FRIDAY short TAKES.

We open with a Bill of Particulars against the Jarrett Regency.

They are destroying the currency by passing massive spending bills; they demand equality of outcome, not of opportunity; they seek to destroy our energy supply, replacing it with the absurdity of the “green new deal;” they are enfeebling the military by demanding woke behavior from service men and women; they bang the racial drum from morning til night; they want to eliminate the filibuster and the Electoral College, pack the Supreme Court, command all states to follow a federal election law, weaponize the law enforcement agencies and the FBI; require everyone to ignore the obviousness of there being only two sexes; eliminate parental control over children so they can be chemically or surgically disfigured according to the dictates of sex-deniers; they are spending more on climate nonsense, welfare, and student loans than on defense.

When you ruin every place you rule, people notice.  When you promise to bring ruin and bring ruin, people notice.  "It’s not often that a politician openly pledges to bring the country back to a time of crippling inflation, high energy prices, and stifling interest rates. But this president is doing his best to keep that promise."  He's a farcical parody of Franklin Roosevelt.  "Nobody is singing 'Happy Days are Here Again.'"

The weekly round-up of pithy elaborations of traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

1.  We don’t need to oblige our own destruction.

2.  Our failing middle schools.  "Starting at about middle school, boys are treated as defective girls."

3.  I don't care who gets the credit.  "The curb is one of a city’s most valuable assets. To allow people to park their cars there for free—often for extended periods—is a poor allocation of space, and a missed opportunity for urban improvement."

4.  Going on a hundred years, to be fair.  "Democratic policies have been hampering the country for quite some time."

5.  Red Plenty builds back better.  "One Soviet furniture factory famously put out product that was so flimsy and uncomfortable that they were literally worth less than the wood it took to make them. They'd have done better closing the factory, selling the logs to Western Europe, and using the log money to import cheap chairs you could actually sit on."  Solyndra, anyone?

6.  John Galt would not disagree.  "All production is, at root, a fundamentally social and collaborative process."

7.  The road to Hell.  "Hoover’s well-intended but wrongheaded policy caused the Great Depression, and we know how that all went. Equally true, Trump’s well-intended but wrongheaded policy caused untold pain, suffering, and misery, not to mention bankruptcies, foreclosures, suicides, and premature deaths. It also wiped out a crucial block of irreplaceable time for in-person instruction for tens of millions of American kids, the full ramifications of which we’ll not sustain for about a decade."

8.  Minnesota not so nice.  "We don’t have a crime problem with our Norwegians."

9.  Emergence will always beat Expertise, particularly garbage expertise.  "One side of the culture war sees elite knowledge as superior to cultural knowledge. The other side insists that the reverse is true."

10.  "Like a good scientist, I investigated."  Sponsored research is censorship per se.  "Promote the alarming papers! Don't even send the other ones out for review. If you wanted to advance in your career, like be at a prestigious university and get a big salary, have big laboratory space, get lots of grant funding, be director of an institute, there was clearly one path to go."

11.  Your pious Prius smug.  "Kids in Congo pay the price."

12.  Me too.  "I’m tired of popular culture bashing men."

13.  Let's take a walk along Wigan Pier.  "Movements can expand the socialist vision by weaving critical race, feminist, indigenous, queer, labor, and climate politics together to help us learn how to stand as one to make a better, and survivable, world."

14.  Dream the impossible dream.  "Things would work much better if Congress agreed to follow its own rules."

15.  Malignant narcissism comes to Jacobin's attention.  "Barack Obama Has Been One of the Worst Ex-Presidents Ever."

16.  Northwestern's athletic director channels his inner deanlet.  "The shirts are inappropriate, offensive and tone deaf."  Hang on, is "tone deaf" now a microaggression?

17.  Let's see what the school year brings.  “The days when universities could get away with racial discrimination to advance diversity are over”

18.  Rush Limbaugh touches off to Riley Gaines.  "This looks like a man mansplaining what it means to be a lesbian."  I know, there's something jarring about Rush Limbaugh and a swimming metaphor. Deal with it.  That is all.