IT'S THE SEPARATION OF POWERS, STUPID.

There's nothing like an unconventional Trump presidency to get even self-styled progressives, usually high priests of the cult of the presidency, to rediscover enumerated and separated powers.  "The raging crescendo in the U.S. to impeach Trump or convict him of crimes is offensive."

Columnist Rick Salutin's elaboration is instructive.  "Marion Barry was a U.S. civil rights leader who got elected mayor of Washington D.C. in the ’80s. The FBI entrapped him in a crack sting and he went to jail. Then he got reelected. His slogan was, 'He isn’t perfect but he’s perfect for D.C.' Voters got the distinction."

Yes, sometimes playing to the base is a winning strategy, and Our President has already been doing so.  Perhaps that's his insurance policy. "In fact, Trump could be impeached, removed, run again in 2020 and win. It might even improve his chances."

MISALLOCATING PUBLIC MONEY?

Your tax dollars will be at work, attempting to fix the Chicago Circle expressway interchange.

First, there will be four more years of construction delays, with the attendant congestion.

That’s the word from the Illinois Department of Transportation, which has been rebuilding what used to be known as the Circle Interchange or, informally, the “spaghetti bowl,” since 2014. The finish date for the project had originally been projected at 2019. IDOT now expects it to be complete in 2022.

IDOT engineers warn that the biggest impact to traffic is coming in the summer of 2020, when a major ramp will need to be closed. This is the ramp from the inbound Eisenhower Expressway to the northbound Kennedy Expressway, which sees 26,000 cars a day.

Why is the project taking so long? It involves three different interstates, a constricted urban area, working around the CTA Blue Line, multiple bridges, a city water pumping station and the need to keep traffic flowing in a spot that sees 400,000 vehicles every day, said Steve Travia, engineer for project implementation at IDOT.

Not too long ago, there was a rebuild in the spaghetti bowl to move that ramp from the left side to the right side of the expressways, in order to reduce the incidence of drivers diving to the left at the last minute, something that the Wise Experts of Highway Engineering discovered was a Design Flaw a previous cohort of Wise Experts didn't see. There are still drivers diving to the right at the last minute, whether because they're clueless or because that's their strategy ...

In part the rebuilding, if that's what it is, has been delayed because other parts of the road network are past their sell-by date.

IDOT also needed to move up the rebuilding of the Interstate 55 and Lake Shore Drive interchange, because of structural problems that needed immediate attention. That meant that some of the Eisenhower work on the Jane Byrne was delayed so that the state would not have two critical access points into the city under construction at the same time, IDOT spokesman Guy Tridgell said. The I-55 work ended late last year.

Apparently, even the previous replacements of the left-side lanes wasn't enough, as they were so narrow that a disabled semi could block them.  Just another hidden subsidy to the motor carriers, and there are a lot of them on that interchange.  "The junction has been rated as the biggest freight bottleneck in the nation by the Federal Highway Administration."  How much of that is container traffic being rubbered from one railroad intermodal facility (Union Pacific and Burlington just west of there; New York Central, er, Norfolk Southern, a few miles south) to another?  And how much of that is on rubber because the railroads haven't yet gotten their act together moving containers around or through Chicago, or can't protect the cargo from the local sticky-fingers?

Apparently, though, part of being spokesman for the highway department is attempting to put a happy face on things, once the work is done, supposedly by 2021.  "Improvements to the junction are expected to reduce traffic delays by more than 50 percent, according to IDOT."

Sorry, no.

SOME VICTIMS DESERVE TO BE BLAMED.

First, some background. It's prudent to consider that people who confront difficult circumstances might respond to them differently.  In Trendy Circles, though, calling out people for Blaming The Victim can cross the line into rationalizing, excusing, or condoning dysfunction, or mau-mauing people who Don't Toe The Party Line.  "[S]ay anything about lottery outlets and thirty year old grandmothers and tribal conflicts disguised as drug wars and rampant delinquency in the big cities, and at a minimum, you're likely to be denounced for 'blaming the victim' and you might find yourself up on charges for 'dog whistling' that becomes some imagined -ism or -phobia and grounds for sanctions up to banishment."

Normals, however, are fair game no matter how difficult their circumstances become.  "Hillary Clinton Says Europe Must ‘Get a Handle’ on Migration to Thwart Populism."

FRATRICIDE.

National Public Radio take incoming from their audience left.

There are dozens of reports detailing how Amazon’s shipping policies negatively effects [c.q.] both the environment and workers, but one wouldn’t have any idea either was a concern after listening to NPR’s sexed-up report (Morning Edition, 11/21/18, “Optimized Prime: How AI and Anticipation Power Amazon’s 1-Hour Deliveries.”

The report, detailing the “Artificial Intelligence” behind Amazon’s delivery systems, relies entirely on interviews with Amazon flacks. The only people Amazon operations; Jenny Freshwater, director of software development; and Amazon VP Cem Sibay. No outside parties were sought for comment, let alone anyone remotely adversarial, such as labor organizers or environmental activists.

Indeed, the words “labor,” “worker” or “employee” are nowhere to be found in the six-minute report: Christmas packages simply deliver themselves with the help of brilliant Amazon execs and this mysterious AI technology. If Amazon’s marketing department wrote and produced a segment on their AI technology for NPR, it’s difficult to see how it would have been any different.

The use of public money to support propaganda hipster content STEM recruiting material for the host universities is censorship per se.  That's true whether it's "Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting" or "News Busters" grousing about the content your tax dollars are paying for.

BABY, IT'S COLD OUTSIDE.

Apparently hoar-frost is a rare thing.

That was the view across the decorative pond before the fog lifted on Monday.  Intrepid photographers who ventured out after the fog burned off, but before the ice melted, were able to get some spectacular pictures.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FREE PARKING.

Everything has an opportunity cost.

For years, urbanists have argued that parking minimums create more problems than they solve. The promotion of parking, they argue, encourages unnecessary vehicle ownership and makes infill development more expensive and sometimes impractical. Land that could be put to productive use often sits idle as parking lots, with many of the spaces empty except for a few seasonal periods of peak use, such as the Christmas shopping season. These parking requirements raise costs for developers, who pass them on to occupants. One University of California, Los Angeles study found that, around the country, 700,000 renters who don’t have cars are nevertheless paying for parking to the tune of $440 million a year.

Not only that, constraining land use to provide for parking leads to higher prices for the property available for other uses.

In Over-the-Rhine, parking mandates had caused perverse development decisions, with usable buildings sitting vacant because of the cost of adding parking -- or being torn down for lots to satisfy parking requirements for projects located blocks away. Developers of dozens of projects had requested waivers, suggesting the system wasn’t working. “[The new rules] make development, especially small business development, a little bit easier,” says Philip Denning, a Cincinnati development official. “There’s one less box you have to check.”

The changes were approved by the city council only in September, but already neighborhood associations in other parts of Cincinnati are asking whether parking minimums can be abolished or reduced in their sections of town. Knowing that commercial developments would benefit the most -- and that residents would be mad if they were forever having to circle around to find a space -- the city implemented a residential permit parking system for Over-the-Rhine. “I always encourage cities to think about both the off-street and on-street parking requirements,” Gabbe says. “If you’re reducing the off-street parking requirements, you have to actively manage street parking.”

Actively managing street parking can mean prices, or it can mean enforcing resident-only-by-permit street parking in thickly settled neighborhoods (which includes a few areas of DeKalb, believe it or not) and it can mean informal enforcement such as the Chicago custom of "dibs."

IS THERE NOTHING THE RUSSIANS CAN'T DO?

First it was supposed hacking of the 2016 presidential election.

Now it's riling up the Third Estate.  "France opened a probe into possible Russian interference behind the country’s Yellow Vest protests, after reports that social-media accounts linked to Moscow have increasingly targeted the movement."

I suppose social media provide propagandists with prodigious platforms compared with scratchy shortwave signals from Radio Moscow, and yet the agitprop so promulgated seems amateurish.  "Russia has been criticized for using social media to influence elections in the U.S. and elsewhere. Attempts to use fake news reports and cyberattacks to undercut the 2017 campaign of French President Emmanuel Macron failed, but Russian-linked sites have pushed questionable reports of a mutiny among police, and of officers’ support for the protests."

I suppose as long as unexpected things happen, there will be people whose first instinct is to look for a grassy knoll.

WE WANT BETTER CHOICES.

Salena Zito takes stock of the recent string of mid-term repudiations of the party of the sitting President.

Between the time Barack Obama took the oath of office in 2009 and the time Donald Trump took the oath in 2017, Democrats lost nearly 1,000 congressional, state House, and Senate seats in nearly every nook and cranny in the country. They also lost the majorities in the state legislatures, governors' offices, and statewide elected offices.

Two years into the Trump presidency, Democrats swung nearly 380 — about one-third — of those state House and Senate seats back into their column. They also flipped seven governors' seats their way as well as 40 congressional House seats, additionally regaining several of the statewide elected offices.

We're likely to see such gridlocking phenomena as long as "voters think a vote for one of the Other than Democrat, Other than Republican candidate is a futile and stupid gesture."

THE STARS COME OUT AT HAMILTON HIGH.

The occasion was the school retiring Kevon Looney's basketball jersey.  A few of his current team-mates showed up.

The group of Warriors, which included MVPs Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry and all-stars Klay Thompson and DeMarcus Cousins, sat near Looney, with some taking videos of their teammate and others eating chips.

The event started in the school library, where Looney answered questions from students and looked at yearbook photos. That's when his teammates, in a complete surprise to the students in the room, appeared.

Let the record show those are the Golden State Warriors, not a reference to the Marquette Warriors.

The chips might have helped as these Warriors got their sole win of the season over the host Milwaukee Bucks.

The library doesn't look much changed from when I used to use it, sometime in the final third of the twentieth century.

Looney scored 2,122 points in his time at Hamilton, where he became one of the top recruits nationally in the class of 2014. In his senior year, Looney averaged 27.9 points, 12.7 rebounds, 8 blocks and 7 assists per game and was named Mr. Basketball by the Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association and the state's boys Gatorade Player of the Year.

His team did not win a state championship.

The 2009-2010 team was the favorite to win the championship, going into the finals at Madison.

To this date, the sole state basketball championship for Milwaukee Hamilton came in 1972.

II. ADVENT.

Let the neighbors on the west side of the pond see the light!

YOU CAN WALK AWAY FROM IT IF YOU WANT.

Emeritus psychologist Michael Morris inadvertently makes the case for buying your advisor a train set.

Develop a retirement elevator speech?  Isn't the point of being retired not having to come in to the office?  "Emeritus" is not Latin for "doing for free that which I used to be paid to do."

Stay on your university's distribution lists?  Administrative ukases were too much of a time-suck when complying with them mattered.  Let the people who must be burdened with them be burdened with them.

Curb feelings of loneliness?  If that advice is based on the contents of your electronic mail in-box, you have a deeper problem, dear reader.

Stay involved in your discipline or your field if you wish to do so and if the circumstances are favorable?  One of the benefits of being retired is that you can write for your web journal or the local newspaper or a hobby magazine.  Also see above on what "emeritus" does not mean.

Enjoy the moment?  That's burying the lede.

Find a hobby?  Way ahead of you.

Look closely at that train.  The locomotive, caboose, and all the busy freight cars are lettered for model railroads.  You won't find a New Haven or Pennsylvania or Santa Fe or any other carrier ever indexed in Moody's or the Official Guide in that consist.  Arguably, I had a fifty year head start on academicians who might buy a train set ...

To get it into this shape, though, I had to get rid of all the administrative clutter that used to be in my electronic in-box.

Downsize?  Yeah, that's not going as fast as I would like, but there are things to give to Goodwill or recycle.

Indulge your guilty pleasures?  My guilty pleasure is mocking excessively earnest people.

Which brings us to ...

Finally, go to lunch occasionally with your former grad students and colleagues. If you’re lucky, some of the students will tell you that you made a positive difference in their lives. Colleagues, on the other hand, are likely to spend a lot of time gossiping about the bizarre logic that has characterized recent decision making by the university’s administration. Please let them vent, because after lunch they’ll be returning to a campuswide meeting on budget cuts affecting the toilet paper supply, while you’ll be heading home to do some nonscholarly reading.

Yup, I've done that from time to time. Morale is shot.

If your students haven't bought you a train set, find a new guilty pleasure!

RIGHTS OVER EVERYTHING.

The Union Pacific Railroad participated in President Bush's recent funeral, operating a special train from a team track in Spring, Texas, outside Houston, to College Station, for the late president's interment at his Presidential Library on the Texas A&M campus.

I don't know how the railroads provide for special movements these days.  Back in the era of dispatchers and train sheets, there would be an entry for POTUS EXTRA 4141 EAST.

The diesel in question has a special paint scheme, honoring President Bush and his library.  The first temporary exhibit at the library depicted Railroads and Westward Expansion, and the former president was intrigued enough by 4141 that he requested a cab ride, which was granted, during which he was able to take the throttle, under the watchful eye of the Road Foreman of Engines.

There's nothing quite like a public railroad move to throw off the journalists.  During the motorcade from Houston to Spring, I wish I had a nickel each time a pressie referred to 4141 as a "train."  On social media there are people wondering who operates the train.  Amtrak?  No, the host railroad.  Amtrak was the host railroad for the 2009 Obama-Biden victory train.

Union Pacific, however,  is capable of rolling out more dome cars for one special movement than Amtrak own.

Contemporary movements of presidents by rail inspire investigations into historic movements of presidents by rail, and Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman on Ferdinand Magellan come up.  So, too, do urban legends, such as President Roosevelt's armored train below the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.  Sorry, no.

BOWING OUT GRACEFULLY.

Former Green Bay Packer coach Mike McCarthy bought a full page advertisement in several Wisconsin newspapers to say "Thank You, Fans."

That's a screen shot.  The full advertisement is available at the Journal-Sentinel story.

That's despite Packer fans being perhaps more vocal than Packer management in wanting a coaching change, starting four or five seasons ago.

That's despite football being a business subject to market tests, which Our Intellectual Betters tell us is somehow less democratic than being in public service subject to electoral tests.

In politics, though, it's apparently OK to scold the electorate for not giving Our Political Masters the Results They Want.

People who weren’t political junkies were hungry for a non-politician, particularly one who spoke about bringing jobs back to long-forgotten places. The fact that Trump was not a traditional politician giving speeches that all the rest were giving was a plus. They weren’t being gaslighted (psychologically manipulated), they were going along on the ride.

That sounds like a lot better reason than, oh, questioning a coach's decision to "sit on a twelve point lead" in Seattle.  If anything, in the 2016 presidential election, it was Mrs Clinton attempting to sit on a twelve point lead, and wondering why it wasn't bigger.

I suppose part of being part of a pathological elite is never having to be self-aware.

The media elites like to think people were suckered because it is less painful than Democrats admitting how tone deaf they have become. Do they really think blaming voters is the best path back to electoral success?

So, here we are two years out and liberal media anchors are still trying to figure out what went wrong in the last presidential election. Here’s a hint for them – it isn’t because they were just too darn smart.

We've been pointing out the failures of the Wise Experts at least as far back as the 2004 presidential cycle.

Let's take stock.

World War II ends in 1945.

The Berlin Wall comes down in 1989, and the Soviet Union goes out of business at the end of 1991.

The Green Bay Packers last won the Super Bowl in February, 2011.

Are general managers of football teams more responsive to their public than public officials are?

A CORRECTION.

Last week we incorrectly described the timing of Thanksgiving, "as early as the 17th and no later than the 23d."

Let's not rush the shopping season more than it already is.  "In fact, the earliest that Thanksgiving can possibly fall is November 22, which is what it was this year. (Fun fact: the latest it could ever fall is on November 28, and that's when it will take place next year.) "

Good thing, though, that I got the fall plowing and haying done on Black Friday.

THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENTS.

Self-checkout or not, the beginning of the 21st century has not been kind to retail.

That's the now closed Boston Store in downtown Milwaukee.  Toward the end of operation, it conducted retail activities at the ground and second floor, and the chain's offices were somewhere upstairs, as were loft apartments.

The two-level store that stands today at 4th and Wisconsin, while bright and attractive, is a tiny fraction of what once was eight floors of merchandise offering virtually everything a machinist at Falk or an office clerk at Schlitz could want: records and tapes in the basement; wine, liquor and men's apparel on the first floor; women's and teen fashions on the second and third levels; furniture on the fourth; appliances and hardware on the fifth; domestics on the sixth; and a golf shop, a ski shop and "Harry's Cafe" on the top floor.

There used to be buildings along Wisconsin Avenue between Fourth and Fifth streets, although I've been away so long that I don't recall what was there last.  With the Midwest Center (or whatever it is now) across the Avenue and the latest incarnation of the Milwaukee Arena (replaced for basketball first with the Bradley Center and then with the Fiserv Forum: meanwhile, the monstrosity atop Penn Station in New York persists) you'd think this real estate would be valuable for something other than a parking crater.

It also used to be the case that the picture windows would have animated displays, and the halls and stairways would be decked.

Not this Christmas.

Here's how it used to be.

A version of this jingle would air each Festive Season, starting after Thanksgiving.  You're hearing a later version, as it does not mention the "monorail train" that used to decorate the toy department.  The "Secret Gift Shop" on the second floor was an interesting service, in which younger children would bring their gift lists and store employees would assist the kids in completing the list, then boxing up the stuff in specially marked boxes.

Perhaps contemporary kids can take advantage of some sort of online service to accomplish the same thing.

THEY NEVER LEARNED NOT TO BE STUPID ABOUT BEING SMART.

Don't say I haven't called attention to the obnoxious condescension of Democrats and their spear-carriers in education, entertainment, and journalism.

It's nowhere near enough.  Take Hawaii senator Mazie Horono.  Victory Girl Nina Bookout is laughing through her tears.  "Senator Mazie Hirono at least had the smarts to inform us that the Democrats think we are all dumb. So there’s that."

David Catron extends.  "It is true that Democrats are afflicted by an irresistible urge to tell everyone how smart they are, even while proposing something stupid. "

By all means, read the articles for elaboration, or just get the picture:

Why is Donald Trump president?

Left to right:  "You didn't build that."  "Mean country."  "What the meaning of 'is' is."  "Basket of deplorables."  Malaise.  (I know, he didn't use the word, but it stuck.)

Meanwhile, the usual claque at the usual place is up to its usual foolishness.  "Yet the figure who [Washington Post columnist Eugene] Robinson declared irrelevant was the subject of much of the MSNBC show's A-block."

That, dear reader, is the quintessence of being stupid about being smart.

A MOST INTRIGUING MAP.

Atlanta's Business Chronicle notes the proposed route expansions for Virgin Rail Brightline in the United States.

Brightline, America's first new major private intercity passenger railroad in over a century, launched service between Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, Florida, in May 2018. It plans to expand to Orlando and Tampa. Pending the closing of the previously announced XpressWest acquisition and receipt of necessary federal approvals, it also plans to begin next year building a railway to connect Las Vegas to Southern California.

In its Nov. 16 IPO filing, Virgin Trains USA named the 240-mile Atlanta-Charlotte route, with an 8.4 million population, as one of eight U.S. expansion corridors. These cities “possess what we believe are key attributes for a successful intercity rail network using existing infrastructure,” it said.

There is potential elsewhere in the Southeast.  Note that my map did not consider Atlanta-Savannah-Jacksonville and beyond, but perhaps investors with real money at stake will.  I'm also intrigued that Virgin Rail Brightline might want to get involved in Texas, where there are some electrified high-speed rail proposals involving Japanese and French railroaders.

Now, might Amazon be interested in participating in a latter day Amazon Railway Express?

VOX DOES THE TIME WARP.

Kaitlyn Tiffany doesn't like self-checkout stations.

Far from novelty or spon-con child’s game, self-checkouts pop up everywhere now: at the new Target in Barclays Center where I buy my useless seasonal objects and knockoff Urban Outfitters clothes; at the CVS where I buy my disgusting seasonal candy; at the Panera Bread where I buy a seasonal autumn squash soup and half a grilled cheese. I’ve heard they are in grocery stores throughout the city, but I refuse to look.

I saw a self-checkout in the Urban Outfitters in Herald Square and almost called the ACLU: Some lucky employee sits on a stool near the self-checkout stations and does nothing but remove ink tags from things before you buy them? Sure. What is a person if not just a slightly more dexterous arm than the ones that robots so far have?

She'd be a real fun date at a Christmas party, wouldn't she?

I am not alone in fearing self-checkout. John Karolefski, a self-proclaimed undercover grocery shopping analyst who runs the blog Grocery Stories and contributes to the site Progressive Grocer, tells me, “I’m in a lot of supermarkets around the country. I watch people. I can tell you that I’ve been in stores where the lines that have cashiers are very, very long, and people are a little upset, and there are three or four self-checkout units open and nobody is using them.

“Wouldn’t the shopper be better served, customer service improved, if those weren’t there?” he asks. I’m not arguing. “Why do I want to scan my own groceries?” he asks. I have no idea! “Why do I want to bag my own groceries?” he asks. An equally reasonable question with no reasonable answer. The simple solution, he points out, would be to hire enough cashiers to serve the number of customers that typically shop at the store. I agree, and this seems very obvious.

I can't resist.

Of course, a Tiffany would want enough cashiers to serve the number of customers that typically shop at a store, and there is a price point for that.

News flash: it's not Wal-Mart's price point.

Self-checkout is sold to us as a high-tech upgrade, but that’s just adding insult to injury — eliminating jobs by making people who have jobs do more jobs. When Walmart installs a new self-checkout, it’s not “automating” the process of checkout; it’s simply turning the register around, giving it a friendlier interface, and having the shopper do the work themselves.

Yes, eliminate-the-middleman, whether it is the farmer (thus greengrocers) or the warehouseman (thus big box retail) or the clerk (thus self-service shelves) or the cashier (thus the unexpected items in the bagging area) is a form of do-it-yourself, and apparently the do-it-yourself grocer offers enough benefits that people take advantage of the shorter wait times, occasional (or not-so-occasional) hiccups notwithstanding.

There's something else I'd note.  Sometimes what makes the attended checkout lines so long is the retailer's insistence on playing 20 Questions with everyone.  The robot stations generally just sell me my stuff.

SO TO HONOR HIM.

Usual protocol when national figures lie in state in the Rotunda is that the hall be cleared when current or former presidents or some other Distinguished Visitors enter.

Tuesday night, though, with wait times of up to five hours in conditions that were chilly for Washington, former president George W. Bush requested that the public be allowed to continue to enter.

Unattributed BBC News screenshot retrieved from Google Images.

He and his brother, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, also took the time to circulate through the room, thanking people for coming.

Over the past two days, I dipped into the C-Span coverage of the public passing through the Rotunda.

What struck me was that despite the apparently large crowds, the pace of people was not rushed, and there were lots of kids, with Mom or Dad able to pause and explain something, and the kids generally getting a clear view from the roped-off area.  On occasion, there would be Catholic school kids in their blazers pausing to watch and genuflect.

Lester Holt signed off NBC Nightly News yesterday with a selection of clips in that vein.

That is all.

THE LATTER DAY FAST MAIL.

Once upon a time, the Post Office expedited first class mail by picking up and kicking off mail sacks on the fly.

Now comes Amazon, intending to automate the sorting and the delivery to your front porch.

Amazon patent application detail retrieved from Drone Life.

The full patent application includes details of the mechanized Railway Post Office in a container.

I suspect technology enthusiasts are making too much of the plans.

The idea is that the train does the long-haul travel, while the hubs would serve as repairing hubs for UAVs that launch from the train for local deliveries, and return for maintenance and further delivery pickups. It's quite clever, and evident of Amazon's strong focus on creating a powerful drone-delivery system of their own.

The publicly available patent calls these hubs "Ground-based mobile maintenance facilities for unmanned aerial vehicles" which "may be coupled to locomotives, container ships, road tractors or other vehicles, and equipped with systems for loading one or more items onto the aerial vehicle, and for launching or retrieving the aerial vehicle while the intermodal vehicles are in motion." This expands upon the idea of using railroad infrastructure and widens the concept to a far broader scope. Amazon is planning on finalizing not only the land and the air, but the sea, as well.

It makes sense—a container ship could launch deliveries before reaching the coast, as soon as it geographically makes sense to send UAVs off. There would be no waiting for the ship to dock or unload hundreds of containers with massive cranes. Amazon is clearly pressing forward with the concept of a nationwide system of drone delivery, and we'll surely hear of more such patents from them in the near future.

Yes, a container ship could launch at sea, if Amazon's special containers were all at the top of the above-decks stacks.

Read through, though, and contemplate the possibilities for rigorously timed train operations.

Instead of providing stationary warehouses to store frequently purchased items in populous areas, Amazon could use a system of moving warehouses and drone stations- launching a delivery drone when they are closest to the desired destination.

Presumably the factories are still fixed locations: will Amazon be integrating backwards? But in populated areas, perhaps you're updating something like this, with battery-powered streetcars or buses?

Perhaps my imagination isn't creative enough, but wouldn't the logistics be simpler if the mobile warehouses and metropolitan delivery vehicles were operating according to a set schedule?

It would require a sophisticated computing system to monitor and maintain the fleet, determine correct launching points, and determine “rendevous” points for the drones’ return.  The patent describes a “maintenance vehicle” which “comprises a plurality of batteries, at least one robotic arm and at least one system for launching an aerial vehicle or retrieving the aerial vehicle within a compartment of the first intermodal maintenance vehicle…”  The robotic arm, it seems, is to help change batteries.  The idea behind the patent is twofold: first that product might be stored in moving warehouses, and second that the delivery drones could be maintained and repaired in the same moving warehouse.  Using standard freight containers would allow the transportation method to change as appropriate.

Will each of these mobile warehouses be attended by a drone mechanic?

If you can contemplate delivering parcels in this way, you can also contemplate receiving parcels.

The patent points out also that the system could be engineered in reverse, to receive deliveries.  If successfully implemented and widely adopting, [c.q.] the idea of moving delivery stations could have an impact well beyond Amazon.

Yes, just as Railway Express and the Railway Post Office helped deliver manufactured goods to the hinterlands, a century ago.

SEMPER FI.

Among Amtrak's recent efforts to lose friends and alienate people, their decision not to provide rolling stock for a Toys for Tots special in New York's Capital Region stands out.

The Marines, Norfolk Southern, and the private railcar operators stepped up.  "While putting together a train like this takes a lot of work even when everything works well, this year's version had extra complications. Amtrak, which had provided the equipment for the train in recent years, told Toys for Tots in August that it would not be involved this year, due to changes in how it deals with charter trains."  The train ran.

[Private railcar and vintage diesel locomotive owner Bennett] Levin, who was part of the group that left Binghamton at 6 a.m. Saturday and got back to their hotel at 11:30 p.m., says "everything was perfect." He had brought an electric train set with him that Bachmann Trains had donated to him for the ride. At one of the stops, a special needs child was in the crowd, and volunteers learned that the boy had said that he wanted a train set, which his parents couldn't afford. They gave the set to the boy.

"He looked at the box, and turned it over and over looking at it, and he had a smile on his face. You knew you were doing God's work," Levin says.

As for whether he would get involved with next year's train, he says "I'm always available if I can add something of value."

Amtrak did ultimately get involved with this year's train as well, donating two baggage cars. Former President and CEO Joe Boardman, who had supported the train when he was in office, was on Saturday's train as a guest. He praised the efforts of the volunteers, and added "I would just like to share how much we appreciate the support of [NS CEO] Jim Squires, a first class corporate citizen."

The effort to deliver toys to counties north of the Capital Region will continue on Sunday, Dec. 9. A convoy of buses, trucks and police vehicles will head north from Saratoga to Rouses Point. In previous years the train would travel CP tracks on that route. The railroad declined to be involved this year, [Marine SSgt Patrick] Lurenz says, so the group coordinated the convoy to deliver the toys to the not-for-profits along the route.

Mr Levin's vintage diesels probably bowed out on the common carriers with this train, as he does not intend to install positive train control apparatus on them account their relatively infrequent use on the main lines.

The children of all ages have a happier Christmas.

EVERYTHING ELSE IS ELABORATION.

Reason's Matt Welch, When the World Convulsed, George H.W. Bush (Mostly) Let Freedom Happen.  "Let one the lessons of his passing be that sometimes American presidents don't have to know it all, and don't have to control it all, either."

So mote it be.

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT.

Brian Addison, of The Long Beach Post, urges, "Get out of your car. It’s the only way to save California."  It's not advice, it's an imperative.

While much has been said about making cars cleaner and more efficient, very little has been said about why people drive so much or for such great distances on such a regular basis. With a severe housing decrease in the foreseeable future—particularly affordable housing in transit-rich areas—those displaced from urban centers have become much more likely to buy a vehicle to get to and from work.

This, in turn, has brought a second wave of aggressive legislation that focuses on creating housing near transit, what is called transit-oriented housing, in order to meet a new slew of climate change goals. The state has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. In addition, over the past decade, it created a first-of-its-kind law such as SB 375, the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act of 2008.

And those lofty goals for 2030? You can pretty much book it that they will not be met the same way the 2020 goals were. Why? Because the 2020 goals mainly dealt with improvements to the electrical grid and commercial freight transit. The 2030 guidelines deal with the great white whale of California emissions: The private automobile.

The report makes one thing completely clear, and critical, about the state’s very survival: We have to drive less and our lack of progress or inability to curb our individual car driving to date has “put California at risk of not achieving the important public health, equity, economic, mobility, housing, and other benefits that [SB 375 is] expected to deliver.”

You can pass all the feel-good legislation you want. The trick is in obtaining compliance.

Fully ambulatory Californians will have to walk, bike, and use mass transit much more. Much, much more. Climate experts say able-bodied Californians will have to walk by foot four times as much as they do now, and will have to bike nine times as much.

In other words, the report is adamant that a reduction in the growth of single-occupancy vehicle travel is essential if we are to achieve an emission level that is 40 percent below those of 1990,  by 2030. Tack onto this Gov. Jerry Brown’s new carbon neutrality goal, which the state hopes to achieve by 2045, and the habits of residents who use their car for everything becomes paramount.

This is not just about long, daily commutes to work, the type of trip perceived as “essential,” since 46 percent of all passenger car trips are under 3 miles. And it’s not about gas versus electric vehicles since, according to the report, even if zero-emission car sales increased tenfold, the state would still have to reduce the miles traveled by cars by 25 percent in order to meet the 2030 goal.

Will have to.

Do you propose to set up a guillotine on Rodeo Drive?

Not since 1968 has there been such heat and fury in the streets. Thousands of ‘gilets jaunes’ stormed the capital at the weekend to rage against Emmanuel Macron and his treatment of them with aloof, technocratic disdain. And yet leftists in Britain and the US have been largely silent, or at least antsy, about this people’s revolt. The same people who got so excited about the staid, static Occupy movement a few years ago — which couldn’t even been ar[ou]sed to march, never mind riot — seem struck dumb by the sight of tens of thousands of French people taking to the barricades against Macronism.

It isn’t hard to see why. It’s because this revolt is as much against their political orthodoxies as it is against Macron’s out-of-touch and monarchical style. Most strikingly this is a people’s rebellion against the onerous consequences of climate-change policy, against the politics of environmentalism and its tendency to punish the little people for daring to live relatively modern, fossil-fuelled lives. This is new. This is unprecedented. We are witnessing perhaps the first mass uprising against eco-elitism and we should welcome it with open arms to the broader populist revolt that has been sweeping Europe for a few years now.

The ‘gilet jaunes’ — or yellow-vests, after the hi-vis vests they wear — are in rebellion against Macron’s hikes in fuel tax. As part of his and the EU’s commitment to cutting carbon emissions, Macron is punishing the drivers of diesel vehicles in particular, raising the tax by 7.6 cents for every litre of diesel fuel. This will badly hit the pockets of those in rural France, who need to drive, and who can’t just hop on buses as deluded Macronists living in one of the fancy arrondissements of Paris have suggested they should. These people on the periphery of French society — truck drivers, provincial plumbers, builders, deliverymen, teachers, parents — have rocked up to the centre of French society in their tens of thousands three times in recent weeks, their message the same every time: ‘Enough is enough. Stop making our lives harder.’

Californians generally lead a more pampered existence than rural Frenchmen. What is Mr Addison thinking?  The French uprising "is a perfect snapshot of the most important divide in 21st-century Europe: that between a blinkered elite and ordinary people who’ve had as much bossing about, tax rises, paternalism and disdain as they can take."

M. Macron, though?  Best summarized by Jonathan Miller.

[H]is hubris, arrogance and almost autistic detachment from the French in the street is in a class with Marie Antoinette. Except that this time around, the courtier whispers, ‘Mr President, the people cannot afford diesel.’ To which the cloth-eared Macron has, in effect replied: ‘Let them buy Teslas.’

This morning the French government suspended the fuel tax hikes.  "Before long, the government will have to decide whether to continue putting the world elites’ conception of environmentalism ahead of the economic interests of French citizens and the interest of national unity." Or recognize that the environmentalists' vision requires force to implement.

Levying taxes on individuals to combat climate change – or for the accomplishment of any social betterment project – is unfailingly undertaken in the name of the sanctity of life. Yet if life is an invaluable state and condition, so too is that of the right of personal property. A life absent the ability to enjoy the products of our toil by utilizing them directly or voluntarily exchanging them with that of others is a life circumscribed, and thus a life forcibly, purposely denigrated in quality.

Yes, and the survival of the dirigiste project is at stake.

For more than 100 years, European governments have built their invasive states, with the public sector controlling ever more of life. The promise of combining security and prosperity through state enhancement has failed to achieve its promise. And what does the political class propose? More government power, this time in the name of green energy.

At some point, it is too much. Just as the citizens suffering under Soviet rule finally said no more, the people suffering under social-democratic rule might someday do the same. Observers have waited decades to see reforms that might forestall such a thing. Reforms haven’t happened. Now the people are in the streets, setting fires and protesting the police.

What comes next might not be pretty.

WHEN THE TECHNOCRATIC VISION COLLAPSED.

David Leonhardt attempts to revive that Old Time Religion.

The October 1944 edition of Fortune magazine carried an article by a corporate executive that makes for amazing reading today. It was written by William B. Benton — a co-founder of the Benton & Bowles ad agency — and an editor’s note explained that Benton was speaking not just for himself but on behalf of a major corporate lobbying group. The article then laid out a vision for American prosperity after World War II.

At the time, almost nobody took postwar prosperity for granted. The world had just endured 15 years of depression and war. Many Americans were worried that the end of wartime production, combined with the return of job-seeking soldiers, would plunge the economy into a new slump.

“Today victory is our purpose,” Benton wrote. “Tomorrow our goal will be jobs, peacetime production, high living standards and opportunity.” That goal, he wrote, depended on American businesses accepting “necessary and appropriate government regulation,” as well as labor unions. It depended on companies not earning their profits “at the expense of the welfare of the community.” It depended on rising wages.

For a quarter century, it worked.

Freedom is like that.  Plus, part of the victory dividend resource curse was the expectation, irrespective of your political stance, that the objective conditions for continued prosperity would always be with us.  We see that in the pop-culture treatment, early in the Reagan years, of former hippies entering middle age as yuppies.  It's more subtle than that, as there were more young people who had a bourgeois bent, despite all the efforts of the academic culture of the era to make bourgeois a dirty word, than there were smelly hippies, but yes, the hippies and the long-haired radicals had the idea there would be enough of the productive economy to sustain them once they got bored with their crusades.  Thus we find ourselves here.

The Best and The Brightest, however,  looted the victory dividend's effects and blanked out its causes.

In the years that followed, corporate America largely followed this prescription. Not every executive did, of course, and management and labor still had bitter disputes. But most executives behaved as if they cared about their workers and communities. C.E.O.s accepted pay packages that today look like a pittance. Middle-class incomes rose faster in the 1950s and 1960s than incomes at the top. Imagine that: declining income inequality.

And the economy — and American business — boomed during this period, just as Benton and his fellow chieftains had predicted.

Things began to change in the 1970s. Facing more global competition and higher energy prices, and with Great Depression memories fading, executives became more aggressive. They decided that their sole mission was maximizing shareholder value. They fought for deregulation, reduced taxes, union-free workplaces, lower wages and much, much higher pay for themselves. They justified it all with promises of a wonderful new economic boom. That boom never arrived.

There's probably a research opportunity somewhere, figuring out, if that is possible, how much real incomes in the United States might have declined had businesses gone on with the Treaty of Detroit.

Fewer people have to make do on the equivalent of a dollar a day these days.  "The world attained the first Millennium Development Goal target—to cut the 1990 poverty rate in half by 2015—five years ahead of schedule, in 2010." That improvement in living standards in the developing world, however, was a Marshallian improvement, and gadgets in hand or polemics are scant comfort to, for example, U. S. citizens who might genuinely be enjoying higher living standards at the same time that they have lost ground to neighbors who are relatively even better off.

Yes, we could investigate whether the shareholder value craze encourages short-term thinking.

We could investigate whether the payoffs to winning tournament markets are inefficient.

But let's not pretend that a restoration of the Treaty of Detroit and the Divine Right of Technocrats is either desirable, or likely to succeed.

IT'S BEEN CRUMBLING FOR A LONG TIME.

So much for the Experts suggesting the Green Bay Packers would contend for the conference championship this year.

Observers can’t help but wonder: What is wrong with the Packers?

It’s been nearly a year since Ted Thompson stepped down as general manager. But to understand what is happening in 2018, you must look back a few years. Many interviewed for this story say the Packers’ struggles can be traced back to Thompson’s final years as GM; others who won’t say it still suggest it with their actions.

Thompson, of course, had a wildly successful overall run in Green Bay. He began his career as a front-office executive in Green Bay in 1992. After leaving for a five-year stint in Seattle, he returned to the Packers as general manager in 2005. The first selection of his first draft was Aaron Rodgers, and the team went to the postseason nine times in 13 seasons of Thompson’s GM tenure, including a Super Bowl XLV title. He will deservedly be inducted into the Packers Hall of Fame in May.

Perhaps so, although if you're going to follow the draft-and-develop model, you've got to have draft choices developing in two or three years. The 2015 draft class was a failure.

CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE STATE LINE.

Sunday was not the best day for travel or for train-watching, and yet the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train drew a respectable following, including a goodly number of first time spectators, to trackside.

The objective is to replenish the local food bank, and our neighbors came through.

The train is making a swing through Iowa, and will make its trip from Chicago to the Twin Cities and points northwest later this week.

A BICENTENNIAL.

Illinois joined the Union on this day in 1818.

Political junkies like to hail native son Ronald Reagan and transplants Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, and Barack Obama.

I'm not sure concentrating on the politics is wise, Illinois (sometimes, "Chicago") being shorthand for "Democratic corruption."

Let us, rather, call the roll of more meaningful Illinois contributions.  High-yield, drought resistant corn.  One-stop catalog shopping, with delivery.  Entertaining clear-channel radio.  World's Largest Store.  We Broadcast Better Music.  World's Greatest Newspaper.  We're Chicago's Federation of Labor.  Crossroads of commerce, on the rails, clogging the roads, in the air, unfortunately for the ecosystem, on the waterways, in the commodities exchanges.

And, although it pains me to say so, isn't the most respected defensive position in football middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears?

Enjoy.

THE HARD WAY.

The end of November is time for the Mid-American Conference football championship game, in Detroit's Ford Field.  Once again, Northern Illinois represent the West Division.

The opponent was Buffalo, and the smart money had Buffalo as a prohibitive favorite.

For fifty-eight minutes and thirty seconds, the smart money looked right.

The game lasts sixty minutes.

The Bulls (10-3) squandered a 19-point lead in the final 15 minutes, 17 seconds, as the Huskies cut the deficit to five early in the fourth quarter, on a 28-yard touchdown reception by D.J. Brown with 17 seconds left in the third quarter and a 32-yard TD reception by Spencer Tears, 2:09 into the fourth. Then, Brown’s 35-yard catch lifted the Huskies to a one-point lead with 1:09 left, and the Bulls had to scramble to create anything that resembled a comeback drive.

The Huskies had possession for only 11:23 of the second half, but kept the ball out of UB’s hands at the most opportune time – the final drive of the game.

Northern Illinois defensive end Josh Corcoran had to sit out the first half account a targeting penalty in the final regular season game. His return in the second half undoubtedly made blocking assignments more difficult for Buffalo.  Buffalo's defense, which entered the game highly regarded, "collapsed" as viewed from New York, but it was just another day at the office for Northern Illinois.  "NIU’s offensive onslaught in the second half was a surprise to everyone but the Huskies. An offense that entered the game averaging only 19.9 points per game torched the Bulls' defense for 137 passing yards after halftime by quarterback Marcus Childers (21-for-33 passing, 300 yards, four touchdowns)."

Medium's Justin Coffin asserts, "Northern Illinois is Impossible."

The MAC is a chaotic place for most programs. That chaos is fueled by the coaching turnover that is painful for the schools that endure departure and cute to the folks who call this place “The Cradle of Coaches.” The biggest indicator of upcoming disappointment in this league is, largely, any success at all. The big, rich schools will come and steal dream coaches using their lucrative TV deal money at the first sign of progress, and that’s just the way things are.

NIU thrives in the chaos. The Huskies win consistently when the environment is better designed for them to fail, so of course they won another MAC title on Friday night when all signs deep into the game pointed to an imminent Buffalo victory. Of course they stepped up on defense. Of course Childers, a quarterback averaging barely over five yards per attempt on the season, completed 21 of 33 passes for 300 yards and four touchdowns against the MAC’s third best scoring defense. Of course they came back from 19 down to win. Of course they did it “the hard way.”

In the last decade the Huskies have lost two coaches to bigger jobs and had to regroup after losing a Jordan Lynch, a finalist for the Heisman Trophy, to graduation. Where so many others failed, the Huskies continued winning. Central Michigan, Kent State and Bowling Green have all played for or won a MAC championship in the last 10 years. All three of those programs are in the midst of their worst stretches of football in school history. NIU hasn’t stopped winning.

Let's just enjoy it while it lasts.

Next up: the Boca Raton Bowl, December 18, facing the University of Alabama at Birmingham Blazers.

Rod Carey enters bowl season with an 0-5 record in bowl games as head coach – the Jan. 1, 2013, Orange Bowl game, was as an interim head coach. A win would mean NIU’s ninth of the season, which would mark NIU’s highest win total since 2014.

“In the past, we have not been successful in bowl games. And that’s the fact of it,” coach Rod Carey said. “You can’t change that. But that’s not about me. It’s not about past records. It’s about this group of guys having the opportunity which we feel great about to play a 14th game and compete together.”

Yes, the opponent is that University of Alabama at Birmingham.  "UAB (10-3) returns to its second consecutive bowl after having its program reinstated six months after its December 2014 disbanding and just completed a conference title-winning season as it defeated Middle Tennessee, 27-25, in the Conference USA Championship Game."

Buffalo will play Troy State, or is it simply Troy these days?  I'm not sure what it says about the state of college football that what used to be the Go Daddy Bowl in Mobile, Alabama has since become the GMAC Bowl (would you buy a used car?) and is currently the Dollar General Bowl, and it's just before Christmas, rather than part of Mobile's Mardi Gras opening ceremonies.

I still wonder, though, if the football program is good value for money?

TONIGHT'S RAILROAD READING.

Chicago Boy David Foster signs up for a "Take the Throttle" program at The Essex Steam Train and Riverboat that takes place after the high tourist season.

Essex also offers a training and experience program for people who would like to learn a little bit about operating a steam locomotive.  Being interested in steam power, I signed up.

The program includes some written material to be reviewed at home, a group classroom session of about an hour, and then an individual hour operating a locomotive under the guidance of an experienced engineer.

From the post, it appears that the serious work of raising the fire and getting steam pressure up is taken care of by railroad personnel ahead of time.  (O ye who complain when your car has to warm up for thirty seconds this time of year ...)

On arriving, I was surprised at the scale of the operation.  Although I was there in the off season (early November), judging by the parking lot and the number of railcars the place must be quite busy during prime months.  First was the class, which covers safety rules and basic steam locomotive principles.  It was taught by the railroad’s machinist, who described himself as the “spare parts department.”  Next was a group visit to the locomotive cab to familiarize ourselves with the layout of controls and indicators.

The Essex museum do a serious tourist business in the summer. It's in a thickly settled part of the country, alas, without a direct connection to Amtrak or Connecticut Department of Transportation trains.  As part of the 2013 O Scale Convention, our group went there for a train ride, cruise, and riverside lunch.

There are a lot of controls and indicators for an engineer to be aware of, and a steam locomotive does not give the same sort of feedback a motor vehicle does through the steering wheel and brake pedal.  That's where being attuned to the stack talk helps the experienced engineer.

On a steam locomotive, the cutoff point of steam admission to the cylinders can be controlled by the engineer.  Early cutoff lets the steam do more of its work expansively, improving fuel economy at the cost of some reduction in power.  The reverser sets the cutoff point as well as controlling the direction of travel–while the reversers on early locomotives were manually-operated and required considerable strength to operate (and sometimes led to broken arms), the reverser on #40 is a fingertip control, using air pressure to do the hard work.

It was a drizzly and somewhat chilly day, but very comfortable in the locomotive cab. (The boiler backhead is very hot, do not touch!)  Basic controls and indicators include the throttle, the reverser, the boiler pressure gauge, the injectors, the boiler water glass, and the brakes with their associated pressure gauges.

It takes nimble hands to get a steam locomotive started. The cylinder cocks have to be open to prevent the pressure of condensed water in the cylinders from blowing out the cylinder head. The sanding valve might have to be open just before the start if the rails are wet. Generally, the reverser is set to full forward or full reverse to start. Get the highball, yank the throttle open briefly to prime the cylinders, close it, open it slowly. Building up speed is a matter of opening the throttle and coming in on the reverser. That's the secret to a steam locomotive being able to pull any train it can start, as it picks up speed it's making more power strokes in a minute, and the expansive power of steam being admitted to the cylinders is enough to sustain the movement.  Don't forget to sound the whistle and bell as required!

That is a locomotive with a train on, which makes the art of handling the train even more challenging than running a light engine.

We ran about 4 miles, limited to a maximum speed of 15mph as required by the Federal regulations under which this railroad operates, then ran in reverse to return. For this run, only the independent air brake…which controls brakes on the locomotive and tender..was used; if we had been been hauling train cars, then the automatic air brake, which operates brakes on all cars almost simultaneously, would have also been employed.  (Proper management of the braking system is essential: the instructor cited the example of a train in which over-use of the independent air brake caused the steel tires which are shrunk-fit on the locomotive wheels to overheat and delaminate, stalling the train on a bridge.) Operating the independent brake is unlike using a car or truck brake:  you use the brake control to increase, decrease, or hold the air pressure level and hence the braking force.

On the other side of the cab, the fireman has a lot of work to do.  Even for this minimally-light train (‘light’ being a relative term: locomotive & tender weighing over 100 tons), there was a lot of coal shoveling involved to keep the steam pressure up…and the fireman also has primary responsibility for monitoring the boiler water level and adding water as required–low boiler water can lead to a catastrophic explosion. Water is added to the boiler via a clever device called an injector, which performs the seemingly-impossible task for forcing water in against the boiler pressure by using that same pressure.

On the workaday railroads, the engineer often had the responsibility of running the injector. "Fireboy, keep her hot, I'll keep her cold!" It's likely that Essex assign a second qualified engineer to do the firing, the better to assure the visitor of a safe trip.

Steam locomotives (and a few diesels, to this day) have shrunk-fit tires so as to make the replacement of a flat tire (another consequence of sliding wheels) a matter of heating the damaged or worn tire, removing it, and shrinking a new one on less of a production than replacing the entire wheel, which would require counterweighting and balancing work.  The independent brake at least permits graduated responses to conditions, with more or less braking force.  The automatic brakes on freight cars don't work that way: once applied, they can only be fully released, and if you attempt to apply them more tightly, there might not be enough air pressure left in the system to achieve the desired effect.

It is possible to stop a steam locomotive, and a train, using only the reverser, although that's a risky practice.

In addition to the Steam Experience opportunities Mr Foster notes, the Illinois Railway Museum on occasion sells opportunities to take the throttle on Russian Decapod 1630, "Uncle Boris."

CROSSING THE LINE.

It's Christmas, which means it's time for the Smug to find Much to Marinate In.  "There is a fine line between responsible elitism and irresponsible tyranny by a vocal minority."

Yup.  "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" set the know-it-alls at Huffington Post off.

The Victory Girls have a holly-jolly riposte.

Whilst making tongue-in-cheek social justice commentary about Rudolph, they have neglected the key takeaways of this story from years ago. Although he was bullied, left out of all of the reindeer games, unaccepted, different-quirky even-young Rudolph was able to overcome and do something absolutely great. He saved the day! He made kids smile. And his story is magical. He didn’t stomp his hooves and whine and go to a “safe space” and resign himself to life being too hard as a red-nosed reindeer and call it quits. He didn’t blame others and become a victim. He didn’t expect special treatment or demand it from his peers because he was different. He may have shed some tears and that’s okay. When given a challenge, he rose to the occasion and excelled and proved his biggest critics and his bullies wrong. He persisted.

Yes, and he went down in history.

Maybe the Huffington Post and the rest of the Problematic Christmas crowd got polka-dot elephants at Christmas back in the day, and they're ever after mad at the world.

FINIS.

Before the floundering Green Bay Packers kicked off to the Racine Chicago St. Louis Arizona Cardinals, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist Pete Dougherty suggested, "Mike McCarthy-Aaron Rodgers marriage has run its course with Packers."

At this point, it doesn’t matter who’s more to blame. All that matters is Rodgers isn’t buying what McCarthy is selling and isn't playing anywhere near an MVP level. That’s why the Packers are 4-6-1.

Make that 4-7-1.

There was an NFL Network report on Sunday that Arizona Cardinals rookie head coach Steve Wilks wasn’t guaranteed a second season. A win over the Green Bay Packers might remedy that.

As for Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy, his future might have been sealed on Sunday.

The Packers were already in the middle of a terrible season, and a loss against a bad Cardinals team at home makes it much worse. Green Bay lost when Mason Crosby’s field-goal attempt to tie the game on the final play went wide right. Arizona got the upset 20-17 victory. The Cardinals were 2-9 before Sunday. And they were competitive against the Packers for the entire game. That says a lot about the Packers.

Aaron Rodgers tried firing his team up last week by laying out how the Packers would win their last five games and make the playoffs. Green Bay didn’t even get the first of those five wins, which should have been the easiest one.

And with an absolutely flat, disappointing loss at Lambeau Field to one of the worst teams in the NFL, that should truly be the end of the McCarthy era.

It was.  The standards are tough in Green Bay.

Several USA Today sports pundits had Arizona losing to Green Bay in Green Bay as the lock of the week, last week.  Yes, and Hillary Clinton is president.

The ominous signs in Titletown were present five years ago.  (Yes, before that late-game collapse in the conference championship game in Seattle.)

We'll have a more detailed assessment later this week.

I. ADVENT.

Santa Claus comes to town, despite occasional heavy rain and thunderstorms.

The train stopping for Santa to interact with children of all ages is a recent feature of the show.