FRIDAY short TAKES.

With the coming of winter, the cold-flu-and-corona season is likely to turn out like last year.

So much so, indeed, that we kick off with the beginning of the spin.

1.  "We set out to flatten the curve, and we ended up stamping out the flu."  We'll see.

2.  What did you expect the denial of coherent beliefs to lead to? "In the span of a decade or so, essentially all professional media not explicitly branded as conservative has been taken over by a school of politics that emerged from humanities departments at elite universities and began colonizing the college educated through social media. Those politics are obscure, they are confusing, they are socially and culturally extreme, they are expressed in a bizarre vocabulary, they are deeply alienating to many, and they are very unpopular by any definition."

3.  It's a cult.  "Across a remarkable range of issues, the superstition that the president is a talisman now reigns unchecked."  You'd think that a quarter century of a legacy giving way to a chocolate messiah who was followed by a rent-seeking reality show host and then a doddering ficus would change a few minds.  "In the coming years, conservatives ought to do their level best to find and promote that rarest of birds: the politician who knows his place."  Read the rest.

4.  Today, we are becoming like Brazil.  That is, "We don’t need a lecture from Michael Sandel to know that ‘meritocracy’ has badly misfired."

5.  Lori Lightfoot never had a clue.  "She can’t deal with skyrocketing violent crime, in the rough neighborhoods and now violence is in the Loop, on the North Side, everywhere. And now police are issuing warnings about violence on Michigan Avenue." A stretch of North Michigan Avenue remains vacant and locked up.  With cheerleaders like Neil Steinberg, Chicago deserves to get what will come, good and hard.  " Chicago cops don’t want to be told to take the vaccine because they’re Red State white bread Trumpies huddled in their walled enclaves in Blue State multicultural Chicago. Not taking the vaccine is the middle finger to science and authority that, being cops, they just can’t deny themselves."  Indiana, I understand, is recruiting police officers from Illinois.

6.  End the mask mandates now.  We simply cannot continue a begrudged compliance.  It might once have been reasonable to forgive excess caution in the face of extreme uncertainty, but we’re long past that point.

7.  How bad does a supply chain crisis have to be for Dunkin Donuts to be out of Donuts??

8.  These pickups aren’t designed for work.  Exactly, if you can't get 4x8 building materials in the bed, it's not a proper truck.

9.  Just like those streets lined with American elms, when the failure comes, it will come everywhere.  "The regulatory and financial system we have today is optimized for development monocultures."

10.  Relaxed practicality.  "People intermingled because they were not all that different."

11.  If we are lucky.  "Have we reached the high water mark of woke?"  Case in point? "You make Superman a bisexual, self-obsessed narcissist because you yourselves are self-obsessed narcissists."

12.  We are Team Labor Shortage.

13.  Draw up a little list? "If no one misses them, either, maybe they, too, are better off not planning a return to the office anytime soon."

14.  Hector, condescend, deplorable-shame, disrespect.  "How infuriatingly, insultingly out of touch they are."  Case in point: "These days, the men and women who worked through the whole pandemic are being shamed and patronized by the very people whose cushy existences they facilitated for a year and a half. "

15.  If you can't condescend, whine.  "Wailing about fairness is emblematic of the impotent strategy progressives have deployed to steamroll Manchin and Sinema."

16.  Perhaps some introspection would pay dividends for Fauci.

17.  Epistemic closure in a nutshell.  "[W]hen you want to find the intolerant, look for Democratic strongholds where you find a lot of college diplomas."

18.  Raggedy Ann, avatar of aristocracy.  "People are straining to put food on the table and gas in their cars; they increasingly fail to see the point in going to work at all. Psaki’s response is that of the anointed class she represents: shut up and take it."

19.  The essential elements of the 2020 election controversy.  "Two ingredients drove the outcome in 2020: First, private philanthropy injected into government election offices and, second, a banana-republic style suspension of agreed-upon election rules. You didn't need much outright voter fraud when these two ingredients combined to poison the 2020 election."  Private activities to get out the vote are one thing; improper departures from codified rules are another.  Buy this book.

20.  Lori Lightfoot fouls her nest.  "I don’t feel like the onus is on [Kane County personnel] to go in there in an emergency situation that was created by poor government and a lack of support the officers receive."

21.  Second step: "The cure for ignorant politicians is supposed to be elections."  There is a first step.

22.  Turf 'em out.  "Blame the individuals whose choices brought about such negative unintended consequences."