OPPORTUNITY COSTS.

Those name, image, and likeness deals college athletes get to make only have value if there is a mutually beneficial trade to the endorsement.  "The only thing worse than not being able to trade on your image as a college athlete is being able to trade on your image, and nobody is interested."

How easy it is to go astray if you lose sight of the meaning of "trade on your image."

Caitlin Clark, who holds the record as the NCAA Division I all-time leading scorer, has announced that she will be entering the 2024 WNBA Draft. Clark has decided to forgo a fifth year at the college level, which has led to speculation about a potential pay cut compared to what she currently earns through NIL deals.

Clark, the point guard for the Iowa Hawkeyes, was awarded an additional year after the COVID-19 pandemic impacted her freshman year and has built a roster of impressive endorsements.

I have no doubt that the Indiana Fever or whoever hires Ms Clark will make a side deal with State Farm to get some product placement in those "like a good neighbor" adverts she's been making.  If the WNBA put too many restrictions on her ability to trade on her image, that would be stepping on the league's value proposition, which could use a little inclusion, namely of Normals.  She'll do just fine, thankyouverymuch.

Fans were shocked to learn that Caitlin Clark, one of the best college basketball players of all time, would potentially earn less than $80,000 in a WNBA rookie contract as the top pick. Despite this, fans are quick to point out that her jersey sales alone will most likely bring in millions for the professional team she joins.

Clark has stated that her major sponsors will not drop her when she turns pro, and it is likely that her deals will continue to grow as she advances to the next level, squashing the storyline that she will lose money going to the WNBA.

Yes, and a good agent will include a piece of the action on those jersey sales, unless the league already has provisions governing such royalties.

IT TAKES AN IDEA TO BEAT AN IDEA.

A recent American Thinker article, "American Marxism and Unalienable Rights," by Steve McCann, appears to take on the attempt by the usual sort of social constructivists to deconstruct the notion of natural rights, or perhaps, of rights that inhere in the individual.  I suspect the Deep Thought he is attempting to take on runs something like this.  Suppose for the sake of argument that there is no Creator.  Then there is no endowment of rights that inheres in individuals.  Therefore, any assertion that rights inhere in individuals is a construction of ... individuals, which is to say, a social construction.  Thus the whole intellectual apparatus of Radical Skepticism can be unleashed on it.

THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE IS FOR COMMONERS.

Health care is a scarce resource, and like any other scarce resource, we can ration it by price or by politics.  Or by divine right?  "King Charles’ cancer diagnosis highlights the long waiting times many people in the UK face."

GIRLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN.

As Fasching Dienstag approached, some Louisiana high school girls picked up their Stanley cups, no, not the one the guys skate around the ice with, and recorded their festive dancing.  For some reason, my Twitter (it's still the Sears Tower and Comiskey Park here, dear reader) feed filled up with Social Commentary on that dancing.  Here's a quote tweet with minimal editorial comment.

“Why don’t men want western women?” pic.twitter.com/DmacXcv8ow

— Chase Austin • Girls, Confidence, Power (@Playboysparadox) February 27, 2024

A LITTLE SLOW ON THE UPTAKE.

Apparently Americans for Prosperity bought the domain name "Bidenomics.com" a few months ago.  The tag line is "Bidenomics is bad economics" and the site, which will rate a quick-link on the interchange list for the duration, offers all manner of material in support of that proposition.  Townhall's Guy Benson catches the web team of the Jarrett regency in an unforced error.

Also, how on earth did this White House -- especially in light of the inflation polling showcased above -- allow the conservative group Americans for Prosperity (with whom I'm affiliated) to buy the url for Bidenomics.com?  At the very least, they should have figured out a way to lock it down to prevent opponents from accessing it and further exploiting damaging public sentiment.

Enjoy.

THE PARTY OF CHAOS.

A recent Supreme Court ruling noted, loosely, that states have the authority to define "insurrection" however they see fit to disqualify people from standing for state office.  It's a federal responsibility to do the defining and disqualifying where standing for federal office, and there are people in Congress who would like to do just that, to take a number of candidates for the House, the Senate, and the presidency off the board.  George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley has thoughts.

Calling it “one on a huge list of priorities,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) announced that he will be reintroducing a prior bill with Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Eric Swalwell to disqualify not just Trump but a large number of Republicans from taking office.

The alternative, it appears, is unthinkable: allowing the public to choose their next president and representatives in Congress. It appears that the last thing Democrats want is for the unanimous decision to actually lead to an outbreak of democracy. Where the Court expressly warned of “chaos” in elections, Raskin and others appear eager to be agents of chaos in Congress.

Soon after the decision, Raskin went on the air at CNN to assure people that he and his colleagues would not stand by and allow the right to vote be restored to citizens in the upcoming election. He pledged to offer a prior bill that would declare Jan. 6 an “insurrection” and that those involved “engaged in insurrection.”

I previously wrote about these “ballot cleansing” efforts because it would not just disqualify Trump but potentially dozens of sitting Republican members of Congress. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) sought to bar 126 members of Congress under the same theory. Similar legislation offered by Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) to disqualify members got 63 co-sponsors, all Democrats.

The charade has gotten beyond ridiculous.  Professor Turley notes that challenges to slates of electors have become almost as common as replay reviews on Sunday, and that both parties are guilty of it.  Undoubtedly, should a Democrat majority in the House pass such a bill, the grousing about Senate filibusters will also resume.

IT WASN'T TWO GUYS IN TRUMP CAPS.

The Chicago Police Department ordered a Subway, no, not the one Jussie Smollett patronized, closed for the neighborhood's own good.

The restaurant, located at the intersection of West 79th Street and South Perry Avenue in the city's West Chatham neighborhood, is open 24 hours a day with nearby workers saying nighttime violence was common.

Though there's no seating inside the restaurant, there is a waiting area at the location where police say the shooting occurred at around 11:30 p.m. Thursday. The restaurant's counter is surrounded by bulletproof glass to protect employees.

According to authorities, a suspect shot the victim in the head before fleeing the scene. Police did not have information on the age of the victim and no one was in custody.

Though the restaurant was still open for business earlier Friday morning, Chicago police recently arrived to place signs on the restaurant's windows ordering the business' closure at the direction of the police superintendent.

An employee for the Subway told NBC Chicago that the man shot was neither an employee nor a customer, but rather someone hanging out in the restaurant's waiting area.

That's the same neighborhood that comes up in mentions of "food deserts."  Nowhere to buy the ingredients to make a grinder at home, soon, nowhere to go out to buy a grinder.

THE NEXT TIME YOU'RE WEDGED IN THE MIDDLE SEAT BETWEEN TWO WIDEBODIES, CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE.

The essay appeared in Inside Higher Ed on March 1, not April 1, suggesting it's intended In All Earnestness.  Is ‘Fatphobia’ the Last Acceptable Prejudice in the Academy?

Ridiculing a scholar because of their gender or race is unthinkable nowadays, but does that same protection against discrimination apply to academics who are overweight?

Definitely not, according to Cornell University philosopher Kate Manne, who claims that “intellectual biases against fat people” in academia are “rampant,” with “fatphobia” so endemic that many scholars feel emboldened to belittle, berate and bully—often openly—peers deemed obese.

In Unshrinking: How to Fight Fatphobia, the Australian scholar discusses her own difficulties being “quite fat” in the academy but also recounts grim tales from friends and colleagues who have been targeted on account of their body size.

She strikes me as the sort of academic who would write a lament in The Nation or Inside Higher Ed about having to ask the rental car company for a seat-belt extender or not being able to claim two seats for the price of one on her next trip to the antipodes.

UNDOING AN UNFORCED ERROR

Thanks, Amtrak.  "Coach passengers now can buy meals in Silver Star and Silver Meteor dining cars."  They shouldn't have ever closed the dining cars to coach passengers, let alone pretending that a box lunch in a fancy box was a contemporary dining experience for the sleeper passengers.

We're not back to the days of finger bowls or Deer Park spring water, let alone the kind of choices the railroads used to offer.

Coach passengers were also allowed to purchase breakfasts at $20, lunches at $25, and dinners at $45 aboard Superliner-equipped western long-distance trains offering freshly-prepared meals since last March, but it has taken until now for Amtrak management to begin generating extra revenue on the Silver trains’ dining cars.

News Wire has yet to receive a response to inquiries whether that pricing will remain constant or how the “limited number” is determined.

Riding the Star in June and September northbound from Orlando, the dining car staff was anything but overwhelmed.

Wouldn't the simplest way to determine how many coach passengers get to use the dining car be for the Lead Service Attendant to first take reservations in the sleepers and then go through the coaches taking reservations, the way Fred Harvey used to do it?

THE BUILDING BACK BETTER FARCE.

Everything is fine, according to perpetual environmental worrywart Bill McKibben.

Joe Biden is old. Like each of us, he comes from a particular place in history, in his case the LBJ years. And that’s one big reason why his first term has been so full of accomplishment: His age, often cited as the greatest obstacle to his reelection, is actually his superpower.

There was never much question that Third Act, the progressive organizing group for people over 60 that I helped found, would end up endorsing President Biden for reelection.

Sixty years on, it's still greasers and freaks. All the Jarrett regency has done is appeal to the old-style freaks whilst unleashing the latest in Weimar tributes.

The first presidential election in which Joe Biden was eligible to vote featured Lyndon Johnson beating Barry Goldwater. History remembers LBJ’s presidency as chaotic because of his tragic adventuring in Vietnam, but in other respects it was remarkable. His Great Society echoed Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal (FDR was Biden’s childhood president). Under Johnson, the federal government took ambitious steps to advance civil rights, to rein in poverty, attack disease, beautify human landscapes and conserve wild ones, and to further science — these were the Apollo space program years. Not every project worked, but lots have lasted: Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps, for instance.

A trust fund that is about to run out of money, and attempts to ameliorate poverty that have failed.  Unlike schools, or, to an extent, social security or the local roads, taxpayers do not perceive Medicaid and food stamps as something they draw from at one stage in their life (schools or pensions) whilst paying into them at another (as working adults.)  In that dynamic we might also see the resistance of suburban commuters to transit subsidies or bike lanes.  They perceive these as things one class of people pay into but derive no benefit therefrom.  But I digress.  It is, rather, Mr McKibben's understanding of the Jarrett regency as the final, farcical, twitches of the New Deal and Great Society, that concern me today.

So Biden was socialized in an era when government took on big causes, and you can see it reflected in his first-term commitment to rebuilding infrastructure on a grand scale, boosting a new sustainable energy economy with billions of dollars for solar panels and battery factories, dramatically increasing the number of people with healthcare, and standing up for gun control, voting rights and reproductive rights.

"Rebuilding infrastructure" with a porkulus that doesn't even make good this year's wear and tear on the roads, bridges, and water mains. "Solar panels and battery factories" that will never pass a market test, but the politically connected will be able to wet their beaks doing studies. Plus the usual free stuff.

LET THE KIDS PLAY.

Iowa senior Caitlin Clark now holds the collegiate basketball career points record.  Whether that record is comparable with previous records is precisely the kind of First World Problem that keeps the sports almanacs behind the bar well-thumbed.

WHEN THE USELESS TOOL FROM CORPORATE SHOWS UP.

I like the attitude of the Border Patrol Union.  First, speaking truth to power.  "We handed them the most secure border in the history of the United States and a roadmap to keep it that way and make it even better. Through 94 executive actions, President Biden completely destroyed border security."  Then undermining the boss with mockery.

Board AF1, take nap.

Wake up in place called Brownsville.

Read large teleprompter message, "It's all Trump's fault".

Board AF1, ask who people in green uniforms were, told they "strap" illegal aliens, express horror, take nap.

Wake up, call a lid, hit beach, take nap. pic.twitter.com/exvsDieaVW

— Border Patrol Union - NBPC (@BPUnion) March 2, 2024

Dementia Joe is getting a conscience about the border only because it's not polling well for him.  Yes, it is the nature of a representative republic for elected officials changing their stances in response to Popular Opinion.  We can do better, by electing representatives whose stances align with ours from the beginning, rather than on the expediency of the latest polls.  And by turfing out the sort of politician who blames his opposition or the voters for his difficulties.

TAKE A RIDE ON THE ROCK RIVER VALLEY.

If you pass "Go" make a contribution to the maintenance fund.

There's a turntable that all cars must transit if they do a circuit of both loops. I've seen such turntables at smaller outdoor railroads, such as the 7 1/2" gauge popular with live steam operators, where those turntables connect with finger tracks on trestles the better to move locomotives on or off of pickup trucks for transportation.  Here, the turntable appears to pivot to a track used to store maintenance of way cars.

The rolling stock is heavy enough and the rail bonding secure enough that the locomotive carrying the camera is not rendered immobile by a few dry leaves on the rails.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

We open with a pithy observation from Kristi Noem. "Joe Biden and Kamala Harris suck."  Want the nuanced version?  "Biden simply seems unfit to be president at a time of deep trouble."  By the fruits of the open borders shall ye know him.  "Must Americans keep dying for Joe Biden?"  The chumbolones are no longer confused.  "The Biden White House is playing a stupid game for stupid people, for idiot clowns. He doesn’t need 'the power.' He’s president and he’s got the power. He’s got a pen. He’s got a phone. All he has to do is immediately rewrite the hideous executive orders that he wrote when he came into office."  Nobody likes being duped.  "Once the deception unravels and the truth becomes unavoidable, the people will be angry at Joe Biden."

No less a shill for the Presidential Cult than reporters for New York's Times see the stupid.  "Under Mr. Biden, unemployment is low, real wages are rising, the stock market is booming and inflation is finally cooling. But at the same time, many groceries and other living expenses are vastly higher now than they were under Mr. Trump."  "Americans aren't stupid."  Salon writers hop on the clue bus.  "Appeals to the facts about how historically great Biden’s economy is, are no salve for how everyday people are experiencing hardship and increasingly view Donald Trump and Trumpism as a viable alternative to the Democrats and 'democracy.'"  No surprise, there, democracy comes between "demented" and "demonic" in the dictionary.

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

HOIST ON THEIR OWN VIRTUE SIGNAL?

Washington's Free Beacon ventures to Walworth County.

The migrants began to trickle into Whitewater, a sleepy town of 15,000 an hour west of Milwaukee, toward the end of 2021.

Prior to their arrival, local news and political debates generally revolved around school fundraisers or the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater's D3 athletics. Today, residents are focused on their 1,000 new neighbors, who mostly hail from Nicaragua and Venezuela and largely keep to the shadows because they lack official identification. Locals say the real number of migrants in the town could easily be double the number reflected in the police department's official statistics.

As the migrant crises in big cities like Chicago and New York receive national media attention, Whitewater residents can only laugh.

Greater Whitewater Committee president Jeffrey Knight is quick to point out that migrants have caused New York's population to grow by 2 percent, while Whitewater's population has grown by almost 10 percent in two years, almost entirely due to the southern border crisis. That would translate into more than 1.5 million new arrivals in New York.

"I don't have a problem with immigration," Knight told the Washington Free Beacon. "The concern is about resources."

It only becomes a "concern about resources" when governments or non-government organizations commit to providing social services for immigrants, with or without proper papers.  "Those Ellis Island arrivals didn't have to be asylum seekers (strictly speaking, asylum seekers ought stop in the first country they arrive at outside their own) but it helped, a lot, to have Uncle Bruno standing Pops that steamer ticket, and have a relative, or a sponsor, stateside."  Earlier this year, I offered an assessment of the new residents in Whitewater.

It might be that some of those arrivals are coming based on word of mouth, to do year-round work tending the dairy herds.  The details, though, sound a lot like that underground economy, cheap labor subsidy, employees subject to hold-ups from their employers.  Professor Katz and I treated that as a net benefit to the host country, despite the complaining it provoked from some quarters.  "Net benefit" does not preclude difficulties confronting Whitewater and Walworth County officialdom.

Might the arrival of those refugees been deliberate?

No one knows what brought the migrants to Whitewater. It is not a sanctuary city, and no red-state governor is shipping busloads of migrants to Whitewater's doorstep. That Wisconsin is one of a handful of states that will likely decide the next president is just happenstance.

Some residents think the migrants were attracted by the progressive city council's pro-immigrant rhetoric. Others think the sleepy midwestern town is just a good place for illegal migrants to hide.

Whatever brought them, Whitewater's migrant population and its subsequent demographic transformation could offer a glimpse into the next stage of America's immigration saga. As lawmakers fight about what to do with the southern border, the rate of illegal border crossings shows no sign of slowing. With roughly 8.5 million illegal border crossings recorded since President Joe Biden took office, it is almost inevitable that more towns like Whitewater will see migrants flocking their way.

Once the migrants arrive, it is on the town to adapt. The hiring of new ESL teachers for Whitewater Public Schools has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars alone, one city official told the Free Beacon.

And, the article suggests, those farm-hands are supplementing their incomes in ways that don't show up in the National Income Accounts.

Neighboring counties have expressed concern about cartel activity among Whitewater's migrants. One slide describes the surge in fentanyl seizures in recent years.

"All states are now affected, just like southern border States," the slide reads. "Narcotics investigations are a substantial investment of an agency's resources including financial, manpower, physical assets, and time."

Law enforcement officials said last November that they had traced nearly $250,000 worth of funds back to drug cartels in just four months. In the words of one law enforcement official, the migrants perform "farm or factory labor during the day and cocaine sales at night."

The political economy of migration, though, isn't as straightforward as either the open-border advocates or the Trumpians would like you to believe.

Amid all the disruption, Whitewater's government celebrates itself as a progressive oasis nudged between two counties that supported former president Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. The top item at a Feb. 10, 2024, city council meeting was "proactive approaches to address potential NeoNazi activities in the city or on campus." Further down the agenda was a discussion of how to "promote a welcoming and educational environment for new immigrants."

Chuck Mills flies the Israeli, American, and "Blue Lives Matter" flags outside his tow shop. He disagrees with many of the city council's more liberal stances. But when it comes to migrants, he's mostly on board.

"Some conservatives want to paint all these immigrants as, you know, rapists and murderers," Mills said. "I did eventually welcome them here, it's still a fluid situation, knock on wood, but I've had nothing but good experiences."

Mills notes that Whitewater has faced a labor shortage since 2020, as the town's University of Wisconsin satellite campus never fully rebounded from COVID lockdowns and remote learning.

"There businesses around here needed to fill this void that a failing university left behind when they sent all the kids home and many just never came back," Mills said. "You got farms out here that need help, and I'd take one of these immigrants over a college student."

Whitewater's probably where that nest of communists calling themselves the Walworth County Democrats live. That hostility about "a college student" is par for the course, that university being popular with the high school social set, as well as serving as a suitcase college catering to students who return to their suburbs to hang out at the mall, or wherever they hang out now that the malls are going away.  I wonder, though, whether that city council postured about offering that welcoming environment, without expecting anyone to show up.  Martha's Vineyard, with a converted teacher's college and cows.

THEIR INCOMPETENCE IS THEIR DIVERSITY.

Remember this lament?  "People who tick the right Diversity, Inclusion, or Equity boxes will likely be promoted until they reach several rungs above their respective levels of competence."

Dear reader, what better way to start Women's History Month than with the quintessence of the results?

VP HARRIS: "They're trying to do with 'DEI' what they sadly, successfully, did with 'woke.'"

pic.twitter.com/ddXaaMM9sH

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) February 29, 2024

We know that the Masters of Inclusive Euphemism will do the same thing with "DEI" that they do every time Militant Normals start mocking their preferred terminology.  That's fine.  Call it "Inclusive Excellence" or whatever, it's still Affirmative Action* or Special Education or Our Liability Preemption.

THREE SEASONS IN THREE DAYS.

Today, longtime WGN broadcast meteorologist Tom Skilling took his pension.  His final broadcast appearances would be a Midwestern career in microcosm.  Monday, late spring conditions, the clothes tree at Cold Spring Shops got a workout.  Tuesday, have you ever seen temperatures in the seventies in Illinois in February?  Good day to set out a folding chair and do some reading on the deck.  Tuesday night, though, the squall line came in, hail, tornadoes in the vicinity, then a dusting of snow and temperatures back to proper winter levels.  That in the wake of a Hallowe'en with snow and temperatures normal for Christmas, a Thanksgiving with approximately normal temperatures, a Christmas with no snow and temperatures normal for Hallowe'en, and shortly after Three Kings, a polar vortex.

At least the Snow Moon got to live up to its billing.

The Chicago streets department held a naming contest for their new plows, and "Skilling It" earned the most votes.  It's Chicago, take the tally with, well ...  Let us note the other names are "CTRL-SALT-DELETE, Casimir Plowaski, Ernie Snowbanks, Mies van der Snow, Bad, Bad Leroy Plow."  Not bad, a computer pun, a war hero, a sports hero, an architecture hero, and the South Side."

He will also receive an honorary Doctorate of Science from Northern Illinois University.

Trustees also approved a honorary doctorate to long-time Chicago meteorologist Tom Skilling. His last day on air will be in February. The Aurora native has worked at WGN for the past 45 years. NIU President Lisa Freeman says the forecaster has worked with many NIU students through internships during his career. The board credited Skilling as a passionate educator, trailblazer, an advocate for climate awareness. He will receive an honorary doctorate of science in fall 2024.

In the same way that Mr Skilling got his broadcast start in Madison, the meteorology program at Northern got its start in Madison.  A number of faculty members in Madison figured out the tenure depth and the enrollment future and set up a meteorology department in DeKalb.  Reality has since come for meteorology as an independent department, first the forecast office went, then what remained of the academic effort got rolled in to a larger department with an ambiguous portfolio.

Fair winds.

IT CAME TO THIS LONG AGO.

Salena Zito continues to chronicle the "destruction" side of "creative destruction" along the rivers of northern Appalachia.

Most people in this town will tell you they'd rather have taken a physical punch to the gut than get the news they received yesterday when Cleveland-Cliffs Steel announced it was idling its tinplate production plant, a move that directly cost 900 people their jobs.

It isn't just those workers who face catastrophic uncertainty; this closure also jeopardizes the jobs of thousands more people whose businesses supported the plant: the barber shops, gas stations, mom-and-pop grocery stores, the machine shops that make the widgets for the steel industry. And there's also the demise of the tax base, which affects the school district and the quality of the roads.

Thirty years ago, more than 10,000 people worked here at Weirton Steel. Now, the last 900 workers left have just lost their jobs.

"It's just another scar to add on what people in power have done to our lives and our community over the past 40 years," said one employee who declined to give his name, adding, "Honestly, how many times does this story have to be told before someone in power cares about our lives."

He points to different buildings downtown, and all of them for him were "used to be this" and "used to be that."

Weirton this week, a few years ago it was Youngstown, it's the same story.  "It would be scant consolation to these men that the closures of steel mills all up and down the Mahoning and Monongahela valleys was creative destruction at work, a shakeout of suboptimally small plants at less advantageous locations."

NEVER MIND.

Yesterday, hamburger purveyor Wendy's announced something that sounded a lot like peak load pricing, or "surge pricing," as the popular locution has it.

According to the original report from Nation's Restaurant News and Food & Wine, prices for food items would automatically change throughout the day depending on demand, similar to "surge pricing" in rideshare apps like Uber and Lyft. The initiative was disclosed by Kirk Tanner, the CEO and president of Wendy's, in a recent discussion with analysts.

According to Tanner, Wendy's plans to invest approximately $20 million to install digital menu boards capable of displaying these real-time variable prices across all of its company-operated locations in the United States. An additional $10 million is earmarked over two years to enhance Wendy's global system, which aims to improve order accuracy and upsell other menu items.

In conversation with Food & Wine, a spokesperson for Wendy's confirmed the company's commitment to this pricing strategy, describing it as part of a broader effort to grow its digital business. "Beginning as early as 2025, we will begin testing a variety of enhanced features on these digital menuboards like dynamic pricing, different offerings in certain parts of the day, AI-enabled menu changes and suggestive selling based on factors such as weather," they said. "Dynamic pricing can allow Wendy's to be competitive and flexible with pricing, motivate customers to visit and provide them with the food they love at a great value. We will test a number of features that we think will provide an enhanced customer and crew experience."

It's always a tell when a Suit uses "enhanced" in combination with a change in policy that is clearly a retrenchment.  And isn't it annoying enough when a human clerk asks "would you like fries with that" or "you can supersize it for $0.25 more?"  Calling upselling "suggestive selling" makes it no less obnoxious.

The price-change plans are the latest in a series of moves designed to modernize Wendy's business using technology—and increase profits. In 2023, Wendy's began testing FreshAI, a system designed to take orders with a conversational AI bot, potentially replacing human workers in the process. In his discussion, Tanner also discussed "AI-enabled menu changes" and "suggestive selling" without elaboration, though the Wendy's spokesperson remarked that suggestive selling may automatically emphasize some items based dynamically on local weather conditions, such as trying to sell cold drinks on a hot day.

The robot is going to miss one opportunity, though, suggestively selling the salad bar to skinny people.  That's something a human clerk can do.

BREAKING THE ADDICTION TO ROADS.

I scoff at the Jarrett regency touting the "Bipartisan Infrastructure Appropriations" as a victory, as the current ration of pork doesn't even make good this year's wear and tear on the roads, bridges, and mains previous rations of pork made possible.

More generally, though, whenever there is talk of spending money on internal improvements, the advocates of Best Practice and the fraternity of Wise Experts are sure to follow. That might be the worst possible thing, compounding, as it is likely to do, the decisions that brought us to where we are. "The values of post-war American development are embedded in our current approach -- efficiency over resiliency, large up front expense over ongoing maintenance expense, comprehensive over incremental, one-size-fits-all over tactical -- and they keep us from seeing the opportunities that sit right in front of us." Perhaps I will have to continue to object to misuses of "efficiency." Too often, it's misinterpreted as attempting to do more with less, as in the quote.

Make no mistake, the municipalities will be on the hook for the repairs, unless they have well-connected Congressmen in future.

Pay close attention to those roads and bridges. Dementia Joe will be showing up at the ribbon cuttings, if he remembers and he can stay awake, but he will be out of office in another ten years, when the projects start to wear out and either the municipalities are on the hook for repairs or there will be another bipartisan porkulus.

The time to stop throwing printed money after bad money is now. "Until we have a credible plan for maintaining our existing transportation infrastructure, we must stop building more roads and bridges."

PREPARE FOR ANOTHER CIVIL WAR?

So much for Our Democracy^(TM).  Democrat politicians and their court intellectuals for the Democrats have no problem with not certifying an election if they gain some benefit by it.  "Without clear guidance from the Court, House Democrats suggest that they might not certify a Trump win on January 6."

IF YOU WERE THERE, YOU WEREN'T THERE.

It might be better for historians without any lived experience of the 1960s to attempt to come to terms with them.  Me?  I was there and I didn't like it.  "The America of the 1950s was an America that worked. The counterculture that followed did not. It's more accurate to describe aspects of it as alien, immoral, and destructive."

Let's yield the floor to Chapman historian Luke Nichter, who is probably young enough to have pored through the newspapers and scholarly writings without attempting to square what he found with his own experience.  In The Year that Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968 he presents a few surprises, which he obtained in conversations with people who were there, and have since crossed the final summit.

Let me open Book Review N^o. 6 by noting that, unlike depressingly many recent political histories, Year that Broke is not a hair-on-fire reaction to Donald Trump's 2016 win, or to the strength he seems to be showing again this election season. That concentration on the year, and the events of that year, are even more commendable given the opportunities to foreshadow the various forms of populism, the Summer of Rage, and futile nation building wars that still seem to structure an impossible politics.  Nor is it the focus of Year that Broke to point out how Reliance on National Politics to Solve Problems is never going to end well.  It's going to take each of us to figure that out.

WHAT ARE THE EXIT CONDITIONS?

Early in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I asked, "Might there still be a compromise in the Tom Clancy style available?"  A year into the trench warfare, the Tom Clancy outcome still looked better than what the peaceniks were contemplating.  "In Command Authority, the Russians gained Crimea and everything east of Mariupol, with relatively little loss of life.  The territorial outcome Mr Gerson advocates is similar, only with the puppet oblasts of Lugansk and Donetsk picked over and destitute."

Here is the correlation of forces as of this week, according to Belmont Club.

It's been two years since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, and the big news is that there has been no battlefield decision, something few would have predicted in 2022. It's hard to say who is even winning. Putin wants victory more than Biden, a fact reflected by Russia's huge war production of arty ammo and manpower mobilization, but the Kremlin is paying for it by starving its economy and military of innovation investment.

The Ukrainian soldiers are getting fewer, and Russia's military equipment is getting older by the day. Both things are occurring simultaneously. Each is weakening and gaining strength in his own way. On some time spans, it means disadvantage Kyiv. On other time scales, it spells game over Moscow as a world capital. The analyst must reckon which effect is dominant.

One of the challenges in understanding the situation is drawing the right map. The terrain map measures how much land Russia has acquired in exchange for its loss and suggests how much more it must spend in men and treasure to win completely—or in Kyiv's case, regain completely. For the moment, it seems unlikely Russia has the power to seize all of Ukraine to its Western borders, just as it is hard to imagine Ukraine retaking all its Eastern losses. Absent a collapse on either side, the division line may settle in between.

But you can draw another map that depicts the gains Kyiv and Moscow have made in the world in terms of supporters. The war is being fought on a geopolitical scale, too. Winning and losing are measured in terms of the world's balance of power. Here, the picture is more definite. The global, rule-based world has been shattered. People have described our current state as "the era of competition." But those are weasel words. It is more direct to say that we're in the middle of Cold War 2.

The optimism that some people held last fall, as summarized by Outside the Beltway's James Joyner, has long since passed.

Ukraine’s war aim has always been maximalist: not simply pushing Russian troops to the pre-2022 invasion status quo but retaking Crimea. I’m still not sure that’s possible without substantially more Western participation but they’re certainly making it very costly for Russia to hold the territory.

NATO countries, and the United States in particular, have very slowly ratcheted up the deadliness and range of weapons they are willing to supply Ukraine. They’ve just taken possession of US M-1 Abrams tanks and President Biden has promised ATACMS missiles, which have a range upwards of 200 miles. While maddeningly slow from the Ukrainian perspective, it makes sense given Western fears of escalation. It’s not clear what Putin’s “red line” is and at what point he’ll go into desperation mode.

Despite his War College background, he shied away from "the only winning move is not to play," which subsequent events have suggested is where we find ourselves as the spring mud season approaches.  "Ukraine Faces Growing Calls From US to Cede Land to Russia."

DESPERATELY SEEKING THE HOUSING FAIRY.

It should be clear by now that "Common Dreams" means "wishful thinking."  The latest believer in miracles is Farrah Hassen, who somehow passed the bar exam, offering "Housing Is a Human Right, Not a Luxury Commodity."  I guess the communists aren't whining about those little boxes made of ticky-tacky any more.  "In the wealthiest country on the planet, this is unacceptable."  The problem, in her nightmares, is that people are adding to the housing stock.

Over the past decade, according to the Harvard study, the majority of growth in renter households has come from Millennials and Gen Zers who continue to be priced out of homeownership while also paying more for a declining supply of affordable units.

Meanwhile, construction in the high-end “luxury” rental market, which drives up rents for everyone else, remains in an upward trend. And private equity firms like Blackstone, the largest landlord in the U.S., have been expanding their real estate portfolios. These trends have fueled increased housing costs and evictions across communities.

The Harvard study revealed that our nation’s aging rental stock also needs crucial investment. Nearly half of renters with disabilities live in homes that are minimally or not at all accessible. Further, around 4 million renter households live in units with structural problems and lack basic services like electricity, water, or heat.

That's quite the bundle of points, isn't it?  First, how is it that construction expanding the supply of high-end rentals drives up the rents for everybody else?  (Let's leave aside for the moment what those additional upscale renters implies for the vanishing middle class, dear reader.)  Are those renters leaving cold-water flats for tower apartments with pools and a lake view?  Or might their departure simultaneously lead to vacancies in less-tony apartments or condos, and a removal of those high income bidders from the waiting lists there?

THE FRACTIONAL INTERURBAN.

The current proprietor of the Rock River Valley Traction Company offers a carbarn tour.

Among the rolling stock in the barn, a believable representation of an Indianapolis and Southeastern curved side car, one of the "rubber stamp" cars built by Cincinnati Car Company for numerous traction companies.

That's an intriguing choice of prototype, as when Indianapolis and Southeastern fell on hard times (thanks, road socialism!) they went to the lightweight, one-man cars as an economy measure.  Thus their heavy combination cars became bargains for The Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company, which rebuilt them as three-truck articulated units.

Two decades later, after I&SE had quit business, those cars again became available for sale, and The Milwaukee Rapid Transit and Speedrail Company bought them ... to replace the heavy interurbans, including the rebuilt combines.

A two-foot gauge replica Duplex would be a bit of a stretch for a garden railway.  There are smaller, rideable Duplex models that run on 7 1/2" gauge tracks, well-proportioned for outdoor riding.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

We could fill Cold Spring Shops solely with elaborations on "One of the most frustrating aspects of the attitude of people who see more government as the solution to every problem we have today is that they aren’t willing to do the hard work of cleaning up the mess the government made in the first place before calling for more government actions."  I would get as bored with writing only on that theme as you, dear reader would get reading only about that theme.

Politics divides.  "Support for democracy is not in decline because voters are being brainwashed by enemy propaganda on TikTok. Support for democracy is declining because democracy is simply not working the way we were told it would."  The continuation is instructive:  "Perhaps the creation of societies so stratified that the ruling class can barely comprehend the concerns of ordinary voters was not such a foolproof recipe for democracy after all."

Is crisis-mongering the handmaiden of governmental overreach?  "Maybe you could stop the endless Cycles of Crisis where one Outrage is only displaced by the next Cause for Alarm and then that is replaced by the next Moral Panic."

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

WE'LL NEVER GET THE TIME LOST IN CONSTRUCTION DELAYS BACK.

Collective punishment, er, collective frustration in traffic jams, is your fate.

It's not enough that Wisconsin's department of transportation has to work on the expressways south, west and northwest of Milwaukee.  Now they hope to add a third lane in each direction on the easterly expressway running north.  There will be two years of construction delays.  "These changes are being made to address existing and future traffic volumes, pavement and structural needs. It will also improve safety and address deficiencies including clearance at bridges, visibility and merging and weaving distances, according to a state Department of Transportation project overview."  Will it be worth it?  "According to the state Department of Transportation website, I-43 carries 49,000 vehicles per day south of Highway 60 and 85,460 vehicles per day north of Silver Spring Drive, with future projections raising those figures to 65,000 and 112,500 by 2040, respectively."

The induced demand is right there in the forecast, dear reader.  When the work is done, it will be just as congested as it currently is.  There is no discussion of high occupancy toll lanes, let alone toll roads, in Wisconsin.

Let's at least credit Marc Williams, executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation, for honesty.

“The work will never conclude on Interstate 35,” Williams said Tuesday at a regional transportation summit in San Marcos.

The rapid population growth in the San Antonio-to-Austin corridor has put significant pressure on TxDOT to keep up with the ever-rising tide of traffic between San Antonio and Austin, Williams said.

“We add 1,300 new residents every day in Texas, an extraordinary rate of growth. The demand on us is really to keep pace,” Williams said at the summit, which was hosted by the San Marcos Area Chamber of Commerce and the Greater San Marcos Partnership.

Because residential growth bids up the price of land, it becomes costly to condemn properties to widen the expressways.

OUR GERONTOCRACY.

We have little choice but to undermine them with mockery. "Biden Mocked for Holding Pelosi's Hand in Tarmac Shuffle, Gets Confused About Navalny's Widow."  Isn't it time that the Silent Generation relics who brought about the past quarter century of decay were turfed out?

WHO DID THIS???😭🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/2pxIp43VJZ

— il Donaldo Trumpo (@PapiTrumpo) February 22, 2024

The Red State article also notes Dementia Joe was much faster to meet with the widow of a Russian dissident than he was to meet with residents of East Palestine, Ohio.

Between the senescence of the Democrats and their neglect of Normals, if the country gets another dose of Donald Trump, that might be something well-deserved.

THE SIXTIES CALLED, AND THEY WANT THEIR ACTIVISTS BACK.

The Jihad Fan Club at our allegedly most prestigious universities never ceases to come through, does it?  A few months ago, I wondered, "Is the Hamas-mania on display at institutions of higher learning you might have heard of the evidence that convinces the people that our universities are being run by terminally stupid people?"

The evidence continues to accumulate.

Harvard Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine is walking back an Instagram story that depicted Black men being controlled by a hand with the Star of David on it.

The post was originally made by the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee and the African and African American Resistance Organization, but was also shared by Harvard Faculty & Staff for Justice.

Apparently Elise Stefanik's dressing down of now demoted Harvard president Claudine Gay has encouraged her successors to ... use their speech codes.

The groups immediately faced criticism for the post, prompting the university to open an investigation.

”The University is aware of social media posts today containing deeply offensive antisemitic tropes and messages from organizations whose membership includes Harvard affiliates,” a statement from Harvard reads. “Such despicable messages have no place in the Harvard community. We condemn these posts in the strongest possible terms.”

”This matter is being reviewed by the University and is being referred to the Harvard College Administrative Board, which is responsible for the application and enforcement of undergraduate academic regulations and social conduct,” the university said. “Harvard rejects antisemitism in all of its forms.”

The now withdrawn visual invoked the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panther Party; in a follow-up statement the Justice in Palestine soviet issued a new statement, invoking ... Stokely Carmichael.  People with long memories took notice.

Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine circulated an amended graphic with an image of Stokely Carmichael, a Black Panther Party leader who praised Adolf Hitler in 1970 as the "greatest white man" and later complained, in a 1990 address, that "zionist pigs have been harassing us everywhere."

Fitting, isn't it, that a brain-dead parody of Lyndon Johnson in the White House merits a brain-dead parody of The Movement in Cambridge?

JESSICA CORBETT CLIMBS THE BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN.

It's always amusing to read Common Dreams.  When they're not lamenting the latest Threat to Democracy^(TM) they're begging for the sock puppet president they argue with but vote for to act more like a dictator.

After nearly two dozen Sunrise Movement campaigners were arrested Monday at U.S. President Joe Biden's 2024 campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, the youth-led climate group is planning over 40 protests across the country.

Next Monday, movement members plan to demonstrate at local Democratic Party offices and city halls to demand that Biden declare a national climate emergency and use the full extent of his powers to tackle the fossil fuel-driven global crisis.

"Biden can't build renewables on Monday, approve fossil fuels on Tuesday, and then claim to be climate president. That's not how science works, and young voters know it," said Sunrise campaign director Kidus Girma in a statement Thursday. "President Biden must declare a climate emergency and go all-out to stop the climate crisis."

"There are dozens of things he could sign into law tomorrow if he wanted," Girma noted. "He could make sure that every time a climate disaster hits, no one gets evicted and everyone has access to free healthcare. He could end the fossil fuel era by refusing to approve a single oil or gas well in this country."

Sunrise is calling on the Democratic president to reverse the massive rise in U.S. fossil fuel production—rather than approving projects like Willow in Alaska—and to "create green union jobs by unleashing the full power of the Defense Production Act."

All that wishful thinking about executive orders neglects two things, acts of Congress and consent of the governed.

The group's plans for next week's protests were announced as nine Democrats joined Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a bill intended to reverse Biden's recent pause on approvals for liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, and as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rubber-stamped the Saguaro Connector Pipeline in Texas.

While Biden has faced intense criticism from campaigners and scientists for various decisions—from backing Willow and Mountain Valley Pipeline to continuing fossil fuel lease sales and skipping last year's United Nations summit—former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, has been far more hostile toward climate policies.

Mr Trump also understands that a lower world price for crude oil and natural gas makes it more difficult for Iran to underwrite the jihad and the Persian Gulf piracy or for Russia to continue its annexation of eastern Ukraine.  It's amusing, though, that an executive order contrary to a president's Article II powers is fine if it "ends the fossil fuel era," particularly if it's an implementation of full-on public assistance for everyone; whilst a proper decision by an independent regulatory commission, which is to say, the quintessential manifestation of the Administrative State, is a "rubber stamp."

What would we ever do without the sort of naïvete that prays for a president to use his pen and 'phone to decree the Big Rock Candy Mountain?

PRESIDENTIAL RANKINGS ARE LESS USEFUL THAN COLLEGE FOOTBALL POLLS.

Academics who fancy themselves Court Intellectuals for the Administrative State have a propensity to evaluate American Presidents for their Conformity to the Academic Prejudices.  Thus we have the latest Presidential League Tables, courtesy of those Court Intellectuals.  Not that it fools Noah Rothman, or anybody else with a functioning jive detector.

If the historians who contributed their alleged expertise to compiling a list measuring “overall presidential greatness” brought any history with them into their analysis, that’s hard to discern from the product they produced. My colleagues will take the list to task for its authors’ revisionism, but it seems that the point of this exercise wasn’t an objective assessment of American presidential legacies. It was to convey to the list’s readers that Donald Trump is bad.

According to our most influential historians, Trump earned himself a spot at the very bottom of their list registering relative “greatness” in the Oval Office. Perhaps owing to a latent sense of shame among practicing academics, Joe Biden managed only to be named America’s 14th greatest president, just ahead of Woodrow Wilson. It should surprise no one that, with throat-clearing exceptions made for presidents such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, the list favors progressive Democrats and progressive Republicans. The virtue of progressivism is the common thread. We can, therefore, deduce that the goal of this enterprise was to advance voguish narratives favored by progressive academicians.

The list is reminiscent of other efforts to manipulate public perception via the selective deployment of “expertise.”

Yes, and it will be treated as Received Wisdom on the Sunday shows, all the efforts of citizen pundits and social media scribes notwithstanding.  The Credentialed Experts push such things because they think their salaries depend on them doing so.

What’s remarkable about these efforts to launder opinion into the national discourse under the guise of expertise is that the architects of these experiments are possessed of such self-regard that they think they can reshape our perception of reality. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who isn’t invested in promoting an agenda agree that Barack Obama belongs somewhere on the spectrum of historical greatness between Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. No one in their right mind believes America’s civic institutions and civil society are roughly comparable to Italy’s. Anyone who was persuaded to put off emigrating to the United States because the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia better cares for its female population has been profoundly misled.

Why would anyone believe this nonsense? Indeed, it sometimes can seem like belief is beside the point. The objective in articulating facially nonsensical untruths such as these isn’t to convey “expertise” but zeal in service to a faddish political cause. Today, the cause is anti-Trumpism. If history gets in the way of that goal, then history has to go.

Dominic Pino, also reacting to that silly survey, gets to the point my title hints at.

[P]residents should not be ranked in the first place, and if the APSA cared about its credibility, it would stop ranking them.

This is not to say historians should not evaluate presidents. They do and they should, and some are better than others. Exactly how that evaluation is done will take into account factors such as the evaluator’s worldview, or his belief about what presidents ought to do. That will vary, and arguments will be had on whether certain presidents were good or bad, and in what ways.

In a logical world, yes. "Presidential historians," though, are a class of people who serve as Morale Conditioners for those Credentialed Elites who have done away with self-service drug stores.

[Jon Meacham is] part of a cadre of scribblers who traffic in the role of "presidential historian," which neither implies nor is implied by holding an academic post, and which includes the likes of the long-departed Theodore H. White; and the book's dedication is to Evan Thomas and Michael Beschsloss, two more of the tribe.  For the most part, the presidential historians share the world view of the Credentialed Elite who see Governance by Wise Experts as something to be desired, and Successful Presidents as holders of the office who advance that cause.  Thus, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson rate high in that cadre's estimation, while Calvin Coolidge or Ronald Reagan ... do not.

It will be up to future genuine historians, perhaps in another three centuries, to sort those rankings more precisely.

So let it be with the latest survey. As if the people who are inclined to vote for Donald Trump in their state primary, or should he earn the Republican nomination, in the general election, are going to be dissuaded from so doing by ... university professors?

POUR ANOTHER SPRECHER.

My Chicago Boyz colleague Sgt. Mom chronicles the descent into irrelevance of Establishment Journalism.

I have to confess to feeling a positively unholy degree of amusement, watching the Establishment Mainstream Media publicly coming to grips with Joe Biden’s senility … this after pretty much papering over his decaying mental condition over the past three years. That President Biden’s remaining brain cells have been melting into a slightly greenish and glowing puddle of goo has been screamingly obvious to everyone on the center-to-right quadrant of the blogosphere with any sense and worldly knowledge since his installation in the Oval Office. That the major national media minions are now having to wrap their tiny minds around that realization, and not just acknowledge but explain how it is now urgent that he be replaced on the Dem party ticket this year, as well as how they managed to escape noticing the freaking obvious for the past two or three years … well, all sorts of fun for those of us with a freakish sense of humor. It’s like watching a hapless stage magician try and gingerly handle a turd by the clean end.

The National Establishment Media – the public affairs branch of the Democrat Party – just spent the last three years trying to cover up his mental incapacity, not to mention his corruption, mendacity, and nasty tendency to perve on any attractive female of any age within reach, even on public occasions. The jig is up. The party’s over. Credibility is shot … not just shot but bleeding messily out in the center of the dusty street, while the large crowd of onlookers who perhaps held Tea Party sympathies, willingly served in our nation’s armed forces in the past, believed that our votes – and our protests counted for something – point and jeer.

Yes, indeed – learn to code. Or wait tables, dig ditches, sling packages at Amazon or drive for Uber. If it’s good enough for former millworkers, coal heavers and truck drivers in the industrial heartland … it’s good enough for those who have called themselves news reporters for years, people who have lied to us by commission and omission. There are too many Taylor Lorenzes, and not enough Salena Zitos, it seems to be all too important for the top-ranked national news outlets to have a seat in the farcical White House press conference room, and thus, the national news industry is a fading one. It’s fading for a number of reasons, but one of the major ones is that a large proportion of consumers of news are tired of the lies and are fleeing to other sources than the mainstream purveyors of the government party line.

We'll see: web logs used to be the New Citizen Journalism, then Social Media was supposed to be the New Citizen Journalism, until the gatekeepers unleashed their fact checkers, now Substack appears to be a way for people to turn their punditry into a hobby business.  And yet the Sunday shows, and their cheap imitations available any evening on the political cable channels, continue to define The Narrative.

THERE MIGHT BE SOMETHING FOR SECULAR PROGRESSIVES IN IT.

Among today's Common Dreams scare stories we find "Christian Nationalist Insiders Are Prepping for Trump's 'Dystopian' Return."  It's based on Politico speculation that the Trump campaign has not yet confirmed, denied, or mocked.  The article includes a snippet of social media:

Amongst some of the proposals for a second Trump Admin:

- end surrogacy
- end no fault divorce
- invoke the insurrection act to stop protests
- end sex education in schools
- stop policies that “subsidize single motherhood”

Also predictably, the hysterics look up from their wine glasses.

The proposals of Trump's allies are "straight out of The Handmaid's Tale," said Lauren Hitt, senior spokesperson for President Joe Biden's reelection campaign. "Nationwide abortion bans, attacks on same-sex marriage, and restrictions on contraception—this is the horrifying reality being openly discussed by Team Trump and the likely architects of his second term agenda."

"Every day Donald Trump openly supports an agenda of restricting Americans' freedoms, dividing our country, and attacking our rights," said Hitt. "That's what he will do as president. It's not who we are as Americans."

The Jarrett regency, shoring up its support among welfare recipients and Weimar America.

That's how you get more Trump.

DISPLAY THAT NEW CONSTELLATION FOR THE AGES.

Commander Joel Holwitt argues, "Let's Restore the Navy Jack." Apparently, the First Navy Jack might not have been the first.  "As both a naval officer and a naval historian, I recommend the Navy secure the First Navy Jack and restore the traditional Navy jack."

The "First Navy Jack" captured the spirit of September 12 Americans, and there's one in the Cold Spring Shops flag rotation.

Its origin story, though, involves more than a little imagination.

Use of the First Navy Jack was directed by then-Secretary of the Navy Gordon England in May 2002. Secretary England wrote: “From the very beginning of our Navy, the Jack has been used on board American warships. . . . The temporary substitution of this Jack represents an historic reminder of the nation’s and Navy’s origin and will to persevere and triumph.” The Secretary ordered that the First Navy Jack remain flying until the end of the Global War on Terror.

Regrettably, the First Navy Jack probably is not the actual first jack of the U.S. Navy. The jack that the first commander-in-chief of the U.S. Navy, Esek Hopkins, ordered his ships to fly in January 1776 was described simply as a “strip’d jack.” His instructions made no mention of a rattlesnake or “Don’t Tread on Me.” Hopkins did fly a rattlesnake flag known as the Gadsden flag, but it had a plain yellow background and served as his personal standard. At the time, most American merchant ships frequently displayed a red-and-white striped flag, and in all probability, the first Navy jack was a similar striped flag.

None of this is recent news. The Naval History and Heritage Command website states that the design of the First Navy Jack “rests on no firm base of historical evidence.” The North American Vexillological Association, dedicated to the scientific study of flags, awarded their 2002 William Driver Award to Peter Ansoff, whose research concluded that “while the rattlesnake-and-stripes flag that currently flies on the bow of every U.S. warship has a long tradition in American flag use, its design was a 19th-century mistake based on an erroneous 1776 engraving.” In fact, the flag we call the First Navy Jack actually was not flown on board a U.S. Navy ship until 1975, when it was used as part of the bicentennial celebrations.

The Commander goes on to note that going to that flag might have brought ill fortune.

At best, the First Navy Jack is historically unsupportable and represents the embarrassing initial missteps of the U.S. Navy. At worst, it is encumbered by a superstitious sailor’s worst enemy: bad luck, a superstition that a multitude of events and programs over the past 17 years seems to support.

It is time to secure the First Navy Jack and use the traditional Navy jack, which has a long and storied history. The traditional Navy jack actually did fly during the American Revolution. It flew on board the USS Constitution during the War of 1812. And it flew on the bow of the USS Missouri during the Japanese surrender ceremony. And instead of the prickly warning that the First Navy Jack symbolizes, the traditional Navy jack is a reminder of the indivisible strength of our union. Just as Secretary England intended when he wrote that the use of the First Navy Jack would be “temporary,” the traditional jack can be raised to end one period of our Navy’s history and reconnect us to our distinguished past.

The past 17 years have been a time of great change in our Navy: new uniforms, new ships, and new policies. It’s time to change back to one of our best traditions, the U.S. Navy jack that flew proudly for more than 200 years, in times of peace and war.

That "indivisible strength" looks a little shaky these days, but then one like it flew on Monitor and Hartford, didn't it?

VOTE YOUR CONSCIENCE, OR SCHRÖDINGER'S CHRIS CHRISTIE.

Outside the Beltway's James Joyner offers the usual sort of guilt-tripping the devotees of the major parties engage in during election season, particularly when there's a binary choice of two particularly evil candidates, or their party manifestoes.  "There are two and only two viable candidates for President. To refuse to vote for either of them is to let others decide between them."  I want better choices, and I'd rather vote for a manifesto closest to what I want and not get it than vote for what I know is going to be a crap sandwich.  That's long been my stance.

Mr Will recognized, dimly, what his advocacy brought.  Follow the link if you want.  It's this message I want to reinforce.  "Dear reader, if you're uneasy about that sort of Republican ... and your choice is between a Trumpian showboater and a Squad-adjacent Democrat, reject the false binary, and don't let those irritated rumps on the extreme get your vote.  There might be libertarians or socialists or free-soilers elsewhere on the ballot."

He continues, taking to task former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who will vote his conscience this November.

But there are plenty of folks out there like himself—homeless Republicans who think Trump is morally unfit for the office—who might be persuaded to hold their nose and vote for Biden with the nudging of Christie and other likeminded Republican leaders. Given that Christie knows damn well that Biden is better for the country than the alternative, abdicating that role is feckless at best.

What's amusing is that the somewhat more polemical Stephen Kruiser of Pajamas Media makes the same argument, but with the colors reversed.

A vote for Joe Biden or whichever commie ends up on the ballot in November is a vote for the imminent demise of the United States. That's not hyperbole. ... There is no "principled" reason for any Republican to vote for anyone other than Trump or any other Republican who might replace him should the Democrats' pre-election rigging work. Sitting this election out because of delicate feelings or a misbegotten sense of honor would be unconscionable.

Which means that Chris Christie is simultaneously helping Donald Trump and helping Joe Biden.  Sorry, no.  He's part of the Coalition of the Unwilling, which I would like to see get bigger.  "The so-called binary choice is only a binary choice if voters vote with the expectation that other voters are treating the choice as a binary choice. In the states and districts that skew strongly one way or the other, if you're going to be disappointed with the outcome anyway, at least vote for the choice you want, rather than vote the Nash strategy."  And in a battleground state, or a close district, should you vote your conscience and someone slag on you for spoiling their preferred candidate's chances, your response ought be, "Offer me a bundle with more policies I want."  Governments are supposed to derive their just powers from our consent, and if they don't, they ought to be gridlocked anyway.

SPEAKING OF FRINGE IDEAS.

The house organ for all wokeness, all the time, in higher education heaves up today's entertainment.  "The current assault on academic freedom operates through anti-Muslim racism."  Recall, dear reader, what happened when those Ivy League presidents invoked context for their assaults on academic freedom.  "People who tick the right Diversity, Inclusion, or Equity boxes will likely be promoted until they reach several rungs above their respective levels of competence."

VIVE LE DIFFERENCE.

The following headline is a candidate for a Friday short take, but for a lack of Cold Spring Shops posts elaborating on its message.

Men and women's brains do work differently, scientists discover for first time.

To borrow a maxim, if we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be research.  "That I might get into trouble claiming sex is binary, while personality is a continuum, and body types require Euclidean n-space to categorize does not mean using the left's cancel mob tactics on the left's court intellectuals in Bloomington or anywhere else."

And now, dear reader, there's evidence on the side of the binary.

The brains of men and women operate differently, scientists have shown for the first time in a breakthrough that shows sex does matter in how people think and behave.

The issue of whether male and female brains are distinct has proven controversial, with some academics arguing it is society – rather than biology – that shapes divergence.

There has never been any definitive proof of difference in activity in the brains of men and women, but Stanford University has shown that it is possible to tell the sexes apart based on activity in “hotspot” areas.

They include the “default mode network”, an area of the brain thought to be the neurological centre for “self”, and is important in introspection and retrieving personal memories.

The limbic system is also implicated, which helps regulate emotion, memory and deals with sexual stimulation, and striatum, which is important in habit forming and rewards.

There is always reason to conduct further reseach.

Dr Vinod Menon, prof of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Stanford, said: “This is a very strong piece of evidence that sex is a robust determinant of human brain organisation.”‌

“Our findings suggest that differences in brain activity patterns across these key brain regions contribute to sex-specific variations in cognitive functioning.”

However, he added that further research is needed to fully understand the implications of the findings.

‌It is well known that male and female chromosomes release sex-specific hormones in the brain, particularly in early development, puberty and during ageing.‌

In particular, might the stereotypically male or female brain functions be evolutionary adaptations?

Women tend to be better at reading comprehension and writing ability on average, and have good long term memory.

Conversely, men seem to have stronger visual and spatial awareness and better working memory.

‌Yet scientists have struggled to spot these differences in neural activity, with brain structures looking the same in men and women.‌

Selection, respectively, for gathering and nurturing, or for hunting and defending? You decide.

Dr Gina Rippon, emeritus professor of cognitive neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, and author of The Gendered Brain, has argued that society is to blame for brain differences in men and women.

‌Commenting on the study, she said: “The really intriguing issue is that those areas of the brain which are most reliably distinguishing the sexes are key parts of the social brain.

‌“The key issue is whether these differences are a product of sex-specific, biological influences, or of brain-changing gendered experiences. Or both. Are we really looking at sex differences? Or gender differences?

‌“Or, acknowledging that almost all brain–shaping factors are dynamically entangled products of both sex and gender influences, are we looking at what should be called sex/gender differences?”

Personality is a continuum. The sifting and winnowing goes on.