FRIDAY short TAKES.

It's our republic, if we can keep it.  "Overturning decades of precedent, the conservative supermajority has issued ruling after ruling that undermines the ability of executive branch agencies to regulate industry, to fight climate change, and to protect consumer health and safety."  What do I keep telling you about the illegitimate administrative state?  "Since 2020 too many government officials at both the state and federal levels decided they no longer had to obey the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the supreme laws of the land that supersede any other laws or mandates these power-hungry goons might try to impose."  Turf them out.  "America’s elite has failed and must be removed and replaced."

Nor will jailing opposition politicians and deplorable-shaming voters work.  "The challenge to 'our democracy' [Dementia Joe] posits will not go away for two reasons. First, the crisis facing the status quo does not arise from one man, Donald Trump, but from the failure of the establishment to deliver across a wide range of issues. Second, the discontent of which Trump is a figurehead now includes significant parts of the electorate and has political strongholds in a number of states."  Buckle in.  "If Trump is going to win again, the sheer force of his political will and the electorate's fear of what the Democrats will do if he loses will be what he needs. "

Higher education's reality checks continue.  Objective scholarship?  Nope.  "People (including me) look at papers and statements like this and conclude that a lot of what’s happening at universities isn’t really research — it’s social activism dressed up as research, which need not be of good quality so long as it has the right ideological goals."  Defining plagiarism down?  "Evidence of scholarly misconduct was just the parsley decorating an anti-wokeness blue-plate special."  The worst get on top?  "People without talent are rewarded and promoted. Those who would fare better in a meritocracy are left seething with resentment."  Where's Dean Wormer?  "Smug and arrogant is no way to go through life."

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

1.  Poverty won.  "The current regime has poured trillions into welfare programs, ideological production, family recomposition, and psychotherapeutic intervention, but Americans are more miserable than ever."

2.  Reality came up to bat.  "While decline came about gradually over decades, its sudden and abrupt chaos during the three years of Biden’s presidency has shocked Americans."

3.  Yell at us some more, Dementia Joe.  "For Biden to run on free speech is about as convincing as Bill Clinton running on abstinence."

4.  The corona tyrants' class warfare.  "There was this whole sense that the working class and the poor had to put their lives at risk so that the Zoom class could feel virtuous."

5.  Nothing good comes from fishing off the company pier.  "Fani Willis hired herself a special prosecutor with benefits, according to a new court filing."

6.  The hysteria.  "It is clear that the Kochs and the other oil, gas, and chemical barons have been planning this takeover for a long time—the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and lots of other secretive organizations have plowed the ground for a cruel, hateful, and corrupt Donald Trump."

7.  Indeed.  "Please, let us have gone as far with schlub-wear as we can go."

8.  This old white man concurs.  "As an old white man who is allegedly guilty of causing every bad thing since the extinction of the dinosaurs, to be frank, I'm past the point where the words 'white supremacy' mean anything to me. And at this point, they probably don't mean much to Americans anymore. The Biden White House and, by extension, the Democrat Party have cried 'racism' so often that most people just shrug."

9.  Voice transcription software messes up the avocado toast.  "The horizon of their pallet was limited by the extent of the market."

10.  The tragic vision.  "To speak of solutions at all is naive; what we have instead is an endless, or endlessly reiterated, series of trade-offs by which we negotiate a flawed cosmos."

11.  Those responsible adults.  "I get wanting to avoid unnecessary wars, but I’m not sure if allowing ourselves to be bullied this much by Iran and China is the way."

12.  Let petty tyrants shake their iron rods.  "Claiming to be a defender of democracy while you try to lock up and ban your leading opponent doesn’t pass the smell test."

13.  No.  Next question?  "Does America really pine for a Geezer Grudge March?"

14.  This is a pattern.  "An administration led by a declining octogenarian, lacking in vigor, focus and mission, is incapable of demanding excellence from its staff."

15.  The state of politics.  "Drake University, don’t turn this into a drinking game."

16.  Rent seeking comes with strings attached.  "Despite throwing money at big businesses with one hand, both sides are bogging down corporations—especially the ones that successfully earn a lot of customers—with the other hand, stacking up regulations, or even threatening to break them up with antitrust cases."

17.  All Hail the Messiah, Obama, Obama.  "All this formed part of the legacy of long-term damage done by the man who brought 'a spring to the step' of parking attendants in the basement of the State Department. But the fools keep cheering."

18.  More libertarian wisdom from George Will.  “A particular institution charged with the routinized planning of virtue, the way the Federal Highway Administration plans highways, would be ominous and would deserve the ridicule it would receive.”

19.  Losing politicians blame the voters.  "'The fact that people think that government, ehh, you know, does it really even do anything? And I'm like, 'Oh my God, does government do everything for us,'' [Michelle] Obama said. 'And we cannot take this democracy for granted. And sometimes I worry that we do.'"

20.  Maybe in 150 years we got a few things right?  "Evidently, we need a black federal judge ruling a temporary bar on the removal of a monument celebrating reconciliation with the people who wanted to retain the enslavement of his ancestors, whose removal was ordered by the same political party that used to support that same retaining of slavery, just weeks after a black member of that same party, serving as mayor of Chicago, said members of the opposing political party, who historically supported emancipation, are still fighting the war that ended slavery, except on the side supporting the reinstitution of slavery."

21.  The cars in question are based in Minneapolis.  "The cars don’t run during the winter unless the Green Bay Packers make it to the Super Bowl, or the Wisconsin Badgers make it to the Rose Bowl."

22.  We should enjoy this.