riders on the storm

 

The Doors

Chapter Two of Pope Francis's new encyclical is titled "strangers on the road" -- my memory went right to --

Riders-on-the-storm, bahm, bahm...

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The Pope's Chapter Three is "vision of an open world."

-------------- [excerpt / summary] --------- ...The spiritual stature of a person's life is measured by love, which always "takes first place" and leads us to seek better for the life of the other, far from all selfishness.  The sense of solidarity and of fraternity begin within the family, which are to be safeguarded and respected in their "primary and vital mission of education."

     The right to live with dignity cannot be denied to anyone, the Pope again affirms, and since rights have no borders, no one can remain excluded regardless of where they are born.   

     In this perspective the Pontiff also calls us to consider "an ethics of international relations", because every country also belongs to foreigners and the goods of the territory cannot be denied to those who are in need and come from another place.  

Thus, the natural right to private property will be secondary to the principal of the universal destination of created goods.  The Encyclical also places specific emphasis on the issue of foreign debt:  subject to the principal that it must be paid, it is hoped nonetheless that this does not compromise the growth and subsistence of the poorest countries.

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"The Election That Could Break America"

-- The Atlantic

(continued)

...If he Election Night results get changed because of the ballots counted after Election Day, you have the basic ingredients for a shitstorm."

     There is no "if" about it, I said.  The count is bound to change.  "Yeah," the adviser agreed, and canvassing will produce more votes for Biden than for Trump.  Democrats will insist on dragging out the canvass for as long as it takes to count every vote.  The resulting conflict, the adviser said, will be on their heads.

"They are asking for it," he said.  "They're trying to maximize their electoral turnout, and they think there are no downsides to that."  He added, "There will be a count on Election Night, that count will shift over time, and the results when the final count is given will be challenged as being inaccurate, fraudulent--pick your word."

The worst case for an orderly count is also considered by some election modelers the likeliest:  that Trump will jump ahead on Election Night, based on in-person returns, but his lead will slowly give way to a Biden victory as mail-in votes are tabulated.  

Josh Mendelsohn, the CEO of the Democratic data-modeling firm Hawkfish, calls this scenario "the red mirage."  

The turbulence of that interval, fed by street protests, social media, and Trump's desperate struggles to lock in his lead, can only be imagined.

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