That military disrespect? More on the ‘it doesn’t matter’ story, Day 4:
Jason Kander:
Why do the troops support President Trump? They don’t
This all brings me to the real reason our troops prefer Biden to Trump, because, in reality, it’s much simpler than the indictment I’ve laid out above. In the military, leadership is more than just a buzzword. It’s at the foundation of everything we do, which is why that same Military Times poll reported roughly 3 out of every 5 military officers to have a “poor view” of the president.
Our troops — no matter how deep their ancestral Republican roots may be back home — know bad leadership when they see it, and they see it plainly in Donald Trump. In Joe Biden, they see a steady leader who has confronted challenges in his life more difficult than elections, and — even if they don’t always agree with his politics — that’s something they can respect.
Narrator: it meant something.
Axios:
Kevin McCarthy warns Trump's war on mail could screw GOP
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy is privately encouraging voting by mail and warned President Trump the party could be "screwed" by his fight against mail-in voting.
The big picture: "We could lose based on that," McCarthy (R-Calif.) told me at a diner in Salt Lake City last week, during a campaign swing that began in the Pacific Northwest. McCarthy said the party can't afford for Republicans to sit home, afraid of getting COVID-19, while Democrats flood the field with mail-in ballots.
A metaphor. Or boater suppression. We report, you decide.
CBS/Austin:
Multiple boats sink during Trump Boat Parade on Lake Travis
As of Saturday night, the Travis County Sheriff‘s office said they were still sorting out just how many boats went under. A spokesperson explains it’s unclear how many calls came in, how many boats sank, how many were towed and how many people needed rescuing largely because others on the lake stepped up to help before some first responders got there.
NY Times:
The former vice president is airing tens of millions of dollars in ads rebutting Mr. Trump’s law-and-order-themed attacks, though some in his campaign are hoping to quickly return the focus to the coronavirus and the economy.
Mr. Biden is slated to visit Pennsylvania on Monday and Michigan on Wednesday, his third and fourth trips to critical swing states since last week, when he traveled to Pittsburgh for a speech rebutting Mr. Trump’s attacks and then to Kenosha, Wis., to meet with the family of Jacob Blake, a Black man shot by the police, and with others.
Morgan Jackson, a top adviser to Roy Cooper, the Democratic governor of North Carolina, said his surveys after the conventions indicated that Mr. Biden had a steady, if modest, advantage in the state and that the small number of swing voters were chiefly concerned about the pandemic.
“Charlotte is not burning,” Mr. Jackson said. “That’s a conversation taking place on Fox News but nowhere in reality here.”
North Carolina is voting now. Not next month, now.
And now for the completely predictable from the NY Times:
A New Front in America’s Pandemic: College Towns
The coronavirus is spiking around campuses from Texas to Iowa to North Carolina as students return.
Last month, facing a budget shortfall of at least $75 million because of the pandemic, the University of Iowa welcomed thousands of students back to its campus — and into the surrounding community.
Iowa City braced, cautious optimism mixing with rising panic. The university had taken precautions, and only about a quarter of classes would be delivered in person. But each fresh face in town could also carry the virus, and more than 26,000 area residents were university employees.
“Covid has a way of coming in,” said Bruce Teague, the city’s mayor, “even when you’re doing all the right things.”
Within days, students were complaining that they couldn’t get coronavirus tests or were bumping into people who were supposed to be in isolation. Undergraduates were jamming sidewalks and downtown bars, masks hanging below their chins, never mind the city’s mask mandate.
Zeynep Tufekci/Atlantic:
The Pandemic Is No Excuse to Surveil Students
Trying to do so is all but useless.
As a university professor, I’ve seen surveillance like this before. Many of these apps replicate the tracking system sometimes installed on the phones of student athletes, for whom it is often mandatory. That system tells us a lot about what we can expect with these apps.
There is a widespread charade in the United States that university athletes, especially those who play high-profile sports such as football and basketball, are just students who happen to be playing sports as amateurs “in their free time.” The reality is that these college athletes in high-level sports, who are aggressively recruited by schools, bring prestige and financial resources to universities, under a regime that requires them to train like professional athletes despite their lack of salary. However, making the most of one’s college education and training at that level are virtually incompatible, simply because the day is 24 hours long and the body, even that of a young, healthy athlete, can only take so much when training so hard. Worse, many of these athletes are minority students, specifically Black men, who were underserved during their whole K–12 education and faced the same challenge then as they do now: Train hard in hopes of a scholarship and try to study with what little time is left, often despite being enrolled in schools with mediocre resources. Many of them arrive at college with an athletic scholarship but not enough academic preparation compared with their peers who went to better schools and could also concentrate on schooling.
Leslie Dorrough Smith/The Conversation
Why masks are a religious issue
In his landmark analysis of the social impact of religion, scholar Bruce Lincoln argued that there is no realm of life that cannot somehow be made religious. This is not because there are topics that are specific or unique to religion, but because of what happens to the authority of a claim when religious language is used. In other words, when people use religious speech, their authority is often perceived to be heightened.
For example, if someone plans to marry a partner they don’t appear to like very much, their claim that “we’ve been together a long time” may not come across as a convincing argument for a wedding. But what if that same person says that “God has brought this other person into my life”? That reason may be more readily accepted if the public hearing these words is already open to religious ideas.
Taking this approach to religion doesn’t mean that all religious claims are factually true or ethical. It also doesn’t mean that the people who use religious language are insincere or even wrong. Rather, the function of religious speech is to amplify the authority of an idea through appeals to seemingly unquestionable authorities, like deities and “ultimate truths.” If a statement does this, Lincoln concludes, then it is religious.
Tom Krattenmaker/USA Today:
To stop Trump, we need to vote in person, even if you have to crawl through broken glass
Trump is planning to declare victory on election night before mail-in votes have been counted
My friend John Nelson is horrified by what President Trump has done to the country. He tells me, “I’ll crawl through broken glass to vote if I have to.”
Right there with you, Johnny — especially after the Republican convention. To make sure my vote counts, I will vote in person at my neighborhood polling place on Election Day, coronavirus or not.