New York Times: August 25

Brace Yourself for the Man Who Could Become California’s Governor Elder is a longtime conservative talk radio host from Los Angeles, a fixture of right-wing punditry in the mold of Rush Limbaugh. His schtick is offense and outrage, and over nearly three decades in the business he has minted an oppo-research gold mine of misogynistic and racially inflammatory sound bites that would seem to doom his prospects in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly two to one. ........ On top of everything else — on top of the pandemic, droughts, the wildfires and unbreathable air — this state has a new emergency to worry about. Unless California’s Democrats wake up, in three weeks’ time a Trumpian provocateur could well be chosen to run one of the nation’s bluest states. ......... Elder, who is Black and grew up in South Central Los Angeles, rose to national prominence largely for his paternalistic attitudes on race. He has called Blacks “victicrats” for painting themselves as victims of racism. “In the year 2001, racism is not our major problem,” he once said. “Personal responsibility is.” ........ Like Donald Trump, Elder has a keen understanding of the utility of outrage; when the left attacks him, he goes on Fox News and wears the criticism as a badge of purity, helping him further stand out from the Republican pack. Perhaps that’s why Elder’s standing in the polls has only gone up amid the onslaught of criticism. By making him the face of the recall, Newsom is cementing Elder’s lead, all but guaranteeing him as a successor should Newsom fail to win a majority. It’s a frightening strategy, even if it’s Newsom’s best play......... because the Senate and Electoral College render populous states essentially meaningless, California’s 40 million people are all but shut out of determining the direction of America’s national government. Now it’s clear our state government, too, is rudderless. .......

our poverty rate is the highest in the nation

Is Coffee Good for You? Yes! But it depends on the kind of coffee and the quantity. ....... “The evidence is pretty consistent that coffee is associated with a lower risk of mortality,” said Erikka Loftfield, a research fellow at the National Cancer Institute who has studied the beverage. ........ moderate coffee drinking was included as part of a healthy diet ....... moderate coffee drinkers had less cardiovascular disease, and premature death from all causes, including heart attacks and stroke, than those skipping the beverage ........ The potential benefit from coffee might be from the polyphenols, which are plant compounds that have antioxidant properties ........... They were linked to a lower risk of death from all causes, except with instant coffee, the evidence was weaker. ........... Espresso has the highest concentration of caffeine, packing about 70 milligrams into a one-ounce shot, but is consumed in smaller quantities. By comparison, a typical 12-ounce serving of drip coffee has 200 milligrams of caffeine, more than instant’s 140. ........ Evidence suggests there can be a reliance on the drink, and tolerance builds over time. Withdrawal symptoms include a headache, fatigue, irritability, difficulty concentrating, and depressed mood. ........ caffeine is a psychoactive drug, and coffee is its biggest dietary source. About a half-hour after sipping a cup of joe, the caffeine kicks in, and is quickly absorbed. Blood vessels constrict. Blood pressure increases. A moderate amount of caffeine can wake you up, boost your mood, energy, alertness, concentration and even athletic performance. On average, it takes four to six hours to metabolize half the caffeine. ....... Caffeine is also linked with delaying the time it takes for you fall asleep, how long you stay there, and the reported quality of that shut eye. ......... In addition to caffeine, coffee is a dark brew of a thousand chemical compounds that could have potential therapeutic effects on the body. One key component, chlorogenic acid, is a polyphenol found in many fruits and vegetables. Coffee is also a good dietary source of vitamin B3, magnesium and potassium. ......... Ethiopia, coffee’s birthplace ....... If you are enjoying the drink in moderation, doctors say continue onward, and savor those sips.

My Auntie Taught Me the Secret to a Perfect Breakfast: Improvise Upma is a simple, delicious South Indian breakfast dish that you can make differently every time. ......... When I was a kid, there was no one cooler. She wrapped her hair in a silk scarf and rode an old scooter through the dusty, pitted streets of Pune to her job as a school principal. She sewed all her own clothes, then repurposed the scraps. She played badminton with friends on the weekends, enthusiastically and maybe even a bit viciously. It seemed as if she knew how to do everything. And because she let me join her for anything and everything, I did. ............ When I make it now, usually on the weekends as a late breakfast or lunch, the plan is no plan. The basic tempering stays the same, and I build the dish as I go, adding whatever I have on hand, from some fried okra, to a bunch of blanched edamame from the freezer, to a whole cob’s worth of sweet-corn kernels.

BEST OF LATE NIGHT Jimmy Fallon: Americans Care More About New ‘Spider-Man’ Than Covid’s Origins “In the trailer, Spider-Man visits Dr. Strange and asks him to turn back time. Then President Biden shows up and asks for the same thing,” Fallon joked on Tuesday. ............. “Well, guys, as I mentioned, today the report on the origins of Covid was completed, and an unclassified version will soon be released to the public. And like everything with this pandemic, I’m sure Americans will fully accept the truth and they’ll put all conspiracy theories to rest.” — JIMMY FALLON .......... “Following the full approval of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, the company revealed it would start marketing the drug under the name Comirnaty, so now people will start referring to the Pfizer vaccine as ‘the Pfizer vaccine.’” — SETH MEYERS

The School Kids Are Not Alright Virtually every school in the nation closed in March 2020, replacing face-to-face schooling with thrown-together online education or programs that used a disruptive scheduling process to combine the two. Only a small portion of the student body returned to fully opened schools the following fall. The resulting learning setbacks range from grave for all groups of students to catastrophic for poor children. ....... From the start,

elected officials seemed more concerned about reopening bars and restaurants than safely reopening schools

that hold the futures of more than 50 million children in their hands. ......... at a time when the highly infectious Delta variant is surging and the coronavirus seems likely to become a permanent feature of life. .........

the pandemic amplified disadvantages rooted in racial and socioeconomic inequality, transforming an educational gap into a gulf

. ......... Remote instruction was clearly a factor in driving what researchers call disenrollment.

A Supreme Court That Has Gone Wrong very few cases came before the Supreme Court prior to 1953 involving the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution, the ones that provide protections for people accused of crimes ....... while it never overturned any of the Warren court’s major decisions, began hollowing them out ......... the court’s record “from 1986 through the present and likely for years to come, can easily be summarized: ‘The police almost always win.’” ........

Some have been stopped, beaten up and hauled into jail for no other reason than that they were Black and in the wrong place at the wrong time.

...... while the justices, who willfully ignore the racial implications of their cases, rule that police forces can get away with almost anything, their decisions are not binding should Congress or state legislatures, or even municipal governments, enact rules governing police misbehavior .........

an eloquent and damning indictment not only of horrific police practices, but also of the justices who condoned them and continue to do so

Raw Onions Are the Best Food. Let Me Explain. There’s no greater pleasure than biting into a slice of a raw red onion and tasting its stinging sharpness. .........

A single bite contains an entire sensory universe.

....... Pride shimmered in his eyes, but he grew increasingly irritated when I could not muster much enthusiasm for iced coffee and doughnuts. (I did not have it in me to tell him that Dunkin’ also has outposts in New Delhi, the city I left behind.) ........ I am a vegetarian who eats exactly three vegetables. ........ In my early 20s, I lived in a basement apartment, where my “kitchen” consisted of a mini-fridge, a rickety folding table, a cheap dollar-store knife and a plastic cutting board. ........ At Indian restaurants, with my slightly horrified American friends, I would ask for onions, green chiles and salt on the side and proceed to chomp on them in eyes-closed pleasure throughout the meal. ........ I can conceive of no greater pleasure than biting into a slice of a raw red onion and being suspended for a few seconds in a cocoon of sensation: the sound of the primordial crunch as my teeth sink into it, even as it shoots rockets of discomfort up my nostrils. ......... whether you’re peeling it, dicing it, wiping off the sticky tears caused by it or scrubbing your fingers clean of its stubborn fragrance, the onion reminds you at every step that it is alive. ...........

New York Times: August 5

We the People Have a Few Ideas for the Constitution https://t.co/qcuN9QUS7q

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) August 5, 2021

https://t.co/Z3jsiivYWu

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) August 5, 2021

It’s been 50 years* since America’s last real update to its Constitution. We asked seven writers and legal scholars what they think needs amending next.

• All workers shall have the right to form and join labor unions.
• Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
• The word ‘person’ shall apply to all human life — born or unborn.
• International law shall be part of American law. .......... While the United States today is a far cry from Nazi Germany, it has nonetheless proved itself to be a threat to world peace, blatantly and regularly violating international rules or letting its lawyers twist limits on war into licenses to strike. ........ An amendment to our Constitution modeled on Germany’s could be a start for America’s atonement, by counseling prudence and placing constraints so the country cannot launch disastrous wars of choice as easily or send drones or special forces practically anywhere for deadly missions. It could also offer protections to Americans as well: While the parents of young Black men killed by police have traveled to speak before the United Nations in Geneva to decry violations of international standards on the streets of our cities, no legal appeal to those standards is possible in our courts. ............ forcing Americans to take seriously what others think global morality and rules demand would invigorate our discussion — and litigation — about how to exercise power elsewhere and treat one another at home.
• The right of the people to have privacy and be secure against searches and seizures of their persons, houses, papers and effects, including their data and metadata........... Today, our most important documents and communications are not typically transmitted by the public postal service or held by us in our homes but are handled by companies like AT&T, Google, Facebook and Slack. These companies also hold our metadata — including not only whom we talk to but also where we are and what we watch and read — which, alone or in aggregation, can reveal information as sensitive as the content of the messages themselves. Police officers no longer need to search our homes and documents one by one; they can go straight to those companies, generally getting content with a warrant but also often doing dragnet digital searches through metadata without a warrant. ......

  A few tweaks could do a lot to retrofit the Fourth Amendment for our times — and for many years to come.

• The Supreme Court shall be expanded and its powers limited.
• No state or city shall restrict people’s movement.......... state and local laws clearly make it harder for people to move toward opportunity. Zoning regulations limit housing construction in many wealthy cities and regions, raising housing costs and limiting in-migration for those who don’t already have high salaries to take advantage of those strong economies. Land use regulations in the most productive regions have reduced economic output by 36 percent between 1964 and 2009. Occupational licensing regulations cover 25 percent of workers and limit the ability of people to move between states because their licenses do not travel....... Such an amendment could be used to invalidate unreasonable land use regulations — such as excessive minimum lot size rules and unjustified density limits — and labor regulations that discriminate in their effects against out-of-state workers.

Thomas Jefferson Gave the Constitution 19 Years. Look Where We Are Now. The 26th Amendment to the Constitution took effect 50 years ago this summer, extending the right to vote to all Americans age 18 and older. It was the fourth amendment in the span of a decade, three of which expanded voting rights — a burst of democratic reform nearly unequaled in the nation’s history. ......... based on the country’s increasingly polarized politics, it is likely to remain the last for anyone alive today ........ “We have an amendment process that’s the hardest in the world to enact,” said Aziz Rana, a professor of constitutional law at Cornell University. “That’s the reason why it’s basically a dead letter to enact constitutional amendments. You have to have rolling supermajorities across the country to do so.” Out of almost 12,000 amendments proposed since the founding, only 27 have been adopted. ........

This paltry record would have surprised the nation’s founders, who knew the Constitution they had created was imperfect and who assumed that future generations would fix their mistakes and regularly adapt the document to changing times.

........... Thomas Jefferson went further,

proposing that the nation adopt an entirely new charter every two decades

. A constitution “naturally expires at the end of 19 years,” he wrote to James Madison in 1789. “If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.” .......... the 1860s, when the post-Civil War amendments banned slavery, made Black people citizens and prohibited racial discrimination in voting; the 1910s, when amendments established a federal income tax, a direct vote for senators and the enfranchisement of women; and the 1960s, when the civil rights movement led to democratic reforms like abolishing the poll tax, giving presidential electors to Washington, D.C., and allowing 18-year-olds to vote. ......... The 26th Amendment was cooked with two ingredients common to several others: a controversial Supreme Court ruling and a war. ........... the slogan “old enough to fight, old enough to vote” — eight words of moral clarity that became impossible to disagree with. ....... Mr. Bayh had been at the forefront of efforts to expand the franchise throughout the 1960s and had spent the previous four years pushing for what he hoped would be the original 26th Amendment — abolishing the Electoral College in favor of a national popular vote. ....... (There was a brief delay when Senator Ted Kennedy tried and failed to tack on a provision granting statehood to Washington, D.C.) ......... In just over three months, the required 38 states had signed on — the fastest ratification of a constitutional amendment in history. ........ Had the 26th Amendment not passed when it did, there’s no way the Republican Party would permit it now. It has seen the polls showing that young voters are overwhelmingly hostile to the party. .........

The country passed the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments in the aftermath of the Civil War — a time when Americans were as divided as they could be.

But those amendments “were ratified at the barrel of a gun,” Mr. Levinson said. Any former Confederate state that wanted to be readmitted to the Union was first required to accept the 14th Amendment, granting citizenship to Black people and extending the equal protection of the laws to Americans everywhere. It worked, but it’s hardly an ideal path to constitutional reform. ............ The 27th Amendment, which bars Congress from raising its own pay until after the next election, was originally drafted by James Madison and passed by Congress in 1789, along with the Bill of Rights. It failed to win ratification in enough states and was forgotten for nearly 200 years ......... partisans on both sides treat their favored justices like superheroes. “The veneration of justices is a sign of a dysfunctional political system, whether Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Antonin Scalia,” Mr. Rana said. “A healthier system would be one in which you didn’t know who was on the court, because it wasn’t the only vehicle for constitutional change.” ................ There is one other avenue for reform laid out in Article V of the Constitution:

a new convention, which can be triggered by the agreement of two-thirds of the states and which allows a direct vote on amendments, without needing to go through Congress.

Many attempts to open a new convention have been made; none has yet succeeded, although Republican-led states have come close in recent years. ................ “Imagining a convention would inevitably generate a national conversation about all sorts of topics, as against the present reality where no one, at least in the political class or elite punditry, really broaches the possibility of constitutional reform at all.” ..................

if the Constitution can’t be changed to adapt to modern needs and the Supreme Court becomes both too powerful and too politicized, the political system starts breaking down.

.......... American government is entering

a state of institutional paralysis

, failing to address a number of enormous social problems, including the coronavirus pandemic, racial and economic inequality, the fallout of overseas wars and the continuing aftereffects of the housing crisis. ......... In a functioning system, political leaders would listen to the views of the majority and transform those views into effective policies. ..........

“The United States is effectively a great empire. And a common story about how great empires decline is that the institutions are not able to address the basic social problems the society faces.”

.......... “There may be a way to get there without 700,000 people dying, but there will not be a way to get there without violence,” she said. “The violence is already happening. Jan. 6 was a manifestation of the political dispute in our country right now, much like the country in 1859. The question is, how many people have to die before we decide who America will be in the next generation and next century?” ......... “This is going to sound so pie in the sky, but you have to vote them out,” she said. “That’s the only thing politicians respond to, of either party. That’s the one universal truth of our system.”

America Needs to Break Up Its Biggest States since the addition of Alaska and Hawaii in 1959, America hasn’t increased the number of states, and unless some future president winds up buying Greenland, the United States is unlikely to expand territorially. Nonetheless it continues to expand — demographically.

Since 1960, the country has added over 150 million people through a combination of immigration and natural population increase. Yet we haven’t upped our state count.

.......... on its own, Los Angeles County would be the 10th-largest state in the union. The four largest states by population now make up roughly one-third of the population of the entire United States — more than the smallest 34 put together. ......... Those four largest states have only eight senators, while the 34 smallest states have a supermajority of 68. ...... per the terms of Article IV, creating states from a state that already exists would merely require the state legislature to vote to split up and for Congress to assent. ......... California could even plausibly be broken into as many as five states, if the Bay Area and Los Angeles were hived off to become city-states, which they are certainly populous enough to be. ......... it could be powerfully symbolic if, for example, members of the Seneca, Oneida, Mohawk and other nations of the old Iroquois Confederacy played a central public role in defining a state covering their old territory.

The known global virus caseload has surpassed 200 million infections. a daunting figure that also fails to capture how deeply the virus has embedded itself within humanity. ....... The global toll as of Wednesday was 4.2 million ........ the emergence of the Delta variant — thought to be twice as infectious as the initial form of the virus — is adding fuel to a fire that has never stopped raging ........ governments have faced increasingly angry protests while enforcing lockdowns on weary populations and struggling businesses ....... Over the last six months — as the world raced to 200 million cases in half the time it took to reach 100 million — the calculus for measuring the danger of the moment has become more nuanced. ..........

In the United States, with about 93 million people eligible for shots who have chosen not to get them

, experts say that a rise in cases this winter is inevitable. ............... hundreds of millions of cases are now an inescapable part of our world of seven billion people .......... “We have to understand that

this virus is now endemic

,” said Robert West, a professor emeritus of health psychology at University College London, “and that we have to be thinking about our long-term strategies for dealing with it as a global phenomenon.”.

किन भएन मन्त्रिपरिषद विस्तार ? सरकारको चाबी माधव नेपालको खल्तीमा !https://t.co/9kBd14zp1M

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) August 5, 2021