A Flower Unfurling

Tiny limbs 

That clutched my finger once 

The recent past 

Revisited in photos and videos 

To see you have grown 

To munch on a baby carrot 

And to already share jokes 

Inside jokes. 

 

My wonder wagon 

Who helps me look at the world 

Afresh. 

 

Giddy and adamant and wailing 

High fiving, swiping and 

Finding new tricks on the phone 

May you lead the way. 

 

The glue that will 

Keep the family together 

No matter what 

My topsyturvy 

Niece.

Coronavirus News (298)

A Photographer's American Road Trip 

After the Pandemic, a Revolution in Education and Work Awaits Providing more Americans with portable health care, portable pensions and opportunities for lifelong learning is what politics needs to be about post-Nov. 3. ........... one of the most profound eras of Schumpeterian creative destruction ever — which this pandemic is both accelerating and disguising. .......... No job, no K-12 school, no university, no factory, no office will be spared. .........  the Industrial Revolution produced a world in which there were sharp distinctions between employers and employees, between educators and employers and between governments and employers and educators, “but now you’re going to see a blurring of all these lines.” ............ the globalization of goods and people has been slowed by the pandemic and politics, but the globalization of services has soared — and “the half-life of skills is steadily shrinking” ........... whatever skill you possess today is being made obsolete faster and faster. ...........  a path of “work-learn-work-learn-work-learn.” ..........  accelerations in digitization and globalization are steadily making more work “modular,’’ broken up into small packets that are farmed out by companies. .......... platforms that synthesize and orchestrate these modular packets to make products and services .......... “work will increasingly get disconnected from companies, and jobs and work will increasingly get disconnected from each other.’’ Some work will be done by machines; some will require your physical proximity in an office or a factory; some will be done remotely; and some will be just a piece of a task that can also be farmed out to anyone, anywhere. .....................  As more work becomes modular, digitized and disconnected from an office or factory, many more diverse groups of people — those living in rural areas, minorities, stay-at-home moms and dads and those with disabilities — will be able to compete for it from their homes. ............. today Kumar is not looking just for “problem solvers,’’ he says, but “problem-finders,’’ people with diverse interests — art, literature, science, anthropology — who can identify things that people want before people even know they want them. ...............  AI will take away jobs of the past, while it creates jobs of the future. ........... lifelong “radical reskilling.” .......... “Radical reskilling means I can take a front-desk hotel clerk and turn him into a cybersecurity technician. I can take an airline counter agent and turn her into a data consultant.” ............ “just-in-time learning,’’ offering the precise skills needed for the latest task ......... will be able to “learn, earn and work,’’ all at the same time.  

The Life Of Christ by Fulton Sheen

Joe Biden And Kamala Harris On 60 Minutes

Foreign Policy: Submissions

 

My Adult Son Moved in. It’s a Nightmare. Can I Kick Him Out?

Inside the Democrats’ battle to take back Texas

Trump Tells Coronavirus, ‘I Surrender’ The president plays the climate-denial playbook on a pandemic. ............  Just between now and Election Day, we’re likely to lose almost twice as many Americans to Covid-19 as died on 9/11. .......... According to the right, climate change isn’t happening; anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it without destroying the economy; and it’s all a hoax concocted by a global conspiracy of scientists, who are just in it for the money. ......... climate denial is largely sustained by a network of right-wing think tanks supported by fossil-fuel interests ...........  “experts” claiming either that global warming isn’t happening or that nothing can be done about it are basically professional deniers, who make a living as “merchants of doubt.”  

Hillary Clinton Says It Is Different This Time 

Much Too Much

Dry leaves 

Scavenged for fuel 

Tiny tracks to mud roads 

That wind down 

To engulf the village 

Into kerosene lamp dark 

That burts open into 

A rod red morning. 

 

Starry nights 

Time zones away from 

Big city lights 

That are a poor substitute. 

 

Hyperlinks that replace thoughts 

Stares that unblinkingly avoid 

The passersby 

The person next door 

And the coffee table mate 

Sitting across the table. 

 

When much is enough 

And much is too much 

Close your eyes and take a deep breath 

Of centering.

 

Coronavirus News (297)

This Is Why Republicans Fear Change The party’s survival depends on frozen politics. ............ the case for D.C. statehood is straightforward: American citizens deserve full representation in Congress .......... Puerto Rico, on the other hand, has routinely chosen Republicans for statewide office. ......... Republicans are hostile to greater democracy, where democracy means equal representation in a federal system of separated powers. ...........  The question of whether Democrats will abolish the filibuster or expand the courts or create new states, should they win power, is actually a question of whether Democrats will bring dynamism to the American political system. 

The Case Against Google A lawsuit with bipartisan support could herald a new era of trustbusting. ....... Why has Washington united against one of America’s most successful and popular companies, and how could the case change the internet as we know it? ........... Google now controls 88 percent of the U.S. search engine market, an unparalleled power the company uses to effectively prevent alternative search engines from competing. .......... Google, like Facebook, has argued that it doesn’t harm consumers, since its flagship product costs them nothing to use. ........  “The harm is to competition” ............. Google’s control over search means it can charge marketers higher fees for ads ........... “On too many queries, Google is more interested in making search lucrative than a better product for us.” .......... many news organizations have virtually no choice now but to depend on Google and Facebook to reach readers and fund their operations ........... two crises: a financial crisis, because advertising revenue that used to go to publishers is now captured by big tech intermediaries, causing the news industry to collapse; and an editorial one, because media’s dependency on a handful of platforms incentivizes virality and sensationalism over high-quality journalism. ................  “When a consumer uses Google, the consumer provides personal information and attention in exchange for search results,” the lawsuit reads. “Google then monetizes the consumer’s information and attention by selling ads.” ......... Google, the lawsuit claims, pays $8 billion to $12 billion a year to Apple in exchange for making Google the default search engine across all of its devices. That has made the two tech giants heavily reliant on each other to the exclusion of other search engines. ................... the Justice Department’s move could set off a cascade of similar lawsuits against big tech companies  

Why Does Trump Win With White Men? The gender gap probably deserves another name. ......... The electorate as a whole seems ready to cast out President Trump by a big margin. But not men. .......... Trump leading Mr. Biden among white men by a 12-percentage-point margin — 53 percent to 41 percent. ................... not flattering to men. Women tend to cast votes based on what they perceive as the overall benefit to the nation and their communities. Men are more self-interested. .......... “Women think about government in terms of the well-being of the country” ........ “Men are much more likely to think about it in terms of their wallet. Their bottom line is, how does this affect me?” ..............  “I think the gender gap reflects traditional differences in male and female values and personalities, differences such as men’s greater competitiveness and concerns with issues of power and control, and women’s greater compassion and nurturance, rejection of force and violence, and concern with interpersonal relations.” ............  Men’s political views were shaped by a more individualistic attitude ............  “We see it in poll questions that ask, “Is America getting too soft and feminine?” Dr. Deckman said. “Those who answer ‘yes’ lean strongly Republican.” ............ white college-educated men are beginning to vote more like women and people of color. ..... just 6 percent of Black women support Mr. Trump; for Black men, it was 11 percent. There was a bigger gap between Hispanic men and women: 23 percent of women were for Mr. Trump, and 35 percent of men. ...........  His boorish tone, inability to express empathy and unwillingness to admit mistakes are not qualities that most women find attractive. ........... when men and women pay attention to politics, they are looking at two different pictures. ...........   “Men consume more political news, but for a lot of them, especially younger men, it’s like a hobby and a sport” ......... The gender gap cannot be completely differentiated from rank misogyny. Some would argue that it is misogyny. ................  Trump might be fading so fast and hard that Mr. Biden could win the male vote — though not the white male vote. .......... a torrent of Trump-splaining ........ Republicans spent a full three decades tearing down Hillary Clinton, often in flagrantly sexist ways — criticizing her clothes, her tone of voice, her physical stamina, her “likability,” her response to her husband’s infidelity. It worked and she lost because a large proportion of the nation, including lots of women, viscerally disliked her. ......................  He said he believed every American family needed a tank in their garage.

Coronavirus News (296)

Why the 5G Pushiness? Because $$$. Selling 5G capability is a huge opportunity for phone companies. Be careful.

The Ottoman Empire's Influence On The Present Day “Whether politicians, pundits and traditional historians like it or not, the world we inhabit is very much an Ottoman one.” ....... “It’s not as though Columbus didn’t cross the Atlantic, of course he did, or that Martin Luther didn’t lead a Protestant Reformation, of course he did; but there are Ottoman and Muslim elements to those stories that we have ignored or not paid attention to. A lot of the work of my book is reinserting Islam and the Ottoman Empire into those stories to give us a fuller and, I would say, more empirically true story about all of these events that we think have something to tell us about the making of the modern world.”

Why the 5G Pushiness? Because $$. 

The Shrinking of the American Mind What wasn’t said at the debates was as telling as what was. ......  President Trump never mentioned Afghanistan, where the United States lost more than 2,400 lives and spent some $2 trillion over the past two decades. ........ One of the characteristics of a nightmare is that it is all-consuming. Everything beyond it fades into the murk. President Trump, in an extraordinary sustained broadcast of his self-obsession, has managed to corral the world into the shadow of an orange colossus. ...........  the pandemic’s exposure of a global leadership vacuum, rising inequality in Western societies, the frozen inadequacy of the United Nations, social fracture, the spread of the surveillance state, and the hate-multiplying impact of social media platforms may be pivotal issues of the coming decade. What did we hear on these themes? Essentially nothing. ........ The shrinking of the American mind involves a kind of numbness. It has become difficult to think or see beyond the noise emanating from the White House. Indignation fatigue has set in. There he goes again. .......... In the end the debates amounted to a portrait of the growing irrelevance to the rest of the world of an insular United States. Two men in their 70s showed an almost complete disregard for the I-want-to-help-change-the-world idealism of Generation Z. This was close to insulting. The exchanges were, on the whole, petty, petulant and predictable. ...... Africa, famously home to “shithole” countries for Trump, is where roughly two-thirds of population growth will occur between 2020 and 2050; its fate is also humanity’s. ....... The essence of America is openness. ...... The shrinking of the American mind under Trump therefore amounts, for Americans, to a dangerous denial of themselves. Prolonged for another four years, in a second Trump term, it would negate the American idea

Trump’s Last Stand for White America We face a choice between a true renewal and a warped fantasy of the past. .......... His has been the stand — I am tempted to say the last stand — of whites against nonwhites. .......... fear has been Trump’s main weapon. Fear, which depends on pitting one group against another, is the currency of the Trump presidency. It is therefore no surprise that the America that is about to vote is probably more fractured than at any time since the Vietnam War. ..........  He wants to freeze a white America. ......... France is worried about Muslims from North Africa. .......... Power has migrated eastward to Asia. America’s recent wars have been unwon. By midcentury, non-Hispanic whites will constitute less than 50 percent of the population. .........  He puffs out his chest, Mussolini-style, but he is a bone-spur coward. A narrow ramp makes his limbs tremble. He is good at getting the blood up. He is good at undoing. He is not good at getting anything constructive done.  ......... Donald Trump does business the McCarthy way. He deals in specters: immigrants, and Muslims, and brown people, and Black people, and L.G.B.T.Q. people. 

How Democrats Won the War of Ideas The era of big government is here. ........ The Democrats won the big argument of the 20th century. It’s not that everybody has become a Democrat, but even many Republicans are now embracing basic Democratic assumptions. Americans across the board fear economic and physical insecurity more than an overweening state. The era of big government is here. ..............  two-thirds of Americans support allowing people to buy health insurance through the federal government, the public option. Two-thirds support Joe Biden’s $2 trillion plan to increase the use of renewable energy and build energy-efficient infrastructure. Seventy-two percent of likely voters, including 56 percent of Republicans, support another $2 trillion in Covid-19 relief to individuals as well as state and local governments. ................... Two-thirds of Americans think government should do more to fight the effects of climate change. At least 60 percent of Americans support raising the minimum wage and providing tax credits to low-income workers.  Eighty-two percent of voters and 70 percent of Republicans would like to consider legislation to expand paid family and medical leave. ..........  both parties are moving left, it’s just that Democrats are moving left at 350 miles an hour while Republicans are moving left at 50 miles an hour. .......... canceling college debt, more than doubling the minimum wage, shutting down coal-fired plants and guaranteeing every American a job. ......... the familiar historic pattern. A crisis hits, like Covid-19, the financial crisis, World War II or the Great Depression. Government expands to meet the crisis. Republicans eventually come around and ratify the expansion. ........... This is still a nation where 72 percent of people call themselves moderates or conservatives and only 24 percent call themselves liberal. Americans still have a strong basic faith in democratic capitalism and dislike socialism, by a two-to-one margin. ................. a much stronger social safety net to protect people from the hazards of life — poverty, sickness, joblessness — but they also call for reform in three sectors where government has been captured by insider manipulation: housing, finance and health care. ............  the liberal welfare state won — a robust capitalist economy combined with generous social support. 

How to Reopen the American Mind In the midst of an existential crisis for higher education, is it even reasonable to expect the humanities to survive? ..........  Many colleges and universities are now fighting for survival. .......... liberal arts colleges are shutting down at even higher rates, and job losses at colleges are multiplying .......... Words like “apocalyptic” and “extinction” keep showing up in otherwise dispassionate analyses of the situation. ............ the vulnerability of democratic institutions to the forces of technocracy, greed, materialism and an immoderate individualism. ......... the “four years of freedom” enjoyed by his elite students, a “charmed” period that fell “between the intellectual wasteland” of the student’s family life and the “inevitable dreary professional training that awaits him after the baccalaureate.” ...........  an ignorant and benighted populace looming outside the campus gates ...........  the public perceives — not incorrectly — that the cynicism of politicians and administrators about their capacity to think for themselves is often matched by that of academics ............. The health of the humanities should be measured instead by whether our society provides ample opportunities for its citizens to ask the fundamental questions about the good life and the just society. ...........  millions of Americans have gravitated to online reading groups and book clubs, attended Zoom panels on the burdens of history and the meaning of open discourse, watched philosophy lectures on YouTube and flocked to longform, humanistic magazines ................  we have finally matched the inherent elitism of humanistic inquiry with the democratic faith in everyday intellect that has always characterized the American mind at its most open.

The Roadside Twang

Will you 

For just once 

Give a glance 

And a coin 

To the Roadside twang? 

 

To give is to rejuvenate. 

 

Happiness is in giving 

With a little effort 

You might even 

Become happy. 

 

The music and the singing 

Is but bonus 

Roadside singing 

Is a stage all its own. 

 

The wisdom of small giving 

Is within your reach 

For it is a road 

Open to the public.

 

Coronavirus News (295)

She’s Evangelical, ‘Pro-Life’ and Voting for Biden Billy Graham’s granddaughter says, “This president doesn’t represent our faith.” .......... For most of her life, she voted Republican. Yet this year, she is voting for Joe Biden ........ “The Jesus we serve promotes kindness, dignity, humility, and this president doesn’t represent our faith,” Duford said. .......... About eight of 10 white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and polling suggests that the great majority will vote for him again in 2020. ......... The Rev. John Huffman, who once was President Richard Nixon’s pastor, said he has voted Republican all his life but has now joined a group called Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden. He said he prays for Trump but sees him as “an immoral, amoral sociopathic liar who functions from a core of insecure malignant narcissism.” ..............  A huge obstacle for many evangelicals considering a vote for Democrats is abortion policy. So a particularly important part of the upheaval now underway within evangelical ranks is a move to redefine “pro-life” to apply to more than fetuses. ..............   I equally wish the Republican Party would place a greater value on life outside the womb. ........... as a practical matter, abortion rates fall more during Democratic administrations than Republican ones ...........   one of the most effective strategies to reduce abortion numbers is to provide comprehensive sex education and family planning ......... Evangelical churches, she said, have mistakenly pursued a harmful “strategy of political gain in Jesus’s name.” ........  Describing family separation at the border, environmental degradation, denial of health care to the poor, she added, “These are not pro-life policies.” ........... “This is a vote for the soul of the nation,” he added. “I’ve never seen an existential threat like this in my 66 years of living.” “This is not about partisan politics,” he said. “It’s about truly choosing life.” 

U.S. Foreign Policy Never Recovered From the War on Terror Only a Reckoning With the Disastrous Legacy of 9/11 Can Heal the United States ..........  With the declaration of its global “war on terror” after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States went abroad in search of monsters and ended up midwifing new ones—from terrorist groups such as the Islamic State (or ISIS), born in the prisons of U.S.-occupied Iraq; to destabilization and deepening sectarianism across the Middle East; to racist authoritarian movements in Europe and in the United States that feed—and feed off of—the fear of refugees fleeing those regional conflicts......... Advocates of the war on terror believed that nationalist chauvinism, which sometimes travels under the name “American exceptionalism,” could be stoked at a controlled burn to sustain American hegemony. Instead, and predictably, toxic ultranationalism burned out of control. Today, the greatest security threat to the United States comes not from any terrorist group, or from any great power, but from domestic political dysfunction. ...........  The election of Donald Trump as president was a product and accelerant of that dysfunction—but not its cause. The environment for his political rise was prepared over a decade and a half of xenophobic, messianic Washington warmongering, with roots going back into centuries of white supremacist politics. .........  the consequences of U.S. antiterrorism policy since 9/11: surveillance, detention, torture, extrajudicial killing, the use of manned and unmanned airstrikes, and partnerships with repressive regimes. .................  minority communities that have experienced the most severe domestic effects of U.S. antiterrorism policies, and civilians in countries where the United States has waged war. ......... militarism abroad and racial and economic inequality at home are mutually reinforcing ...........  (The absurdly militarized police response to the recent racial justice protests offers one vivid illustration.) ..................  especially as the Washington herd turns its attention farther east and girds for a new great-power conflict with China. ............. The United States has conducted combat operations in 24 different countries since 2001 and remains officially at war in at least seven. ..............   the number of Sunni Islamist militants around the world almost quadrupled between 2001 and 2018. ......... the taxpayer bill for post-9/11 U.S. wars at almost $6 trillion ..........  2.77 million service members had served 5.4 million deployments since 9/11. More than 60,000 service members have been killed. Many more have come home with permanent, life-altering injuries. Eighty-three percent of post-9/11 veterans report living with post-traumatic stress disorder. The country thanks its troops for their service but continues to send them on multiple deployments in wars with no clear purpose or strategy for victory. ............  The war on terror became a route through which open racism was smuggled back into mainstream U.S. politics. ................ as if Western Christian societies hadn’t just produced two world wars and the Holocaust within the span of a century. ..............  The United States had securitized its immigration policy after 9/11, viewing many who came seeking refuge from oppression or simply the opportunity for a better life as potential terrorists. ............   Today, Guantánamo Bay prison remains open, and the former head of a CIA torture prison heads the CIA. ............  the commission should be created through congressional legislation and comprise not only respected former officials but members of impacted communities and civil society experts in relevant fields, including human rights, international law, and foreign policy. The commission must be independent and free of political pressure and given access to all information, classified and unclassified, relevant to U.S. policies and practices undertaken since 9/11. ...............   It should hear from communities abroad who have lived amid the chaos and violence of U.S. military interventions. ...........  A genuine reckoning with the post-9/11 period would spur not a U.S. withdrawal from the world but rather deeper engagement with it. The main challenges of today—the coronavirus pandemic and climate change foremost among them—are shared. The United States must commit to a sustained multilateral approach to meet these challenges, rather than continuing to unilaterally abrogate and undermine the very norms and conventions that it helped to establish. ...................  A review of post-9/11 antiterrorism policy would help expose the folly of seeking security through repression, whether at home or abroad. ........ the people of the Middle East made clear what they want during the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011–12: economic opportunities, governments that work for them instead of small cabals of self-dealing elites, more political freedom. ................ A genuine accounting for the war on terror and its unintended consequences should engender a strong sense of humility about the United States’ ability to produce grand transformations, especially through military force. The United States has neither the ability nor the right to change other countries’ governments, but it can embrace an ethic of solidarity and use its considerable diplomatic and economic power to defend the rights and freedom of people in other countries who are working for positive change. 

The Philosophy That Makes Amy Coney Barrett So Dangerous Do we really want our rights to be determined by the understandings of centuries ago?  .............  In 1987, Robert Bork was denied confirmation to the Supreme Court because his originalist beliefs were deemed a serious threat to constitutional rights. ..........  Early in the 19th century, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that “we must never forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding,” a Constitution “meant to be adapted and endure for ages to come.” ........... the many instances where James Madison and Alexander Hamilton disagreed about such fundamental questions as whether the president possesses any inherent powers. ..............   what often is overlooked is that conservative justices ignore original meaning when it does not serve their purpose.  

Pete Buttigieg Dropped Out of the Presidential Race and Wrote a Best Seller  converted a guest room into a study. Then he woke up early every morning and got to work, snacking on peanuts and almonds ..........  the “deadline energy” of his kamikaze literary endeavor .........  masked, standing behind plexiglass, teaching a course on trust in politics to 19 undergraduates at the University of Notre Dame.

A New Life of Malcolm X Brimming With Detail, Insight and Feeling a family history of American racial terror that preceded his birth in 1925. Malcolm’s middle-class parents moved several times, often into neighborhoods they knew were hostile, confronting the Ku Klux Klan, local officials and bigoted employers. His father, Earl Little, died when Malcolm (born Malcolm Little) was 6, the victim of a streetcar accident that Malcolm later suspected was a cover-up for the work of a racist mob. ............  His mother, Louise, kept the family together as long as she could, but eventually succumbed to poverty and mental illness. Malcolm, then 13, and his seven siblings were scattered into foster care and other arrangements. ...................  They could not nurture Malcolm through childhood, but they steeled him with the truth: He owed white people nothing. Not deference, or trust, or gratitude for whatever comfort he might find in life. Malcolm’s character and beliefs changed over the years. Defiance of white supremacy was his essence. ..................  Though he was rarely violent, Malcolm was embedded in a social network of thieves, drug dealers, racketeers and prostitutes as he split his late teenage years between Boston and New York City. His tragic and frequently despicable behavior marked him for early imprisonment, if not death. ............. Incarceration at 20 was the pivot of Malcolm’s life. He accepted the teachings of the Nation of Islam while behind bars .............  He quickly became the group’s most effective and recognizable spokesman, with fierce criticism of white America and a gospel of Black self-respect. Malcolm’s political celebrity and unapologetic approach ultimately turned the leadership of the Nation of Islam against him, and Muhammad gave the assassination order that led to Malcolm’s killing. ........ a bizarre arranged meeting between Malcolm and the leadership of the Ku Klux Klan in Atlanta in 1961. Muhammad sent Malcolm and his colleague Jeremiah X to attend the meeting on behalf of the Nation of Islam, and Malcolm never forgave him. ...........  account of Malcolm’s assassination at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. ......... the possible involvement of the F.B.I. and New York City police. .........    devastated by the indignity and simplicity of the killing. Malcolm knew he was in danger and did little to protect himself. ..........  and begun experimenting with new tools for a global, human-rights-based movement for Black liberation. He was forceful, fine and weary, but not finished. And then three men rushed the stage, bullets ripped through Malcolm’s flesh and he bled to death on the floor. ............... his charisma is undeniable. His heroism grew from his courage, but also from his delight in his Blackness and his cause. .......... America has never been a nation of laws for Black people, he said. A country that is conditionally lawful is not lawful at all. It is weak, and will eventually be exposed, no matter how much wealth and military power it amasses. And in such a country, he wondered, what good is it for Black people to ask for trim legal solutions to police violence, electoral theft, segregation and poverty? ............... Malcolm’s inheritance in the Black Lives Matter movement. Black Lives Matter isn’t asking for anything. Like Malcolm, it demands everything that Black people deserve, by any means necessary. ...........  We will exceed even Malcolm’s wildest dreams.

Coronavirus News (294)

Coronavirus News (293)

Fareed Zakaria Looks at Life After the Pandemic  What insights does it offer during a catastrophe that evokes the Spanish flu after World War I, which claimed 50 million — some reckon 100 million — lives? .......... Ancient Athens, a proud democracy, never recovered from the plague. The late-medieval Black Death all but wiped out Europe with a toll between 75 million and 200 million. Yet note that it was estimated to have run for 100 years. The Spanish flu trickled away after two. ..........  SARS-CoV-2 was sequenced almost instantaneously. .......... governments, which went for penny-pinching and deflation after the Crash of 1929, but now pour out trillions. ............. States actually “gain strength through chaos and crises.” .........  Taiwan and South Korea quickly contained the virus without totalitarian tactics. ..........  What matters is not the ideological coloration of government or its size, but its quality, Zakaria says. He argues for “a competent, well-functioning, trusted state.” ........  The United States has proved neither competent nor cohesive. It is an archipelago of some 2,600 federal, state and local authorities charged with health policy. .......... The ur-model of the strong state is France. In terms of deaths per million, it ranks far above confederate Switzerland, with its 26 cantons jealously holding off Berne. .......... Social Security is superb, Veterans Affairs a disaster. Meanwhile, officialdom has grown exponentially in a supposedly “anti-statist” country. America, Zakaria says, must learn “not big or small, but good government.” ......... America the Dysfunctional ........   Upward mobility is down, inequality is up. The universities of the United States lead the global pack, but a B.A. at one of those top schools comes with a price tag upward of a quarter-million dollars. The country boasts the best medical establishment, but health care for the masses might just as well dwell on the moon. ........... Striking a wondrous balance between efficiency, market economics and equality, those great Danes embody an inspiring model; alas, it is hard to transfer. ..........  rooted in ultramodernity: globalization, automation, alienation, mass migration, the lure and decay of the world’s sprawling metropolises. These are the stuff of misery — and the fare of cultural critics since the dawn of the industrial age. ........... “This ugly pandemic has … opened up a path to a new world.” ...........  “many rich societies” do not honor “a social contract that benefits everyone.” So, the neoliberalism of decades past must yield to “radical reforms.” Governments “will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investments. … Redistribution will again be on the agenda; the privileges of the … wealthy in question.” Now is the time for “basic income and wealth taxes.” ............ urge a revolution already upon us, and probably represent today’s zeitgeist and reality. .......... We are all social democrats now.  

It’s Time to Try Virtual Reality. Here’s Where to Start. Running out of fun things to do at home? The new generation of VR headsets is surprisingly approachable, with games for players of all ages. 

Apollo's Arrow The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live  ..... what it means to live in a time of plague — an experience that is paradoxically uncommon to the vast majority of humans who are alive, yet deeply fundamental to our species. 

Trump says he might leave the country if he loses the election. Is that a threat or a promise? pic.twitter.com/S7woNm88g3

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) October 21, 2020

 

Coronavirus News (292)

McConnell casts doubt on massive pre-Election Day stimulus deal as Pelosi sounds upbeat about talks with administration  Asked when Americans could expect relief amid the coronavirus pandemic if a deal isn't reached now, Clyburn replied, "When we change this administration." ........ In a test of competing proposals, a vote McConnell called Tuesday related to a standalone bill to extend the Paycheck Protection Program garnered a handful of Democratic votes but fell short of the 60 votes it would ultimately need to be adopted. And a separate vote pushed by Democrats on a House-passed comprehensive stimulus bill fell short of a majority. The Senate is set to vote Wednesday on a roughly $500 billion proposal, similar to one Democrats rejected this summer. It's also expected to fail.

Asean governments need a change of mindset if they want to follow Vietnam’s lead in attracting foreign investment Vietnam has become a hub for foreign direct investment in the past decade, with steady compound annual growth of 10.4 per cent between 2013 and 2019 Some may say this is thanks to its young labour force and proximity to China, but the appeal of a stable political environment cannot be underestimated .......... those countries with the strongest economic foundation have the best chance of emerging from the crisis intact. .......... Few countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) could claim to be as economically strong as Singapore. Yet there is one that has been quietly shoring up its resources and laying a solid foundation for growth.

China GDP: economy grew by 4.9 per cent in third quarter of 2020 China’s growth picks up from 3.2 per cent in the second quarter and a contraction of 6.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2020 Industrial production and retail sales grew by 6.9 per cent and 3.3 per cent respectively from a year earlier as investment turned positive for the first time this year ............ The world’s second-largest economy has recovered strongly after shrinking by 6.8 per cent in the first three months of the year – the first official contraction since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976 

With Covid-19 Under Control, China’s Economy Surges Ahead Exports jumped and local governments engaged in a binge of debt-fueled construction projects. Even consumer spending is finally recovering. .............  The United States and other nations are expected to report a third-quarter surge too, but they are still behind or just catching up to pre-pandemic levels. .......... China’s lead could widen further in the months to come. It has almost no local transmission of the virus now, while the United States and Europe face another accelerating wave of cases. ........... China’s model for restoring growth may be effective, but may not be appealing to other countries. Determined to keep local transmission of the virus at or near zero, China has resorted to comprehensive cellphone tracking of its population, weekslong lockdowns of neighborhoods and cities and costly mass testing in response to even the smallest outbreaks. .................  Under ordinary circumstances, most Chinese are compelled to save for education, health care and retirement because of a weak social safety net. 

McConnell warns White House against making stimulus deal as Pelosi and Mnuchin inch closer GOP leader suggests Democrats are not negotiating in good faith and could disrupt Supreme Court nomination ......... McConnell told reporters Tuesday that if a deal were reached and passed by the House with President Trump’s support, he would put it on the Senate floor “at some point” — but he did not commit to doing so before the election. .........  with the negotiators “several hundred billion” dollars apart and also at odds over the extent of state and local money. ........ Trump, for his part, has brushed aside complaints from Senate Republicans and said they will ultimately back a package if he tells them to. “It’s very simple: I want to do it even bigger than the Democrats,” Trump said. “They’ll be on board if something comes.”  

West lags East in curbing COVID

Biden Wants To Transform America

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An Undercover Trip Into the Rageful Worlds of Incels and White Supremacists online chat rooms where lonely men find succor in misogyny and white supremacy .......... the “social isolation and erotic frustration” that seemed to drive them ........ the language of extremists tends to occupy the space between risible and profoundly dumb .......... Contemporary white supremacy is a mishmash of old anti-Semitic tropes, racist pseudoscience and bizarre fantasia — what Lavin calls a “bigot’s pastiche.” ......... (Neo-Nazis famously love to use “88,” because the eighth letter in the alphabet is H, and 88 signifies “Heil Hitler”; I learned from Lavin’s book that some enterprising Christian neo-Nazis have also started using “83,” for an oxymoronic “Heil Christ.”) ............... Radicalization often happens online nowadays .........  American and European “accelerationists” who are trying to incite a race war. ......... “bigotry and Nazism should have a social cost.” ......... a cadre of “launderers” who repackage far-right ideas into edgy-but-not-quite-bannable videos that get them clicks and converts on YouTube. ......... “Let us hold it to the light — this wet, rotting, malodorous thing — and let it dry up and crumble into dust and be gone.”

Just Like You, Claire Messud Never Read ‘A Brief History of Time’  You know, often when you meet writers, they disappoint. There’s no reason for a brilliant writer to be good company. ......... Each of us has our own literary taste, just as in music or food. 

Reed Hastings, the Founder of Netflix, Keeps His Library in His Pocket   

Matthew McConaughey he knows there are people who think, “Gosh dang, McConaughey just eases right into everything — the guy doesn’t seem to have any bumps, doesn’t get hit crossing the road.” He said he wrote “Greenlights” partly as a corrective to this perception, to show how much effort it has taken to get where he is. ........... No one can escape hardship, he said, but he can share the lessons “that helped me navigate the hard stuff — like I say, ‘get relative with the inevitable’ — sooner and in the best way possible for myself.” ...........  “I’m still continuously testing and updating my philosophies, practically daily” ............  The book’s first chapter dramatizes a scene from 1974 where McConaughey watched the couple fight ferociously — his mother having broken his father’s nose with a telephone while he brandished a ketchup bottle — before his parents had sex on the kitchen floor. Image ........... “It’s a state of being that I work at, continuously, daily, and I break a sweat to get it.” ............ someone who is perpetually preparing himself for opportunities and actively steering himself toward them. .......... “People underestimate the utter intentionality of what Matthew’s done. He’s really good at going from A to B to C. He’s got a plan and he’s just brave enough and brazen enough to execute it.” ........... “He wasn’t discovered in a bar — he went over to the guy who he heard was casting it. Matthew’s always playing the long game.” ............. a practicing Methodist but also describes himself as “an optimistic mystic,” forever fine-tuning his personal dials in search of further broadcasts from the universe. ...............  That approach to existence has sent McConaughey hunting for what he calls “greenlights” — the traffic signals that mean go, which he prefers to spell as a single word and which he believes take skill and acumen to identify. ............   You’re making choices. They matter.” .......... “It’s his way of wanting to be heard on another level” ....... “It’s another level of communication that you can’t get in a role.” ..........  “Even the most powerful actors — Denzel Washington, Daniel Day-Lewis — are still at the mercy of the parts they’re being offered. Actors need these other outlets.” ............ “If you’re high enough, the sun’s always shining.” ............  (“Don’t leave crumbs”; “Dissect your successes”; “A roof is a man-made thing”). .............  “All of a sudden, my wife was like, ‘Get in the truck, load up your food, water and tequila, and don’t come back until you’ve got something,’” he recalled. “So, bam, I called a friend with a cabin and hit the desert.” .........  “Could this actually be a banner year, where things got started?” he asked. “Where we got cleansed? A little evolution would be nice.”

Doctors May Have Found Secretive New Organs in the Center of Your Head They appear to be a fourth pair of large salivary glands, tucked into the space where the nasal cavity meets the throat. ......... Any modern anatomy book will show just three major types of salivary glands: one set near the ears, another below the jaw and another under the tongue. “Now, we think there is a fourth” ......... we are in 2020 and have a new structure identified in the human body.”