BETTER BY WHAT STANDARD?

As a general rule, I am skeptical of anyone claiming to be working in the cause of a better world.  "Perhaps it would be better to not think about a vision of a better world, because that way leads Process and Consensus and Expertise, which is to say, the phenomena that have brought to pass the Great Rebellion."  Not to mention that Process and Consensus and Expertise are the best possible outcomes, when the alternative is Vanguardism and Self Righteousness.

Enough of the high concepts for the month.  What sort of better world does not include French Toast in the dining car?

In the background, out of the depth of field, the pastries and containers of oatmeal that pass for a continental breakfast on the Lake Shore.  In the foreground, the 10 ounce hot cup containing hot water for mixing into the oatmeal.  Experience the taste of a better world, then, as it's a one-use cup, throw it out!

When I posted the picture on Twitter somebody commented on the sustainability of a one-use cup.  Indeed.  Serve the coffee in a proper Dolphin coffee cup, the way The Milwaukee Road did, and keep a kettle of oatmeal warm in the kitchen to serve as the passengers request.

OUCH.

The James G. Martin Center's Edward Archer characterizes grantsmanship as fostering "The Intellectual and Moral Decline in Academic Research."  In particular, "My experiences at four research universities and as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) research fellow taught me that the relentless pursuit of taxpayer funding has eliminated curiosity, basic competence, and scientific integrity in many fields."

Well, yes.

The problem, dear readers, lies not with the professor's judgement, but with the sponsored research system itself. Research is expensive. Good research is particularly so. With (in some disciplines) a rather elastic supply of teaching labor available at budget rates legislators and others holding the university's purse strings understandably seek to encourage all faculty who wish to do research to seek external funding, in order to boost default teaching loads (both course load and course size.) External funding, however, involves the possibility of the principal investigator doing work that supports the agenda of the sponsor. That's not the same thing as doing research for its own sake.

It's worse than that, argues Mr Archer.

Yet, more importantly, training in “science” is now tantamount to grant-writing and learning how to obtain funding. Organized skepticism, critical thinking, and methodological rigor, if present at all, are afterthoughts. Thus, our nation’s institutions no longer perform their role as Eisenhower’s fountainhead of free ideas and discovery. Instead, American universities often produce corrupt, incompetent, or scientifically meaningless research that endangers the public, confounds public policy, and diminishes our nation’s preparedness to meet future challenges.

Even if it's not that bad, the sponsored research imperative diverts thoughtful people from playing with whatever ideas appeal to them (yes, many of them might turn out to be bad or trivial, but that's how emergence works) in order to follow what appears to be a Hot Topic (the tragedy being that by the time those grants and working papers hit the conference and journal circuits, the discipline's stars are on to other things) or to make some money.  (Margaret "University Diaries" Soltan has done yeoman service on how that goes wrong: the search string "pharma" is simply one place to start your research.)  Either way, the successful grant-getter might turn into a one-trick pony: perhaps it's a good trick, perhaps even Socially Useful (something Mr Archer doubts), and yet anything that isn't grant-worthy isn't investigated.

I suspect that Mr Archer correctly perceives a mutation of grant-seeking into another variant of the Glass Bead Game as well under way.

A number of critics, including John Ioannidis of Stanford University, contend that academic research is often “conducted for no other reason than to give physicians and researchers qualifications for promotion or tenure.” In other words, taxpayers fund studies that are conducted for non-scientific reasons such as career advancement and “policy-based evidence-making.”

That idea has been in the air for some time.

Yes, and the graduate students so trained on the taxpayer dime learn the arts of grantsmanship, and, should they be fortunate enough to land a tenure-line job, they can then write grants and recruit and develop the next generation of Amway representatives researchers.  Whether the work so funded is better than the work professors develop on their own initiative remains to be seen.

I'm glad to see others taking up the argument.

FREQUENCY, CONNECTIVITY, AND DEPENDABILITY.

Regional Passenger Rail is catching on in the Connecticut River Valley north of Springfield.  The day I arrived in Springfield was the day the local authorities dedicated a new high-level passenger platform serving two tracks, complete with local news coverage.  As part of the rail rebirth, the public spaces of Springfield's Union Station have been returned to use.  For years, the Amtrak facilities, such as they were, were the concourse on the south side of the building, with a ticket office upstairs.  The head building was still standing, if derelict, and it was rebuilt, with some of the public spaces put to use as waiting rooms for local and intercity buses.  (That's the same concept as Milwaukee's intermodal station using a former Milwaukee Road station.)  Now the head building is open again, and it includes some eateries and a convenience store.  (Milwaukee please copy.)

That's the recently restored and reopened north entrance.  The taxi rank is out the south door, which used to be the only entrance.  There are no more flapping card Solari boards along the Northeast Corridor, although this successor offers the same visual aspect (but with no electronic clicking to call attention.)

Note that the Vermonters headed up-river and down-river are both on time, and both due in the station ahead of the westbound Lake Shore.  That gives passengers along the river between New Haven and wherever the Vermonter originates these days the option of an all-rail ride from, for instance Hartford for Cleveland, or White River Junction for Chicago, that is, if Amtrak allow the connection.  The return trip, not so much, as the Boston section calls eastbound around 5.30 pm.  We'll see how well that augmented Hartford Line service that's currently running does.

WELL, THEY SHOULD.

Today's lamentations from Inside Higher Ed include "More than 40 percent of trustees are now very concerned about the future of higher education."

Gosh, I wonder why.  Their biggest worry? "The financial sustainability of higher education institutions."  That gets picked by 42% of private college trustees and 25% of public college trustees.  Market tests are real, dear reader; and perhaps more than a few of the public college trustees might recognize that legislative forbearance for Mr Chips has limits.

The second biggest worry, "Price of higher education for students and their families," picks up 24% of the public and 25% of the private trustees.  That perhaps the students aren't developing the kind of human capital that makes borrowing against future earnings a possibility (note: I'm not saying "prudent" or "rational" let alone "desirable" to do that borrowing) might be present in some of the "Others receiving votes" category, e.g. "Public perception of the value of a college degree" or "Relevance of higher education in helping graduates obtain a better job/career" or "Incoming students' preparedness for college."

Most of the discussion in the column focuses on business practices and the challenges of being a trustee; the idea that maybe the services being rendered aren't that great any more gets short shrift.

PRICES FUNCTION TO REALLOCATE RESOURCES.

Half a year ago, we noted that Boise drivers were stuck in traffic (and the futility of providing additional road capacity to ameliorate the congestion.)

It has also long been a theme of mine that housing prices adjust such that a resident is indifferent among bundles of differently priced houses and differently painful commutes.  "In equilibrium, no, but to the extent that cars become more costly (thanks, fuel efficiency standards and crashworthiness standards) and the roads become more congested, the value of living closer to work goes up.  Thus do we get the rising rents in city centers."

That's as true in Boise as it would be in San Francisco or on Manhattan.

Affordability has worsened to the point that it is starting to stunt the Boise area’s job growth, the Realtors say, as it already has in Portland and Seattle.

“I’m beginning to sense the dropping unaffordability of Boise is beginning to hinder job-growth potential,” said Lawrence Yun, an economist for the Realtors, in a phone interview with the Idaho Statesman.

Workers may not be feeling any job-growth impact yet, because unemployment is still so low here — 2.4% in December — and help-wanted signs are prevalent. The local economy remains strong.

I think by "affordability has worsened" they're referring to people bidding up the prices of existing houses, and by "not feeling any job-growth impact" it is the people who are employed (and getting pay raises?) doing the bidding up.

Whether the price changes will induce the efficient responses remains to be seen.

Yun said housing costs could put the brakes on companies considering relocating to Idaho from California and other states with higher costs.

“If home values are very high, that also means that trying to recruit people at the same wage will be difficult,” said Yun. “They may have to offer a higher wage.”

Boise wages grew a modest 2.2% from the second quarter of 2018 to the same period in 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Gosh, pay packets commensurate with the costs of living in an area? Quelle surprise!  Plus, perhaps we're seeing people migrating away from the Super Cities with rent gradients so steep nobody moves there any more.

Boise and those other areas — including Tampa, Nashville, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Louisville, and Columbus — need added housing inventory to make homes more affordable, Yun said.

“More supply needs to be built to change the price growth or at least stabilize it,” Yun said. “If there’s insufficient supply, that means prices will continue to rise strongly, and at some point it’s going to choke off potential buyers as it makes it a less attractive place to live.”

The number of building permits issued in Boise fell 3% last year, while nationally they increased 8%. The shortage of homes is forcing more people to rent.

Rents are rising too, partly because of demand from people who cannot afford to buy.

Like home builders, apartment builders are busy, but they’re not keeping up with demand. Since 2015, developers have built 3,581 new rental units in Ada County, bringing the total to nearly 19,000. An additional 1,542 units were under construction late last year.

Of course, fast-rising prices have an upside. They bring profits to builders, house sellers and apartment owners, and they attract new development that eventually could moderate price increases.

That is, if people are free to react to the incentives. Consider the arbitrage arguments: rental rates must also adjust in order that the equilibrium resident is indifferent between renting or owning; likewise house prices that are far in excess of the capitalized value of rents for that house are warning signs of a potential housing bubble (Hello 2007 my old friend?)

On the other hand, there might be symbioses among "smart growth" advocates, zoning boards, and incumbent homeowners, as the advocates and the boards can talk a good game about sustainability and preserving the environment and not having to impose taxes to build new schools, while the incumbent homeowners harvest the capital gains.  Until the constraints start driving potential residents and employers away.

WHY NOT LET NOODLES & COMPANY PROVISION THE TRAINS?

Last weekend was the Amherst Railway Society train show at the Eastern States fairgrounds outside Springfield.  The last time I was there was twenty years ago, time for a return trip.  Driving or flying?  Of course not.  My first ever train trip included The New England States, and I'm a regular rider of the Chicago to Boston service.

Midwinter can be a risky time to ride trains, particularly if the polar vortex and the lake effect snow are at work from Toledo onward toward Utica.  Last Thursday, though, the running was good, does that mean we are seeing a recession developing with Norfolk Southern not having enough land barges to interfere with Amtrak in the usual manner.  Thus, I think we were waiting for time at Toledo and at Cleveland (my habit on trains is to sleep whenever possible and not pay too much attention to my watch or other cues for the time of day) and likewise arrived at Albany with enough time to have done the kind of switching New York Central used to do there.

THE COLLATERAL DAMAGE OF ROAD SOCIALISM?

Waiting in line is a feature of socialism, and regular readers know it.  "Why should road socialism be different from any other socialism?"  Where there is socialism, though, there are people who attempt to escape from its aggravations.

The late Kobe Bryant and his party might well be among those people.

During his career with the Los Angeles Lakers, it was common for Bryant to travel by helicopter from his Orange County, California, home to Lakers games at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. It helped him avoid two-hour travel times through L.A.’s notorious traffic while also keeping his body fresh.

“It’s a nice dash of glitz, a touch of showbiz that goes well with the Hollywood sign in the hazy distance,” J.R. Moehringer wrote for GQ magazine in 2010. “But sexy as it might seem, Bryant says the helicopter is just another tool for maintaining his body. It’s no different than his weights or his whirlpool tubs or his custom-made Nikes. Given his broken finger, his fragile knees, his sore back and achy feet, not to mention his chronic agita, Bryant can’t sit in a car for two hours.”

He was a regular enough user of the helicopter that it was marked in such a way as to suggest it was his, or at least that he endorsed the operator.

The helicopter also made it easier for him to get to family events above the aggravation of traffic.

In an interview with Alex Rodriguez and Big Cat in December 2018, Bryant said using the chopper was his solution to being able to attend training as well as spend time with his family.

“I had to figure out a way where I could still train and focus on the craft but still not compromise family time,” he said.

Apparently the use of private helicopters to avoid traffic is a thing, but still relatively uncommon.

There's probably a transportation research question here, something along the lines of high occupancy toll lanes and congestion pricing being more cost-effective at alleviating road congestion than helicopter charters.

POLITICAL ACTIONS GENERATE RENTS.

Rent seekers, inevitably, seek the rents so generated.

Today's tale starts with the collision of Wisconsin's bar closing laws and the presence of drunken Democrats at what might be a contested convention in Milwaukee.

The city of Milwaukee and a variety of business interests would like bars to be open until 4:00 AM during the Democratic National Convention in July. Bars in other convention cities are often open later, and the late closing time could accommodate thirsty delegates as they leave late nights at Democratic Party events.

If bar-closing hours were a local matter, there would be no problem, but Our Political Masters are of the view that bar-closing hours should NOT be a local matter (the extension to highway speed limits or drinking ages or minimum wages or metric measurements is straightforward) and then the rent-seeking begins.

However, the proposal has to go through the state legislature for approval, and that means it has to go through former Tavern League President Swearingen’s committee. Swearingen, according to the Business Journal, is going to hold the proposal up unless he can include the unrelated issue of regulating wedding barns in the bill.

This is how seemingly innocuous appropriations bills bloat into continuing resolutions that never fund new ideas until it's almost too late, and continue to buy hay for the artillery's horses.  It's also canonical cartel behavior.

Swearingen may have a personal interest in the issue as he is the owner of a supper club in Rhinelander. For the last two years, Swearingen and the Tavern League have targeted agricultural event venues because of competition for the banquet hall business.

The Tavern League complains competition from agricultural event venues is unfair because they don’t have to get liquor licenses if they do not sell alcohol at events held on their properties. Instead, the persons renting the “wedding barn” space is responsible for providing their own alcohol.

Let's be grateful the tavern league doesn't think it unfair for me to buy a case of beer and have guests over to watch the Packers in the Super Bowl. (That is, when the Packers live up to the standard again.)

THEY'RE SO INCLUSIVE THEY CAN'T TEACH ANYTHING.

(Apologies to Yogi Berra.)  How else, though, characterize a decision by a curriculum committee at Yale to cease offering a fairly standard art history course, Renaissance to Modern, because there aren't enough role models, or something.

According to The Yale Daily News, the art department has decided that the class might make some students uncomfortable due to the "overwhelming" whiteness, maleness, and straightness of the artists who comprise the Western canon (though that last label may be dubious). Indeed, the focus on Western art is "problematic," course instructor Tim Barringer told the student newspaper.

"I want all Yale students (and all residents of New Haven who can enter our museums freely) to have access to and to feel confident analyzing and enjoying the core works of the western tradition," said Barringer. "But I don't mistake a history of European painting for the history of all art in all places."

Indeed not, and there's a relatively straightforward way of expanding the coverage, say, by starting around the twelfth century and mixing in other forms of religious art with the altarpieces and ikons, and ending with the invention of photography, which freed the artist from the commercial obligations of making accurate portraits to keep the patrons satisfied.

THE TRENCHANT SOCIAL SCIENCE OBSERVATION OF THE CENTURY.

It's Pajamas Media's Richard "Belmont Club" Fernandez, on the difficulty nuanced structured governing paradigms have dealing with complexity.  "In our complex 21st-century world, centralized institutions are too weak to cope with emergent events. It is man—ordinary, adaptable, individual, deplorable man who must be called upon to help."

His context is the virus that is plaguing Wuhan, China.  Whether it's a biological weapon experiment gone bad, or a parasite adapting to a new host is irrelevant. Events continue to surprise us, and distributed networks of knowledge will likely have an advantage over all the collectives of Existing Experts.

How many times must I tell you to bet on emergence?

USE IT UP, WEAR IT OUT, MAKE IT DO, OR DO WITHOUT.

I've griped previously about products that are "cheaper to toss and replace, rather than troubleshoot and repair."  Seriously, when a farm tractor comes with an end user license agreement???

The right-to-repair laws I allude to have not yet become a thing.  Nonetheless, there are market tests. "Farmers Are Buying 40-Year-Old Tractors Because They're Actually Repairable."  Perhaps after the manufacturers see their latest rolling computers gathering dusts in showrooms, they'll catch on.

When a brand new John Deere tractors breaks down, you need a computer to fix it. When a John Deere tractor manufactured in 1979 breaks down, you can repair it yourself or buy another old John Deere tractor. Farming equipment—like televisions, cars, and even toothbrushes—now often comes saddled with a computer. That computer often comes with digital rights management software that can make simple repairs an expensive pain in the ass. As reported by the Minnesota StarTribune, Farmers have figured out a way around the problem — buying tractors manufactured 40 years ago, before the computers took over.

“There’s an affinity factor if you grew up around these tractors, but it goes way beyond that,” Greg Peterson, founder of the farm equipment data company Machinery Pete told StarTribune. “These things, they’re basically bulletproof. You can put 15,000 hours on it and if something breaks you can just replace it.”

Well, good.

A Nebraska area auctioneer sold off 27 older model John Deere tractors in 2019. The old work horse tractors are so popular that one with low mileage can sell for tens of thousands of dollars. A 1980 model with 2,147 hours of use sold for $43,500. A 1979 model sold for $61,000.

That’s a lot of cash, but it’s still cheaper than a new model which can run between $100,000 and $150,000. The price is nice, but avoiding the computer components of the newer models saves money in the long run.

Interestingly, the socialist hopefuls for the Democrat nomination are the only two aspirants to national office the story indicates as advocating right to repair laws.  I have to wonder, though, what sort of business strategy selling a more advanced product with a higher first cost and higher future maintenance costs when a less advanced product with lower maintenance costs is currently available.  Thus, a tractor is materially different from a portable computer or a smart 'phone.

PHARISEES, SADDUCEES, AND THE SANHEDRIN, OH MY!

I'm reluctant to endorse Kurt Schlichter's hypothesis that liberals and their lackeys want people who don't see things their way dead, and yet a series of commentaries that hit cyberspace during the Festive Season give me pause.  First up, Common Dreams regular Chris Hedges, who has long been calling for some sort of insurrection, makes a number of points about the ongoing impeachment that well might be right wing talking points, although his primary point is that the credentialed elite won't give up their powers voluntarily.

No party or elected official dares defy the military-industrial complex or other titans of the deep state. The Democrats through impeachment have no intention of restoring constitutional rights that would curb the power of the deep state and protect democracy. The deep state funds them. It sustains them in office. The Democrats are seeking to replace the inept and vulgar face of empire that is Trump with the benign and decorous face of empire that is Joe Biden.

The kindest thing Mr Hedges can come to say about Our President is that he's not exactly an effective face of empire, vulgarian or not. "This truth binds half the country to Trump, who although a con artist and himself flagrantly corrupt, at least belittles and mocks the ruling elites who have betrayed us."

CNN columnist Scott Jenning takes a more nuanced view.

Donald Trump wasn't elected to fit in with these people — the political, intellectual class -- to make them happy, or to become one of them. He was elected to break them. And that's apparently what he's done.

Donald Trump will be the third president in American history to be impeached by the House of Representatives.

And honestly, that's just fine with Trump's supporters. What better evidence is there that you've shaken Washington to its core when the minders of a system you've come to despise are leveling the gravest punishment the system permits against the very President who is doing the shaking up?

We can lawyer this to death, but for many Americans this comes down to a simple observation -- Trump said he was going to rattle their cages, and by golly they seem rattled.

Not to mention, he's fund-raising off the impeachment, and going to Davos to turn over the money-changers tables, or at least mock them for excess process and insufficient employment.

He concludes with several sad predictions.

That partisanship is more important than policymaking? That House Democrats have no confidence in their party's ability to beat Donald Trump in an election?

And, perhaps most alarmingly, that impeachment — once reserved for the gravest of situations — is now just another tool to inflict damage on their political opponents.

The funniest thing I heard all weekend was a quip to the effect that Congress has a very low approval rating, lower than even replay officials, and perhaps more obstruction of Congress might be desirable.

The more troubling possibility is that future Congresses might hold over future presidents the threat of articles of impeachment whenever that president invokes national security or executive privilege.  Think I'm kidding?  Late Tuesday night, the Senate tabled an amendment proffered by the Democrats that would have authorized the sergeant at arms of the Senate (backed up by jackbooted government thugs if necessary?) to compel former ambassador and national security advisor John Bolton to give testimony.  That's supposedly necessary because the usual dance of subpoena - invocation of executive privilege - court decision is too slow.

Our Political Masters, though, notes J. D. Davidson of The Federalist are losing their patience with those uppity Normals.

Because we the people have, by electing Donald Trump, proven ourselves incapable of governing ourselves. We can’t be trusted with such a momentous responsibility, and so we should defer to the expert careers officials who know better. This is really the ultimate aim of left-wing ideologues: to protect the people from themselves and look out for their best interests, whether they like it or not.

He uses a different Roman era reference, "[L]ately it seems our unelected officials think of themselves less as public servants and more as a Praetorian Guard." Praetorians, Pharisees, either way it's people who decided that preserving their privileges by screwing ordinary people was a pretty good gig.  That is, until the masses show up with pitchforks, torches, tar, and feathers.

THINGS WILL GO ON BADLY, JUST AS THEY HAVE BEFORE.

Reason's Nick Gillespie suggests that the national nightmare will continue.  "Come the end of the Senate trial that starts today, Trump will almost certainly still be in office, Democrats and Republicans will hate each other even more, and trust and confidence in Washington will be even lower than it already is."

The problem, he notes, is that the usual suspects in the usual venues will see in this manifestation of government failure a case for ... reforming and expanding the powers of government.

Again and again—and in countries all over the world—declines in trust of government correlate strongly with calls for more government regulation in more parts of our lives. "Individuals in low-trust countries want more government intervention even though they know the government is corrupt," explain the authors of a 2010 Quarterly Journal of Economics paper. That's certainly the case in the United States, where the size, scope, and spending of government has vastly increased over exactly the same period in which trust and confidence in the government has cratered. In 2018, I talked with one of the paper's authors, Andrei Shleifer, a Harvard economist who grew up in the Soviet Union before coming to America. Why do citizens ask a government they don't believe in to bring order? "They want regulation," he said. "They want a dictator who will bring back order."

Put another way, emergence is likely to produce better results, but emergence, being messy, is scary.

YOU CAN SAY NO AND UPHOLD STANDARDS WITHOUT ELABORATION.

A British columnist called Vicky Spratt decries "The Dangerous Rise Of Men Who Won’t Date 'Woke' Women."  Apparently a British entertainer called Laurence Fox has stepped into it.

Laurence Fox – who you perhaps only knew as Billie Piper’s ex-husband because you’ve never seen Lewis (what?) – does not date “woke” women who he believes are being taught that they are “victims”, irrespective of whether they are right or not. He thinks that it’s “institutionally racist” to tell the story of the First World War in a racially diverse way, irrespective of the fact that Sikh soldiers absolutely fought for Britain. And he also doesn’t believe in white privilege, irrespective of the fact that he works in a painfully undiverse industry, was privately educated and comes from a wealthy acting family which is nothing short of a dynasty.

Sound the alarms, commence the deplorable shaming!

Fox is denying racism and sexism, irrespective of whether or not they exist. It’s nothing short of gaslighting. It’s all very Donald Trump. And as you would expect, the whole debacle has lit a fire under anti-woke poster boy Piers Morgan while gaining Fox thousands of extra Twitter followers.

I could go over all the things he’s said; I could use data to prove how wrong he is; I could express concern for his mental health (after all, who really enjoys arguing on Twitter?); I could make jokes about his behaviour. But all of that would be to seriously miss the point.

There’s nothing funny about the things Fox – or Wokey McWokeface as he now wants to be known – is saying. It’s also not particularly sad. It’s dangerous. He is just one very privileged man, and as a result of said privilege, has been given a platform. And he has used that platform to legitimise a bigger backlash against diversity and progress which is unfolding every single day in less public corners of the internet.

Not wanting to date “woke” women, far from being laughable, is actually one of the more insidious aspects of it. Spend an afternoon on any major dating app and you’ll come across (generally white) men saying openly sexist and misogynistic things.

The columnist knows these things because she recently had a bad experience with an online matching service.

The good news is people like her generally come with warning labels.  Gentlemen, you don't have to post annoying requests like "no psychos."  You also don't have to continue with a match that will only go nowhere.

Let the cads stay home nursing their beers, and the wokesters stay home nurturing their cats.

THE END OF THE INTERURBAN ERA.

The last full day of operations of the North Shore Line was 20 January, 1963.

I've offered (autobiographical) retrospectives over the years.

The Chicago Tribune posted its own retrospective.

The first photograph is historic for reasons the captioner might not know.

Unattributed photograph retrieved from Chicago Tribune.

This Milwaukee Limited is loading passengers at the Dempster Street station in Skokie.  The station building still stands, it has subsequently been moved a few yards away from the tracks, and it's home to a coffee shop.  Look closely and you'll see a stack for a coal stove on several of the cars.  In later years, many cars received electric heat, but not lead car 765, as it was wrecked in a level crossing accident at State Line Road, and subsequently written off for scrap.

The slideshow captures the essential elements of the North Shore Line, including its use as the "Flying Streetcar," with the last load of boots returning to Great Lakes at the end of liberty, on the last night the railroad ran.  I can't vouch for that picture, that night was bitter cold and the recruits are in their summer whites.  Perhaps the reference is to the last train of the night.

HOW DARE YOU BE RICH?

The propagandists of Oxfam would like to guilt-trip the Ruling Class at their upcoming gathering in Davos, Switzerland. "Our broken economies are lining the pockets of billionaires and big business at the expense of ordinary men and women. No wonder people are starting to question whether billionaires should even exist."

They even provide an animated graphic. (Am I rude to ask how many billionaires might have been involved in making the graphic possible?)

Are there any questions?

Yes.  First, might it be possible that on average, each of the world's 4.6 billion people might have been made more than $2,136.55 better off by trades over the years it has taken for those 2,153 billionaires to emerge?

Second, why aren't those billionaires seeking even more money hiring that cheap labor in Africa?

Third, what could you do in the days of the Pharaohs to accumulate $10,000 (or its equivalent in shekels or talents or drachma or what have you) each day in the first place?  What magic is at work, and in what way is it more powerful than compound interest?

Fourth, in what way does "unpaid care work" differ from "Father earns, Mother keeps house?"  (How much trouble can I get into extending that argument? )

Fifth, might there be more efficient ways of discovering (jobs can never be created) those 117 million new jobs than by using government (including the institutions of the Davos international order) as tax collector and middleman?

Not for the Common Dreams types.

In a statement from the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation that acknowledged Oxfam's latest figures on global wealth inequality, commissioner Magdalena Sepúlveda warned that "if multinationals—and the super-rich—do not pay their fair share of taxes, governments cannot invest in access to education, healthcare, and decent pensions, or take measures to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis."

Doesn't that presuppose that there are functioning governments, and people making money in the first place? Perhaps that's the case in the developed world, but in the impoverished places, the places under military or kleptocratic rule, in places where religious law overrules Scottish Enlightenment values?

OBVIOUSLY A MAJOR MALFUNCTION.

I won't put this Inside Higher Ed passage in the same category of understatement as my title, which experienced readers will recognize from the day Challenger exploded.

Evergreen’s enrollment started dropping after the end of the financial crisis. To be sure, many colleges are dealing with low enrollment because of declining birth rates that have resulted in fewer Americans of traditional college age. But at Evergreen, enrollment has dropped by 1,000 students since 2017, to about 2,900, indicating something else might be at play. Of course, the strong progressive bent on campus might be a turn-off to some, especially after student protesters made national news in 2017 for occupying the president's office and calling for a professor to be fired.

The so-called progressives are learning another lesson, one that you'd think their older mentors might have raised, namely, that the only thing worse than grades and class ranks is the absence of grades and class ranks.

Now courses have been reorganized around 11 “paths of study,” with themes like political economy, math and computer science, food and agriculture, and Native American and indigenous programs. All courses will now be marked with their level, from introductory to advanced. The college, which has traditionally had a curriculum that changes every year, will now commit to a five-year plan of offerings.

That "political economy" course of study is probably heavy on Marx and light on Ricardo or Ely, but that's why we have school choice at the college level.

Read on, though, and note that history rhymes.

George Bridges, president of the college, said the student population at Evergreen now wants different things out of college than students who may have attended Evergreen in past decades. Evergreen’s acceptance rate is about 97 percent. The student population now has a high number of first-generation college students and military veterans. About half of all students are transfers from community colleges.

“They have a very different vision of what college would be and have different needs,” Bridges said. “They want to leave Evergreen with a degree they can use in a career, in a market,” and that’s explicable to employers. Students who attended in past decades grew up in a different economic climate, he said, and weren't seeking such specific outcomes.

Put another way, you can imagine no market tests, but you'd better conduct yourself as if your graduates are subject to market tests.

WHAT WOULD WE EVER DO WITHOUT EXPERTS?

Two chroniclers of the Coastal Establishment, Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, have a new book out that will make the Credentialed Wise comfortable with their prejudices.  Here's how they describe a meeting Our President had with assorted Military Brass in the Sanctum Profanum in the Pentagon.  "One hundred fifty-​­two years after Lincoln hatched plans to preserve the Union, President Trump’s advisers staged an intervention inside the Tank to try to preserve the world order."  It continues, characterizing Our President as somewhere between misinformed and deliberately obtuse.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had grown alarmed by gaping holes in Trump’s knowledge of history, especially the key alliances forged following World War II. Trump had dismissed allies as worthless, cozied up to authoritarian regimes in Russia and elsewhere, and advocated withdrawing troops from strategic outposts and active theaters alike.

Read on, though, and it sounds a lot like members of the Permanent Government chastising this outsider for daring to question The Way Things Are. "Rather than getting him to appreciate America’s traditional role and alliances, Trump began to tune out and eventually push away the experts who believed their duty was to protect the country by restraining his more dangerous impulses."  That's the conclusion, but perhaps the way in which the Experts delivered their message contributed.

Mattis devised a strategy to use terms the impatient president, schooled in real estate, would appreciate to impress upon him the value of U.S. investments abroad. He sought to explain why U.S. troops were deployed in so many regions and why America’s safety hinged on a complex web of trade deals, alliances, and bases across the globe.

An opening line flashed on the screen, setting the tone: “The post-war international rules-based order is the greatest gift of the greatest generation.” Mattis then gave a 20-minute briefing on the power of the NATO alliance to stabilize Europe and keep the United States safe. Bannon thought to himself, “Not good. Trump is not going to like that one bit.” The internationalist language Mattis was using was a trigger for Trump.

The reporters can't quite say "the presenters condescended to the deplorable," but read on and judge for yourself. "Trump appeared peeved by the schoolhouse vibe but also allergic to the dynamic of his advisers talking at him. His ricocheting attention span led him to repeatedly interrupt the lesson. He heard an adviser say a word or phrase and then seized on that to interject with his take."

EVERYBODY KNOWS WHAT THE STANDARD IS.

The Green Bay Packers earned a spot in the playoffs, a division title, a first-round bye, and a second drubbing in Santa Clara.  I'm hearing none of the "at the beginning of the season, if someone had told you" subjunctive stuff that often accompanies teams that chronically underachieve or that mount a surprising run.  Rather, the sports talkers and radio callers are wishing for regime change in the defensive coaching staff, and there are even people thinking about the succession at quarterback.  That might be a good thing, in the long run people hit what they aim at, and aiming at "good enough" isn't good enough.

Bart Starr was not Vince Lombardi's first quarterback.

WHY NOT JUST ASK THE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION FOR ANOTHER MAIN TRACK?

Craig "Amtrak in the Heartland" Sanders evaluates the possible return of passenger trains to the Dixie Line.  "A Serious Proposal or Just a Talking Point for Public Consumption?"

The appearance of Ray Lang, Amtrak’s senior director of government affairs, at a meeting of the Tennessee House Transportation Committee was significant for a number of reasons, but two in particular stand out.

First, it was the first time Amtrak has named a specific route that fits the criteria that Anderson and Gardner have been talking up.

That route would link Atlanta and Nashville, but Lang also talked about extending a pair of Midwest corridor trains to Memphis.

Second, it offered concrete proof that Amtrak expects state and local governments to pay for its vision of the future of rail passenger travel.

It is not clear why Amtrak chose Tennessee as the opening act for what promises to be lengthy process.

Perhaps Amtrak has quietly sounded out other states on their interest in ponying up money for new rail passenger service and we just haven’t heard about it.

Or perhaps Amtrak projects the Tennessee routes as among the most likely to succeed.

The news reports out of the Volunteer State generally portrayed a favorable reception to Amtrak’s proposals with some legislators speaking well of the prospect of rail passenger service where none exists now.

Atlanta and Nashville have never been linked by Amtrak and Tennessee’s capitol has been off the Amtrak route network since the Floridian makes its final trips between Chicago and Florida in early October 1979.

In fact, Tennessee lost most of its passenger train service before Amtrak even became a thing, with the New York and Chattanooga Pelican (yes, there was a Chattanooga Choo-Choo although it never left The Pennsylvania Station at a quarter to four, nor did it serve breakfast in either of the Carolinas) and the Chicago and Atlanta Georgian gone by the end of the 1960s.  The less we say about the Floridian (hammered by bad Penn Central and Conrail track across Indiana, for a time combined with a Louisville to Orlando Auto-Train, and generally slow and undependable) the better.

But adding more lanes to Interstate 75 through that southern spur of the Appalachians is a losing proposition.

Other players in the process will also play a role in whether the trains operate.

Chief among them is would-be host railroad CSX.

CSX’s Covington fired a warning shot across the bow in saying, “introducing passenger trains to heavily used freight lines will be a complex, costly process.

“And I understand that you guys are hearing from your constituents about the crowded roads, and you’re obviously looking for solutions to that. But we want to make sure you do it in a way to make sure it doesn’t backfire and divert freight off the rails and onto the highways.”

That’s another way of saying that CSX will demand some very expensive infrastructure improvements as the price of agreeing to host the trains.

More than likely the price tag for those projects will be more than state lawmakers are willing to pay for a service that Amtrak said will lose money.

Whatever that additional cost will be, it is likely to be less than the losses the state highway commissioners incur each day that they persist in not treating their roads like assets.  Perhaps CSX might consider a more favorable attitude as well.  Union Pacific are getting a very fine intermodal corridor out of the upgrade of the Alton Route, and faster trailer and container movements from Mexico toward the Great Lakes that aren't battering the old Route 66 (yes, I know, that's Interstate 55) are the very opposite of a backfire.

The former Illinois Central might also benefit from an attitude adjustment.

Another player will be the Illinois Department of Transportation, which funds the trains now operating between Chicago and Carbondale, Illinois, that Amtrak has proposed extending to Memphis.

Amtrak spokesman Magliari said it would be relatively easy to have the southbound Saluki and northbound Illini serve Memphis because Amtrak already has crews based in Carbondale who operate the City of New Orleans on host railroad Canadian National between Carbondale and Memphis.

But what looks easy or even possible on paper may not be so in practice. IDOT will want assurance that its interests won’t be harmed in any rescheduling of the trains.

An unknown about the additional service to Memphis is whether the state of Kentucky would be willing to help fund trains that run through their state.

That's yet another undoing damage that Amtrak previously contributed to: some years ago, the agency raised no objection to Canadian National removing the cab signals and one of the main tracks on the old Main Line of Mid-America, turning a 100 mph railroad into just another 79 mph line with a lot of freight train interference; and Amtrak inherited the vestiges of an Illinois Central corridor service in which several overnight trains between Chicago and New Orleans became day trains between Chicago and Memphis.

Frequency, connectivity, dependability.  Better, though, to be talking about the possibility of such things rather than lamenting their absence.

YOU ARE A LIAR ON NATIONAL TELEVISION.

The prevarications of Elizabeth "Fauxahontas" Warren never cease to entertain.

Today, though, the entertainment is more of the form of two ancient shamans of the Technocratic Conceit throwing down as if in a no-holds-barred cage match.

Unfortunately, the senator from Voronezh Vermont wasn't quick enough to come back to her "You called me a liar ..." with the title line I proposed.  But the senator from Muskogee Massachusetts, in one minute, destroyed all the credibility of her "I think I'll have a beer" advert, and all to the great glee of Tucker Carlson.  "Elizabeth Warren is not someone you'd want to have dinner with - - that much is entirely clear. Tell her you're busy if she ever calls."

I guess he, too, called her a liar on national television.

This time, CNN tells us -- this time -- Elizabeth Warren was being a 100 percent completely real. Not like that time she lied about her race or the time she lied about her job history, or the time she lied about her plan to finance universal health care without a middle-class tax hike.

No, this time for sure -- no question at all -- Elizabeth Warren is telling the whole truth and nothing but, and you'd have to be some kind of misogynist to doubt her. That's what they told us all night on CNN.

Now, why do they tell us that? Why lie to us? Simple. The Democratic National Committee is worried about Bernie Sanders. All those attacks on Wall Street offend donors.

That Wall Street money is also fretful about all of the plans coming out of the Warren Wigwam. Are they feeling sufficiently strong to back the former vice-president, or will we see another billionaire businessman mounting a hostile takeover, this time of the Democrats?

I bet that by year's end, "impeachment" is going to be well down on the list of 2020 political stories.

THERE'S NO MONEY TO COPE WITH A TEACHER SHORTAGE BY RAISING WAGES?

Welcome to raising your kids in Illinois.  At the end of the previous academic year, this was the state of affairs.

It's the same old story, year after year.  "The report said shortages were reported in almost every subject area, with foreign languages, special education fields and computer science leading the list of classroom subjects. There also were significant shortages of school psychologists and library and media specialists."

I'm reminded of that Soviet era joke that ends, "pull down the shades and pretend we're moving."  If insufficiently many people screen for the job, make the job easier to screen for.  "Someone who wants to be a teacher, someone who knows a test is coming up, can't prepare sufficiently for a basic skills test and the problem is the test?"

Read the details, and weep.

Kelly McConohy has spent 11 years working as a paraprofessional, assisting students with special needs at Glenview Middle School. She wanted to become a licensed teacher.

But even after earning a degree in educational studies, she couldn’t pass the state’s Basic Skills Test. The math portion, with 60 story problems, gave her the most trouble. That’s partly because, at age 52, McConohy hasn’t taken a rigorous math class in decades. But it’s partly because the test is tough. Only 31 percent of college students pass the math portion on the first try.

When the legislature eliminated that test, it cleared the way for McConohy to move to the next requirement — student teaching — which she began this week. When I spoke with her on Monday, after her first day, she sounded positively giddy.

“I love this job,” she said. “I’ve never loved a job before, I can honestly say. And this is a truly just so… it’s so my thing. I love it.​”

McConohy is still with the same students, in the same program, working with children who have emotional disabilities. At Glenview, it’s called the Success program, “because it’s more positive,” McConohy said.

Yes, calling troubled kids successful is part of the problem. It's that same college of education mindset that equips college graduates with a lot of self-esteem and darned little ability to, oh, pass the mathematics test.  Story problems?  Bet there isn't a "sand falls into a conical pile" question among them.

Maybe that's what makes the analytics guys in opinion polling or sports or option trading so obnoxious, having to deal with overconfident innumerates all the time.

NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF THERE HAD BEEN A TRULY IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE.

Andrew McCarthy suggests that had evidence of state treason ever come to light, there would have been no protracted Mueller report.

If collusion with Russia had been fact rather than farce, Trump would never have made it to an impeachment trial. He’d have had to resign, Prior to November 8, 2016, Republicans were not the ones in need of convincing that Russia was a dangerous geopolitical threat. If it had been real collusion that brought Democrats around to that conclusion, the votes to impeach and remove would have been overwhelming.

And the timing would have been irrelevant. If Americans had been seized by a truly impeachable offense, it would not matter whether Election Day was two years, two months, or two weeks away. The public and the political class would not tolerate an agent of the Kremlin in the Oval Office.

If there were such egregious misconduct that the public was convinced of the need to remove Trump, such that two-thirds of the Senate would ignore partisan ties and do just that, there would be no partisan stunts. Democratic leaders would have worked cooperatively with their GOP counterparts, as was done in prior impeachments. They would have told the president: “Sure, you can have your lawyers here, and call whatever witnesses you want.” There would be a bipartisan sense that the president had done profound wrong. There would be a sense of history, not contest. Congressional leaders would want to be remembered as statesmen, not apparatchiks.

If there were a real impeachable offense, there would be no fretting about witnesses at the trial. Senate leaders would be contemplating that, after hearing the case extensively presented by both sides, there might well be enough votes to convict without witnesses. But if there were an appetite for witnesses, witnesses would be called . . . as they were in Watergate. And just as in Watergate, if the president withheld vital evidence of appalling lawlessness, the public would not be broadly indifferent to administration stonewalling.

Note though, that in the Watergate scandal, two years elapsed from "third rate burglary" to resignation, with each invocation of executive privilege being litigated in the courts.  What's going on now is more like that corrupt Washington establishment hanging on to as much of its authority as it can.

Why was the Democrats’ impeachment gambit driven by the election calendar rather than the nature of the president’s offense? Why were the timing of hearings and the unreasonable limits imposed on Republicans’ ability to call witnesses dictated by the frantic rush to get done before Christmas recess — to the point that Democrats cynically vacated a subpoena they’d served on a relevant administration witness, fearing a few weeks of court battles that they might lose?

Why did Democrats grope from week to week in a struggle over what to call the misconduct they accused the president of committing – campaign finance, extortion, quid pro quo, bribery? How did they end up with an amorphous “abuse of power” case? How did they conclude that an administration that goes to court rather than instantly surrendering potentially privileged information commits obstruction?

Why such tedious recriminations over adoption of Senate procedures that were approved by a 100–0 vote the last time there was an impeachment trial? Why all the kvetching over whether witnesses will be called when those procedures provide for the calling of witnesses in the likely event that 51 senators — after hearing nearly two weeks of presentation and argument from both sides — want to hear from one or two of them?

There are days when I suspect the worst fears of some populist pundits are correct: the Permanent Bipartisan Establishment still abhors Donald Trump's hostile takeover of the Republican Party, and the continued wrangling over process and ongoing introduction of new evidence protects business as usual, as well as putting that blemish on his Permanent Record.

Does the Permanent Political Class turning dubious conduct with respect to foreign aid for Ukraine into a Constitutional crisis say something about the vapidity of the appeal that sclerotic establishment otherwise has?

On Ukraine, nothing of consequence came of President Trump’s bull-in-a-china-shop excesses. Sure, they ought to be a 2020 campaign issue. Democrats, instead, would have us exaggerate them into historically extraordinary wrongs. For that, you need gamesmanship. If there were real impeachable misconduct, there would be no time or place for games.

There's no consensus, yet, among Democrats on who their side of the binary choice is going to be. Unfortunately, the nominating convention in Milwaukee does not coincide with German Fest. I can think of no better occasion to tap a few kegs.  Muttering a few choice German expressions at Democrats optional.  Just don't make a drinking game out of each time Elizabeth "Fauxahontas" Warren says "plan" or Bernie "Statler" Sanders gives the "cut" signal to the band.

THE LONGEST TRANSITION IS FROM SATURDAY TO SUNDAY.

Craig Newmark notes that Ryen Russillo doesn't quite answer, "Why Is It So Hard to Draft NFL Quarterbacks?" Nor does he shed any light on what the supply elasticity of quarterbacks is.

It's not quite true that "For every [c.q.] Patrick Mahomes, there’s a Mitchell Trubisky."  It's more like 28 busts to 22 successes with five borderline hires in the past few years of first-round draft choices according to Mr Russillo, who watches Saturday pro football, er, the Southeastern Conference, regularly.

His assessment: the position is a difficult one to learn, and the usual quantitative stuff isn't precise enough to pick winners. (The extension to Ira Magaziner style industrial policy ought to be straightforward, but I digress.  There are cameo appearances by Ben Bernanke.)

ASKING FOR WAY TOO MUCH.

This Saturday's not-regular-Saturday bridge column illustrates the pitfalls of attempting to describe a hand on incomplete information.

North deals, and the opening bid with a balanced hand and 16 high-card points is standard.  I'd like to think that raising to Two Spades with seventeen points is standard; that the simulation highlights the bid as some kind of a suggestion.  The North bot shows Clubs, with a notrump opening I figure there are game values in Spades, but the bot has other ideas.  That Four No Trump does not have a highlight on it indicating calling for aces, and the bot interprets my additional responses as a way to bid a grand slam in Clubs.

The opening lead is East's ♦7. We treat the North hand as the closed hand for counting losers.  In Spades, none, but note how useful the South hand would be as a dummy with Spades as trumps; in Hearts, there's one; in Diamonds none; in Clubs there might be two or three losers, even as trump.  Unfortunately the simulation is not an artificial intelligence that might see the value of stopping with game at Four Spades, especially with all those potential Club losers once the Ace is cashed.

And so it goes: win the opening lead with the Ace on the board; the ♣4 winkles out the Queen and now it's possible to run all the Clubs.  Perhaps it would have been wiser for me to draw trumps, establishing the ♣7 and ♣8 before going to work on the other suits, but I opted to use the high Diamonds in hand to discard some of the low Spades on the board, then cash the ♥ Ace, and then on the second round of Spades, east was out and ruffed with the ♣ Nine.  Now East can lead a low Heart to the Queen and West can return a Spade for another club ruff; as the North hand is a closed hand, there's a club ruff available there of the ♥ King, and the three remaining tricks are mine, but down three on a grand slam attempt isn't how any of this is supposed to work.

PRIVILEGE IS CIVILIZATION.

I've made this argument repeatedly and at length for years.

Perhaps Washington Examiner columnist Timothy P. Carney makes the point more succinctly.

Cultural liberalism is class warfare waged by the wealthy against the poor and working class. The privilege of the elite mostly comprises the norms, the models, and the community that support and guide people toward marriage and family. And that's one privilege too many elites would sooner keep to themselves.

Glenn "Insta Pundit" Reynolds notes, "Roger Simon was pointing this out over a decade ago."

The deeper subtlety of Mr Carney's argument is that the socially transgressive stance of the cultural influencers is a pernicious form of "do what I say" (casual sex and drug use) when that is evidently "not what I do."  Specifically, "Americans in the upper class are much more likely to profess liberalized teachings on family and marriage while personally practicing conservative family values."

The trickle-down effect of Weimar mores on the living conditions of people living in modest circumstances has been something cultural conservatives have recognized long before Roger Simon had his road-to-Gomorrah moment: it's been around at least since Emmett Tyrrell wrote The Liberal Crack-Up, and that book was in print before an obscure vice-president named Dan Quayle made a cause out of the "lifestyle choice" of a television character called Murphy Brown.

Whether the Normals will figure out the success sequence on their own remains to be seen.

THERE'S HISTORICAL TRUTH, AND THEN THERE'S HOWARD ZINN'S TRUTH.

There's a large pile of books still to be reviewed, and I'll start the 2020 count with Mary Grabar's Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation against America.

This Book Review N^o. 1 will not deal with the content of the book to any length, as I am more interested in its usefulness in helping teachers, whether as home-schooling parents or as employees of a school system, teach the controversies, where the book is deficient, than I am in the specific illustrations of elisions, omissions, and falsifications Ms Grabar points out.

I'm not a fan of People's History, and Ms Grabar located a review by Cornell's Michael Kammen who, years before I wrote that post, described People's History as a "scissors-and-paste-pot job."  Yup.  I'm troubled that some useful histories offering a different point of view, including naval historian S. E. Morison's investigation of Columbus's voyages are out of print and generally de-accessioned from the libraries.  On the other hand, the teacher or home-schooler wants to read up on the Founding or the Civil War or the Gilded Age or World War II, he's got to do his own research to identify where the controversies are introduced or contested,  That the Oregon Association of Scholars are conducting a campaign to get Debunking into public libraries and schools and supporting a talk by Ms Grabar at Portland State might be taking the fight to the enemy; and yet it's still going to be on that teacher or home-schooler to figure out what to do next.

That matters, as there is still much work to be done.  I borrowed my title from page 161 of Debunking.  It comes from Ronald Radosh, historian of inter alia several Communist plots and author of a generally favorable review that raises several of the points I could have raised here.  By all means, go there, read and understand.

Note, though, his conclusion.

Grabar has done a great service in writing the first serious book exposing Zinn’s scholarship and offering a corrective to his fables. It is unfortunate, however, that her book is not likely to receive the broad audience it deserves. It will likely be read by those who already know Zinn was an ideological partisan who used history to enforce his own political agenda. How better would it have been had a mainstream press undertaken this effort, one willing to buck convention and the publishing industry’s liberal clientele and give the book the chance it needs to effectively confront all those committed to what I call “the Zinning of America.”

Put another way, the book is a Regnery product, and, although the Regnery polemical touch is lighter than normal, that marque probably taints what's between the covers as not useful per se.  It's crucial, though, to understand that "Howard Zinn's truth" or "The Party's Truth" (Mr Radosh's original formulation) is something that's been granted legitimacy by the kind of radical skepticism that allows truth to be surrounded by a bodyguard of sneer quotes and falsehood, such as the smearing of Justice Kavanaugh, be rationalized as simply the accuser's truth.

It is useful for people, particularly people charged with the education of the young, to recognize nonsense masquerading as scholarship.  It is more useful for those people to be able to help the students in their care to understand the nature of the controversies and weigh the evidence.  Neither People's History nor Debunking contribute to that effort.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

SISTER NANCY WANTS THAT BLACK MARK ON DONALD TRUMP'S PERMANENT RECORD.

The speaker went on ABC's This Week, where Democrat operative George Stephanopoulos holds court, to the great amusement of Twitchy.  Leave aside the early-onset-dementia stammering and twitching, and she's simply a lay teacher carrying out Mother Superior's warning that there are some things that cannot be expunged.  "The President has been impeached – and no amount of gamesmanship from Leader McConnell will erase that fact."  That's legally and factually correct.  But will anybody give a d**n.  In another hundred years, will that impeachment be viewed by historians and chroniclers as simply a sad echo of Andrew Johnson running afoul of True Believers over the Tenure of Office Act?

Betsy McCaughey misses that Constitutional point, although she is almost certainly correct about what the rest of the year is likely to look like.  "Expect a short trial, an acquittal and no relief from the venomous anti-Trump rancor driving the Democratic Party. House Democrats are looking for new grounds to impeach. As if Congress had nothing better to do."

THE DIXIE FLYER RETURNS TO THE RAILS?

No, that's not a deluxe airplane or even a coaster wagon or a sled.  It's one of a fleet of trains once offered by the Nashville Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway, which covered the western slope of the Appalachians with fleets of trains linking Cincinnati with New Orleans and St. Louis or Chicago with Atlanta, and some of those trains once had through cars for and from Detroit or Florida points.  (The vestigial tail of this service continued to serve Cincinnati right up to Amtrak day.)

Now Amtrak are apparently interested in adding a regional rail service between Atlanta and Nashville.  As this service does not cover 750 miles, and the tracks are owned by CSX, the successor to NC&StL, it might be a long time from first stirrings to implementation.  It's probably not a good time for Better to be the enemy of Good Enough.  Let's get the trains running between Atlanta, Chattanooga, and Nashville (let's hope without any Andrews raids) and then we can talk about onward to Louisville and Cincinnati (and Detroit and Chicago and St. Louis) or toward Florida.

FASTER, PLEASE.

Never mind impeachment, Our President has submitted his budget request.

Permit me another aside: wouldn't it be refreshing if his Cabinet Secretaries simply submitted a one page executive summary of their activities and requests, and if he then, in proper business fashion, compiled those, added his own executive summary (fifteen or twenty bullet point on at most two pages) and turned that in to Congress as his report on the state of the union, then scheduled a rally in California or Virginia or Illinois or Iowa at the time the Speaker of the House has invited him to address that Joint Session of Congress?

On the other hand, going in front of those sleazy pontificators and mocking their conceits might have play value.  And there will be opportunities.

Could there be anything more cheering and cockle-warming than hearing that the Federal government might actually cut funding for [public radio]? (Though I seriously doubt that Trump’s budget proposal will literally END funding.) And can we do the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities next, please?

Yes, just as I've been encouraging for years.  That the agencies so named are regressive transfers to old rich people only makes their departure more desirable.

IT'S A CHILD, NOT A CHOICE.

History Channel's Vikings, which first sailed some seven years ago, and I've long had reservations about the messing about with real history and the injection of contemporary sensibilities into the show.

We're supposedly in the closing episodes of this show, perhaps by the time the growing season begins in the Northlands, and that means all the principal characters will have to die off, or perhaps deliver the Holy Grail to a sinkhole in an island off the coast of Vinland.  Perhaps I should hold my tongue about Oleg the Prophet building a great gate in Kiev and other Orthodox trappings worthy of a Mussorgsky opera, while Prince Igor is being groomed to liberate some of the khanates from the Persians, or is it Polovtsians, or am I thinking about a Borodin opera.  That's currently a side story, and there's been nothing going on in England or Ireland as of yet.

On the other hand ... what follows contains spoilers ... Goofy King Olaf has failed in his attempt to install Bjorn Ironside as the first king of all Norway, and now he and the winner of the electoral college, King Harald Fairhair, are at odds, with Olaf musing about how the outcome didn't come out the way he rigged it and there's got to be a reckoning.  With Fairhair looking to send Ironside to join his parents (I warned you there would be spoilers) in Valhalla, there's likely to be another episode of Deep State Among the Deep Waters to come.  Because a new character named Erik, who might anticipate an early crosser of the Atlantic, are we going to see this Deep State eventually sink in the deep waters of Green Bay, which is, after all, the world's biggest fjord.

But then comes the strangest plot twist of all.  Hvitserk, the least relevant of Ragnar's sons with Aslaug the Usurper, has had some kind of mushroom, and a wounded Lagertha returns to Kattegat as a serpent with a long tail.  And thus the Seer has correctly foretold that one of Ragnar's sons will kill her.  That means there must be a memorable Viking funeral, and any funeral of a sufficiently high-ranking Viking must involve a human sacrifice, the attendant to serve at Valhalla.  (Permit me a theological digression, if Valhalla is in the spirit world, are attendants or golden goblets or silk curtains really required?  The extension to those "harps of gold" the Heavenly Host are playing on that midnight clear is straightforward.)

The sacrifice, though, introduces an interesting twist on equity feminism.  As Lagertha was the greatest of shield maidens in life, her attendant in Valhalla must be from among the shieldmaidens and consent to the one-way horse ride.  Torvi volunteers.

Torvi offering to kill herself was the curveball that came out of the blue. Being pregnant and recently losing another child, you would think she would want to make sure she and her family were kept safe.

It's difficult to make sense of what was going through her mind. There's no question about whether she looked up to Lagertha. They had one of the strongest bonds on the show.

This could show how much Torvi thought of Lagertha that she would give up her life as a mother to help her get to Valhalla. It would have been a shock if followed through with the plan.

For that, I'm thankful Gunnhild managed to talk her down from it.

What this reviewer doesn't tell you, dear reader, is that Gunnhild invoked tribal law. Because Torvi is with child (and why is it that any drama involving events of the seventeenth or earlier centuries always uses that locution?) the child has no agency to volunteer to be sacrificed, and thus Torvi gets a pass from being serviced by the priests before the angel of death stabs her.  Make of that what you will.  Ironside gets to Kattegat just in time for the conclusion of the funeral, with the flaming arrows melting the ice for what remains of the pyre ship to sink.  "Bjorn is going to be unpredictable following the death of his mother. He's lost everything, including the election that he was supposed to win."

I wonder if he will call the Kievan Rus a longship of deplorables when they show up to install Ivar as a Ukrainian puppet.

THERE ARE YELLOW WEASELS. THEN THERE ARE MODAL WEASELS.

Either way, you're calling an audible that's likely to fail.

Instead of “It could be impossible,” say “The probability is 3%” or “The probability is 17%” or whatever.  Instead of saying, “It’s certainly possible,” say “The probability is greater than zero,” or “The probability is roughly 10%.”  Instead of “It mustn’t be inherently so,” say “The probability is only 86%.”  Do specific numbers seem overly precise?  Then switch to “highly unlikely,” “even odds,” “almost certain,” and such.

You don't sound more nuanced and erudite if you make like a weasel.  That's probably speciesist against weasels, to compare an academic with a weasel is disrespectful of weasels.

Outside of Grievance Studies, academics will crush you for unwarranted certainty.  Otherwise, though, you can qualify your assertions like an eagle – or like a weasel.  So why be a weasel?

Eschew obfuscation!