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

Coronavirus News (291)

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.”   

One More Truck Stop

Missed exits 

Pop up billboards 

Of one more truck stop. 

 

The wheels that carry 

Souls across lifetimes. 

 

Banana bazooka 

Gunshot wounds 

After one more argument.

Fights are not supposed to be settled

On this side of the fence. 

Submission is peace. 

Hurl the red flag

The white and the green

Against the blue sky.

Fathom the bottom of seas

While you reach for

The stars.