FRIDAY short TAKES.

The State of Our Biden Is Historically Frail.  Fool me twice, shame on me.  "So the 2020 Faustian bargain is in shambles. Remember its quid pro quos: all the major Democratic presidential candidates of 2020 nearly simultaneously pulled out the primaries to coronate Biden—but only on the condition that Biden would play to the hilt his 'ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton' schtick that would offer a veneer to the otherwise unpopular hard left agenda of the new Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren/the Obamas/Squad Democratic Party. The people voted for a 'return to normalcy,' all while the left destroyed the southern border, unleashed a critical legal theory/George-Soros crime wave, dismantled hard-won deterrence abroad, and printed money to spur hyperinflation."  Are there enough young voters to fool for the first time?  "A Democratic campaign that is scared of college campuses is not a campaign that can win given today's coalitions."  Their student debts might be forgiven, but buying kale and tofu?  "Bidenomics – by which we mean massive, deficit-financed inflation-fueling spending, an avalanche of costly new rules and regulations, a huge “clean energy” push, higher taxes, open borders, no new free trade agreements – has failed the country." Or having to pay for chips and salsa?  "I don’t like the idea of paying for something that I used to get for free, either."

There are still pundits who would prefer to abolish the People.  “There might be some point to the accusation that the media have not sufficiently rung the alarms to alert the nation to an existential threat to democracy. But if Democrats lose to Trump after all THAT coverage, the fault will not be in the media, but in themselves.”  That "existential threat" talk is hyperbolic.  "The GOP has changed for the better by allowing everyone to support a future of freedom, prosperity, and security instead of being condemned to the Democrat future of oppression, poverty, and anarcho-tyranny."  And past performance can be an indicator of future results.  "Mr. Biden's policies are expected to cause price increases and Republicans overwhelmingly say they expect lower prices if Trump is elected."  Speaking of past performance, he's lost the Border Patrol.  "Look at the massive damage Joe Biden and his wrecking crew have inflicted on this country, the economy, and our border in 3 years, imagine what they could do in 8."

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

1.  Why we might get another dose of Trump.  “You know what happened?  I got pissed.”

2.  Reject the false binary.  "We have no other choices, because enough people refuse to make them."  That guarantees a bad choice.  "Both candidates suffer from a disturbing lack of mental acuity."

3.  Rush Limbaugh called liberalism the gutless choice.  "One feature common among today’s ‘progressives’…and maybe among those of Dos Passos’s time too…is coupling the feeling of courage that they get from believing that they are defying law and convention with the feeling of security they get from conforming to an in-group."

4.  Relative prices matter.

5.  Literally the same thing.  "Coupons are okay. Surge pricing is bad."  Study price theory.

6.  Requiem for the corona tyranny.  "Authoritarian restrictions did not save more lives."

7.  Unfortunately, this truth is not self-evident.  "A people must have civilized norms and civil institutions on which to predicate a state."

8.  Phony erudition gets published.  "He writes in plain English and wears his considerable learning lightly—two things the intellectual classes find difficult, if not impossible, to do. Something about the marriage of down-home common sense to sharp sentences in a well-balanced paragraph drives a certain kind of tenured radical bonkers."

9.  Air travel.  "It would indicate inconvenience by design."

10.  So much for Our Democracy^(TM) or intellectual inquiry.  "The real need of power elites is to control civilian populations."  Useful to have a self-styled progressive point that out.  Dear reader, do you see a pattern?  "Apparently, letting people stay on the ballot so the voters can decide matters is a betrayal of democracy."  Exactly.  "Biden is a sock puppet for an institutional conglomerate that exercises enormous influence over our national politics, our government, and our culture."

11.  The Tragic Vision.  "The future is not granted, it is won and maintained through the successful execution of warfare."

12.  Experience teaches.  "When you watch a country fall apart, you understand things can actually fall apart.  Americans are complacent."

13.  Caveat emptor.  "For all their wonder, free markets aren’t wonderful enough to protect people from lack of common sense."

14.  Do we want another civil war?  "In a way, the battle over Trump's eligibility hasn't even started yet."  The so-called resistance will keep pushing.  "Do you dislike Donald Trump enough to excuse us for trashing legal norms to keep him out of office?"

15.  Endorsing the Tom Clancy outcome?  "The only thing worse than an armistice with no clear winner or loser is an endless war with more than a million casualties."

16.  Will the Angry Right spin this wisecrack as endorsing jihad?  “Taylor Swift got on Instagram and encouraged her 282 million followers to vote, which backfired when everyone voted for the blank space.”

17.  Rockland County to New York: pound sand.  "You asked for it. You're a sanctuary city; we're not."

18.  Be careful, higher education, what you complain about.  "Tax endowments, cut DEI, defund grievance studies … we're already voting for Trump — you don't have to sell us on him."

19.  The cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon ... "At publishing time, millions of children across the country expressed great joy that their mothers put their phones down for a few minutes to play with them."

20.  Sir Charles drives the zone against the ward-heelers.  "And then finally us black people are like, ‘I don’t know, man, other than my ability to dunk a basketball, all my neighbors’ hoods are still the same, our schools are still the same.' And that’s why I think black people are leaving disappointed in the Democratic Party."

21.  We make men without chests.  "In the Age of Wokeness, the guys who built the cities and sacrificed everything for their families are not as important as campy transgender activists."  And expect of them virtue and enterprise.  "The one thing worse than a toxic male is an emasculated male."