CHASING THE PRODUCTIVE PEOPLE OUT.

Long before the genial socialist succeeded the crabby socialist as ward-heeler-in-charge of Chicago, I noted, "Meanwhile, the conventional wisdom in Chicago is that residents and businesses don't pay enough in taxes for the privilege of living, working, and profiting in Illinois."  Illinoisans have had several chances to vote the Combine out, and they haven't.  "George Will, confessed Cub fan, hopes that Illinoisans can arrest the decline before it's too late. 'The nation has a huge stake in this brawl because the 'blue model' is bankrupting cities and states from Connecticut to California, so its demolition here, where it has done the most damage, would be a wondrous story enhancing the nation’s glory.'"  I thought the corona tyranny might change some minds.

Springfield politicians are hazardous to your health.

The bill of particulars is as constant as the Polar Star: "Tax policies were inducing businesses to leave long before the corona tyranny began.  The crime and underperforming schools in Chicago are so notoriously bad that people of African extraction with the means to do so are leaving.  Residents and businesses get a dose of the green new deal every day, particularly on mornings when the sun doesn't shine and the wind isn't blowing."  There's a heat wave on offer for later this week.  We'll see how high the spot price of electricity goes.  The only saving grace might be that because people can subscribe to interruptible service on their air conditioners in return for a monthly rebate from the power company, we might be spared rolling blackouts.

Might the voters who left have been voters who would have turfed the Combine out of Chicago and Springfield?  The businesses that served them will follow.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The Left gave us nihilism.  "Even the elite Left is now forced to live among, and cannot always escape, the ruination it created—and for the first time is becoming slightly unhappy with what it birthed."  So mote it be when you deny coherent beliefs.  So, too, with technocrats.  "The problems created by bad centralized policies imposed at a large scale won't be resolved by simply imposing better centralized policies at a large scale."  Take Dementia Joe with you.  "Mendacious and destructive government policies are a hindrance to just about every American’s dream."  Seven bucks for a bag of chips?  Legitimacy can be exhausted.  "America is not about presidents or politicians."

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

A FORMERLY MOVABLE FEAST.

In the course of remarking on flamingos foraging on Lake Michigan, I noted, "I suspect flamingos will not find Wisconsin winters congenial, and zebra mussels are also filter feeders."  I'd forgotten about another filter feeder.  "The likely outcome will be a collapse of the whitefish population. But when the quaggas exhaust their food supply, the quagga population collapses? The article mentions a seaweed called cladophora that prefers clearer water. What is cladophora's food supply? What fish use cladophora for food?"

TEMPERING PRINCIPLE WITH PRACTICALITY.

For all we hear about the vaunted European passenger railways, that public money is Never Enough.  "European governments shrinking railways in favour of road-building, report finds." Seriously.

European governments have “systematically” shrunk their railways and starved them of funding while pouring money into expanding their road network, a report has found.

The length of motorways in Europe grew 60% between 1995 and 2020 while railways shrank 6.5%, according to research from the German thinktanks Wuppertal Institute and T3 Transportation. For every €1 governments spent building railways, they spent €1.6 building roads.

“This is a political choice,” said Lorelei Limousin, a climate campaigner with Greenpeace, which commissioned the report. “We see the consequences today with the climate, but also with people who have been left without an alternative solution to cars.”

The report found the EU, Norway, Switzerland and the UK spent €1.5tn (£1.29tn) between 1995 and 2018 to extend their roads – but just €0.93tn (£0.8tn) to extend their rail networks.

In the four years that followed (2018-21), the average gap in investment in rail and road decreased from 66% to 34%. During that time, seven countries invested more in rail than roads – Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the UK – while the rest spent more on roads than rail.

Dr Giulio Mattioli, a transport researcher at the Technical University of Dortmund, who was not involved in the study, said: “Most European countries have been actually encouraging car use by investing large amounts of public money into expanding motorway infrastructure.”

In the public and political debate, Mattioli added, small investments into bike lanes and railways were heavily scrutinised while investments in roads were taken for granted. “This absolutely needs to change if we are to meet climate mitigation targets in the transport sector.”

Yes, the doomsday environmentalists will view any public spending on roads, particularly if it comes at the exclusion of the trains, trams, and cycling paths, as a misuse of public money.

News flash: this is what democracy looks like.  The motor vehicle, whether in Berlin, Germany, or New Berlin, Wisconsin, is a Marshallian improvement and it will develop a constituency for spending public money accordingly.  On the other hand, between the rent-seeking and the weakness of market tests for public projects, those road investments will become future liabilities, whether the government is Polish, Lithuanian, or any other country.

NEVER MIND COMPREHENSIVE REFORM, LET'S TRY TWO SIMPLE THINGS.

Cato Institute contributor Alex Nowrasteh gets to the heart of the immigration matter.

[W]e hypothesize that many people oppose immigration liberalization because they don’t know how complex and restrictive the immigration system is. Many years ago, I spoke to a conservative audience in Arizona about immigration. Afterward, an elderly woman asked, “I understand the benefits of immigration, but why don’t the illegals just go to the Post Office to register and become legal? What are they hiding?”

Those questions are reasonable if you know nothing about the legal immigration system. Her question was spurred by ignorance, not by malice. As a result, we’ve identified ignorance of the actual laws as a significant problem in liberalizing immigration. Just imagine how hard it would be to talk about tax policy with someone who doesn’t know that the U.S. has an income tax or even what it is. That’s about where we are in terms of the immigration debate.

His interlocutor undoubtedly remembered those public service announcements that used to run on radio and television.  Aliens must report addresses during January.  I'm not sure whether that's still a requirement.  It's been a few years since I did any research on immigration policies.  I fear, though, that we have talk of amnesty or comprehensive reform or the like because the government's protocols for keeping track of aliens aren't working.

BLOWN WAY OFF COURSE.

Plastic lawn flamingos in Milwaukee neighborhoods or on Bascom Hill?  Pretty standard stuff.

The real thing, looking for food on a Port Washington beach?  That's odd.

For eight hours, five pink flamingos called Port Washington home, and really, is it different from what they're used to? You've got sand, waves, and people. A lot of people, just like you would on a tropical beach.

"Just close your eyes and pretend that you're in the Caribbean," said Beth Connell, flamingo watcher.

It's South Beach, but not Florida's.

Pictures similar to the ones taken are what vacations are made of. Even the professionals set up shop at Port Washington for it.

Milwaukee's South Shore Park beach sometimes offers views of cruise ships making, yes, port calls.

The flamingos in Port Washington?  Tempest-tossed.  "The American Birding Association says Hurricane Idalia threw the American Flamingo off course, some even spotted in Ohio. These five showed up along Port Washington's shoreline Friday morning on Sept. 22, bringing out some cheer leaders."  The shore, unfortunately, offered slim pickings.

As our feathered friends flew south, birders say it is possible they'll stay close to the lake.

"They filter feed like whales which is cool, mostly feeding on little zo-plankton and stuff. Will they find anything to eat in Lake Michigan? Yea, there's spiny water fleas and bloody red shrimp I'm sure they're feeding on," said Miller.

Bird experts say it's unclear if the flamingos will find enough of what they like to eat in Lake Michigan. So, it is no surprise these five flew the coop.

I suspect flamingos will not find Wisconsin winters congenial, and zebra mussels are also filter feeders.

Milwaukee's Journal-Sentinel helpfully compiled answers to some frequently asked questions about Wisconsin flamingos.

ROBERT REICH SLIPS ON A BANANA.

Two score and five years ago, Alfred E. Kahn, who the Carter administration rewarded for introducing commercial freedom into air transportation by making him the "inflation tsar," decided to head off talk about an impending recession by calling it a banana.

The reason, he amiably explains, is that references to recessions seem to make people nervous and irritable. He hardly needs to add that one of the people made most irritable is his employer, President Carter.

In the peculiar atmosphere that frequently precedes a recession, the CVI -- the Candor and Veracity Index -- takes a sharp dive, and everyone in official positions is required to pretend that the probable is impossible. It is one of the conventions of American politics that no president can ever acknowledge any chance of a recession ahead. That custom is now adding another element of murkiness and uncertainty to public discussion of the coming year's prospects. High officials are permitted to speak of slow growth ahead. But all references to recessions are forbidden -- as noted by the effervescent Mr. Kahn, who likes to live dangerously.

These days, you have Raggedy Ann and Buckwheat to stomp on the Candor and Veracity Index, and you still have the problem.

Once again, inflation threatens a Democratic presidency, and the Biden White House does not have many more effective tools at its disposal than Carter’s did during Kahn’s stint as the hapless chairman of something called the Council on Wage and Price Stability.

As Kahn predicted, it took a sharp — how do you say? — downturn, engineered by Federal Reserve interest rate hikes and marked by unemployment that peaked in 1982 at 10.8 percent, to crush inflation. A similar Fed rate-raising campaign that began in March is why many worry about the risk of a banana now.

While Carter’s inflation-fighting efforts did mostly fail, in one area they did some good. That was the deregulation of passenger airlines, trucking and freight rail, which exposed long-standing government-protected cartels in those industries to competition, resulting in lower costs throughout the economy.

That's not the way the Jarrett regency will roll.

There was a time, in other words, when a left-center spectrum of Democrats paid attention to the supply side of the economy, not in the Republican tax-cuts-for-the-rich way, to be sure, but in a pro-consumer sense of enabling efficiency, with the goal of promoting abundance and, eventually, lower prices. Kahn, Kennedy and — yes — Carter deserve credit for this contribution to easing long-range inflationary pressures.

Biden’s treasury secretary, Janet L. Yellen, advocates “modern supply side economics,” which, as she put it, “prioritizes labor supply, human capital, public infrastructure, R&D, and investments in a sustainable environment.” She argued that the Build Back Better plan’s “investments” in child care, family leave and the like would have advanced that policy.

Whether all that spending really would have raised productivity — or poured more gas on a raging inflation fire — is a good question, to which we will likely never get the answer since the bill is essentially dead. Meanwhile, the administration should look, as Kahn did, for opportunities to fight inflation by loosening the government’s grip on unduly regulated markets.

That Build Back Better is the new banana.

Don’t get scared. I’m going to talk about something that’s caused a lot of fear mongering.

You see, advanced countries, like the United States, pool resources for the common good. How? Well, governments enact taxes and then spend that money on things that benefit everyone. Think of national defense, schools, highways, healthcare, unemployment insurance — basically government spending that protects the well-being of the people.

But since some folk, like your conservative Uncle Bob, think ANY pooling of resources for the common good is…socialism.

And since socialism is apparently so terrifying…

I’m going to use a different word to describe this taxing of individuals for the common good. Let’s use.. I don’t know.. How about…Banana! That’s not scary, right?

There is no such thing as the, singular noun, common good, and the very litany Mr Reich chants demonstrates as much.  Is nation building "national defense?"  Why have school board meetings become so contentious?  To what extent has highway construction been captured by rent-seekers?  What effect do third-party payments have on your medical bills, and can a monopsony really contain prescription drug costs?

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY.

Yes, today is Monday, which means the peanut gallery reactions to Brightline's Orlando extension up and running came in over the weekend.  Glenn "Insta Pundit" Reynolds gets to take a dig at California's faster train from Goodrum Junction to South LaPorte, er, Merced to Fresno.  The comments to the post are predictably negative, with people suggesting that the fix for congested interstates and maltimed traffic lights is to build more lanes of road.

A WPTV report has the obligatory Florida Man content.

The first Brightline train traveling from South Florida to Orlando rolled out Friday morning, completing a massive expansion project that cost the company $6 billion and took four years to complete.

The inaugural ride to central Florida departed Miami at 6:50 a.m.

It was scheduled to arrive in West Palm Beach at 7:45 a.m. and then depart for Orlando International Airport about 15 minutes later. However, a fatal Brightline train crash in Delray Beach delayed the route for more than an hour.

The train eventually left West Palm Beach at about 9 a.m. en route to Orlando.

The first responders and the coroner might be less dilatory in Florida: when a Metra train or Amtrak's regional service has a close encounter with a pedestrian in Chicagoland, that turns into a three hour delay.  Scroll down for the obligatory hand-wringing about those deaths on the level crossings.

The Associated Press analyzed federal data beginning in 2019, finding that Brightline trains have the highest death rate in the U.S., fatally striking 98 people since Miami-West Palm Beach operations began.

That's a rate of about one death for every 32,000 miles that its trains travel. However, none of the 98 deaths have been found to be Brightline's fault.

I wonder whether a few pedestrian overpasses might be useful where the train runs close to the beach. The highest point in Florida would be somewhere on the bottom of Lake Michigan, and grade separating the railroad didn't make sense when Henry Flagler built the original Florida East Coast.

LET'S TAKE A TRAIN RIDE.

Earlier today, Brightline's Orlando service started carrying passengers.

“Opening Orlando fulfills our ultimate business model. We have seen incredible enthusiasm from the business and tourism industries eager to travel between Central and South Florida,” says Patrick Goddard, Brightline president. “As we start service to Orlando for peak holiday seasons, I encourage everyone to check calendars, make plans, visit our website or app and reserve a seat now.”

The Fourth Estate covered the first trip.  Can we do something about reporters describing trains as "chugging along?"

Transportation pundits are reading all sorts of things into that service opening.

Amtrak’s decades-old monopoly on intercity passenger rail travel will fall in the coming weeks when Florida becomes home to the fastest American trains outside the Northeast Corridor.

Brightline, the only private passenger railroad in the country, is slated to open its newest station here later this year, providing a train connection between Orlando International Airport and South Florida in three hours. Meanwhile, work is progressing on high-speed projects in Western states and Texas, and Amtrak is eyeing its biggest expansion in 52 years.

Brightline's multiple frequencies are the antithesis of Amtrak's Silver Meteor and Silver Star, which are what remains of the New York - Florida service of years ago, timed to provide late afternoon or evening departures for the rich men and women north of Richmond, given generous recovery margins south of Jacksonville, and, in the case of the Star, sent all over Florida in order to serve both Tampa and Miami without splitting or combining the train in Orlando.  Close enough for government work, but not exactly a value proposition for somebody in Miami with business in Jacksonville.  That segment of the market is small but present: I spoke with a passenger in the diner who was headed from north Florida to a meeting in Miami.  Now if Brightline, Amtrak, and the Commuter Rail operators out of Miami and Orlando would coordinate connections and sell some sort of pass good on any train.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Is it too much to ask for everything not to suck?  Probably.  "Because lazy and shoddy thinking is much easier than is serious and logical thinking, these primitive habits of thought will plague humanity for the duration."  At least decentralize the suckitude?  "The power of America lies in its people. And you know, less government, more people."  Or bet on emergence?  "Where can Americans find political leaders capable of dealing with this crisis?"  (The debt ceiling in that column, pick any other crisis.)  Dona nobis pacem.  "I’ve said for a while now that the way to save this nation, short of outright secession and breakup, is to re-embrace federalism."

Reality is socially conservative, and reality bats last.  "At a time when the abnormal is championed as the new normal, conservatives cannot act to uphold the established order without being silenced or destroyed by the progressives who control that order."  The "new normal: is an experiment against reality.  Wait.  "The problem with norms and customs, however, is that they are relatively easy to tear down and much harder to restore."  Until their absence becomes painful?  "Democrats are destroying America at a fast enough rate."

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

MERRICK GARLAND, QUERULOUS LITTLE WORM.

An Indiana Member of Congress lights him up.  "Representative Victoria Spartz is a woman who grew up in the totalitarian, authoritarian, stifling, single party, communist state of the Soviet Union, and she's now worried that her voters, her constituents, the citizens who live in her district who asked her to represent them are now afraid of their own government."  There's video.  The enforcer for the establishment's Morale Conditioners responding "yes, and yes" at the end of the clip has a whiff of "yes, dear" about it, doesn't it?

PASSING THE TORCH.

A new starting quarterback for the Green Bay Packers will run out of the Lambeau Field tunnel for the first time Sunday. Cherry Starr wishes Packers quarterback Jordan Love luck and tells him he deserves 'all the success.'  She's continuing a tradition Bart Starr established.

When Bart Starr retired from the NFL he wrote annual notes to every starting quarterback at the start of every season. Cherry has continued the tradition after Bart died in 2019 and is having the 32 quarterbacks sign a helmet for the Helmets to Heroes auction, which raises money for pediatric cancer treatments and research.

Good.

Let's hope the Green Bay Packers will put up some highlights for those kids to watch.

WATCH TRAINS FROM YOUR COMPUTER.

The Guardian's Kari Paul remarks on the phenomenon.

The world of railfans and trainspotters is hardly new. Since the advent of the railroad, hobbyists and professionals have taken photos of local trains, traveled to see their favorite railways, and simply passed the time sitting on platforms to enjoy the view.

But the community saw a digital boost during the pandemic, when the act of watching livestreams of trains soared in popularity. Many say they were drawn in by the community around the feeds, the romantic lore and history of rail travel in the US, and the regularity of trains passing through at a time when the world felt chaotic.

“A lot of people said during lockdown the camera really saved their sanity, because it was a way to connect with people they weren’t able to see in person at the time,” said Robert Scott, a railfan who volunteers as a moderator for a live camera in Chehalis, Washington. “Some people keep the feed on 24 hours a day in the background because they like the familiarity of the regular passing of trains.”

With unsettled weather, and winter, on the way, being able to watch trains from home makes sense.  Let me offer suggestions.  I have not embedded any feeds as depending on the hour of the day, there might not be much going on.

COMING TO TERMS WITH RETRENCHMENT.

That's been going on in higher education for as long as the Cold Spring Shops have been online.  The faculty directory of Northern Illinois's economics department, circa 2010, put me in mid of those passenger train departure boards before Amtrak took over.  After Amtrak took over, many of those departure boards were empty, suggesting that there weren't that many trains "worth traveling again."  And yet, the poobahs of higher education continued to behave as if business as usual was a sustainable course.  Sorry, no.  "Particularly when the higher education community has been enabling the cry-bullies, and otherwise sticking its fingers in the eyes of normal Americans. And longtime critic, if from the inside, and economist Richard Vedder warned the mandarins to stop pretending business as usual was sustainable."

BUILD IT BY INCREMENTS.

A Route Fifty article asks, "Can the future of passenger rail be found between Miami and Orlando?"  Color me cautiously optimistic, as long as people, whether doing development-oriented transportation, which is what Brightline is doing in Florida, or whether setting up Regional Rail service, consider the essential elements of a train service, which are frequency, connectivity, and dependability.  You'll note I left out speed, and regular readers know why.

Let's turn to the story.

A private railroad operator will start service between Orlando and Miami next week, with trains reaching 125 miles an hour on the three-hour journey. It marks the first time in decades that American cities will get a new rapid rail connection, and it will offer the fastest trains outside of the Northeast Corridor.

Brightline, the company that operates the trains, said service between Orlando’s airport and downtown Miami will start Friday, Sept. 22. The railroad started service between Miami and West Palm Beach in 2018, but the new 235-mile route will take its trains further up the coast to Cocoa (near Cape Canaveral) and then northwest alongside a highway until reaching the Orlando airport. Eventually, Brightline hopes to connect the line to the Tampa area on the Gulf Coast as well.

Brightline will be opening service with a full schedule of trains, meaning overnight trips to the Mouse or South Beach or day trips to any of the cities along the way are available to passengers. Ridership increases more than proportionately to frequency, which people spending public money tend to forget.

“Americans from all across the country will be flying to Orlando and have the opportunity to take the train—a modern train—to Miami,” said Rick Harnish, the executive director of the High Speed Rail Alliance. “They’ll see what American trains can be, and hopefully start telling their congressman they want them back home, too.”

Harnish said Brightline’s ambitions also set it apart from most of the Amtrak network. Amtrak, he says, is essentially two different systems. One is in the Northeast Corridor, between Boston and Washington, D.C., where Amtrak owns the tracks and offers frequent service. The other system operates everywhere else in the country, where service is infrequent and runs on tracks owned by freight carriers. Many states pay Amtrak to run shorter-distance trains, but even those run only a few times a day.

“Across the country, there are proposals for starting new passenger routes. And the states are proposing like one or two trains a day—maybe three or four,” Harnish said. “You can’t compete with the automobile if you only have one or two trains a day.”

Advocates of that approach say they just want to see if the service will succeed. But Harnish said that they are actually guaranteeing that it’ll fail. “All kinds of proposals out there that are driven by states are essentially setting themselves up for failure because they’re not frequent,” he said. “And Brightline has walked in and said, ‘We are launching with hourly service.’”

Harnish said Brightline’s model might not work in many other places in the U.S. In Florida, the company that launched Brightline built the railroad along the Atlantic coast more than a century ago. It also owns real estate along the corridor, particularly near its stations, that has been developed alongside the new rail service. That’s another source of revenue for the company, besides just fares.

Yes, the Brightline business model is different, and Brightline service caters to an upscale clientele, even in Smart, which is their locution for standard, class.  On the other hand, a train or two weekdays only serving Rockford or McHenry using Chicago's Metra trains will not build a passenger base.

THAT'S THE WAY THE INFRASTRUCTURE CRUMBLES.

Saturday evening, southern Wisconsin got some rain, which might have put a damper on the Gemütlichkeit at Oktoberfest.  It made for a strange sort of rain delay at the local baseball stadium.

Roof is closed here at AmFam Field, but the rain appears to be falling on the field???? @Brewers @WISN12News pic.twitter.com/zu85JqBRs8

— Hannah Hilyard WISN (@Hannah_WISN) September 17, 2023

That leak came at an interesting time for the local infrastructure cult.

The Brewers have called American Family Field home since 2001 and have a lease that expires in 2030. State Democrats and Republicans have been debating on stadium renovation funding plans for several months.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, proposed a plan in which the state would spend $290 million in repairs and the Brewers would extend their lease by 13 years, through 2043. Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said that plan wouldn’t work and indicated he wanted to come up with a deal that included a longer commitment from the Brewers to remain in Milwaukee.

Why should stadium infrastructure be any different from any other infrastructure?

Raise the issue of state residents who might live in Twins country having to pay taxes for a Milwaukee stadium: prepare for back-and-forth about the tourism dollars that show up in Milwaukee, or not, if those tourists bring tailgating supplies with them, eat before the game, and spend nothing on concessions inside or eateries or hotels in the Milwaukee area. Call the whole notion of stadium subsidies a regressive transfer to owners and player: prepare for argumentam ad anecdotam about those parking lot attendants and beer vendors, perhaps from some protected status communities, whose very livelihoods are at stake if the stadium is empty. Sometimes, the politicians defending the stadium subsidies on those grounds are the very same people who use "trickle down" as a pejorative. Apparently, it's not, as far as the pouring of the beer is concerned.

Yes, I'm repeating myself, but the political wrangling over the stadium subsidies is amusing, apart from the White Sox and the Bears engaging in similar high-jinks in Illinois.  Apparently, when a government cuts taxes and bets on emergence, that's "trickle down," but when a government allocates money for a stadium, those beer vendors are "jobs created or preserved," and when a government appropriates money for a pet project, the people temporarily employed (can you say Solyndra, dear reader?) qualify as "jobs created."

MOVIE HOUSES FAIL THEIR MARKET TESTS.

I've long been displeased with the experience of going to the movies, particularly at the chain theaters.

Perhaps it is time for the people who run the theaters to rethink their business model, which seems to be based on upselling at the concessions, and endless commercials. Nearly half an hour of previews? Seriously? We're already doing the theaters a favor by purchasing tickets and their popcorn, and we can tolerate the high prices intended for popcorn lovers at the concessions.  When the scheduled start time for the feature is 1.30, start it no later than 1.35.  Don't make me wait until two.

It's not that the experience got any better after the end of the corona tyranny.

With both the performers and the script writers on strike, though, there won't be many summer blockbusters coming to antagonize the curious. The streaming services are likely to win the battle with the movie houses the same way they won the battle with the cable companies, by default.

And now, dear reader, there are all of three movie houses operating within the city limits of Milwaukee.

Like the rest of the country’s theaters, the Downer closed its doors during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown orders in March 2020. Five months later, it was the first movie theater in the city of Milwaukee to reopen.

Like several other local theaters, the Downer had never fully reopened; since late 2020, it had been open three to five days a week most weeks, with only a couple screenings per auditorium each day.

The Downer is the second movie theater in the city of Milwaukee to close this month. Marcus Theatres closed the Southgate Cinema, its last movie theater in the city limits, on Sept. 5. With their closings, the Oriental Theatre, the Avalon Theater and the Times Cinema are the last movie theaters in the city.

Southgate is another of the shopping centers that were the Next Big Thing at the city limits sixty years ago, and it long ago morphed into an enclosed strip mall, with a new sort of tenants. The Oriental is an old school movie palace with the faux-Chinese courtyard and zodiac in the ceiling, and it may still be screening The Rocky Horror Picture Show at Friday and Saturday midnights.  The Avalon is its Bay View counterpart, only with a faux-Moresque courtyard setting off the zodiac, and I believe it is now owned by a nonprofit of some sort.  Those theaters are both located in neighborhoods the metrofexuals would like to turn into walkable, inclusive, yet transgressively upscale environments.  The Times (formerly Times Fine Arts) once had an, ahem, reputation.  The current owners continue to cater to the sort of people who speak of filllllm, if, perhaps, expanding the sorts of edgy to show.

VICTIMOLOGY WILL BE THE UNDOING OF ILLINOIS.

Commentary contributor Christine Rosen notes that Informed Opinion seems bent on repeating the mistakes of the 1960s.  It's business as usual in Illinois.

In May, Cook County prosecutor Jason Poje wrote an outraged letter of resignation from his position as assistant state’s attorney in Illinois. “The simple fact is that this State and County have set themselves on a course to disaster,” the letter said. Poje noted that communities have been endangered by policies such as “bond reform designed to make sure no one stays in jail while their cases are pending with no safety net to handle more criminals on the streets, shorter parole periods, lower sentences for repeat offenders . . . overuse of diversion programs, intentionally not pursuing prosecutions for crimes lawfully on the books.” These and other such notions have upended the foundations of the adversarial justice system. “Once we decide that it’s worth risking citizens’ lives to have a little social experiment,” Poje wrote, “that balance is lost.”

The recent effort to sideline the needs of victims in favor of emphasizing the plight of criminals is part of a broader change that began decades ago.

It's not, she notes, an effort that worked then.

And so, despite the lessons learned from overly liberal crime policies in the previous century, many of them are ascendant again. We’ve seen the return of the decarceration and prison-abolition movement, the success of defund-the-police activism, and the end of cash bail, as well as claims that criminals simply can’t help themselves or their behavior because they live at the whim of oppressive “systemic” forces that control their behavior.

These policies have a body count.

The end of cash bail for violent offenders has returned to the streets people who have killed or assaulted again, even as their victims’ stories go untold or are ignored by activists. Excessive use of diversionary- and restorative-justice programs failed to have the desired effect of combatting crime; indeed, in many cities, prosecutors have simply given up prosecuting some crimes.

None of which stops Northern Star columnist Kahlil Kambui from asking Kim Foxx for an opportunity to replace Jason Poje.

With inflation and cost of living on the rise, it is getting harder for people to buy basic necessities to survive and live comfortably. Because of this, people have resulted from shoplifting to meet these needs.

You may have heard the saying “if you see someone shoplifting, no, you didn’t.” That means that if you see someone stealing food, you should ignore it and pay no attention to it.

Food insecurity is a lack of consistent access to enough food for every person in a household to live an active, healthy life as defined by the USDA. In 2020, 28.6% of low-income households experienced food insecurity and that lack of food resulted in people shoplifting according to the US Department of Health and Human Services

Basic necessities like water, food, period products, clothes and baby formula are a human right. But for many people, this stuff is unaffordable, so people turn to shoplifting.

We’ve talked about it and we are supposed to report shoplifting to management whenever we see it. We are not supposed to confront the person or anything out of fear of retaliation,” said a Whole Foods worker, speaking with Bon Appetit. “But personally, I don’t tell anyone if I ever see it. I know that the coworkers who are closer to my age have very similar opinions on it. It’s just not something we care about all that much. Our paycheck isn’t going to change whether or not we do anything about it, and Whole Foods will not suffer from the tiny amount that someone just stole.”

No one wants to shoplift, but they do it to survive. These people are looking for food and other necessities, and when people call them out or call the police, they are only making a bad situation for these people already worse, putting them even more at risk.

It is generally my practice not to slag on student editorialists, and the column is self-refuting in any event.  I call attention all the same, as the rationalizations the columnist engages in will not do anything to change the perception of Illinois as not being a fit place for living.

TRAFFIC ENGINEERS RECOGNIZED THE PROBLEM SIXTY YEARS AGO.

Our story begins nearly a hundred years ago, when the brains trust decided that self-amortizing, government-guaranteed mortgages were a Good Thing.

In 1934, Congress passed the National Housing Act, creating the Federal Housing Administration. The new government agency promoted homeownership by guaranteeing home loans with long repayment periods that lenders might have otherwise been unwilling to give (prior to this time, buyers usually had to pay off home loans within five years, meaning that monthly mortgage payments were quite high).

Since taxpayers would be on the hook if buyers failed to pay back these government-backed mortgages, the FHA went to great lengths to minimize the risk of the loans.

That article focuses on the Original Sin of redlining in that Act, which we have dealt with elsewhere, and with snob zoning, to which we shall return anon.

LET'S ADD ANOTHER SUB-CATEGORY TO VOLLEYBALL ATTENDANCE RECORDS.

Last week, "outdoor" joined "indoor regular season" and "indoor championship" as categories.  Now, we must disaggregate by conference.

The third-ranked Florida volleyball fell in a tightly-contested five-set match to the No. 1 Wisconsin Badgers on Sunday.

Florida set a new program record on Sunday, with 10,323 fans in the stands of the Stephen C. O'Connell Center. That is not only a O'Dome record, but also is the highest-attended match hosted by an SEC school all-time. It is also the highest attendance for an on-campus volleyball match in the state of Florida.

Florida finishes the non-conference schedule with an 8-1 record, while Wisconsin moves to 9-0 on the season.

The Gators won the first frame 25-15, then followed with a hard-fought 25-22 victory in the second to take the 2-0 lead. Wisconsin answered with a 25-21 win in the third and then a 25-22 victory in the fourth to force a winner-take-all fifth set. The Badgers won the hard fought fifth set 15-13 to clinch the match.

On a day when the Milwaukee Brewers had multiple opportunities to walk off a winner, and the Green Bay Packers played Lets Give Up A Lead, the outcome of that match made for some good cheer.

From my perspective as an Older Guy with a background in econ, the rising visibility of collegiate women's volleyball has to present opportunities to cash in on that Name, Image, Likeness, stuff.

RUSH LIMBAUGH LEFT A VOID.

The current crop of successors, including the Clay and Buck production, have not brought the proper mix of parody and seriousness to the dueling investigations of the Trump and Biden rent-seeking organizations.  We open with regime media questioning the Republicans opening an impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives.

On Monday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy ordered the House Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means Committees to start an impeachment inquiry into Biden without anything approaching comparable evidence. Indeed, the absence of such evidence was used as a perverse justification for the impeachment inquiry. The pretext is the purported need to grant greater investigatory authority to House committees examining whether Biden lied about his business dealings with his son Hunter and whether the president granted Hunter “special treatment” in the ongoing criminal investigation of Hunter’s potential tax and gun crimes.

That editorial continues,

But at the risk of sounding crass, where is the blue dress? Where is the phone call? Where is the riot? There’s little question that Biden family members — especially Hunter but also Joe Biden’s brother James and his daughter-in-law Hallie — have profited enormously over the course of Joe Biden’s political career. But evidence that the president was himself involved in Hunter’s schemes or shared in any of the profits is thus far lacking, as is any evidence that the president violated the law.

But at the risk of sounding crotchety, where is the populist voice asking El Rushbo's favorite question.

Remember the left’s battle cry: “The nature of the evidence is irrelevant; it’s the seriousness of the charge that matters.” You simply need to make a harsh, totally unfounded charge, and that’s reason enough to investigate.

Not, though, to the editorialists on Times Square.

There is a colloquial legal term for McCarthy’s approach: It’s a fishing expedition. He’s unilaterally opening a rare inquiry into a sitting president not because of the evidence that does exist but rather because of the evidence Republicans believe might exist. This is a remarkable expansion of the House’s conception of its role in impeachment, one that potentially places every future president in jeopardy whenever the House is controlled by the opposing party.

When bourgeois norms break down, the resulting grim strategy cycle of punishment becomes unpleasant.  It's a little late, though, for regime media to develop a conscience.  Back to Maha Rushie.

RUSH: Hillary Clinton was at the TIME 100 Summit. You know what she did? She offered the Democrats impeachment advice, and we have it for you right here. Here’s Hillary Clinton talking about the Mueller report and impeachment.

HILLARY: You don’t put impeachment on the table as the only item on the table and say you’re going to get there no matter what, which is what happened in ’99. Instead you say we are going to proceed with the seriousness that this demands. Not to pre-judge the outcome, but to examine the evidence as objectively as possible and then to draw conclusions and if, at that point, they believe that high crimes and misdemeanors have been committed, then I think it is the obligation of the Congress to put forward articles of impeachment.

Those might be words Speaker McCarthy and the Freedom Caucus and whatever other fractions there are in the Republican caucus are living by.  In the grim strategy, that might be what Republican voters want, never mind how unhappy they are at Times Square.

Finally, it’s difficult to exaggerate the degree to which claims of Democratic corruption justify continued Republican support for Trump. This is how people who otherwise claim to value integrity reduce themselves to Trump sycophants. If everyone does it — if Joe Biden is as corrupt as or worse than Trump and is a Democrat in the bargain — then why not back the man they feel at least fights the right enemies and advances the right causes?

I do not write this piece to vouch for Joe Biden’s integrity or to defend any aspect of Hunter Biden’s conduct or career. If solid evidence of profound misconduct did exist — equivalent to proof of Clinton’s false statements under oath, Trump’s quid pro quo phone call with Zelensky or Trump’s riot — then opening impeachment proceedings would be an entirely proper response. But an impeachment inquiry in the absence of such evidence is an abuse of the House’s power, one that represents yet another dangerous escalation of American political combat.

When partisans are at the stage of "They started it" it might be time for wiser heads to prevail. I fear, though, that wiser heads are few, far between, and not much honored by today's partisans.  Today's posts have noted other reasons why Republican voters -- militant Normals, if you will -- might be on the Trump train.

CELEBRATE TRANSGRESSIVITY, YOU'LL GET MORE OF IT.

Saturday was a day for a trip to Wisconsin, to stock up on Milorganite, Sprecher, and Spanferkl.

That's one of several weekends of the Oktoberfest at Bavarian Bierhaus in Glendale, Wisconsin.  The Spanferkl sold out relatively early, the Bierhaus had a small Geschwader of traffic controllers directing parking starting at mid-day, and the grounds were full, although the lines at the beer stands and Jägermeister tent were not obnoxiously long.

Elsewhere in Milwaukee, there were other folk festivals in progress.

Thousands of people visited Franklin Field Saturday for the inaugural Tacos and Tequila Festival, listening to some of the biggest names in rap music.

The lineup included Nelly, Twista, and the Ying Yang Twins.

The Tacos and Tequila Festival likely brought 4,000 to 6,000 people to Franklin Field, according to a city permit application. It's something festival-goers have been waiting months for.

"Between the musicians, the tequila, and the tacos I think it's going to be a pretty great time," said Tanner Peterik.

That's not a bad crossover event for Mexican Independence Day, and I recognize at least one of the names as somebody who performed at Northern Illinois, although he's also known for, well, things that might go into Democrat fundraising efforts in Virginia.

CALIGULA'S HORSE DIDN'T SOLICIT TRIBUTE MONEY.

A candidate for Virginia's state legislature, Susanna Gibson, did.  The Hill offers just-the-facts reporting.

The release of a sex video made by a woman running for a House of Delegates seat in Virginia is roiling the race for the majority in the state’s legislative chamber.

Susanna Gibson and her husband livestreamed a video of them performing sexual acts on the website Chaturbate and asked viewers to pay them money, The Washington Post reported Monday.

Gibson, a nurse practitioner and mother of two children, has gained traction as an abortion-rights candidate running in the district outside of Richmond.

The seat represents one of the commonwealth’s most competitive districts. No one currently represents the district, which was redrawn in 2022. The district voted Democratic by just more than 1 point in the U.S. House race last year.

As a result, the seat has the potential to play a determining factor in which party will control the chamber after November’s elections. Republicans have a four-seat majority in the House of Delegates.

Power Line's John Hinderaker has more fun.

Consistent with the channel’s name, Susanna was the star of the show. Her husband was a necessary accessory, but definitely second fiddle. It was Susanna who would read chat messages from viewers and respond to them in various ways, often by requesting payment. The videos consist in considerable part of these interactions.

The sex itself, while XXX-rated, is predictable and unerotic, due to the fact that it is being performed for an audience. What is shocking is what Susanna says to her fans. The folks at Free Beacon took one for the team, not only viewing the videos but extracting Susanna’s interactions with her viewers, which I think a normal person will find appalling, coming from a candidate for public office.

Candidate Gibson apparently had enough shame left to deactivate the videos.  The Free Beacon screen shots will be there as long as there is a Free Beacon.  The photos are not safe for work, nor are they material that any self-respecting brakeman of the old school would post in his caboose.

RENDER HONORS TO THE REVIEWING STAND.

Oktoberfest season begins along the Great Lakes with Milwaukee's German Fest.  In Germany, there's only one Oktoberfest, in München, and that opens Saturday.  The German local festival is more likely to be a Schützenfest, and those come in all varieties.  Here's a parade from Süchteln-Hagen, which appears to be a smaller community, and the parade is smaller.  The beer and dancing are probably as good, and there might be carnival rides, exactly as at the larger events.

The parade is genuine and charming.  Note the youngsters carrying hand-lettered signs introducing the various participants, and the variety of honors being rendered as the groups pass in review.

That is all until next week, I have fall chores to tend to and an Oktoberfest to go to.

GET WELL CARDS FOR AARON RODGERS.

I wondered if the Gods of Politeness might not have thrown a penalty flag on Milwaukee's Jack's American Pub basing a drinks-on-the-house promotion based on the New York Jets losing a game that Aaron Rodgers started.  Aaron Rodgers suffered a season-ending injury on his first series, some patrons recalculated the probability of drinks being on the house, and then the Jets walked the game off with an overtime punt return.

The pub would still like to have customers for football games not involving the Packers, and the owners have called an audible.

"Rodgers starting was a stipulation of the original promotion ...," Jack's wrote in a statement Thursday. "Now that this promotion has been rendered null and void, after the unfortunate injury suffered, it has been decided to reverse the drink special in solidarity with the Jets."

Now the fans must open their tab before play commences, and their rooting interest is in the Jets winning.

If the Jets win, the pub will pay your drink tab for the game, as long as you open your tab 15 minutes before kickoff and stay for the entire game. The promotion still excludes food, top shelf liquor, pitchers and shots.

The deal will run through the entire regular season, for all Jets games except when the Jets play at the same as the Packers. (Understandably, Jack's will be featuring Packers games in those instances).

"Before the season started, the intention of the original promotion was for people to gather and have fun watching the Jets game," Jack's statement said. "We would never wish injury on any player, especially one that has been so important to the success of the Green Bay Packers for many years. While it's sad to see how things played out during the first Jets game, the ownership and staff of Jack's American Pub are all wishing the best for Aaron Rodgers, his recovery and the New York Jets!"

We'll take stock of the promotion once the playoff picture becomes clearer.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

We're embracing the suck this week.  America deserves better choices.  "For democracy to survive we must ensure the Democrat candidate has no opponent."  "Institutions and experts have so often proved themselves to be untrustworthy and incompetent as of late."

Let's contemplate a Fourth Turning catalyst.  "Perhaps there’s no better example of [generalized suckitude from People in Authority] than watching the man who scoffed during a presidential debate at the notion of America engaging in global “nation-building” suddenly declare that it was America’s mission to spread democracy to the ends of the earth with the 'ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.'"  It's not as if I haven't been documenting a lot of tyranny in Illinois and in the United States, is it?

The tyranny is coming from an order of people who have lost their minds.  "Looking at this generation of leftist leadership that seems absolutely convinced America is 'systemically' racist, sexist and phobic, and that only a complete deconstruction of our way of life will help – one wonders if it must be allowed to discover by painful experience how idiotic that philosophy really is. Alas, sane Americans will have to suffer the consequences of their foolish experiment, too."  Brace yourself to your duties, dear reader, reality will bat last.

Nation building is a foolish idea.  So let it be with urban planning. "Victor Gruen found work conceiving and developing what became America’s earliest shopping malls, which he optimistically envisioned as the best of what city shopping districts had to offer (strolling from store to store, places to socialize), but now easily accessible by car from the new suburban communities spreading across the landscape. As shopping activity shifted from the old downtowns to suburban malls, downtown leaders sought to transform them again to win the shoppers back." Downtowns: undone by the Fatal Conceit. "Gruen’s generation of builders and architects were so influential precisely because their vision came at a moment when American communities were still malleable enough, and confident in the ability to physically change themselves, that they could transform rapidly into something that responded to an emergent need."

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

FAVORABLE PUBLICITY MONEY CAN'T BUY.

Trains contributor David Lustig does some plane-spotting at a naval air station, and doesn't get arrested.

I always knew of the existence of plane spotters; many are train enthusiasts as well. But in general, we prefer iron horses, and they are more attracted to machines that fly.

It all boils down to what we like to do when we have free time. For some it becomes an obsession, for others, it’s just an enjoyable way to take our minds off work.

Whether it be trains or planes, a hobby can also be a great social leveler, with membership cutting through all classes, professions, ages, and persuasions. When we get together it becomes an all-welcoming club where everyone can sit at the table. It’s a place where we feel comfortable just being ourselves.

You can see it wherever railfans gather: “Is that one of the new SD40 rebuilds?” Or “You should have seen this place when they had Baldwins.”

Until recently I never realized how similar train fans and airplane spotters are.

I put in the bit about "doesn't get arrested" as apparently the Californian enthusiasts hung out just beyond the secured area of the base, and some of them were sharing information from plane spotters elsewhere in the country about likely interesting departures that might be headed their way, and the Shore Patrol wasn't actively running people off and checking papers and otherwise behaving like an iron curtain had come down.  There are railroads, transportation authorities, and local police who could do with a reminder that photography, or train watching, isn't suspicious per se.

As the large airborne radar aircraft came closer to the runway where we were all standing, the air was quickly punctuated by the sounds of dozens of digital cameras set on continuous as it went by. The dozen or so fans, most sporting monstrous zoom lenses, photographed its every move.

“It just came in from Tinker,” someone yelled over the jet noise, meaning the AWACS official home base of Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City. “It’s here for a multi-service exercise.”

“Was that an E model?” someone else asked. “Nah, I think it was a D. I’ll check the tail number.”

The nomenclature was foreign, but the knowledge was the same. Substitute a rail yard and the questions might have been about the difference between a GP38 and a GP39.

It was obvious I was not a regular, but I was quickly accepted into the group. There were a couple of local jocks, a few ex-service members, a father who brought his young daughter, and a group of high school and college types hauling around enough photographic gear to stock a camera store.

“New here?” a fan asked me. “Best time to see lots of action is early morning between 8:30 and 10.” Some of the others chimed in to confirm his comments.

“Any time I see an F35 take off I get goosebumps,” said John, who had arrived before dawn to see the show. “If I’m not here I like to go watch trains, especially farther up the coast towards Santa Barbara.”

The article concludes with an observation that there are transportation enthusiasts for all the modes. "Visit Duluth, Minnesota’s Canal Park on a summer weekend and you’re sure to encounter boat enthusiasts — especially when the Arthur M. Anderson is paying a call. The Anderson was steaming near the Edmund Fitzgerald the night that boat sank in a Lake Superior storm in 1975."  The iron boats still go, although the Twin Ports are not as active as they once were.

NO, THERE'S NO NARRATIVE JOURNALISM.

Consider a recent story about the Culture Wars in Wisconsin's common schools.

At July’s Wood County chapter meeting of Moms for Liberty — a growing, national conservative organization that has drawn scrutiny for its extreme rhetoric on hot-button issues — the discussion turned to a topic that had been decided 30 years ago: whether the local high school should have a valedictorian.

The Marshfield School District discontinued the practice in 1993 on a 4-3 vote partly due to concerns that it put too much pressure on students. Since 2010 the district has recognized the top 5% of graduating seniors, but has stopped publicly ranking students by GPA.

For some parents, it was a reminder that school policies didn’t reflect their values.

“The pushback on it is that whole ‘Well, we don’t want to exclude someone,’ ” said Mary Schueller, the Wood County Moms for Liberty chair who graduated from Marshfield High School in 1995. “Well, not everybody gets a participation ribbon for valedictorian and salutatorian. They worked really hard for that.”

Don't you love that Divine Passive cum smear in the lede, dear reader, followed by a most illiberal deflection?  Right now, there's an abortion statute in Wisconsin decided more than thirty years ago, and it's being contested in the state legislature and in court, and rightly so.  Any time somebody invokes precedent of long-standing, or the related "settled" (as in climate science and epidemiology) it's a weak argument.  Yes, Cold Spring Shops takes a stance in favor of many traditions and arguments of long standing, inevitably, though, from a position that such traditions, or such arguments, confer evolutionary advantage, and require a case that their continuation is no longer productive.

DON'T OVERDO IT.

As a followup to yesterday's post about Stupid Food Eating Tricks, here's a look at what was in the kitchen last weekend.  We start with the grow boxes.  They were productive during the summer.

Those are the Chocolate Habaneros in the foreground, and the Green Ghosts behind.  Ghost pepper plants aren't as prolific as some of the others.  The fixings for salsa are now assembled.

Six each of the Green Ghost, Trinidad Scorpion, and Chocolate Habanero.  That will be plenty even with an abundance of tomatoes and a little extra vinegar to take the edge off.  Four hours and a Packer win later, we're done.

Yes, that's cold beer on hand.  There's no "Dare you to eat this and go without liquid" at Cold Spring Shops.  And yes, the test batch is plenty hot.  The Victor E. Garden is mostly done for this season, there's plenty put away for winter, either as salsa or as plain Roma tomatoes for spaghetti sauce.

FORTUNATELY, THE WEATHER COOPERATED.

Game Day in Lincoln, Nebraska, has long been a thing, and it used to be a bigger thing when Nebraska lined up against Kansas or Oklahoma or Colorado when regional rivalries involved the same conference.  Rutgers or Oregon in, maybe not the same thing.

The largest crowd ever recorded at their stadium, though, was to watch women play volleyball.  Stadium announcer Paul Sunderland said what happened was a Big ****in' Deal.

“That match in Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska, has to go down as one of the seismic, most important events in the history of the sport, not only in the United States, but in the world.

“It not only was remarkable, but it was beautifully executed and produced by the folks at the University of Nebraska. That was an ode to the sport of volleyball in the state of Nebraska, a tribute to the Nebraska volleyball program, historically built under Terry Pettit. That tradition of success has been continued by John Cook, and I venture to say that only in Nebraska could this marker of 92,003 have been put down.”

Kudos, indeed, to Cook’s program for having the courage to dream big with an enterprise that entailed significant risk. After all, the university could have been left with egg on its face if it had rained on August 30.

I saw a lot of comments from die-hard fans noting that the level of play in the Cornhuskers’ lopsided three-set victory over Nebraska-Omaha out of the low-major Summit League wasn’t so hot, and that the event would have been substantially better if Nebraska had played against a ranked opponent.

Hogwash.

This wasn’t about the volleyball. It was about spectacle.

When folks used to go to the circus once a year, did they nitpick that the third dancing bear in Ring 2 was out of step? Did they debate whether the daring trapeze artist might have over-rotated a bit on his quadruple somersault?

The proverbial “squash match” between programs on vastly different competitive planes was ideal in this situation. The point was to send the crowd home happy with a victory by women in red, and satisfied that they had been part of a shared communal fan experience that turned out to be a really big deal.

The bulk of the folks in the stands were there not for the steak, but the sizzle. The lure was setting a world record while perhaps witnessing a women’s college volleyball match for the first time. The Cornhuskers found a way to satisfy casuals in an environment of fractured mainstream media that makes cultivating them more difficult than ever.

As far as I know, no trapeze artist has ever executed a quadruple somersault, except into the net: the triple to a catch is hard enough. But I digress.  A non-conference match with sufficient rooting interest from the visiting team might be promotion enough.

What's more interesting is the back story behind the event.

The impetus for this whole production? A rivalry, of course. Last September, nearly 500 miles away in Madison, Wisconsin, the Badgers -- Nebraska's biggest nemesis and the team that beat it in the 2021 national championship -- moved a match to the Kohl Center and drew a crowd of 16,833, breaking Nebraska's attendance record for a regular-season match.

Of all the things that captivate Nebraska sports fans, it's their attendance records. A few years ago, when the football team's six-decades-long sellout streak was in jeopardy, boosters and corporate sponsors bought unsold tickets to keep the record going. Nebraska volleyball hasn't had to worry about that; eight of the top nine crowds in NCAA volleyball history are matches that have involved the Huskers.

But the Badgers' one-upping the record nagged at Nebraska fans, who sent a flurry of emails to coach John Cook urging him to take his team somewhere to reclaim their record. After the season, he plotted. He initially pondered Pinnacle Bank Arena, Nebraska's basketball venue. It wasn't big enough.

After a couple of conversations, Alberts told Cook there was one place they could go: Memorial Stadium.

Wisconsin? Dear reader, might you wonder if something is off? College volleyball means Long Beach State or Stanford or UCLA or the University of Spoiled Children, doesn't it?

THE WAY TO DEMONSTRATE THE FOLLY OF A RULE IS TO COMPLY WITH IT.

Bicycle riders and motorists are perpetually at loggerheads about rolling stops, the latter slagging on the former for blithely assuming they have the right of way even when it's not their turn; the former noting the way "right on red" is inevitably a roll-through, never mind the risk to bicyclists along the curb or pedestrians in the crosswalk, and the same sort of rolling through being common at crossings with stop signs.

That brings us to "San Francisco cyclists protest ... by obeying traffic rules."  Hilarity ensues at Cold Spring Shops.

Hundreds of cyclists rode across the Wiggle - a zigzag on-road bike route which avoids the city's hills - in single file during evening rush hour in response to a police directive to punish cyclists for riding through stop signs.

Riders approached every stop line as cars must do, coming to a complete halt and only moving forward when they have the right of way, rather than making a 'rolling stop' as many cyclists currently do. Their point was bikes shouldn't be treated the same as cars as they don't present the same dangers.

"The thing you say you want — every cyclist to stop at every stop sign — you really don't want that," Morgan Fitzgibbons, one of the protest's organisers, told SF Weekly. "You're going to destroy traffic in every neighborhood that has a heavy dose of cyclists."

Campaigners say police should be focusing on law-breaking drivers, who present far greater risk to safety than cyclists. During the protests drivers were reported honking their horns in frustration and confusion about the delays and over why cyclists weren't riding through the junctions as normal.

The city has resources for traffic enforcement, apparently.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC), criticised [police captain John] Sanford's focus on bikes given the SFPD signed up to Vision Zero, supposedly targeting the five most common causes of traffic injuries, all of which are violations by motor vehicle drivers.

In a recent blog the SFBC said: "The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is shocked to see SFPD shifting resources away from enforcing against the deadliest traffic behaviors. SFPD has a long way to go towards fulfilling their own promises to make our roads safer for everyone who bikes, walks and drives."

Protesters are calling for the city and California to adopt the Idaho Stop law, introduced in Idaho in 1982, which allows cyclists to treat stop signs as give way signs, and red lights as stop signs, allowing them to proceed if the junction is clear. This allows them to clear the junction faster, increasing rider safety and clearing the way for motor traffic.

Let's leave aside the Obamavilles and aggressive panhandlers messing up the streets of San Francisco, and consider whether the real problem might be, as comments to the article suggest, a surfeit of stop signs.  That provides a different tradeoff, though: there are many crossings where a rotary might do a better job of keeping traffic moving, although between the propensity of highway engineers to overdesign the things and the way the rules keep motorists looking left until they're into the circle, they bring their own hazards to bicycle riders and pedestrians.

THE VALUE OF CONVERSION CARGOES.

That's a reference to what now might be an obscure computer game, the early version of Railroad Tycoon, in which serving a coal mine and a community with a steel mill and another community with a factory was a way to the big bucks, if you set the trains up properly.

In real life, the ability to haul inputs to a factory and outputs away pays off.

Unique are those commodities from which a single carload leads to a car being loaded several times in processing and production, and can in turn fill other railcars with byproducts — ultimately creating a triple effect on carloadings.

One example plays out several times per month in the upper plains in North Dakota, with regional railroad Dakota Missouri Valley Western Railroad and its 50-car shuttle “corn trains”.

Originating in the state’s southeast, the DMVW has been hauling these trains of railroad-owned grain hoppers for several years from the towering grain elevators in Oakes, Fullerton, and Napoleon, N.D., to an ethanol processing station about an hour north of Bismarck.

Trains no longer gather the grain a boxcar at a time from multiple retail elevators in towns spaced six to ten miles apart, but the logic of the conversion cargo is the same whether you're playing Railroad Tycoon with one car trains, or serving flood-loading elevators.

Blue Flint Ethanol is co-located with the Coal Creek Station power generation plant and is capable of processing 18 million bushels of corn annually, producing up to 50 million gallons of ethanol per year. Most of this is then shipped out by rail, primarily routed to DMVW’s interchange with Canadian Pacific at Max, N.D., further north of the Blue Flint facility.

Opening in 2007, Blue Flint Ethanol is unique, as it was the first in the United States to utilize waste heat from the power plant for its ethanol production. A similar plant in Spiritwood, N.D., now uses the same processes.

A byproduct of corn-to-ethanol processing are dried grains known as “Dried Distillers Grain” or DDG. This commodity is hauled via grain hoppers and is used as a high protein animal feed. The DMVW hauls the DDG in hopper cars, also delivering them to the Canadian Pacific interchange at Max.

Yes, that is the very same Max that Professor Peter Schickele would sometimes refer to.  Whether the conversion cargoes help support families in Hoople or Zap I don't know.  The logic of conversion cargoes is lucrative all the same.  "There are not many places a railfan can see one car of corn directly result in two additional carloads for the carrying railroad, but it’s something that plays out multiple times per month for the DMVW in the Peace Garden State."

THE LEGEND LIVES ON.

Not too long ago, the Ostalgists of Jacobin circulated a statement.

If you want to see what that modest prosperity looked like, History Collection offers some of the good, and some of the bad.  Apparently what I refer to as a khrushchoba becomes a Plattenbau.  Shared toilets and no hot water.  It was junk, all the same, and deserved to be junked.

Look no farther than the sanctum sanctorum of East Berlin, a war memorial built by the Prussians and repurposed in Communist times as the Monument to the Victims of Fascism and Militarism.  Once a week, the Peoples' Army would stage a parade to change the guard.  The embedded video does not show the actual changing of the guard.  (That's here from 1979 if you're curious.)  Focus on the setting.  Two score and four years after the Soviets raised their flag over the Reichstag, the office buildings still gave the impression that the Mighty Eighth and their Royal Air Force counterparts had been at work over Berlin only a day or so ago.

That was the final such parade before Germany reunified. The government of the Federal Republic took all possible steps to assure East Germans that reunification was not a hostile takeover.  Watch another video, though, when the staff of one of the major military academies assembles to hear the old national anthem one last time as the old flag comes down, and then see the new flag raised.

The civilians are dealing with the event with more equanimity than we observed among some Florida academicians when Governor DeSantis made much less fundamental changes in regime.

Pace Jacobin, socialism fails every time it's tried, even if there's, as that History Collection post suggests, more casual sex.