WHAT WAS I SAYING ABOUT AUTHENTIC BACKGROUNDS?

I don't know whether Wisconsin representative Mike Gallagher (R-Titletown) hired in a bookshelf.  That Packer jersey prominently in the background is authentic.

.@RepGallagher details the changes needed in order to restore people's confidence in the integrity of our election system#NextRevFNC pic.twitter.com/ZKaDoD038c

— The Next Revolution (@NextRevFNC) January 11, 2021

The representative describes himself as an "Eisenhower nerd" and his reaction to last Wednesday's Capitol incursion was "banana republic crap."  He's no fan of Congressional oversight of state elections: the Federal Constitution is pretty clear on that point.

By even forcing debate today, they are endorsing the pernicious idea that Congress, not the states, is the right forum for litigating — or even worse, relitigating — an election. This is an extremely progressive interpretation of the Constitution. It gives the federal government enormous new powers to regulate how states conduct elections, something the Left has sought for half a century. Until now, conservatives have rightly fought back against this line of legal reasoning. Yet the objectors would throw it all away for a few hours of primetime debate that they concede is unlikely to change the outcome.

The objectors also point out that the Democrats objected first, and so turnabout is fair play. It is true that Democrats bootlessly objected to certified Electoral College counts in 1969, 2001, 2005, and 2017. Their conduct was disgraceful, and Republicans rightfully shamed them for normalizing end-runs around the Constitution. But just because Democrats violated norms does not mean that Republicans should follow suit, especially when it will achieve nothing other than endorsing unlimited congressional supervision over election outcomes. Allowing a handful of people working in the federal government to choose a president borrows from the cynical playbook of the Left, and it is a recipe for Republican defeat in future elections.

The representative elaborated on the points in the first paragraph, above, on Steve Hilton's show Sunday evening.

The second paragraph illustrates a problem that arises in repeated games: once you get into a grim strategy equilibrium, in this case punish your opponent each opportunity you get, it's hard to get out.

(RE)IMAGINE THAT.

Yahoo News collect articles from a variety of sources, including The Root, from whence Ishena Robinson submitted, "Surprise, Surprise: Off-Duty Cops From All Over the Country Were in D.C. During Capitol Coup Attempt."

Several police departments across the country have opened investigations into cops among their ranks to find out if they were involved in the siege on the U.S. Capitol on Washington, D.C. on January 6th.

The growing number of probes follows an announcement from the Seattle Police Department on Friday that two of its officers have been put on administrative leave pending an investigation into allegations that they were in the nation’s capital during the raucous events.

The sheer ingratitude of those Seattle lawmen. There has to be an easier way to express their discontent over the Seahawks not getting a first-round bye.

The conclusion of the article (or is it an editorial masquerading as an article) is precious.

One thing is clear so far: there was a whole gang of people who earn tax-payer dollars among the horde of Trump supporters who travelled to D.C. to claim this country as theirs alone and violently attack democracy.

Sounds just like woke propaganda.

GOVERNOR PRITZKER TRAILS BY 9,860.

The geographic area and population of Illinois are both similar to those in Sweden, and there are similarities of the Chicago and Stockholm metropolitan areas.  But  Springfield politicians are hazardous to your health.  Governor J. B. Pritzker (D-Lake Geneva) continues to micromanage and destroy local businesses.

A service called Worldometers has been keeping track of coronavirus infections and deaths, disaggregated in a number of ways.

The latest report from Sweden counts 489,471 infections and 9,433 deaths.
The latest report from Illinois counts 1,028,750 infections and 19,293 deaths.

Conditions in Illinois are such that a transition to a full reopening is in order.

A biomedical ethics expert with the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (the people who make the medical devices do their magic) notes, "The final verdict about Sweden’s relative success or indefensible failure is still many months in coming."

Relative to Sweden, it's clear the lockdowns in Illinois are ineffective evaluated against a standard of less stringent lockdowns.  That still appears to be true, even with Sweden's public health authorities recently changing their approach.  Note that the change went through their parliament first, it was not some executive order.

Last week, the governor trailed by 9,595.

As of 28 December, 9,057.

As of 21 December, 8,414.

As of 14 December, 7,815.

As of 7 December, 7,049.

As of 30 November, 6,201.

As of 23 November, 5,706.

As of 16 November, 5,040.

As of 9 November, 4,516.

IT'S THAT SPECIAL PLAYOFF WEEKEND.

Dave Barry pretty much captured what was going to happen.

The National Football League is also trying to adapt to the pandemic, exploring the possibility of a season with no fans, no coaches and no players. “We’re thinking of just showing 60 minutes of referees throwing penalty flags and peering at replay monitors,” says NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. “So it won’t really be much different.”

Fortunately, there are a few fans in the stands, and there is a possibility of a polar vortex coming into Green Bay for next weekend.

A CURIOUS SEPARATION.

Northern Illinois men's basketball coach Mark Montgomery's contract would be due to expire at the end of June, and yet, without much elaboration, he's no longer head coach.

Athletic Director Sean Frazier said in a Sunday NIU Athletics news release that a national search will commence to find the next head coach to lead the program.

“We thank Coach Montgomery for his commitment to NIU and his efforts to advance NIU men’s basketball over the last 10 seasons,” Frazier said in the news release. “We wish him the best in the future. We will be meticulous and efficient in finding the best person and coach to lead the Huskie men’s basketball program going forward.”

In those ten years, teams had at least one appearance in one of the pay-to-play tournaments. On the other hand, there were days like this.

That's from March 6 of last year, the final public appearance of any basketball team in the convocation center until who knows when.  Northern Illinois had secured a first-round bye in the conference tournament, and this game hosting Ball State was for the west division and better seeding in the tournament (which did not take place, the teams were in Cleveland and the conference pulled the plug.)

There's more than the immediate oddity of a team being shut out five minutes in, with all of the Ball State players who had scored resting.  Fifty years ago, I watched a high school game in which the halftime score was 10-0.  In the days before the shot clock, a slower or less talented team might freeze the ball and hope that its opponents would lose patience and commit fouls, or execute a double-team badly; but in this instance, it was the team engaging in the stall that had nothing.  They did score some points in the second half, but not enough to overcome that gap.

THE EPISTEMIC CLOSURE IS STIFLING.

In the wake of Wednesday's stupid and futile gesture in Washington, the brain-brothers of Dean Wormer are all over Inside Higher Education.  We'll start with Southern California's William Tierney, bringing the condescension.

I have never looked to the National Association of Manufacturers for guidance about the structure of democracy. I have never thought the Business Roundtable was particularly amenable to individuals such as President-elect Biden. Nevertheless, their statements were admirable and garnered a good deal of commentary. I do not doubt that the vast majority of us in higher education reacted with horror, shame and disgust at the events that transpired because of Trump’s call for armed insurrection. Change, however, has to begin with a meaningful dialogue about what our role has been in enabling the events that have occurred. The echo chamber of Facebook where our friends like what we write and we like what they write gives us a sense that we are at least voicing our contempt for those who wish to destroy democracy. We must do more.

If you seek an echo chamber, look no further than Inside Higher Education, particularly since they discontinued comments on their posts. What has it been, fifteen years of me documenting the distortion of "meaningful dialogue" into precisely the echo chamber higher education has become. Consider Colleen Flaherty's "A Failure to Educate," in which the failure is right there in her essay.

Early Thursday, the Association of American Colleges and Universities issued a statement saying its pro-liberal education mission took on new urgency following the Capitol attack. “The task of an education allied to democracy is not simply to help students gain knowledge and skills,” the group said. “It is also to assist students in forming the habits of heart and mind that liberate their thinking and equip them for, and dispose them to, the creation of a more just and inclusive society through civic involvement.”

Lynn Pasquerella, AAC&U’s president, later told Inside Higher Ed that if colleges and universities are to develop the “independent and critical thinkers necessary to ensure that democracy is more than a tyranny of numbers,” they must affirm that a liberal education helps students -- citizens -- discern the truth, recognize and digest narratives, and promote “an understanding that the world is a collection of interdependent yet inequitable systems,” among other aims.

Catch the question-begging in both paragraphs. It's standard Student Affairs boilerplate, and yet it's rhetoric that's off-putting to people who might think that the thinking of the Scottish Enlightenment might be more helpful than the rubric of liberating tolerance, and it's guaranteed to antagonize anybody who might be a strong Trump loyalist.  That is, what Mr Tierney hopes for will be invalidated by what higher education does.

Democracy is an idea founded on the belief that through dialogue we will reach understanding and a decision about the way forward. The fundamental purpose of our colleges and universities is to model how to have difficult dialogues and what viable solutions to particular problems might be based on facts.

And yet, the dissident sites, such as Campus Reform or The College Fix or Minding the Campus or College Insurrection never lack for material pointing out precisely how the same people who profess these beliefs do everything they can to suppress dissenting views.  Read John Kroger's essay, dear reader, and ask yourself how much of what he now misses has been deliberately deconstructed over the past fifty years.

The survival of democracy in America depends on the existence of a well-educated electorate: voters who can tell the difference between truth and lies, between honesty and demagoguery. It will require voters who are wise and critically aware consumers of social media. It will require voters schooled in American constitutional and democratic values. It will require voters who understand both the greatness and the failings of American democracy evident in our history. And it will require students who understand the very real and concrete differences between alternative forms of government. I am not sure studying these issues can be optional anymore. Can an understanding of history, politics and rational decision making remain an elective course of study? Is civic virtue something we can leave to other institutions -- families, churches, political parties and television networks -- to teach and encourage? This morning, I think not.

Families, churches, service clubs, the other institutions of civil society, just more hegemonic institutions to deconstruct. May you be damned.  That goes for you, too, Shenandoah University president Tracy Fitzsimmons.

We faculty members and administrators in higher education all have a role in helping our students be critical-thinking activists for democracy. We must ensure that our students hear many different voices on any given topic, and that opportunities for deep dialogue happen not just in the classrooms and residence halls but also in cafeterias, commuter lounges, fraternities and sororities, and online.

We should ensure that students' curricular and co-curricular experiences connect them with the real world -- one in which there is a multiplicity of political voices and preferences. Our students need to know how to participate in society, how to listen and how to present their own ideas when they encounter lots of disagreement. Groupthink does not prepare anyone well for life outside our campuses and classrooms. As faculty and administrators, we should remember that nearly all foundational and disciplinary skills and knowledge that students develop in college can play a key role in supporting democracy -- or in tearing it down.

Finally, we should abandon any pretense that all ideas are equal. They are not. We should demand that ideas are articulated and defended in meaningful ways that are grounded in science, data, knowledge of history and a commitment to bettering humanity.

I doubt that she is calling for a close look at how critical theory has crowded out serious inquiry, and that "commitment to bettering humanity" is more question-begging.  Her consolation is that she's not the most foolish college president weighing in.

Ronald Mason Jr., president of the University of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C.: “The easy response is that Trump and his enablers played with fire and the Capitol got burned. On a deeper level, poor and working-class white people are pawns in the Trump movement to perpetuate the system of White supremacy in America. It is a system that concentrates wealth in the hands of a privileged few and oppresses people, especially Black people, in order to do so. As a nation, we cannot begin to heal until we admit that we have a problem, and our problem is the system of White supremacy.”

Not much room to evaluate the data or weigh contending understandings of history, is there?

A PRIVATE EFFORT TO KEEP THE EATERIES OPEN.

Aaron Rodgers and Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy have put up the first million bucks.

Rodgers told Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy on Instagram Live on Friday that he’s matching Portnoy’s initial $500,000 donation that started The Barstool Fund, a charitable organization supporting businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I just want to get involved,” Rodgers said. “I’m in. I want to be in at the same amount you put in. You started at $500,000, that’s what I’m in for. It’s an honor to be a part of it.”

The Barstool Fund has now raised over $22 million and helped 102 different businesses as of Sunday morning.

Rodgers believes the charity is helping businesses by “doing something that the government isn’t doing.” The fund is providing “life-changing money” for businesses as soon as two or three days.

Rodgers also called on teammates and others to help the businesses he described as the “backbone of this country.”

There's more than one way to be most valuable player. Green-nineteen.

HIS PIPES AND HIS GRAMMAR HELD WATER.

Apologies to John W. Gardner.  But how else honor the Vatican's master craftsman of Latin documents?

Reginald Foster, a former plumber’s apprentice from Wisconsin who, in four decades as an official Latinist of the Vatican, dreamed in Latin, cursed in Latin, banked in Latin and ultimately tweeted in Latin, died on Christmas Day at a nursing home in Milwaukee. He was LXXXI.

Why not? Milwaukee is for blue-collar aristocrats, including craftsmen of papal documents.

Foster became known as something of a character around the Vatican. He refused to answer to "Father," preferring to be called Reggie. He boasted that he didn't own a Roman collar. He wore janitorial clothes virtually every day — light blue jacket, dickie turtleneck and jean overalls. He had a gruff style but an endearing personality, and former students revered him.

“He looked like a workman,” said the Rev. Daniel McCarthy, a student and friend. Occasionally, when he was in the elevator a cardinal would mistake him for an employee and ask him to push the button for his floor. “Like Reggie was the elevator attendant. So he would press the button. ... That’s how he showed up to work. And that’s how we wrote papal encyclicals for four popes.”

I would be risking copyright infringement to quote all the good stories in both obituaries. Here's one that stands out.

When Foster returned home from the Vatican, McCarthy said, he enjoyed eating at the Butler Inn. Near the restaurant, he would sit on the bridge and watch the trains go by and drink a couple of beers.

“Can you imagine? He’s writing Latin for the pope and he comes back to Milwaukee and he’s wearing the same blue dickies, light canvas suit that he wears all the time and he’s sitting there on the bridge watching the trains, having a couple of beers,” McCarthy said.

A shame I never met the man; rendering the Book of Rules in Latin might have been an interesting exercise.

McCarthy recalls an interesting exchange between his friend and Pope John Paul II.

At the end of the encyclical, Pope John Paul II would sign his name. However there is no letter “J” in classical Latin. So Foster changed it to the letter “I” which is how words and names that begin with “J” it would be spelled in Latin.

Pope John Paul II replied to his correction with a phrase from Pontius Pilate, “What I have written, I have written.” Meaning, he wants his name spelled with a “J.”

From then on, the encyclicals from Pope John Paul II spelled his name with a “J.” However after Pope John Paul II died his name written on his tomb is spelled with an “I.”

“All those years he used a ‘J’ but in the end, as he says, we got the ‘I,’” McCarthy said.

He also remembered his roots.

Whenever a new bishop was announced by a diocese, McCarthy said Foster would call the bishop to learn more about him and would add it in the pope’s decree.

In 2002, Timothy Dolan — now the cardinal in New York City — was named the 10th Archbishop of Milwaukee, Foster wrote the papal letter and slipped in “a most beautiful city” to describe the city.

That phrase, “a most beautiful city,” got Foster into some trouble with the papal office. Officials for the pope told him it couldn’t be included because a pope doesn’t call a city “most beautiful.”

“Reggie said to him, ‘Well, have you ever seen Milwaukee?’” McCarthy remembers with a laugh. “The guy said, ‘No’. So he said, ‘Well then you don’t know what you’re talking about.’”

The phrase remained in the decree.

A guy who could render "microchip" as “assula minutula electrica” might have been able to work an "urbi victrix" or so into the announcement of an archbishopric in Green Bay. RIP.

WATCH THIS SPACE.

It's easier to complete most of the scenery on a stretch of model railroad that will be harder to reach after other parts of the layout start taking shape.  Such is the case where the entrance of the Eastern Route Main Line ducks under the Gloucester Branch on its way into staging.

First, the falsework to support the plaster cloth along the wall, and the beginnings of a retaining wall at left.  If I've done this correctly, the ditching I'm providing for will channel the water if something bad happens.  The Gloucester Branch will make an S curve (it's the same way of gaining space you see on the Chicago Loop) in the foreground.

A few days later, there's more of the retaining wall in place (more sections to finish this, using Chooch peel-and-stick components, are on order) and the support for the plaster cloth is finished.  It's thinking time, do I tackle this right now, or work from the top down, on the theory that some of the mess from above might be more easily tidied up with a less finished section here?  Stay tuned.

A BASTIAT MOMENT ON THE WATER LEVEL ROUTE.

George Drury's brief Classic Trains history of the New York Central system includes this nugget.

The railroad situation along the south shore of Lake Erie was complicated by Ohio’s insistence on a track gauge of 4 feet 10 inches, Pennsylvania’s reluctance to let a railroad from another state cross its borders, and the desire of the city of Erie, Pa., to have the change of gauge within its limits in the hope that passengers would spend money while changing trains there.

It is probably better that Erie offers travellers an amusement park should they wish to break their journey there, and that the Buffalo and Erie; Cleveland, Painesville & Ashtabula; Cleveland & Toledo; and Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana all become one, Stephenson gauge, Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, rather than each of Erie, Ashtabula, Painesville, Cleveland, Toledo, Elkhart, and for all I know, Sandusky and Waterloo each seeking to provide middlemen.

IF YOU'RE ON THE BUBBLE, YOU MIGHT BE EXCLUDED FROM THE BUBBLE.

It's about time for the college basketball experts to start speculating about which teams are locks for the tournament, which teams probably lack the record, and which teams might be in or out, depending on whether or not the bubble pops.  This season, though, there are plans to hold the tournament (its cancellation last year being part of the original panicked fifteen days to slow the spread) in Hoosierland.

The NCAA announced [January 4] that its showcase event — the Division I men’s basketball tournament, all 67 games of it — will be played entirely in or near Indianapolis. The hope is to limit the possibility that the coronavirus pandemic cancels the wildly popular and lucrative tournament for a second consecutive season.

“There are a number of world-class facilities in a close location and that was critical because you have to run a large number of games simultaneously that you can manage and control,” NCAA President Mark Emmert said. “There were a number of cities that were very interested in hosting this event, but the immediate opportunity to do this in Indianapolis was pretty self-evident for several reasons. For one, we were already going to be there.”

Indiana have been under more reasonable restrictions than Illinois, although I suspect the reason to keep people inside might be more about the weather than about exposure to viruses.

Dozens of restaurants of hotels are within walking distance of Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts, and Bankers Life Fieldhouse, home of the NBA’s Indiana Pacers and WNBA’s Indiana Fever. Many of those businesses and venues are connected by skywalks that allow players, coaches or fans to stay indoors.

Hinkle Fieldhouse, the historic home of the Butler Bulldogs, and the Indiana Farmers Coliseum, where the IUPUI Jaguars play, are just short drives from the downtown area. Mackey Arena at Purdue and Assembly Hall at Indiana also are about an hour’s drive from downtown.

All of those venues are slated to host games.

The tournaments for Divisions II and III will also take place in Indiana: Evansville for Division II, and Fort Wayne (ever hear of the Zollner Pistons?) for Division III.

SHOULD I LEASE OUT THE STUDY AS A ZOOM STUDIO?

The latest form of swamp pokhazhukha, as documented by Salena Zito, is fake home libraries.

Last week, a Politico Magazine story revealed that some of the intellectuals and or experts we see either on cable television or speaking at Zoom events have adopted using books as a prop, 2020 style. People are buying books by the foot — not for reading, just to make them look smart.

Even before the pandemic, there has been a service run by Maryland bookseller Wonder Book called Books by the Foot, which provides books for decors for offices, hotels, and movie sets. But since the pandemic began, the service has seen a 20% surge in residential orders, presumably to accent the credibility experts are trying to project.

The story says the Wonder Books team rarely knows the real identity of the people whose home office they’ve staged. Especially if the customer has some degree of fame or are trying to achieve fame, they often order under a code name.

Gen^l Grant conducted the Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and Overland Campaigns in a private's tunic with stars sewn to the shoulders.  Poseurs have to posture, closers don't.

There is something off about having someone else curate your bookshelf. It is like having someone else curate your credibility or personality. It is amusing, tragic, shallow — and honestly, more than a little bit sad.

There is also something off about having someone rate or judge your home or office on social media.

So why is book staging a thing in Washington? Because people want to be seen, noticed, and admired for their accessories, whether it is a staged set of carefully curated books or a rented or borrowed piece of art — even if those books are ever opened, or that piece of art is ever studied or admired.

While many people may believe this is just a silly story, others will look at it as just another display of a lack of authenticity from people in Washington who often claim to know more than we do.

We know their claims are false. They know that we know their claims are false.

But if somebody wants to lease a backdrop, I have my price.

Yes, I do attempt to keep books of similar heights together, and keep them grouped by topic.

ANOTHER THING NEW YORKERS GET WRONG.

Making do in the Big Apple without a motor vehicle was possible, until people started viewing the buses and subways as good places to catch the coronavirus.  Then people started buying cars, but, where, oh, where, do you put them?

Unlike almost every other major city in the country, New York does not have a residential parking program that requires permits to park in certain neighborhoods. The idea has never gained much traction, with drivers objecting to the possible cost of permits.

A rough form of "dibs" does seem to be the practice in the neighborhoods, but until the city fathers understand that the roads are productive assets, and should be priced accordingly, they're stuck.

By some estimates the city has roughly three million on-street parking spaces, most of which are free. But car owners complain that even before the pandemic, free parking had shrunk as street space was used for new bike lanes, bus lanes and docks for the city’s growing bike share program.

Even so, advocacy groups for mass transit and bicyclists said free parking had given rise to a misguided subsidy of car culture that has hurt New York.

“Since March we’ve seen that streets are serving as a pathway to recovery, helping to move essential workers, creating space for social distancing, allowing restaurants to remain open,” said Danny Harris, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives.

“If you want to complain about losing a few parking spots on your block, I’m sorry for your inconvenience but our entire city benefits when you give streets back to people,” he said.

It's not for him to give.

In Queens, the rising tension over parking took a violent turn in November when a brawl broke out between four men over a parking spot. The fight ended after one driver brandished a baseball bat to protect his space and another plowed over the curb and into a bakery in an apparent attempt to run him over.

Four people inside the bakery were hospitalized and the driver was charged with assault and reckless endangerment, the police said.

Still, most of the tension over parking does not boil over.

Must be like those mostly peaceful protests the Times tells us about. But look how reporter Christina Goldbaum describes people doing the right thing. "Some drivers have opted to pay hundreds of dollars for garage spaces rather than waste time dealing with street parking. Searches for monthly parking spaces on SpotHero, a popular parking app, spiked by 103 percent in October compared with the same month the previous year."  I suppose the developers of those applications or the proprietors of the garages are enemies of the people.  Brooklyn resident Diana Richardson might think differently.

But after Labor Day, when she found her cul-de-sac filled with cars of homeowners back from their summer homes, that idyllic notion [of the freedom of the open road] was shattered.

One night, she circled around for two hours before finding a spot. On an alternate side parking day, a truck driver yelled at her as she sat double-parked in her car waiting for the street sweeper to finish because there was not enough space to pass.

On another day, she spent an hour searching for a free space before parking in a metered spot and sprinting back to her apartment to make a work conference call.

“That was the day I lost my mind,” she said. After the virtual meeting, she began looking for monthly parking, eventually finding a garage where she pays $275 a month.

I'll leave the discussion of special movement permits for operating any truck bigger than a standard pickup in an urban area for another day.  That $275 a month, if it's near where she lives, is probably a bargain.

NOT QUITE THE POLAR VORTEX.

Just before the New Year, the State Line experienced a nasty mix of snow, sleet, and freezing rain, followed by a cold snap, but not too cold, meaning there was a lot in the way of frozen fog on the trees.  Here's a look at Cold Spring Shops headquarters.

January 5, midmorning.

January 6, late afternoon, with highlights.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel photographer Mike De Sisti went on walkabout with some panoramic and some close-up shots of the same phenomenon.

The sun has come out enough that much of the natural flocking has gone away here.  The long-term weather forecast, though, anticipates a polar vortex, perhaps in time for the first Packer playoff games.

PLAYING THROUGH THE PAIN.

The current form of women's basketball puts a lot of stress on players' knees, enough so that teams engage medical specialists to keep injuries from happening in the first place.  Sometimes, injuries recur, and it's been particularly tough for Northern Illinois's Janae Poisson.

Poisson had the first surgery on her left knee on Dec. 18, 2017. She battled all the way back, but four games into the next season, she reinjured the knee at practice.

Another redshirt season. More pain. More frustration.

Yet, more determination.

Poisson had another surgery and rehabbed once again. When she returned to the court for the 2019-20 season, she began developing pain in her right knee.

Her coaches encouraged her to stay the course. She stayed the course, and developed perspective.

And those knee injuries? No hard feelings. If nothing else, she’ll thank them for the enlightenment.

“I never knew what it was like to sit on the bench for any reason,” Poisson said. “I didn’t know how to be grateful for the things I was able to do.

“Just small stuff like being able to go up and down stairs without being in pain. Or being able to go on road trips with your team. It’s really simple stuff that I’m grateful for now. Even after losses, I feel grateful.

“Overall, I’m very blessed.”

Thus far, touch wood, the team hasn't had to close practice thanks to the Wuhan coronavirus, although they have missed or postponed games when other teams weren't so fortunate.  It's a shame there won't be spectators this year, as there are several resilient kids back in uniform this year.

TODAY IN FUN HEADLINES.

FART orders new trains. You mean you never head of Ferrovie Autolinee Regionali Ticinesi, the public transportation agency for Ticino, Italy, and environs?

AN APPOSITE QUESTION FOR OUR TIMES.

Reason's Steven Greenhut, trapped in California where the only things spreading more rapidly than executive orders are civil disobedience, people leaving the state, and coronavirus infections.  "How many people think this not-particularly magical thing called 'government' has calmly guided us through the coronavirus crisis?"

I don't, but mine is not the majority position either in Illinois, or in the national government, where the party of more government is in charge.

Every time the Democrats manage to pick the country’s various electoral locks and find themselves in control of the White House and both houses of Congress, they tell themselves it’s 1932. The People have spoken and they want Profound and Lasting Change!

No, they don’t. They didn’t in 2008, when Americans were angry and frustrated about the Iraq War, terrified about the economy, and inclined to inflict severe punishment on anyone with an (R) after his name for his role in both calamities. Almost immediately after Barack Obama took office, however, the reasons he won ceased to resonate: By the time he learned how to work his phone, the recession was over, and the war became a distant memory. So Mr. Never-Let-a-Crisis-Go-to-Waste began shoving through a massive new entitlement/health-care reform that the people didn’t want, Congress turned sharply against him in response, and he spent the next six years caviling about Republican “obstructionism,” as though the Republicans blocking his agenda were not elected specifically and clearly to thwart him.

That's still true now. Incoming president^* Joe Biden is not Donald Trump. He's not much of anything else, either, and it might behoove him to behave accordingly.

Donald Trump, who was elected president in 2016 at a moment when he had an approval rating of 37 percent, won mainly because he was not Hillary Clinton. And Joe Biden very obviously won by not being Trump.

The Republican Party famously has no agenda besides tax cuts. So what? Another way of phrasing that is that the Republican Party thinks the country is fundamentally fine, and in no need of being remade into a European social democracy. The Democrats fall asleep each night fantasizing about reengineering the energy sector, redistributing wealth, and rebuilding every institution with “social justice” and racial preferences foremost in mind. They will win America’s support for all of this only in their dreams.

The way out might be for the Party of More Government to dial it back. "One important step would be to make elections less consequential so that Americans aren't so fearful of the instruments of government in the hands of their enemies."  That's unlikely, but J. D. Tuccille concedes the wisdom of the Tenth Amendment.

So, while we're expanding the realm of human life that's beyond the reach of government, much of what it does should be devolved down the political food chain, closer to the people who are affected, to reduce the likelihood of subjecting them to policies they despise. Ideally, as much decision-making as possible should be returned to individuals.

None of this guarantees that the Trumpists who stormed the Capitol, or any other Americans who no longer believe in the peaceful transition of power, will suddenly regain faith in vote counts. But making election wins and losses less important should lower the political tensions that are consuming the country. And that might give us all a little necessary breathing room while we figure out, once again, how to get along with one another.

Politics divides, and having as little of it as is practicable well might make sense.

THEY CAN RUN, BUT THEY CAN'T HIDE.

The rich people fled to Nantucket.  Now covid is there, and they're ...

The monsters have escaped the Twilight Zone and have come to tony Nantucket Island. Early in this Covid-19 crisis, the wealthy fled to Nantucket to escape the virus. Now cases on Nantucket are rising, and as on Maple Street, “residents are pointing the fingers at each other over who is to blame.” Some cast aspersions on the outsiders who swelled Nantucket’s population; others point fingers at those they know.

Nantucket neighbors are eager to rat out others for perceived transgressions: “For every individual charged with disregarding public-health guidelines, there seemed to be another calling their neighbors out for their reckless behavior either on social media or privately on calls with the board of health.”

Just another failure of Wise Experts, but the schadenfreude!

Law professor Bruce Pardy observes, “’Obey the science’ has come to mean ‘Believe what we tell you and do as you are told.’” Pardy instructs, “Pronouncements from medical officials deserve skepticism, not because they are bad doctors or scientists, but because they have lost sight of the limits of their own expertise.”

Pardy makes clear, “Science makes an excellent servant and an imperious master. It is a method of enquiry, not an approved set of conclusions.”

In short, “’Obey the science’ is an anti-scientific sentiment wielded to achieve public compliance with political agendas.”

Cheerleading for the official “experts” is the media. [Jay] Richards and his colleagues explain, “These experts, however, could never have done so much damage without a gullible, self-righteous, and weaponized media that spread their projections far and wide. The press carpet-bombed the world with stories about impending shortages of hospital beds, ventilators, and emergency room capacity.”

The failures of these experts are in plain sight, perhaps even on Nantucket.

DECONSTRUCTED OF A BAD THEORY.

The latest work of art to be banned in Boston is the Emancipation Monument.

World Socialist Web Site contributor Jacob Crosse brings the scorn.

On December 29, city officials removed from downtown Boston a famous statue of Abraham Lincoln and an emancipated slave that has stood for 141 years. This politically reactionary act was the culmination of a campaign, including a petition drive, carried out by racialist elements linked to the Democratic Party.

So much for Ayanna Presley having no enemies to her left.

Contrary to the claims of its racialist detractors, the statue, paid for by subscriptions from former slaves, cannot by any objective standard be characterized as racist or demeaning. It depicts the abolition of slavery in the US, which Lincoln and over 360,000 Union soldiers paid for in blood.

It features Lincoln, his hand over the Emancipation Proclamation, and a freed slave, his shackles broken, crouched in a runner’s stance with the key to his chains in his hand. The granite base of the statue, all that remains after Tuesday’s removal, bears an inscription that reads: “A race set free and the country at peace. Lincoln rests from his labors.”

The True Socialists would like a true class politics, rather than a woke identity politics.

[Outgoing president Donald] Trump and the Republicans responded to the mass protests [against allegedly racist policing] with open hostility and calls for more widespread repression, including Trump’s June 1 unleashing of federal military police against peaceful protesters in Washington D.C. and his threat to impose martial law and deploy active-duty troops across the country to crush the demonstrations. They portrayed the demonstrations as part of a “socialist” and “terrorist” plot and encouraged far-right and fascist vigilantes to attack anti-police violence protesters.

For their part, the Democrats sought to defuse the movement by means of racialist politics, doubling down on their efforts to define all social ills as the result of ingrained and permanent white racism, promote divisions within the working class, and obscure the fundamental dividing line in capitalist society—socio-economic class.

That dividing line might exist, but it's more likely an alliance of Trumpian populists and entrepreneurial people in the ethnic communities that is going to emerge, not some Fifth International.

ANOTHER DOOMSDAY PREDICTION, PREDICTABLY PAST THE TIME HORIZON OF MOST RESPONSIBLE ADULTS.

Amazon Rainforest Will Collapse by 2064, New Study Predicts.  It's unlikely that I will be in a position to observe whether this one verifies or not, but let me alert younger readers, if I have any, that we weren't going to be around by the year 2000 if the conventional Earth Day wisdom of 1970 held up.  The publishers of the various Old Farmers Almanacs have more integrity.

AT LEAST ACKNOWLEDGE MY CHRISTMAS GIFT FIRST.

Last year, I decided I'd had enough of eleemosynary institutions behaving like cable companies.

It's really annoying, so close to the end of the Festive Season, and before all of my Festive Season gift checks have even been cashed, to receive mailings labeled "Renewal Notice" or laid out in the form of a government notification, with a request for another contribution.

I'm considering reviewing my donation habits, in particular to reduce funding or end it completely, for any cause, no matter how meritorious, that engages in this form of official-looking begging.

In July of 2020, I put Habitat for Humanity on notice.  Their ratio of charitable works to swag is probably low, given their propensity for sending out note pads and offering to send stuffed animals to donors.  Naughty list, again, this year.

But the Salvation Army????  They do good works in DeKalb County, and I have seen socially distanced queues of people at their food pantry as the Pritzker maladministration continues.  I don't want to take them off the Christmas distribution list, but an "Annual Renewal Notice" complete with a return envelope with the glassine window for the return address to show through is precisely the kind of treating donors as people to be billed I'm objecting to.

EGALITARIANISM IN THEORY, BUT NOT AT HARVARD.

Cue the violins.  "Little-noticed provision in new COVID-19 relief bill would slash aid for colleges and universities with large endowments in half."  Special pleading by hedge funds masquerading as universities is nothing new.  Sometimes the politic thing to do is to give the outgoing administration a victory.

Trump, for instance, criticized the idea of giving Harvard, which had an endowment of $39.4 billion in 2019, any help. “They have one of the largest endowments anywhere in the country, maybe in the world, I guess, and they’re going to pay back that money,” Trump said.

"Wealthy institutions that do not primarily serve low-income students do not need or deserve additional taxpayer funds," [education secretary Betsy] DeVos followed up. She also urged Congress to change its rules for distributing the stimulus funds. "This is common sense. Schools with large endowments should not apply for funds so more can be given to students who need support the most," she said.

In May, four Senate Republicans, led by Hawley, co-sponsored a bill that would prohibit universities with endowments larger than $10 billion from receiving CARES Act funds unless they spend 10 times the amount of federal funds appropriated to them on coronavirus-related financial assistance for students.

In response to the criticism, some institutions like Harvard, Princeton and Stanford Universities decided to forgo accepting their share of [coronavirus relief] funds.

“It seems like mostly a political statement to avoid the Twitter debates of last spring,” said Jackson Nell, senior analyst at education research company, EAB, who mentioned the provision in a blog post. “Harvard is probably happy to be out of the picture.”

Spokesmen for the rich universities note that sometimes the endowments include dedicated funds, which they will point to when it is convenient, such as when much of the money goes to support medical research or some diversity initiative, but which they will grouse about if somebody donates money in support of traditional scholarship or an entrepreneurship curriculum.

THIS SITUATION REQUIRES AN ABSOLUTELY FUTILE AND STUPID GESTURE.

That is to say, just another day of getting into trouble at Delta Tau Chi.

As I post this, there is a futile and stupid gesture or two taking place in Washington, D.C., where frustrated Trump loyalists are occupying the Federal Capitol, and the coot is dismayed and saying it must end.  Now.

PUBLIC HEALTH'S CREDIBILITY GAP.

Strong words from Robert M. Sauer and Donald Siegel.

America’s involvement in Vietnam was an unmitigated public policy disaster. In 2020, a new standard for monumental government failure has been set: our public policy response to the coronavirus, which has resulted in the establishment of a state-run religion of mandatory social distancing, a tyrannical public health police state to enforce it, and a never-ending “state of emergency.”

It has been a lot easier for the citizens to see through the lies, as this time the evidence is right in front of them, not half a world away.

We can’t expect the public health police state to voluntarily relinquish their grip on power. Similarly, governors and mayors who are being bailed out by taxpayers are also reluctant to cancel their hour-long press conferences. Infectious disease experts and other public health officials have never been so adored by the public. Their budgets have risen, and at the same time they are destroying our economies and societies and abusing our children. They have become the new generals loving the sweet smell of napalm in the morning.

It's not clear that these officials are "so adored by the public." The palace-guard media, that might be another thing.

People are starting to question the failed strategy of lockdowns, much as they questioned the wisdom of LBJ’s Vietnam strategy. While nonviolent protest is certainly warranted, especially when it comes to the pressing need for our children to return to school, we need an end to the “state of emergency” that enables governors and mayors to lock us down in the first place. Note that these governors and mayors are locking down businesses and educational institutions that are complying with onerous Covid-19 regulations.

The evidence is clear that lockdowns are ineffective and highly destructive and yet, to quote the feisty Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré of Hurricane Katrina fame, our political leaders are “stuck-on-stupid.” Thus, it is time to resist lockdowns, much as citizens resisted during the Vietnam era. Resistance to lockdowns should occur along several dimensions. The first step is for legislators to rein in the power of governors to issue executive orders to shut down businesses. Such powers emanate from the permanent “state of emergency” that has existed in most states since March. In Arizona, State Senator Michelle Ugenti-Rita is seeking to end Government Ducey’s Covid-19 emergency declaration. She states: “We can deal with COVID-19 in a thoughtful and meaningful way without being under a perpetual state of emergency.”

Simultaneously, nonviolent protest against the most unreasonable restrictions, highlighting the toll on our children, is also warranted. The courts must also constrain the executive power of governors and mayors. While supporting lawsuits against shutdowns is vital, we also need to highlight and share human-interest stories on social media of those who suffer from lockdowns.

If these heart-wrenching stories go viral, the mainstream media is more likely to cover them and the politicians will begin to turn on their own experts.

In another week or two, the macroeconomic torpor will be on incoming president^* Biden's watch, and perhaps the narrative will turn.

The Sauer and Siegel essay is one of several essays recommended yesterday by Donald "Cafe Hayek" Boudreaux.  Just go there and keep scrolling and linking.

A MASSIVE REBUKE OF SOCIALISM.

In light of what appears to be the outcome of the runoff elections in Georgia, Reason's Robby Soave backed away from some of what he wrote last November.  "A Biden presidency and a GOP Senate could keep the left out of power for years."  He elaborates in the conventional way.

For democratic socialists, the 2020 election cycle began with great promise; the hard left had not one but two ardently progressive primary candidates in Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), the latter of whom had shown auspicious resilience against Hillary Clinton in 2016. There had also been small, encouraging signs in the years between then and now: the surprise election of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) in 2018, the success of socialist magazines and podcasts, the increasing salience of issues like economic inequality and Medicare for All, the formation of "the Squad.

But neither Warren nor Sanders could overcome Biden, the candidate who had worked hardest to put serious distance between himself and the term socialist. If anything, Biden needed to work even harder at this, since President Donald Trump's reelection campaign was able to tie Democrats to Latin American socialism in the minds of some Florida voters, leading to a surprisingly good showing for Trump among Latino—and particularly Cuban—voters.

Progressives often operate under the assumption that their failure to win elections is a result of malfeasance: More democracy, more activism, and more turnout will produce the broad mandate they need to enact change. They also assume that an increasingly racially diverse electorate will override the white voters who don't support fundamental, revolutionary changes to the economy. But the 2020 results are casting doubt on both of these beliefs: Trump is on track to have the GOP's best showing among minorities in decades, and while he will indeed lose the popular vote to Biden, the unusually high turnout did not lend itself to any sort of blue wave.

Let alone a clear win for the self-styled progressives, who still have to work with more conventional Democrats in both the House and the Senate.  Mr Soave adds, "Even some progressives think it's in the party's best interest to at the very least stop using the word socialism."  Jacob Crosse, a disciple of Leon Trotsky. concurs.  "The so-called progressives rallied behind Pelosi despite the fact that the right-wing policies of the Democratic Party were responsible for major losses for the Democrats in the November 3 election, including the loss of 11 seats in the House and the loss of governorships and state legislatures across the country."  That's right, dear reader, the Democrats were not Marxist enough.  Why vote for a fake reactionary when a real one is available, I suppose.  "There is nothing progressive about Ocasio-Cortez and company. They are conventional bourgeois politicians and have no independence from the factions of the military-intelligence establishment and Wall Street for which the Democratic Party speaks."  In other words, they've been excommunicated from the Fourth International.  There are as many schisms among True Marxists as there were among True Puritans, and for the same reasons.

YOUR MOUTH IS WRITING CHECKS YOUR TEAM CAN'T CASH.

Bryan Dee has the receipts.  "Clemson’s head football coach ranked Ohio State 11th in his Coaches Poll ahead of this weekend’s game against the Buckeyes in the College Football Playoff."  Clemson 21, the eleventh ranked team 49.

A HALF CENTURY OF CREDIBILITY GAPS.

The term "credibility gap" dates to my early adolescence, when it referred to the divergence of Expert Opinion on how well things were going in Vietnam to what any serviceman on the ground could tell his neighbors once, if, he got home.  "[Reporter David] Halberstam, who had covered the war since September 1962 (he left Vietnam in December 1963), did not dare to state flatly that the Viet Cong were winning."  Things were going badly long before the "body count" reports or the Tet offensive.

Therefore, perhaps it is not surprising that people are having none of the "trust the science" stuff being pushed by Our Intellectual Betters.  In the middle of a lament about anti-intellectual behavior by the masses, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel writer Mark Johnson inadvertently stumbles into yet another credibility gap.

In the U.S., though, researchers and health leaders confronted the pandemic at a time when many Americans displayed open mistrust of government and science.

Trust in both began declining long before COVID-19. Political polarization has shrouded the public response to almost every action taken by government. As for science, just as millions of Americans deny the evidence behind climate change, many are wary of vaccines. Health leaders have cautioned that the COVID-19 vaccine will only be as effective as the number of people choosing to receive it.

"Like the trust you have in a family member or a friend, it takes a while to build that back once it has been broken," [Nuclear Threat Initiative senior program officer Jessica] Bell said.

As if a flack at a peacenik organization has anything other than an informed layman perspective to offer on government agencies creating credibility gaps.  Perhaps Mr Johnson's jape about "deny the evidence behind climate change" tells you everything you need to know about his agenda.  At the time of the original Earth Day, the projection was that there might be mass starvation or no humans at all by 2020; later the projection was that the snows would melt on Kilimanjaro or no longer fall on New York City (guess what, it's still there.)  But people like Mr Johnson would still rather hector us.  National Review's Ellen Carmichael is having none of it.

Prominent progressives, left-wing activists, and their media allies have routinely contended that if only Americans weren’t so stupid, selfish, and negligent — and in particular, if red-staters could abandon their silly notions of constitutional rights and their incessant desire to keep local businesses open — this pandemic would have been over a long time ago.

But, for all the insistence that it is American obstinance that is perpetuating the pandemic, there’s not much evidence for such accusations. We are actually now masking at higher rates than ever before, which has been confirmed by observational studies showing broad compliance in retail establishments by customers and staff. Meanwhile, the TSA reports that since March 15, 2020, the rate of passengers passing through checkpoints is about 25 percent of 2019 totals. Americans have significantly curtailed socializing with others, despite scientists telling the New York Times that the data do not support claims that small gatherings catalyze coronavirus surges. And even as the very real pains of prolonged isolation and widespread depression caused by COVID-19 persist, the vast majority of American families have still greatly altered their holiday traditions by canceling plans, limiting gathering size, enforcing social distancing, and even requiring face coverings. The repeated insinuation that pigheaded Americans have refused to do what it takes to defeat the virus is tone-deaf, cruel, and simply untrue. In reality, we have sacrificed a lot more for a lot longer than anyone thought we could.

Put another way, the public have put more trust in people who really don't have much credibility than they ought.  Perhaps Heather MacDonald is being an optimist.

By now, the collapse of government legitimacy is complete. For three months, public officials abdicated their responsibility to balance the costs and benefits of any given policy. They put the future of hundreds of millions of Americans in the hands of a narrow set of experts who lack all awareness of the workings of economic and social systems, and whose “science” was built on the ever-shifting sand of speculative models and on extreme risk aversion regarding only one kind of risk.

The public officials who ceded their authority to the so-called experts were deaf to the pleas of law-abiding business owners who saw their life’s efforts snuffed out. They engineered the destruction of trillions of dollars of wealth, through thoroughly arbitrary decision making. And then they stood by as billions more dollars of work burned down. Public order and safety, equal treatment under the law, stability of expectations—all the prerequisites for robust investment have been decimated. The failure to quell the riots means that more are inevitable. Any future business faces possible destruction by another lockdown or by looting—which it will be is anyone’s guess.

Or perhaps it is time for a new generation of David Halberstams to rediscover the credibility gaps.

LET COOLER HEADS PREVAIL.

Seven Republican members of Congress,  Mike Gallagher (R-WI), Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), Ken Buck (R-CO), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Tom McClintock (R-CA), Chip Roy (R-TX), and Nancy Mace (R-SC) distance themselves from colleagues in their caucus who intend to challenge electoral votes.

We, like most Americans, are outraged at the significant abuses in our election system resulting from the reckless adoption of mail-in ballots and the lack of safeguards maintained to guarantee that only legitimate votes are cast and counted. It is shameful that between both chambers of the U.S. Congress, we have held precisely one hearing on election integrity since Election Day.

The people cannot trust a system that refuses to guarantee that only legal votes are cast to select its leaders. The elections held in at least six battleground states raise profound questions, and it is a legal, constitutional, and moral imperative that they be answered.

Not, though, in a manner that's contrary to a constitution that Republicans purport to respect.

The text of the United States Constitution, and the Twelfth Amendment in particular, is clear. With respect to presidential elections, there is no authority for Congress to make value judgments in the abstract regarding any state’s election laws or the manner in which they have been implemented. Nor does Congress have discretion to disqualify electors based on its own finding that fraud occurred in that state’s election. Congress has one job here: to count electoral votes that have in fact been cast by any state, as designated by those authorized to do so under state law.

It is on the state legislatures to find fraud, as well as to assert the authority to set standards for conducting elections, yet another responsibility they have abdicated during the iteratations of fourteen days to slow the spread.

There is one and only one path to victory for President Trump on January 6, 2021, and it depends on state legislatures certifying Trump electors in the states at issue, pursuant to state law and the U.S. Constitution, and based on a finding that votes lawfully cast in November were sufficient to produce a Trump victory. If they believe there was fraud—and if they believe that such fraud affected the outcome of the election—they must, as a body, convene immediately and send us that information, along with certified electoral votes cast by a Trump slate of electors. Absent such action, there is not a constitutional role for Congress to change the outcome of any state’s vote.

The text of the Constitution is clear. States select electors. Congress does not. Accordingly, our path forward is also clear. We must respect the states’ authority here. Though doing so may frustrate our immediate political objectives, we have sworn an oath to promote the Constitution above our policy goals. We must count the electoral votes submitted by the states.

Arkansas senator Tom Cotton is on the record with similar sentiments and the concurrence of Power Line's Paul Mirengoff.

I share the concerns of many Arkansans about irregularities in the presidential election, especially in states that rushed through election-law changes to relax standards for voting-by-mail. I also share their disappointment with the election results. I therefore support a commission to study the last election and propose reforms to protect the integrity of our elections. And after Republicans win in Georgia, the Senate should also hold more hearings on these matters. All Americans deserve to have confidence in the elections that undergird our free government.

Nevertheless, the Founders entrusted our elections chiefly to the states—not Congress. They entrusted the election of our president to the people, acting through the Electoral College—not Congress. And they entrusted the adjudication of election disputes to the courts—not Congress. Under the Constitution and federal law, Congress’s power is limited to counting electoral votes submitted by the states.

The editors of National Review have a suitably pithy endorsement of the stances taken by the representatives and senators.

The Cruz eleven realize that their effort isn’t going anywhere. Both houses of Congress would have to vote to uphold objections to electors. Neither will, and neither should. If all they want to do is signal that they are upset that Biden won, this isn’t the manner or the forum to do it. Nor is this the proper way to examine underhanded electoral practices that did not alter the outcome, or to propose election reforms, however needed.

Barbara Boxer shouldn’t be a conservative role model.

Indeed not.

IT IS TIME FOR THEM TO GO.

That's the refrain from Al Gore's acceptance speech in 1992, when it was the Cold Warriors of twelve years of Reagan and Bush (quite possibly the last time responsible adults were the norm in Washington.)  It's also long been a theme of mine, particularly where the victory-dividend squandering Silent Generation and early-cohort Baby Boomers and their irritable mental gestures are concerned.

Modern medicine has been successful at keeping people alive longer, and the Rising Stars of the Watergate era are ... still in charge.  That might not be a good thing.  Back in 1998, William Strauss and Neil Howe's The Fourth Turning offered this outlook for circa 2020, at page 324 of the paperback edition.

In the Fourth Turning, the Silent will be fading from power, with less chance to veto (or, as always, to entangle) the actions of others. Their vestigial powers will reside mainly in courtrooms. If they block the Next New Deal, Silent jurists would follow in the Crisis-aggravating saecular footsteps of Roger Taney in the 1850s and the "nine old men" in the 1930s. They should avoid intruding on the moral judgements of Boomer legislatures and avoid using detail, complexity, and delay to stifle the recrudescence of civic authority. Crisis-era antagonisms will not be amenable to being smoothed over, and warring sides will refuse mediation. Decisions will not be improved by adding new layers of procedure, and urgent problems will not await further study. The Silent should defer to the 13er view that experts can be dead wrong, that professional elites can stumble over simple choices, and that kind intentions do not produce kind results. As the Crisis deepens, 13er-style survivalism will trump Silent-style procedural democracy every time.

Twenty years on, the detail, complexity, and delay are still with us, if not in the courts.  Perhaps a Federalist Society long march through the institutions paid off there.  In the rest of the government, though, well, there's the incoming president^*, Joe Biden; there's the continuing speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi; should the Republican base come through in Georgia, Mitch McConnell will continue as majority leader in the Senate; and Anthony Fauci will probably find new layers of procedure to lay on a population smothered by the failed mitigations of the past nine months.  Octogenarians all the way down.  Why should the next set of comprehensive plans turn out any differently from the past sets?

Rebecca Gordon, of Tom Dispatch, likely views many of the events of the past fifty years differently than I, and yet, she and I are in accord on one thing.

Today, however, boomers like me stand on the other side of a new generation gap. We’re the ones younger people increasingly feel they shouldn’t trust. And who can blame them? If we ever consent to get off stage along with Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and the rest of them, we’ll be leaving behind a shattered planet, including the most profound economic inequality in a century, mass extinctions of every sort, and a climate crisis that threatens all of humanity, starting with the poorest of us.

The good news is that most of the bad news in that excerpt is wrong.  But where is the current middle-aged leader to make "it is time for them ... the late Silents and early Boomers in particular ... to go" the rallying cry?

WIN THE LOMBARDI TROPHY FOR ALEX TREBEK.

Green Bay Packer quarterback Aaron Rodgers appeared on Celebrity Jeopardy.  Apparently it is a rare event when host Alex Trebek pays homage to a contestant's signature move.

Let the record show that "Rodgers, who answered in such categories as 'Number 12,' 'Leader of the Pack' and 'Bible MVPs,' beat out 'Shark Tank's' Kevin O'Leary and retired astronaut Mark Kelly to win $50,000 for Midwest Athletes Against Childhood Cancer."

In regular play, the Midwest Athletes get some money each time a Packer defender sacks the quarterback.  It's playoff time, and Chicago's radio stations are saying "playoff bound Bears" with the same sort of forced enthusiasm their news counterparts are saying "president-elect Biden."

Last night, the Packers secured the first-round bye and home-field advantage for the playoffs by letting the Bears be the Bears, meaning that if the Bears wanted to run time off the clock and kick field goals, while the Packer offense did its thing, fine.

As he broke Sterling Sharpe's single-season franchise record for receptions with three catches in a span of five plays, Adams set up the Jones score to cap a 12-play, 76-yard march that made it 28-16.

"We spoke it into existence, 'Here's where we put the game away,'" Rodgers said. "A methodical drive. We converted some third downs, guys made some plays. It wasn't splash plays."

Seven minutes off the clock, two possession game afterward, then the defense picked off the latest solution to a Bear quarterback controversy.  "The Cardinals’ loss meant that McCaskey wouldn’t have to think about canning general manager Ryan Pace or Nagy or both — if he was thinking about it at all. (Hint: not even close.)"

Now, just win and keep playing.

GOVERNOR PRITZKER TRAILS BY 9,595.

The geographic area and population of Illinois are both similar to those in Sweden, and there are similarities of the Chicago and Stockholm metropolitan areas.  But  Springfield politicians are hazardous to your health.  Governor J. B. Pritzker (D-Lake Geneva) continues to micromanage and destroy local businesses.

A service called Worldometers has been keeping track of coronavirus infections and deaths, disaggregated in a number of ways.

The latest report from Sweden counts 437,379 infections and 8,727 deaths.
The latest report from Illinois counts 979,821 infections and 18,322 deaths.

Conditions in Illinois are such that a transition to a full reopening is in order.

A biomedical ethics expert with the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (the people who make the medical devices do their magic) notes, "The final verdict about Sweden’s relative success or indefensible failure is still many months in coming."

Relative to Sweden, it's clear the lockdowns in Illinois are ineffective evaluated against a standard of less stringent lockdowns.

Last week, the governor trailed by 9,057.

As of 21 December, 8,414.

As of 14 December, 7,815.

As of 7 December, 7,049.

As of 30 November, 6,201.

As of 23 November, 5,706.

As of 16 November, 5,040.

As of 9 November, 4,516.