FRIDAY short TAKES.

The past twenty-plus years are not encouraging.  "Will a ridiculous president encourage Americans to take the presidency less seriously?" No.  Next idea? Let's make a better deal.  "Behind Door No. 1 is a Joe Biden reelection in which Kamala Harris calls the White House twice a day to check on the ancient president’s pulse. Behind Door No. 2 is an America that turns into an anarchic day care full of armed toddlers who have been fed Red Bulls and Skittles for breakfast and lunch."  What's behind Door No. 3?  "If neither party nominates someone close to a majority of the public who actually wants to be president, the possibilities are endless for bad things to happen."  Yes, the last non-ridiculous president was the elder George Bush, but sooner or later our luck might run out.  "Americans should certainly fear another unhinged Trump presidency. But given the Hamas sympathies on display from rather too many Democrats, the alternative could also prove deeply problematic."

Politically correct censoriousness?  "It treats people as children who must be shielded from conversation, unable to manage a verbal exchange without supervision, and it is a direct threat to freedom of speech and liberty—as well as the truth."

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

1.  Buckwheat:  "She doesn't appear to be in the room where it happens."

2.  The ideology of nihilism.  "It seeks to upend the very ideas of right and wrong."

3.  Ghostbusters!  "A hilarious cautionary tale on what happens when we empower clueless bureaucrats instead of individuals with local knowledge."

4.  Never enough.  "And God knows the American people have enough contempt for Congress, let's not make it worse."

5.  Never compare politics with the itinerant circus!  "Unfortunately, all of this has led to a great deal of commentary that is deeply unfair to middle-schoolers and clowns, who are actually held to a much higher standard of conduct."

6.  Check your privilege.  "The alternatives to courage and grace: fear and resentment."

7.  Let's empower a special commission.  "Congress knew this was coming. And yet it did nothing."

8.  Democrats gotta Democrat.  "The truth is, it was never 'democracy' they wanted. Too messy. Too many dissenting viewpoints and speech they didn’t like. It was totalitarianism, complete and total dominance of American culture they wanted."

9.  Because they're wreckers?  "Why haven’t popular Democratic governors like Gavin Newsom (CA), Gretchen Whitmer (MI), J.B Pritzker (IL) or Phil Murphy (NJ) thrown their hats in the ring?"

10.  Diversity: "Conformity on all matters related to identity."

11.  Choices.  "There will be no shops left in Washington DC, and then they'll start whining about 'food deserts' and 'CVS deserts.'"  Consequences.  "You cannot burn down businesses and then complain about food deserts. You cannot loot stores and then complain that retailers have left an area."

12.  Rent gradients are real, people.  "Bike lanes don’t directly cause gentrification but they are a symptom of it."  (Is the drug store or supermarket staying open also a symptom?)

13.  Social Security is a stupid program.

14.  War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.  "How do we fight this war fairly?"

15.  Panem Washington:  "A city that can more easily forgive actual convictions than religious convictions."

16.  Those ward-heelers and their desperate constituents?  "At some point the people who keep putting them in positions of power need to own up to the damage they've done in continuing to elect them in the first place."

17.  Math is hard.  "Yes, inflation has fallen sharply this year, but most prices have not fallen. Only their rate of increase has."

18. Compassion fascists?  "What has shocked Jews much more than the atrocities of Hamas are the atrocities committed by Progressives."

19.  Limiting government means limiting government!  "But the essence of Party Conservative is to always tilt to limiting government’s power."

20.  A democratic socialist discovers what Normals have long known.  "The Democratic Party just showed exactly how it feels about its voters."

21.  Don't bullshit God, or Reality.  "You have to give reality the respect it deserves, just as you would if God came before you and asked if you’d behaved decently in this life."

22.  A citizens' arrest.  “It was a fantastic opportunity to be in the right place at the right time, even though it was a really crappy situation for the kid.”