FRIDAY short TAKES.

Hectoring, condescending, and deplorable shaming: no way to win elections.  "Since a misguided refugee resettlement effort, things haven’t been going all that smoothly, and your average Swede thinks things pretty well suck. This means he is chastised repeatedly by the government as mad, a racist, or shut up already, tiresome peasant." What's Swedish for "turf them out?" "Ergo people are voting that they’ve had quite enough, thank you."  Not convinced enough?  "Since the Democrats achieved their governing trifecta in 2020, they have presided over a cascading series of domestic and foreign policy disasters while displaying transparent contempt for the Constitution."  Believe what you see.  "When the president says “watch me,” does he not realize we all have been watching him since he took office and we definitively don’t like what we see?"  Oh, and better watch that ultra-MAGA-fascist talk.  "If liberals insist that enforcing borders is a job only fascists will do, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals won’t."

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

1.  Sleepy Joe: "[Voters] are watching a man dance about and brag about his climate change bill, all the while vilifying them or their family members, heedless of the challenges they face."  Too bad for us.  "Elections have consequences, and, unfortunately, President Biden is the legitimate president of this country."

2.  Blackboard economics.  "These people only think that they are miracle workers. And so their advice too often, if unintentionally, furthers only the designs of the devil."

3.  That advance auction of stolen goods.  "Americans give. And the government takes away. This is a good way to lose the race for the cure."

4.  Smug and self-congratulatory.  "[T]he primary purpose of woke liberalism is to feel good about yourself, and the residents of Martha’s Vineyard certainly rose to the challenge of providing proof."

5.  Indeed.  "The attempt to have it both ways only comes across as convoluted and nonsensical, and that was exactly the point DeSantis was trying to make when he sent those planes to Martha’s Vineyard."

6.  Pretendians.  "Don’t set up a big fat incentive target if you don’t want people shooting at it."

7.  Just do your job.  "Done well, higher education — particularly liberal arts and legal education — makes the ground fertile for a durable democracy by inculcating the habits of mind necessary for well-functioning civil society."

8.  Restore bourgeois norms in the academy!  "It is natural for any community to maintain and enforce its social norms."

9.  "[N]o one really thought this albatross through."

10.  Sponsored research is censorship per se.  "Become known as a critic of 'progressive' government, and your chances of advancement diminish, your access to research dollars goes away, invitations to give paid presentations vanish, and colleagues will shun you. In short, many economists calculate that speaking truth to power is now a personal mistake."

11.  Those annoying public radio news readers.  "Pick one affectation and stick with it."

12.  Those annoying pollsters.  “Who do I like? Haven’t given it much thought. Trump, I guess. Now stop calling me during supper.”

13.  The bad schools, the crime, the vagrants.  "If you look at Minneapolis, Chicago, and San Francisco, it is a race to see who can be Detroit first."

14.  Ward-heeler politicians, doing their thing.  "The activists get rich, the politicians get power and then money, and their developer buddies do great. The people themselves? We are pawns."

15.  Corona tyranny.  "It is not enough for the president to declare an end. It does not end until we end the emergency powers and get an ironclad guarantee that nothing of this sort can ever happen again. One might suppose the Bill of Rights would have been enough but it was not."

16.  The Bears still suck.  "What would life feel like with a consistent winning football organization in Chicago? What would life feel like if the Packers fell into 30 years of despair?"  That was 1968 to 1995 or so, during which time the Bears won exactly one Super Bowl.

17.  Vince Lombardi would understand.  "You know what’s coming, but you have to stop it. That’s not easy to do."  Run to win.  Did you know the Bears still suck?