COHERENCE ON THE HIGH BENCH MIGHT BE A GOOD THING.

I've been fighting it out on this line for years.  [W]hen you deny coherent beliefs of any kind, you get incoherence."  But if you're Dementia Joe's diversity hire you probably think you're being profound.  Pajamas Media's Matt Margolis disagrees.  "Justice Ketanji Jackson Makes a Fool of Herself During Oral Arguments."

What did Mrs Justice Jackson say?

She attempted to draw a parallel between banning transgender procedures for minors and banning interracial marriage during the oral arguments. Her premise was nothing short of baffling. She started by saying, “Being drawn by the statute that was sort of like the starting point, the question was whether it was discriminatory because it applied to both races and it wasn’t necessarily invidious or whatever,” before trailing off in a haze of confusion.

Her argument only got more tangled as she continued, “But you know, as I read … the case here, the court starts off by saying that Virginia is now one of 16 states which prohibit and punish marriages on the basis of racial classifications.” She clearly wanted to invoke the history of racial discrimination, but the connection to the current case was tenuous, to say the least.

Then, the real leap in logic came: “And when you look at the structure of that law, it looks in terms of you can’t do something that is inconsistent with your own characteristics. It’s sort of the same thing.” The idea that prohibiting minors from receiving irreversible barbaric gender surgeries and hormones could be compared to a law prohibiting interracial marriage is, quite frankly, laughable. Jackson’s comparison seemed to rest on an assertion that both laws were somehow grounded in “inconsistency” with one’s “characteristics.”

Of course, this is the same person who infamously declared during her confirmation hearings that she couldn’t define what a woman is because “I'm not a biologist.”

Then, without missing a beat, she tried to pivot: “So it’s interesting to me that we now have this different argument, and I wonder whether Virginia could have gotten away with what they did here by just making a classification argument the way that Tennessee is in this case.” At this point, even she seemed to realize how far-fetched the analogy was.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who is at the Supreme Court arguing on behalf of the Biden administration, responded, “Yes, I think that’s exactly right that there is absolutely a parallel between any law that says you can’t act inconsistent with a protected characteristic and in all other context.”

And that, as Mr Margolis continues, is why we get more Trump.

Banning sex changes for minors and banning interracial marriage are fundamentally different and cannot be compared. Interracial marriage bans were rooted in overt racial discrimination. In contrast, bans on gender procedures for minors aim to protect children from irreversible medical interventions when they lack the maturity to make such life-altering decisions.

Interracial marriage laws targeted consenting adults, while these bans focus on protecting vulnerable youth. Comparing the two minimizes the harm of racial segregation and misrepresents the ethical concerns surrounding experimental medical treatments for children. It’s a false equivalence that undermines both history and reason.

That Our Progressive Betters hope to change the old term "sex change operation" to the murkier "gender affirming procedures" only contributes to the incoherence.  But undermining history and reason is the essence of activist scholarship, isn't it?

THE CRAZY NEVER STOPS, DOES IT?

It's not enough for Democrats to hawk their wealth taxes.

Tax-'n-spend Democrats have control of the presidency^* and both houses of Congress, and they're all about wanting to make the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes.  Perhaps  I'm too much the purist, expecting an incidence analysis to stratify tax receipts by income quintiles (deciles would be better, but that's how the empirical research goes) and then, with something resembling a good estimate of the share of taxes paid by the higher income earners, we could have a good common-room lunch session about what share was fair, or not.

That's not how things work in practice.  Rather, you get populist froth.  "The share of the nation’s wealth pie owned by the richest 0.01 percent has quadrupled over the last 70 years. Their percent of the total tax obligation has stayed the same. What’s wrong with this picture?

And apparently Old Joe screaming about how the Congressional Budget Office, or perhaps Santa's elves, anticipates that his tax on unrealized capital gains will bring in FIVE HUNDRED BILLION dollars over the next ten years isn't enough, at least for the moochers at Common Dreams.  Comparing flows with flows, that is to say, annual income taxes on annual income, is too logical.

The Tax Foundation claims instead that the Treasury report confirms that America’s rich “pay more than one-third of their annual income in federal taxes and more than 45% when state and local taxes are included.”

Indeed, the Tax Foundation adds, the total tax burden on the nation’s super wealthy can, with foreign taxes paid taken into account, run “upwards of 60% of their annual income.”

The key word here: income. The Treasury study, the Tax Foundation charges, “classifies taxpayers according to an estimate of their wealth rather than their income, with the intention of showing that the rich pay very little in taxes.” The rich, the foundation concludes, “are not undertaxed relative to their annual income.”

This Tax Foundation’s claim begs some obvious questions: What yardstick should we use to consider whether our wealthiest are paying an appropriate amount of tax? If our wealthiest, after paying their taxes, are still watching their personal wealth grow at a higher growth rate than the nation’s total wealth, are these wealthy paying their “fair tax share”?

News flash: a productive person's fair share of taxes is never enough.

What level of taxation would be required to stop America’s wealth from concentrating so furiously? To close the gap between the growth rate for the wealth of the richest Americans and our nation’s overall growth in total wealth, current combined federal and state taxes on those at the top would have to rise substantially, at least tripling.

None of these figures should come as a surprise. We’ve known for decades now about the under-taxation of America’s billionaires, a reality that rests on what may be the single most glaring flaw in America’s tax system: “adjusted gross income.” The Internal Revenue Code uses this “AGI” as the starting point for calculating federal income tax due. But “adjusted gross income”—for America’s richest taxpayers—has become and continues to be an entirely meaningless figure.

I won't tell you. Bob Lord just did.

For America’s wealthiest, adjusted gross income bears no relationship to actual economic income. Any estimate of income that places, as the AGI does, the income of the 92 richest Americans at only 1.66% of their wealth rates as essentially useless.

To sharpen this picture even more, consider the increase in tax on America’s wealthiest 367 that would be needed to freeze the increase in their share of our nation’s wealth. Avoiding a further increase in the concentration of the nation’s wealth would require an overall increase in the rate of taxes our top 367 pay to more than 150% of their adjusted gross income. If we limited their overall tax rate to a mere 100% of their adjusted gross income, their share of the country’s wealth would continue to increase.

Where does that leave us? For taxing the rich, we currently rely on an income tax based on adjusted gross income as our primary vehicle. That isn’t working. If we’re going to achieve fair share taxation of the rich, we need to scrap AGI and develop a measure of income that accurately reflects their true economic income. Otherwise, we need to tax wealth directly.

Apparently even the Eisenhower-era 90% tax bracket isn't enough.  Instead, the self-styled progressives want to "freeze the increase in their share of our nation's wealth."  Never mind that doing so might have the effect of slowing, stopping, or reducing the rate of growth of our nation's wealth.  "Since 1900, the average American’s life has improved dramatically due to various products for which the rich were willing to pay a far higher initial price."

GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM.

Before the election, Verge editor Nilay Patel offered an odd endorsement of Kamala Harris.  "A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for school shootings and measles."

We could put a pin in that, take stock of the school shootings and the measles cases, and see whether tightening up at the border has an effect on the latter.

AMTRAK, IS THIS GOOD ENOUGH?

It's easy to watch trains from my computer, and the Virtual Railfan camera watching the Galesburg passenger station draws lots of viewers, particularly when the long-distance Amtrak trains are due.

Every so often, something interesting this way comes.

That's 4.45 pm earlier this afternoon, with the westbound California Zephyr receiving passengers.  In the distance is the consist of the morning's Carl Sandburg, which terminated at Galesburg.  Amtrak's web site offers little explanation of what happened.  There is, apparently, a bus service in substitution to connect with the train for the consist's return to Chicago.  That's not exactly an endorsement of an all-weather mode, and it might be more troubles Amtrak has had protecting its state-paid Regional Rail services out of Chicago.

NEVER CHANGE, COMMON DREAMS.

Doomsday environmentalist C. J. Polychroniou has long provided us with amusement, and now he proposes to salvage the Democrats by doubling down on what lost them the election.  "We should raise walls of resistance as much as we can. More important, though, we should demand from the democratic forces to adopt a socio-economic agenda that puts people’s needs above corporate interests."

Never mind that it was the fraud of running Old Joe as a standard-issue tax-'n-spend Democrat only to implement as much of the Bernie Sanders platform as he could get Joe Manchin to go along with, while letting the alphabet people take charge of personnel that got voters angry going into the 2022 midterm elections.

Never mind that several of the Members of Congress hailed as the Squad and given disproportionate adulation in the pages of Common Dreams lost primaries to Democrats possibly closer to being standard-issue tax-'n-spenders.

GOOD NEWS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD.

Cold Spring Shops, late summer of 2023:  "As long as there are acrobats, aerialists, equestrians, jugglers, and unicyclists there will be circus."

The Northern Star, as Thanksgiving gave way to Advent.

NIU’s Circus Club began as an unofficial club in the spring 2023 semester. Within a year, the club went from being unofficial to being approved through the Student Government Association in the spring 2024 semester.

Circus Club focuses on teaching members different skills relating to the circus, such as juggling, acrobatics and unicycling.

Circus Club is currently in the process of switching from their current adviser, Benjamin Stone, an instructor in the School of Art and Design, to Michel Rodriguez-Cintra, visiting assistant professor in the School of Theatre and Dance.

Nam Pham, a junior illustration major and Circus Club founder, explained the reason for wanting to start the club.

“Two years ago, I decided to have a space where I could get some of my friends together and teach them juggling. And I decided, you know, it would be kind of cool to have that unofficially. So in order to get more outreach and more people knowing about that, I decided to make the club official with a constitution,” Pham said.

Circus Club plans to host future events and performances at NIU once time has passed and once other club members are interested in and comfortable with performing.

Good.  There's always reason to find a circus and go to it, even if that involves an intrastate rivalry with Illinois State and their Gamma Phi Circus.  Who knows, some of the members might dig into the history of the itinerant circus, including the instructional value of the menagerie, and the interaction of humans and big beasts, and become advocates for that dimension of the circus arts.

I. ADVENT

Early November brought above normal temperatures and not much rain.  There's been a cold snap since shortly before Thanksgiving, with little snow for Cold Spring Shops headquarters.

Some of the neighbors took advantage of the favorable weather to get a jump on the blinging out of the houses.

That's from the Saturday before Thanksgiving, with a scissor-lift still parked north of here to finish the work on that house.  Several more houses have also been illuminated, and the weekend after Thanksgiving seems by common consent to be when the lights come on.

The meditation from a few years ago about subsidized solar power encouraging more electricity use remains in order this Festive Season.

LET HER AGE IN PEACE.

Sixteen years ago, Rush Limbaugh called attention to a presidential hopeful's looks starting to go.  "Does Our Looks-Obsessed Culture Want to Stare at an Aging Woman?"

Oh, he caught stick for it.

We are a culture that is obsessed with looking good and perfection because it’s seen, we see, that those are the people having a good time. Those are the people that have fame. Those are the people that have wealth. Those are the people that seem to have success. So, people out there trying to emulate it, and I saw this picture on Drudge yesterday of Mrs. Clinton taken in New Hampshire. It’s not a very flattering picture, but it illustrates the toll of the campaign. If she wins the nomination, she still has basically 11 months to go with this, and it takes a strain, and men who have been president have aged more rapidly than others. You can see it! You can see all of this that I’m describing. I just asked the question: Given American culture today, will Americans want to sit around and watch a woman age that rapidly before their very eyes on television every day, as president of the United States? Well, predictably… Because I know how to push the buttons in the Drive-By Media, I even predicted what would happen: They’d take it all out of context.

The screen grab from Drudge is available here.  Eight years later Mrs Clinton made another run at the presidency, and the years, and the wine, have not been kind to her.

MATT EBERFLUS IS FIT AS A FIDDLE.

Remember when Dementia Joe face-planted in a presidential debate?

It's not that we weren't warned, as Pajamas Media's Stephen Kruiser noted.  "As recently as last Wednesday, anyone who pointed out that he's a train wreck was accused of making it up."  An editorial comment from Pravda-on-the-Hudson caught by Heather MacDonald also didn't age well.  "People are going to see actual footage [during the debate] that contradicts that [cognitive decline narrative]."  Oops, indeed.

Shortly after that performance, a number of Democrat governors met with the doddering ficus and emerged, with Minnesota's Tim "Knucklehead" Walz proclaiming ad urbi et orbi that Comrade Konstantin Ustinovich, er, Dementia Joe, was fit as a fiddle.

A few weeks later, the party rewarded the knucklehead for never thinking a figgy of himself at all by anointing him the successor to the ditzy valley girl, should she have secured the presidency after Dementia Joe renounced a nomination that was his.

Our President's recent decision not to seek a second term, followed by a lid lasting a day, and into that information vacuum came the tinfoil hat brigade.  "Into the void left by the amazing disappearing president appeared all manner of theories about what is going on. Some wilder than others. Was the president faking his Covid? Did Biden even sign his own announcement? Is he much sicker than his aides and doctors are letting on? Is he even. . . alive?"

Look, I'm prepared to credit that abdication to an undisclosed medical event in Las Vegas that got the party poobahs worried about the actuarial tables and no longer willing to roll the dice on a second term.

That noted, the way in which the party eased a sitting president into retirement was crude and nasty.  And not the crudest and nastiest exit arranged by senior management this year.  That honor, dear reader, goes to the Chicago Bears.  "Matt Eberflus gets fired in the most Bear way ever."  Not because the Bears ever excused a coach before season's end.  I lose track of how many we have documented on the day after season's end since Cold Spring Shops opened.  Rather, because the organization sent him out for the day-after call-in with the journos and then told him his services were no longer required.  "The team lets the coach do a press conference, then cans him hours later."

It's not that, in the same way we knew long ago that the sobriquet "Dementia Joe" had some meaning, we long ago saw the suckitude of the Bears.  "After this weekend, it is 'Bears fans believe Matt Eberflus finally coached his way out of a job.'  This is Alyssa Barbieri with Bears Wire writing, not some wishful thinking from the cheery side of the Cheddar Curtain."

YET ANOTHER CONTESTED THANKSGIVING.

That's a tradition almost as old as Thanksgiving, certainly as old as this weblog.  Yes, the Cranky Leftists are all over social media disinviting their relatives and preening for their comrades.  I suspect that the notion of giving thanks for a bountiful enough harvest to get through the winter long antedates Europeans settling in the Americas, and there are multiple interpretations of what those New England settlers really did.  Not that it matters.

The Packers will host an evening game in Green Bay, which will likely lead to some early Thanksgiving dinners.  The timing of the early afternoon meals might be less affected.

There will be no Friday short takes this week.

I give thanks for your readership and your comments.

Spare a few moments thanks for the young people in harm's way around the world, for the people in emergency services who deserve to sit down to the turkey without the alarm ringing, for the people in transportation, tourism, and entertainment passing on their family gatherings to enhance yours.

Postings will resume in December.

THE ADVANCE AUCTION OF STOLEN GOODS HEADS TO MARS.

Protecting competitors is not the same thing as protecting competition, but when the competition is for rents, rent-seekers seek protection.  "Musk gets a leg up from Trump in space battle vs. Bezos."

Stephen "Vodka Pundit" Green summarizes.  "Blue Origin hasn’t been able to compete so the company is crying to Capitol Hill — and garbage publications like Politico are happy to help.

YE WHO NOW WILL BLESS THE POOR, SHALL YOURSELF FIND BLESSING.

This year's tours of the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train and the Holiday Express that Kansas City Southern first offered are roaming the continent's rails.  The Canadian and United States editions of the Holiday Train, with live entertainment, are already running, and coming very soon to Greater DeKalb.

Wednesday, November 27, the United States train calls at Pingree Grove, Illinois around 9 am, Byron, Illinois around noon, and Clinton, Iowa at midafternoon.  After calls at Davenport and Muscatine, the train proceeds to the end of The Milwaukee Road at Kansas City, after which the train will get on the Route of the Flying Crow.

There will be a respite of about a week to return the train to Chicago. Saturday, December 7, the train calls at Gurnee, Illinois, and Sturtevant, Wisconsin, tying up for the night in Milwaukee.  This year's train will sojourn along former Soo Line trackage to Thief River Falls before returning to the main line through Minot to Moose Jaw.

Kansas City Southern used to operate a Holiday Express train with a similar purpose, and that will also run this Festive Season, making calls along the Meridian - Vicksburg - Baton Rouge lines that Kansas City Southern acquired to connect with the big eastern railroads, then westward leading, still proceeding, to Laredo.

These trains run to provide entertainment and an opportunity to make cash or in-kind contributions, to the local food banks along the Holiday Train's routes, and to the Salvation Army where the Holiday Express calls.

Mark your calendars and make a note in your shopping list.

DOES GET-HOME-ITIS GET LAKE BOATS WRECKED?

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down.

They're known as the gales of November, and they conjure images of hurricane-force winds, towering waves, ice-cold temperatures, and bobbing ships.

Also known as the "witches" of November, they occur between mid-October and mid-December, when storm tracks collide over the Great Lakes, creating unpredictable and violent weather. They've left the bottom of the lakes littered with wrecked ships. Maritime historians estimate they are responsible for roughly half of the shipwrecks.

They've even been immortalized in Gordon Lightfoot's enduringly popular song about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975. That tragedy claimed the lives of all 29 crew members.

Although we have a National Weather Service, if it didn't exist shipping companies and their insurers might have had reason to create a meteorological office of their own.

Much of the devastation occurred before weather forecasting technology, such as computer models, could predict when storms would strike. In fact, it was Wisconsin’s own U.S. Rep. Halbert E. Paine, a Republican, who introduced a bill in 1869 that led to the creation of the National Weather Service, aimed at improving storm forecasting on the Great Lakes.

But back in the day, these violent fall storms occurred at the end of the shipping season when companies would push to get one last voyage in before winter, said Wayne Lusardi, maritime historian with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

It's the changing of the seasons that rouse the Witch of November.

Weather is unpredictable in the fall in the Great Lakes region. It marks a time when warm air pushes northward from the Gulf of Mexico, while cold air moves south from the Arctic.

When these air masses collide, they create drastic changes in temperature and atmospheric pressure over short distances, said Craig Hill, a researcher at the University of Minnesota-Duluth’s Large Lake Observatory.

These conditions can drum up gale-force winds that in turn create large waves, Hill said. The National Weather Service classifies gale-force winds as 39 to 54 miles per hour sustained over time.

Recall, dear reader, that weather is the day-to-day changes in temperature, humidity, and rainfall, which follows seasonal oscillations.  Climate refers to the broader conditions affecting either the patterns, or lack thereof, of the weather.

BART STARR COULDN'T RETRIEVE THE MAGIC.

Neither, apparently, can Aaron Rodgers.

Aaron Rodgers, who has been described as "banged up" for the past few months, has reportedly been resisting medical scans offered by the Jets. According to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, Rodgers hasn't wanted to "reveal the severity of his injuries out of fear of having to come off the field."

"Banged up" is an all-encompassing term that's used when a player is dealing with multiple injuries, which Rodgers apparently is. But now the continuing lack of detail about his injuries makes more sense; the Jets don't know what's going on with Rodgers because he reportedly won't allow them to know. At this point, it's not clear if Rodgers even knows the specifics of his injuries.

It's possible that these injuries of unknown severity are what's preventing him from playing better. The 40-year-old is coming off an Achilles injury that took him out just four snaps into the 2023 season, and since coming back he's been a magnet for leg-related injuries. He said his knee was a bit swollen after the Jets' Week 4 loss to the Denver Broncos, but according to Rapoport, Rodgers also sustained a "significant" hamstring injury that he insisted on playing through. A week later he sustained a low ankle sprain against the Minnesota Vikings. Then in Week 7, Rodgers' hamstring issue flared up again. He has played through all of these injuries.

We've heard this story before.

The transition, though, will not go away.  "It’s a period of contemplation in the world of Green Bay Packers star Aaron Rodgers, who at age 39, is mulling retirement more seriously than ever before."  If popular sentiment mattered, the sense I'm getting is that he and Harry Sussex going on a Magical Mystery Tour would be just fine.  Perhaps he gets full range of motion back in his thumb, and his ribs heal, but I keep having those memories of a battered Bart Starr hoping to find the magic again.

The Packers made it back to the playoffs at the end of the 2023 season and just took out some frustrations on the 49ers.

The Jets?  There's only so far you can wish upon a star.

With just six games left in the season and the Jets committing to a rebuild after firing their head coach and GM, Rodgers' reported resistance to team medical treatment may be connected with his desire to play in 2025. If he sits or is put on injured reserve, he has no chance to show any improvement or prove to at least one GM or owner that he's got enough left in the tank as a (soon-to-be) 41-year-old to lead a team to glory.

Playing through multiple injuries may not be the best way for Rodgers to accomplish that, but if he wants to suit up as a starting quarterback in 2025, he may decide it's his only option.

Whether his chances of returning the Jets to the playoffs in another season get any better after being battered up all of this season is for physicians and athletic trainers to judge.

THE MARGIN OF ERROR IN FORECASTING.

You don't have to be a weatherman to have doubts about Thanksgiving week snow.  "Why is there uncertainty in our forecast during the middle of the week? Two storm systems are expected to pass over the central US this week. If they merge together, the chance for wintry weather will increase. However, they may not merge, and we may not see any snow at all. Stay up to date on the forecast!"

The link is likely to expire or have revised text later in the week.

Complex adaptive systems tend to do what they d@mn well please, and that includes late-fall weather in the Great Lakes.  Whether Cold Spring Shops will be getting immediate gratification from a new snow-thrower or not does not, by itself, confirm or refute any of the predictions of climate chaos.

That work on the complex dynamics has yet to capture some of the essential elements, including circulation of the oceans.

Moreover, even once the climatologists figure out cause and effect in a dynamical system, they might do well to respect a division of labor in policy making.  "[L]et us unbundle the confirmation of climate change hypotheses from the discussion of policies to reduce human influences thereupon.  Doing so is not as easy as it looks."

We'll take stock of the snow that falls, or not, as well as the outcome of this fall's hurricane season, early in December.

YES, THERE IS A SIMPLER EXPLANATION.

The opening hour or so of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show today got into riling up the Trump voters probably over nothing.  Last week New York's Times did an analysis of voting patterns (now that most of the votes are counted) and concluded that losing Democrat Kamala Harris lost more votes than Donald Trump gained.

Donald Trump won the election by winning the most votes. He improved on his totals, adding about 2.5 million more votes than four years ago. But just as consequential to the outcome were Kamala Harris’s losses: She earned about 7 million fewer votes compared with Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s performance in 2020.

Ms. Harris failed to find new voters in three of the seven swing states and in 80 percent of counties across the country, a New York Times analysis shows. In the places where she matched or exceeded Mr. Biden’s vote totals, she failed to match Mr. Trump’s gains.

Mr Travis is puzzled by the large vote total Dementia Joe racked up (it's a common trope among the populists, see also Stephen "Vodka Pundit" Green's references to "President LOL 81 million") and asserts "Watch Clay dig into the New York Times story of the final election totals and ask how it’s possible that, in fair elections, Joe Biden outperformed both Kamala and Barack Obama. (Hint: It’s not.)"

THE BELPOT TROPHY.

There's professional hockey in the United Kingdom, and the Belfast Giants and their home arena have been sponsoring something called the Friendship Four Tournament.  It appears to take place over the long Thanksgiving weekend, when teams travelling for tournaments is common, and that leaves Groundhoug Day for the Beanpot Tournament in Boston.

THE END OF THE LITTLE STEAM ERA.

For years, there have been steam trains allowing visitors to view the outdoor exhibits at the Milwaukee County Zoo.  The trains entered service before all the animals moved from the old zoo in Washington Park to the current zoo.  Its initial purpose was to allow visitors, mostly county tax payers, to see what they were getting.

Not too long ago, though, the zoo sold train naming rights to North Shore Bank, and the bank thoughtfully provided a brief history of the Zoo Line.

The post that noted the sale of naming rights also noted that the steam locomotives, one of which served as a test bed for torreified biomass, a coal substitute that captures carbon in plants.  I've not seen any recent developments from that Coalition for Sustainable Rail, perhaps I should put the Democrat implosion and the follies on campus on hold and have a look.

The steamers have transported their last carloads of children of all ages.

They're headed home.  The property of the Sandley Light Railway Equipment Company, relocated for the benefit of Wisconsin Dells tourists, remains as the Riverside and Great Northern miniature railroad for tourists, and the two Milwaukee Zoo steamers, named for Milwaukee Journal senior executives, are now being serviced in the workshop where they were built.

The Zoo trains will continue to operate, with more environmentally friendly diesels.

It's probably too much to ask for North Shore Bank to invest in solar panels or a windmill, string wire, and operate their own North Shore Line.

MY NAME IS ACADEME, AND I AM A FAILURE.

I have been calling attention for years, and don't mind at all when people with bigger platforms than mine recognize that the first step in correcting failure is to admit failure.  The refreshingly solid Republican victories in national election might be the sort of evidence that would encourage academicians to revise their priors.  Let's start with Michael Clune, professor of English at Case Western, with "We Asked for It" in the house organ for business as usual.

Over the past 10 years, I have watched in horror as academe set itself up for the existential crisis that has now arrived. Starting around 2014, many disciplines — including my own, English — changed their mission. Professors began to see the traditional values and methods of their fields — such as the careful weighing of evidence and the commitment to shared standards of reasoned argument — as complicit in histories of oppression. As a result, many professors and fields began to reframe their work as a kind of political activism.

In reading articles and book manuscripts for peer review, or in reviewing files when conducting faculty job searches, I found that nearly every scholar now justifies their work in political terms. This interpretation of a novel or poem, that historical intervention, is valuable because it will contribute to the achievement of progressive political goals. Nor was this change limited to the humanities. Venerable scientific journals — such as Nature — now explicitly endorse political candidates; computer-science and math departments present their work as advancing social justice. Claims in academic arguments are routinely judged in terms of their likely political effects.

The costs of explicitly tying the academic enterprise to partisan politics in a democracy were eminently foreseeable and are now coming into sharp focus.

Democracy is about emergence in government. The academic enterprise is about emergence in understanding.  It sounds like I got out just before the real nonsense took over.  Or perhaps higher education reverted to its roots in the seminary.  (Is it any accident, dear reader, that Joe Stalin was a seminarian at one time?)

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The President Needs Less Power.  Trump won.  "His candidacy was a rare opportunity to register an audible dissent from woke impositions that, otherwise, have had to be suffered in silence."  Britons noticed.  "The voters gave the tiresome snobs (elites) and scolds (culture warriors) a big ‘FU’ in return."  Voters didn't see a monster.  "He's a political wrecking ball and a cultural icon."  A wrecking ball Democrats brought on themselves.  "My schadenfreude toward the Democrats is totally untrammeled. I wanted to see them pay a price for their derangements."  The Trump Counterrevolution is a Return to Sanity.

The election aftermath continues to roil the Smart People, and the final Friday short takes before Thanksgiving features a prologue of Wagnerian proportions.  There will be no Black Friday short takes.

First, smug loses.  "Democratic strategists fixated on defending the status quo, telling voters struggling to make ends meet that they didn’t understand the economy and that it was doing fine. If the public is upset and an incumbent party just replies, 'No, it’s OK, you just don’t get it,' that incumbent is cruising for defeat; this is a lesson Democrats should have underlined when Hillary Clinton’s smug rejoinder to the Trump movement—'America is already great'—fell so completely flat. But because of their own class-inflected blind spots, that continues to be the basic message liberals send to the American people: 'You don’t get it.' And the message in return was, 'No, you don’t get it.'"  Will the establishmentarians get it good and hard?  Not just yet.  "In one sanctimonious declaration after another, Democrats are registering their disgust for the people they blame most for losing the 2024 presidential election. The American people."  So it always is with losing skippers.  Down goes MSNBC.  "There is reason to believe that MSNBC is uniquely ill-suited to bounce back in the post-Biden era. The network's top personalities exude all of the traits many Democrats argue have caused the party to lose touch with normal Americans. Sneering condescension. Inscrutable woke vocabulary. A tendency to embrace bizarre conspiracy theories and view every political problem through the lens of patriarchal white supremacy."

Second, Constitutional norms matter.  "Populism has always been an essential element of the coalition of the right, and it has a lot to offer in a time of elite failure and a collapse of trustworthiness. But left to itself, it tends toward a corrosive alienation from American institutions, and toward the rejection of the boundaries of republican government. Populism must be balanced by conservatism, which pushes back on both fronts and which is also utterly essential at this moment."

Third, the strongest case for limiting the power of the presidency is the power of the presidency itself.  "Trump himself has always been a form of snapback against the overreach of what came before. Barack Obama tried to remake American politics in his image: high-handed, intersectional and replete with authoritarian overtones. Trump came along and ripped the idol off his pedestal. Joe Biden tried to transform American politics by radically reinterpreting the bargain between American citizens and their government. Trump is returning to reject that never-requested transformation."

Fourth, advise and consent is real.  "Hegseth’s nomination, which came as a shock to members of Congress who will ultimately be asked to vote to confirm him, reflects a broader trend among Trump’s Cabinet-level nominations and White House appointments — grievance-fueled loyalists whose disdain for a perceived establishment matches Trump’s wrecking-ball approach to governing and disregard for expertise and experience in a government that tens of millions of Americans depend on."  Expertise and experience hasn't held up so well recently, has it?

Fifth, getting mugged by reality changes minds.  "I have voted Democrat all my life. I supported soft-on-crime candidates because I didn’t want to see people go to prison and lose their chance at a better life. But now I see the ruin that we have to live with as a result of these policies. The white liberals in the suburbs do not live with the consequences of their votes."

Sixth, there might be a way out of the punishment cycles.  "Please don’t do to us what we were going to do to you. Schumer is obviously concerned that Republicans might embrace a scheme to eliminate the filibuster and pass all sorts of consequential legislation with no Democratic input at all. That wouldn’t be bipartisan! Fortunately for Schumer, Republicans have been more principled than Democrats when it comes to the legislative filibuster, and to the filibuster in general. Republicans realize that even though they will have the majority for the next two years, they might be back in the minority at any time after that. So Schumer will not get it good and hard the way he planned to give it to Republicans."  Norms exist for a reason.  “When I am the weaker, I ask you for my freedom, because that is your principle; but when I am the stronger, I take away your freedom, because that is my principle.”

The weekly round-up of pithy (below the jump, they will be) elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

WASTE NOT, WANT NOT.

Second-hand Rose, second-hand clothes.

One of the themes explored in “Dress Codes” will be re-wearing, and how the Royal family have been interested in passing down and repairing their clothing through generations – since well before the current Princess of Wales, Princess Royal and the King became heralded as sustainability role models thanks to their modern-day approaches.

A pair of Liberty print dresses that belonged to a young Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret are a particularly special example, says Matthew Storey, a curator at Historic Royal Palaces.

Royals or not, they were Depression babies, and "use it up" is good advice, in New England or Olde England.

“The dresses are in a Liberty print which dates from 1936, we’ve traced it in their archive,” he explains. “They are in this classic, quality British fabric and when you look at the bigger dress in particular you can see all of the evidence of the history of this object and the way it was worn by Queen Elizabeth II when she was a child.”

The larger of the two dresses shows signs firstly of being tailored to accommodate a growing Princess Elizabeth.

“You can see how it was let out,” Storey notes, “and it probably originally had quite a large hem allowance at the bottom from which they’ve taken fabric, and then added that at the waist to make the bodice a bit longer. They’ve also taken panels and added them at the side of the bodice as well to make it larger. When you look at the making up close, it looks as if it was all done by hand at home – these are skills that would have existed in the Royal household.”

There is also a suggestion that the dress has then been adjusted further, in order to likely become a “hand me down” for Princess Margaret, who was four years younger than her sister. While the princesses will have initially matched in their co-ordinated frocks, the larger of the two is evidently more faded, says Storey, implying that it was washed and worn many more times overall.

Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without is sound advice no matter what your station.  Mr Storey concludes, “We can’t tell for sure [there are no photographs in the public domain to firm up the evidence], but it makes sense, as that’s what many aristocratic families would have done at the time. The bigger dress is clearly more faded, and has also got a couple of little stains on it, which we would never remove, because it’s evidence of wear.”  Well, yes, treating garments as disposable when the subjects are mending and mending can irritate the subjects, with pitchforks and torches to follow.

THE EXURBAN ENVIRONMENT CONTINUES TO BE EMERGENT.

A recent Associated Press analysis suggests, "Forget downtown or the ’burbs. The far-flung exurbs are where people are moving."  The story starts in Haines City, Florida, a little off the course of Brightline's projected extension.

Not long ago, Polk County’s biggest draw was citrus instead of people. Located between Tampa and Orlando, Florida’s citrus capital produces more boxes of citrus than any other county in the state and has devoted tens of thousands of acres to growing millions of trees.

But last year, more people moved to the county than to any other in the United States, almost 30,000.

Bulldozed citrus groves in recent years made way for housing and big box stores that could one day merge the two metropolitan areas into what has half-jokingly been dubbed, “Orlampa.”

The migration — and property sprawl — reflects a significant kind of growth seen all over the country this decade: the rise of the far-flung exurbs.

Outlying communities on the outer margins of metro areas — some as far away as 60 miles (97 kilometers) from a city’s center — had some of the fastest-growing populations last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Those communities are primarily in the South, like Anna on the outskirts of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area; Fort Mill, South Carolina, outside Charlotte, North Carolina; Lebanon outside Nashville; and Polk County’s Haines City.

The article suggests this part of Florida has not yet become stroad hell.

For some residents, like Marisol Ortega, commuting to work can take up to an hour and a half one-way. But Ortega, who lives in Haines City about 40 miles (64 kilometers) from her job in Orlando, says it’s worth it.

“I love my job. I love what I do, but then I love coming back home, and it’s more tranquil,” Ortega said.

And some of this dispersion might be a rethinking of cities in an age of plague. "The rapid growth of far-flung exurbs is an after-effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Census Bureau, as rising housing costs drove people further from cities and remote working allowed many to do their jobs from home at least part of the week."

The suburban and exurban land use patterns continue to be emergent.  And people have this tendency to do what they perceive to be best irrespective of the nudges of the Wise Experts.

Residential density makes getting to work or going shopping using the transportation company easier, perhaps at a greater risk of a plague running rampant. At the same time, though, orderly zoning appealed to the brains trusts of the era, and the rapid transit services that might have been laid down in anticipation of people building further from the cities was gone, a Depression era casualty of the Public Utility Holding Company Act.   Thus we get the exurban development pattern.

Which will take on forms that cannot be anticipated, let alone planned. "[T]he best thing for the Wise Experts to do is to lie down until the urge to micromanage goes away."

LOSING SKIPPERS BLAME THE WEATHERMAN.

Back in 2016, when it was dawning on the pundit class that Donald Trump's message was resonating with enough primary voters, the Wise Experts opted to dial up the scolding.

It's the presidential season, and the developments thus far have pushed the chattering classes into Bertolt Brecht territory, thinking it's easier for the punditry to abolish the people.  When it comes to the Republican voters, we have Juan "How the U.S. Went Fascist: Mass Media Make Excuses for Trump Voters" Cole and Sean "America, you're stupid: Donald Trump's political triumph makes it official -- we're a nation of idiots" Illing.  Follow the links if you want the supporting arguments, such as they are.  David "The Governing Cancer of Our Time" Brooks at least makes the reader read the column to see that, he, too, would prefer to cut out the cancer abolish the people.

I had other things to occupy my attention at the time.  The continuous display track under Cold Spring Shops headquarters was still being built while the punditry came to terms with a Trump presidency.  That section went into service during that term.

CARRY-OUT PIZZA UPSTAGES CURATED CATERED MEAL.

Dear reader, if you remember this, what comes after the quotation will be self-evident.  "Hell is either being trapped in a monologue given by a vegan, or by an egalitarian outraged that some people spend five thousand bucks on an ugly coat."

THERE THEY GO AGAIN.

Shortly after Donald Trump won the presidency the first time, one of the smug coastal cosmopolitans sketched a cartoon that was hailed by all the other Credentialed Fools.

My Chicago Boyz colleague David Foster notes the cartoon is not the flex the Fools think it is.

[T]he pilot does not choose your destination.  You do that yourself…if you are an airline passenger, by choosing the airline and the flight, if you’re going by charter or are the airplane owner, by telling the pilot directly where you want to go.  But in neither case will you hear the pilot say, “Hey, you guys are kind of out of shape; forget Florida, we’re going to Minnesota for cross-country skiing and ice fishing.”

He notes a number of other things, including division of labor among experts.

[A]lthough the pilot in command is responsible for and is the final authority as to the operation of that aircraft, he is also responsible for gathering information from multiple sources relevant to the safe conduct of the flight: weather information, fuel calculations, airspace restrictions, mechanical condition of the aircraft, etc. He can’t just say well, the plane is in good shape and there’s plenty of fuel to get there, so let’s go. Compare and contrast with the politician who in making a ‘lockdown’ decision chooses to rely only on the opinions of virologists and epidemiologists, while ignoring any information about the effects on schoolchildren and small businesses.

A commenter quips, "Expert. That word is well on the way to meaning something like 'overly credentialed fool.'"

It does not have to be this way, and yet, dear reader, don't contemporary technocrats put a lot of their efforts into undoing the errors of past technocrats?  "Internal improvements."  Eugenics.  Urban renewal.

FINDING THE MISSING MEN.

Outkick's Clay Travis suggests, in "The Era of Woke Sports Is Dead," that they were in hiding.  On one level, he's explaining the recent popularity of the Trump Dance.  "It speaks to Trump's innate marketing gifts that he managed to design a new, somehow more popular dance to the YMCA song that replaced the gay singers with the subtle fist pump movements and light swivel of a 78-year-old man."

SAFETY APPLIANCES MAKE DRIVERS LESS VIGILANT.

That's a corollary to "Automobiles go faster because they have brakes."

That observation, which I believe originated with George Stigler, also provoked research into the unintended consequences of crashworthiness standards.  Much of the early work was by Professor Stigler's colleague Sam Peltzman, thus any reference to more injuries and deaths accompanying tightened safety standards becomes a Peltzman Effect.

Put ever better autopilots in automobiles, and watch the drivers disengage.  "Tesla has the deadliest cars on the road today. According to a new study from iSeeCars, Tesla vehicles have the highest fatal crash rate among all vehicle brands in the United States."

Jalopnik contributor Andy Kalmowitz calls the roll of the motor vehicles operated most recklessly.

The study, conducted on 2018-2022 model year vehicles, looked at crashes between 2017 and 2022 that resulted in at least one of the occupants’ death. It found that Teslas have a fatal crash rate of 5.6 per billion miles driven.  Kia came in second with a rate of 5.5, followed by Buick at 4.8, Dodge at 4.4 and Hyundai at 3.9. For reference, iSeeCars says the overall average was 2.8, meaning the average Tesla crash is twice as deadly as average.

The study looked into more than just automakers, though. It also broke vehicles down by individual model. It still wasn’t pretty for Tesla. The Tesla Model Y had a 10.6 fatal crash rate. That’s nearly five times the average for SUVs, and it was the sixth worth score overall. (The Hyundai Venue,  Chevy Corvette, Mitsubishi Mirage, Porsche 911 and Honda CR-V Hybrid were above it). The Model S’s score came in at 5.8, two times the average.

To be fair to Tesla, these numbers don’t automatically mean its cars are unsafe for occupants. It has a lot more to do with how people drive these cars.

It could be, as Mr Kalmowitz suggests, that Tesla owners "tend to drive like goons," and surely there are a lot of cars in that list that figure in the same sort of slanging matches that accompany the big pickup trucks.  Streetsblog's Blake Aued, however, notes "That likely has to do with inattentive or impaired drivers overly relying on its automated features."

Professors Peltzman and Stigler would approve of the inference.

LIFE GOES ON.

The south end of the powered display track at Cold Spring Shops headquarters represents a section of the South Donetsk Railway somewhere along the boundaries of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic and the Ukrainian S. S. R.  The bridge over the escape well exit is installed in such a way as to be easily removed or sacrificed in extremis.

In real life, a bridge of that size would have its own antiaircraft defense installation.  Models of a suitable Soviet portable antiaircraft gun exist, and from time to time they turn up on Amazon or other collectible or resale sites.

The instructions are primarily illustrations, although there is advice in English and a few other languages.  Note, though, the package it arrived in.

Despite the exigencies of a wartime economy, a trader somewhere in Ukraine had some of this model to sell, and an Amazon presence from whence to sell it, and the postal service was still handling such parcels.

ELECTION AFTERMATH WISDOM.

Outside the Beltway's James Joyner comes to terms with the verdict of the people.

I was a regular viewer of “Morning Joe” once upon a time, but it has been years. Mostly, my morning routine has just changed, and it’s now rare, indeed, that I turn on a television before 8 pm on a weekday.

While I never thought they were actively working to get Trump elected, Joe and Mika clearly had a personal relationship with him. And they were adamant that those of us dismissing his chances of becoming the 2016 Republican nominee were missing the boat. Eventually, for whatever reason, they soured on him and he, as is his penchant, went after them in the most ugly manner.

That they’ve now gone the way of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, ignoring past humiliations to ingratiate themselves with him, is indeed worthy of ridicule.

If one ignores the personal baggage, though, they have a point. Like it or not—and, I suspect they like it even less than I do—Trump is once again the President-Elect and will once again serve a four-year term as President of the United States. It rather behooves the hosts of a political talk show to have access to him, both to be better-informed commentators and to be able to book him as a guest on their air. It’s not only good for their ratings, it benefits their audience.

Exactly.  Donald Trump is a counterpuncher.  But dialing up the alarm in response to his antics wastes your time and annoys the Militant Normals.

But what if one merely thinks, as I do, that Trump is morally and temperamentally unfit to the highest office in the world but is nonetheless the legitimate holder of said office? In that case, it seems to me, one in fact normalizes him in the sense of treating him as though he were indeed the President and then holding him to the standards of a normal President.

When he nominates reasonably qualified people to key posts, it seems perfectly reasonable to acknowledge that. In so doing, it makes calling out obviously-unqualified nominees more impactful.

When he proposes perfectly normal policy ideas one happens to disagree with, disagree with them as though they were a normal policy idea proposed by the leader of a legitimate opposition party. And when he opposes policy ideas that violate the Constitution or basic norms of human decency, label them accordingly.

I’ve been rather resolute in defending Republican politicians for aquiescing to the fact that the Republican nominating electorate has repeatedly chosen Trump as the leader of their party. Ditto journalists who treat the Republican frontrunner/nominee/President-Elect/President as though he was those things. The problem comes when they treat truly outrageous behavior as “just politics.”

The Professional-Managerial Classes have brought the outrageous behavior on themselves.  Fall back on the outrage and the credential-displaying, and watch the punishment cycles continue.

SNOWFLAKE, GET A LIFE.

Those Ausfall reenactors in the Donk coalition get their fragility early.  "I’m 16. On Nov. 5 the Girls Cried, and the Boys Played Minecraft."

On the morning after the election, I walked up the staircase of my school. A preteen was crying into the shoulders of her braces-clad peer. Her friend was rubbing circles on her back.

I continued up the stairs to the lounge, where upperclassmen linger before classes. There I saw two tables: One was filled with my girlfriends, many of them with hollows under their eyes. There was a blanket of despair over the young women in the room. I looked over to the other table of teenage boys and saw Minecraft on their computers. While we were gasping for a breath, it seemed they were breathing freely.

The author is Naomi Beinart, junior at a high school not otherwise specified, relationship to any of journalism's Beinarts not specified.

ILLINOIS, RUNNING OUT OF DEMENTIA JOE'S HANDOUTS.

It was all printed money, and even that wasn't enough for the Combine.

That Illinois budget surplus of a year ago?  "Illinois state government received all sorts of fiat money from the Democrat state bailout masquerading as a 2021 coronavirus relief appropriation."  Oh, and all that posturing about Chicago being a sanctuary city and Illinois a sanctuary state?  There's no more printed money coming in, and the potbellied dictator has had enough.

There will be a proper border tsar starting next year, which might solve the stress on social services in Chicago.

NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR A WIN.

I probably shouldn't have taunted Chicago radio last week.  The Packers did not play their best football on Sunday.  By a fingernail, though, the game was a win.

No apologies pic.twitter.com/rc1aAkxJWs

— Green Bay Packers (@packers) November 17, 2024

And yes, that was the right player earning the game ball.

IS THERE NOTHING DONALD TRUMP CAN'T DO?

A recent Mahablog headline says it all, doesn't it?  "Trump Is Preparing to Gut the Defense Department."

Wait, hasn't that been a pacifist fantasy for years?

The Trump transition team is compiling a list of senior current and former U.S. military officers who were directly involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and exploring whether they could be court-martialed for their involvement, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the plan.

Officials working on the transition are considering creating a commission to investigate the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, including gathering information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military, how it was carried out and whether the military leaders could be eligible for charges as serious as treason, the two sources said.

It's an NBC article, there's not much in the way of sourcing, and Team Trump isn't talking to the legacy media.  It's interesting how the Mahablog addresses that treason.  "Just the use of the word 'treason' tells me the people pursuing this are extremists and fanatics who want to punish someone, not people who are serious about improving the military."

Couldn't we have said the same thing about having Melvin Laird in the dock as a war criminal?

MAKE COLLEGE GREAT AGAIN.

Kamala, you're FIRED.

VICTORY DANCE: Fraternity brothers at the University of Missouri showcased their support for Trump's presidential victory by dancing to the song “YMCA,” which Trump often dances to at his rallies. pic.twitter.com/e3ymRwgQlY

— Fox News (@FoxNews) November 10, 2024

The Trump Dance made an appearance last week at Huskie Stadium.

College Football players are now doing the Trump dance in the end zone.

Love to see it 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/VdT6tq3cPa

— AG 🔥 (@Yolo304741) November 10, 2024

Another excerpt from Huskie Stadium made a compilation Representative Byron Donalds posted well and truly stealing the joy from Knucklehead.   It's 30 seconds or so in.

Make America Fun Again 🇺🇸 #TrumpDance pic.twitter.com/8ejExxt7B1

— Byron Donalds (@ByronDonalds) November 17, 2024

A youngster called Angela Rose put together her own, narrated compilation, which also features Northern Illinois at about 2:45 in.

"You notice how most people are happy about this?"

Twitchy's Eric V. put together a collection of more Trump dance videos, as did Andrea Widburg.  The Trump-tutsi?

Be joyful, but brace yourself to your duties.  Sad-sacks in the Andrea Tate mold are still among us.

OH, GET A LIFE.

Andrea Tate must be a lot of fun to hang out with.  "My Husband And His Family Voted For Trump — So I'm Canceling Thanksgiving And Christmas."

I knew he voted red. He knew I voted blue. I had hoped the most capable and most inclusive candidate would win. He hoped his idea of a better America would win. He won, and, from where I stand, America lost.

In the aftermath of Tuesday night’s results, still under the bed covers Wednesday morning, I scrolled social media looking for hope. I unfriended a few short-sighted FB friends— no need to continue our digital relationships and witness their selfishness and hate. Then I saw my husband’s post.

“God Bless America. God bless #45, 47.”

It's not enough for her to cancel people on Facebook, she's got to henpeck her husband.

It had a few likes, and a few commenters joined him in his celebration. He was downstairs in the kitchen making coffee, and I was upstairs avoiding him. I couldn’t talk to him — or even look at him.

I immediately texted, “I love you, but out of respect for me and all my liberal writer friends, can you please take down that post? Also, tell your family I love them, but I will not be coming for Thanksgiving, and I won’t be hosting Christmas. I need space.”

He lets things cool off and brings her a cup of coffee and still she's being bitchy.

I spent most of the morning doom-scrolling next to the cold cup of coffee I ignored partially because I was distracted, primarily out of spite. I finally got up, made the bed, went outside into the beautiful sunny day, took a few deep breaths, and then went back upstairs to unmake the bed and spend the remainder of the day in it.

He went to work — I assumed energized by Trump’s victory.

It's whiny snowflakes of her ilk that ought to be reason for Democrats to be out of power for a generation.  But, in the manner of culture-studies types, the sulking, and the drafting of a memoir about it, goes on and on.

The next day, I finally emerged and listened to Kamala’s concession speech. She reminded us, “Only when it’s dark enough can you see the stars.”

I wrote to my artist friends and told them to keep shining their lights. I wrote to my musician son in college and his songwriter girlfriend. I told them to keep creating. I wrote to my young nieces, who were terrified, and told them I was there for them. I wrote to my beautiful gay cousin and said I loved him and was thinking of him and his partner.

I kept writing.

I received a message from a family member who told me her Ukrainian friend was petrified. Another message came in from an actor friend who said she was afraid that the damage that will be done in the next four years could never be undone. One of my sisters wrote and said she had a panic attack and had to leave work. One of my students rescheduled our afternoon appointment saying she just couldn’t function.

It's only an election.  But academic weenies have been declaring the end of the world when a Democrat loses for a long time.  (And now Dementia Joe is authorizing more powerful missiles for Ukraine's arsenal.  Go figure.)  But Whiny Andrea might be going all Lysistrata on her long-suffering husband.

Later that night, I briefly glanced at my husband and found myself not wanting to look into the eyes I love. I hated this divide. I wanted to touch his forearms and feel our connection, but I also felt an urge to punish him and deny him my touch.

“I am sorry about the holidays, but I cannot bite my tongue like I did with Hillary,” I told him. “I don’t want to disrespect your parents or your brother and his family in their home, or our home, so it’s best this way. No scenes. You can go see them. Seriously — I will not be in a room of 15 people who voted for Trump.”

He mentioned our son and his girlfriend, who are coming home for Christmas.

But she's the foolish one.

I have wondered that since 2016, when I saw my husband’s stubbornness. How could a Latino vote for Trump? How can any of his family members vote for him? Haven’t they believed any of Trump’s comments about immigration? Aren’t they worried about the reproductive safety of the young women and girls in our family? Aren’t they worried about all of the other nightmares that could be headed our way?

I was surprised he didn’t argue about the change in holiday plans. Normally, it would be a bone of contention because of how close he is to his family. Somewhere inside, he must understand what this election outcome means to me. I know he has empathy for me, for which I am thankful. I will hold onto this like a life raft as I try to figure out how we move forward with our marriage.

It goes on in a similar vein for many more paragraphs.  Andrea Tate is not a keeper.  Perhaps her long-suffering husband will figure it out.

SUMMONING THE ECHOES.

Trains contributor Kevin P. Keefe provides today's ferroequinology.  "Brightline conjures the glory of Florida East Coast passenger trains."

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The Militant Normals are on the side of reality.  Cultural curators never saw it.  "Voters didn’t just vote for Trump. They voted against the elitist institutions."  Buckle in for more hysteria.  "The party that said democracy was on the ballot is now the most antidemocratic force in modern history."  Van Jones filled the score card in correctly.   “We got whooped. We got whooped, and we did not understand that.”  Voters had reason to administer that whooping.  “Because ‘crazy’ doesn’t look down on me. ‘Preachy’ does.”  (Don't hector me and call it dialogue.)  Normals want to be left alone.  "Nothing has escaped your overreach, not gas stoves, raw milk, plastic bags, or straws. You infringed on our rights to free speech to refuse untested vaccines and move about unmasked."  Normals reject Expert Failure.  "The American people are sick and tired of having Beltway elitism shoved in their faces as the only way to run the government. The current regime of left-wing four-star generals and DoD lackeys has produced one of the most disastrous tenures in the Pentagon's history."

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

IMITATION BEARS.

They weren't wearing blue jerseys with orange trim.

Officials arrested four people in California this week after state investigators said they committed insurance fraud by claiming a animal damaged their vehicles, when in reality it was someone wearing a bear costume.

Los Angeles-area residents Ruben Tamrazian, 26, Ararat Chirkinian, 39, Vahe Muradkhanyan, 32, and Alfiya Zuckerman, 39, are each charged with insurance fraud and conspiracy in connection to the reported scam, the state Department of Insurance announced.

The state agency's investigation began after an insurance company suspected fraud earlier this year, according to a news release.

The story provided a few moments of levity for Red State contributor Ward Clark.   "Attempted Insurance Scam Bearly Believable."

It's no surprise that the fuzz caught up with them, and ended up being the bearer of bad news. Well, bad for them - good for the insurance company. I'm sure there is a claws in the insurance contract that permits them to deny payment when obvious fraud is involved. And honestly, you don't have to be a biologist to spot this as an obvious fake. A person in a bear suit looks and moves nothing like an actual bear. This attempt at a fast and furry-ous scam was doomed to fail from the moment they pawsed to put on the fake bear claws.

Imagine if they had gotten away with it - imagine how many people would have tried to duplicate the scam. It would be panda-monium!

The story came to my attention Thursday morning during a WLS drive-time clip (that elective drive time in order to secure a Starbucks Festive Season cup) that the reporters decided to wrap up with a song Chicagoans have come to realize is true.

It's Packer weekend, no less.