PRESIDENTIAL PARDONS ON AN INDUSTRIAL SCALE.

The current president followed up on his controversial pardon of his bagman prodigal son by issuing pardons the way his Treasury printed money.

President Joe Biden is commuting the sentences of roughly 1,500 people who were released from prison and placed on home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic and is pardoning 39 Americans convicted of nonviolent crimes. It's the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history.

The commutations announced Thursday are for people who have served out home confinement sentences for at least one year after they were released. Prisons were uniquely bad for spreading the virus and some inmates were released in part to stop the spread.

In principle, the action sounds reasonable, if people who are under house arrest and have behaved themselves, perhaps they have earned clemency.  That appears to be Our President's thinking.

“America was built on the promise of possibility and second chances,” Biden said in a statement. “As president, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, restoring opportunity for Americans to participate in daily life and contribute to their communities, and taking steps to remove sentencing disparities for non-violent offenders, especially those convicted of drug offenses.”

The clemency follows a broad pardon for his son Hunter, who was prosecuted for gun and tax crimes. Biden is under pressure from advocacy groups to pardon broad swaths of people, including those on federal death row, before the Trump administration takes over in January.

He's not done, though, and what he has done thus far is not sitting well with everyone.

Just because someone wasn't convicted of a violent crime doesn't mean they haven't committed violent crimes for which they were never caught. With the way plea deals work today, a good lawyer can plead down almost any crime to a misdemeanor.

It's an abuse of the president's clemency power. Historically, clemency, for the most part, has been granted selectively and carefully.  But Biden's mania for being the first president to name someone of this race or gender to an important job or be the first president to visit this or that country or be the first president to do the most, the largest, the most spectacular, the most awe-inspiring feat in history knows no bounds.

Yes, there are two Illinois white-collar criminals that some flatlander pundits would prefer to be kept out of circulation.  "President Joe Biden on Thursday commuted the sentences of two of the Chicago area’s most notorious fraudsters: former Dixon Comptroller Rita Crundwell, who embezzled nearly $54 million from the tiny town to fund a lavish lifestyle, and Eric Bloom, the onetime leader of a Northbrook management firm who defrauded investors of more than $665 million."  The comptroller misappropriated state property to support her equestrian hobby, and the investment manager crashed his company.

Then come both the libertarian Reason and communist Common Dreams finding the pardon of a "kids-for-cash" judge in Pennsylvania a pardon too far.  "The news that [Michael] Conahan was granted clemency has marred the White House announcement and led to negative media coverage—understandably."

It being the Christmas season, there are people who would like there to be further pardons, in particular prisoners guilty of capital crimes.  "Among the defendants [c.q.] are the Boston marathon bomber and the gunmen responsible for killing nine black parishioners at a South Carolina church and 11 Jewish people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pennsylvania."  Those pardons do not have to be exonerations, they might be commutations of sentence, say, to natural life without parole.

THE MEDIAN VOTERS STAY HOME.

Never attribute to malice that which might better be understood as apathy.

Put simply, some of those Obama-Trump-Biden voters from 2020 might have switched back to Trump, and some of them, having seen both Trump 1.0 and Biden 1.0 saw enough that was unsatisfactory in either presidency to have stayed home this time.  A Politico analysis of turnout and voting in six swing state cities (Atlanta, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Phoenix) suggests as much.

We were aware of those motivations last July, thanks in part to some thinking by Daniel McCarthy.  "He refers, there, to the base voters, although in that litany of policy failures, he's calling attention to the more glaring reasons for the reluctant Biden voter — not necessarily a Republican-leaning voter — to this time stay home, vote for the Free Soiler or Cornel West or who have you, or even tick the Trump box."  And I cautioned you, dear reader, not to draw any conclusions until all the votes were tallied and the counts certified.  "Let's all enjoy Thanksgiving and the beginning of Advent and wait for those certified totals, generally coming in mid-December, before claiming anything more nefarious than more than a few 2020 voters staying home on Election Day this year."

SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE.

In the case of the oh-so-woke University of Pennsylvania, that's troubling.  "In the Sheldon Hackney days, the University of Pennsylvania was anything but an institution that valued free speech, particularly for students."  The university might have changed its most repressive speech codes, they had a green rating for a while, now it's yellow.  Their president did not inspire confidence in the wake of the Jihadi Fan Club running wild on campuses until the weather turned foul.

The good news is people grasp the consequences.  Margaret "University Diaries" Soltan offers what she terms an "occasional series" calling attention to "Why Trump won."  "In an Instagram story that went viral this week, Julia Alekseyeva, an assistant professor of English and media studies [at U Penn], appears to refer to Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old Penn grad, as the “icon we all need and deserve.”"  The professor in question was not done.  "'I have never been prouder to be a professor at the University of P3nnsylvania,” Alekseyeva wrote in a post on TikTok.  You know, cuz U Penn was the school what made Mangione what he is today."

Professor Soltan is not part of the Twitchy or College Fix cheering section.  William "Legal Insurrection" Jacobson might be.  Nevertheless, his "Whether Radicalized Culture at U. Penn Influenced Luigi Mangione Needs To Be Looked Into" is on point.

How was it that he couldn’t be pushed any further? When you get somebody from that background—and a lot of domestic terrorists in our history have been from privileged backgrounds, like the Weather Underground people—if you’re going to have the Elizabeth Warren attitude that you’re entitled to do whatever you need to do by any means necessary because you’ve been pushed too far in your own lived experience, that’s a recipe for disaster. Unfortunately, it’s a recipe that is prevalent on a lot of campuses.

Barrington Moore might be long dead, and yet there are lots of fourth-rate successors around, riling up students.

The College Fix recently reported that Professor Alekseyeva owned up to her errors.

Jeffrey Kallberg, deputy dean of the UPenn School of Arts and Sciences, also issued a statement Wednesday calling the professor’s viral posts “antithetical” to the university’s values.

“Upon reflection, Assistant Professor Alekseyeva has concurred that the comments were insensitive and inappropriate and has retracted them,” Kallberg stated. “We welcome this correction and regret any dismay or concern this may have caused.”

An English and media studies professor, Alekseyeva’s research includes “radical leftist politics.” In April, she won an award from the university for “distinguished teaching.”

“Julia is one of Penn’s most innovative, rigorous, and effective teachers. Her teaching combines academic rigor with the ability to inspire and motivate students,” the award announcement stated.

Whether her research into "radical leftist politics" includes "struggle session" and "constructive self-criticism" is yet to be determined.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Thanks, Democrats.  Barack Obama broke US healthcare.  And the Middle East.  "Barack Obama’s indifference to Syria, his false 'red line,' and his Secretary of State John Kerry’s decision to invite Russia in to join the killing are all decisions that should stain Obama’s name forever."  Then there's his sock puppet.  "What an incredible mess Joe Biden will be leaving for Donald Trump on Jan. 20."  Do you recognize a pattern, dear reader?  "Not since Carter has there been a better illustration of the Peter principle at work. Like Carter, Biden was not just incapable of doing the job but manifestly so."

Mr Obama's condescension finally backfired.  "The more Trump polled even with, or ahead of, Kamala Harris, the more an exasperated and ignored Obama talked down to supposedly low-information voters."

Should anyone really be surprised by what comes next?  "There’s a longstanding frustration that our culture has gotten corrupted and that our institutions are letting us down. And it’s manifesting in increasingly violent imagery, rhetoric, and, occasionally, action."  Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties.  "The Democrats are a party of, by, and for neurotic privileged weirdos, and they hold too many influential positions to be easily shaken loose."  Let the shaking commence.  "The current crew, not their proposed Trump replacements, prompted the sick and tired American people to demand different people."  Even if that meant breaking some glass.  "Four years of Joe Biden caused the electorate to reassess Donald Trump."

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

SO IT ALWAYS IS WITH GOOD INTENTIONS.

Might sex change operations for pre-adolescents be of dubious value?

The medical practice of treating children who are distressed about their gender started out with good intentions. But this case, at its core, represents the profound failures that have occurred in our institutions. Failures that began when activism took over science. Failures that can only be corrected by the courageous, and now the courts. It should never have reached this point, but here we are.

And if my child claims to be Thomas the Tank Engine, does medical science recommend we book him into the Brighton works for new flues?  Or if she claims to be Squirtle, do we give her a sphere to curl up in and sink it in the tub with her in it?  At least in those hypotheticals, common sense is ahead of The Science.  Those kids who think (for this week?) they're in the wrong body aren't as fortunate.

These failures began with the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society. These medical organizations quite suddenly embraced the idea that any child who expressed gender distress must immediately be affirmed and swiftly medicalized.

This then spiraled as risk-management departments and ethics boards at major hospitals grew fearful of raising questions about why there was an explosion of children and teens who wanted this treatment. Not only were these treatments moneymakers for hospitals—it quickly became career-threatening to raise any concerns about this new branch of medicine and the dangers of subjecting young people to lifetime treatments with unknown consequences.

That was once the practice with tonsillectomies, but the complications therefrom were not as severe.

At our gender clinic, patients often had glaring comorbidities like depression, anxiety, ADHD, and eating disorders, or were on the autism spectrum. Many were young people who, if left alone, would most likely grow up to be gay men and lesbians, like myself. Yet we sold our patients the idea that if they are at all different, or gender nonconforming, they must be trans.

I saw teenage girls, with no history of dysphoria, being approved after just one meeting with a therapist. My colleagues could see social contagion as a potential factor in other conditions like Tourette syndrome, tic disorders, and “multiple personalities.” But with gender dysphoria, even suggesting there was a social aspect at work risked accusations of “transphobia.”

I saw teenagers lose their sexual function before they could understand what this would mean for them. A 17-year-old female ended up in the emergency room thanks to a hormone prescription from the clinic. The testosterone she was taking had thinned her vaginal tissues, and her vaginal canal had ripped open after intercourse, requiring surgery.

I saw regret in my patients a few months after it was too late. An 18-year-old girl who had a double mastectomy, only to decide to accept her female identity, begged us, “I want my breasts back.”

Oops.  And where is today's Lionel Trilling to call attention to the irritable mental gestures of the transgressive?

THE CREATIVITY OF COLD SPRING SHOPS.

I refer to the original, the repair shops of The Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company in the Cold Spring Park neighborhood of Milwaukee.  We called attention, nearly three years ago, to their work obtaining extra seating capacity by stretching classic steel interurban combination cars into three-truck articulated units.

INADVERTENTLY UNDERSTANDING WHY THERE ARE TRUMP VOTERS.

Massachusetts senator Elizabeth "Fauxahontas" Warren attempts to contextualize murder.  

The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the health care system.  Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far.  This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the health care to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone.

She subsequently recognized that what might be a discussion point in a political science workshop is beyond the pale for an elected official. “Violence is never the answer. Period. I should have been much clearer that there is never a justification for murder.”

In her attempt to offer clarification, she also recognized a system failure that might generalize to other dimensions of governance.  “The number of people I personally hear from, both in my official capacity and as somebody who stops and talks to people in the grocery store about how hard it is to get medical care that people have paid their insurance companies for over and over and over, is a reminder that this system is just broken.”  Thanks, Obama.

THE BUSINESS OF BUSINESS IS BUSINESS. THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT AND THE ACADEMY IS PROCESS.

A Briton called Thomas Hornall recently spent some time in the States on business, and on his return to Merrie England posted a meditation.  "I’m British.  I recently spent 10 days in the USA for business.  And discovered the ocean between us isn't water.  It's mindset."  Years ago, some acquaintances who were recent graduates went to the U.K. on business and observed much of what he had noted.

His sixth observation inspires the title of my post.

Speed of Execution.

US: "Let's make it happen."  Jump on a call.  Refer through networks.  Action-first mentality.

UK: "Let's be realistic."  List all problems first. Worst-case scenarios. Every reason NOT to try. They ship while we shuffle.

In the academy, you show your erudition by coming up with ever-less-likely worst-case scenarios.  "The consensus comes after endless peacocking and straining at gnats in meetings, and a process in which word-smithing and tweaking of designs ensures that everybody holding a stake gets some of the garlic cloves. And it's all with the best of intentions, anticipating all possible contingencies."

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE.

"Caitlin Clark Explains That White Privilege Feels Weirdly Like Getting Beat Up By Giant Black Lesbians" has Friday short take potential, but for the problem that the elaboration merits quoting at length.  Try not to spit your coffee out.

WNBA player Caitlin Clark explained in an interview with TIME that she has been the beneficiary of white privilege, which strangely feels a lot like getting the crap kicked out of her by giant black lesbians.

Though she admitted that "white privilege" was a bit of a nebulous term, Clark explained that she seemed to most often experience it as getting punched in the face or elbowed in the stomach.

"The fact is, I clearly have experienced white privilege. No one else gets beat up routinely on national television by enormous black lesbians," explained Clark. "That's obviously a privilege that I have, being white. I recognize that this league was built by these gargantuan lesbians, and we must honor all the work they do punching me because of my skin color."

Though sociologists stated that white privilege could manifest in many forms, they agreed that sometimes it does feel like getting shoved to the floor on a basketball court. "It feels different to different people," explain sociology professor Dr. Ray Adams. "For some, it may be that you do not have to worry about security at a store eyeing you suspiciously. For some, it's being wrestled to the ground and having your eyes poked by a 200-pound black lesbian. It's highly variable."

At publishing time, the WNBA had reported excellent progress in its ten-step plan to becoming irrelevant again.

We'll be able to evaluate that statement next summer, when the 2025 season tips off.

ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE.

I've been calling attention.  "When these people say 'Our Democracy,' try hard not to think of 'Our Gerontocracy.'"

And calling attention.

The world's oldest valley girl is vice-president, and that puts the party of Silent Generation governance in a bad place.  "At 28 percent approval, say goodbye to Kamala Harris being Plan B to an aging Biden."  That makes it all the more important to keep the de jure president, who is in his late seventies, alive.

Well, there was an unintended double entendre with that "plan B," wasn't there?

Early in 2024, though, all I could do was again call attention.  "We have little choice but to undermine them with mockery."

NO, STUDENTS ARE NOT CUSTOMERS.

Twenty years ago I suggested "Let's leave aside the quibble that incoming freshmen are 'consumers.' (Employers and fellow citizens are the consumers.)"  Or I've offered variations on "your job is to say no and uphold standards," e.g. "[P]art of being effective is to set those boundaries and stick by them."  Randy "Last Lecture" Pausch suggested an analogy: "professor :: student is as fitness trainer :: weight loser. We, too, have our standards."

I'm always pleased to see someone with a bigger platform than mine extend the argument.  "Keith B. Murray argues that thinking of students as customers gets the professor’s role all wrong."

DO GREY SWANS HERALD GRAY CHAMPIONS?

C. H. Smith's "Grey Swans Are Circling" sure sounds like a Fourth Turning Alert.

History is either "one damned thing after another"--a chaotic collection of random events--or there are connections between events that are not readily visible.  The study of history includes both rooting around for more factual evidence to aid our understanding, and interpreting what is known--both the factual evidence and what people living at that time described and thought was happening.

Two recent events invite interpretation: the sudden collapse of Syria's regime and the assassination of an American CEO in America's financial capital.  These can be viewed as unique one-off events of little future import or they can be viewed as watershed events, harbingers of a future far different than the present.

A systemic case can be made that the grey swans circling above us are harbingers of transformative change.  What is a grey swan?  A grey swan is an event that is known and possible to happen, but which is assumed to be unlikely to occur. The term derives from Nassim Taleb's black swan theory, which describes an event that is unlikely but unknown.

He's going a little overboard with all the bolds and italics.  But his thesis draws an instructive contrast with an observation in Cold Spring Shops from nine years ago.  "Seventy years of relative peace, with first fascism, then general poverty, then Communism, vanquished, and the Zeitgeist is that the Gray Champion is obsolete."  I wrote that while the final years of the Obama presidency still looked like a continuation of Business as Usual, and Donald Trump was more a figure of fun than the harbinger of a social movement, although I raised a warning.  "You might profitably look at the list of the most popular boy names these days and note the absence of any of the traditional one-syllable names of The America That Worked^(TM).  But as surely as fire will burn us, some of these infants might have to reacquire the heroic virtues, despite the best efforts of the deconstructionists to deconstruct."

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE.

Jalopnik contributor Bradley Brownell goes on a road trip.  "Buc-ee's Is The Sickness At The Heart Of America."  Apparently a Buc-ee's is way bigger than a Wawa or a Kwik Trip and you could probably hide a large Casey's in the fueling pad alone.  He starts in classic Affluent Society Excess fashion.

Buc-ee’s is our Parthenon, The Automobile is our Athena, and that chubby and cheerful wood-chewing rodent is her symbolic owl stand-in.

I am currently writing this post from the passenger seat of a road trip across this gloriously fucked up nation. In addition to the amber waves of grain and purple mountains majesty, the highways and byways of America are pockmarked by the occasional arrival of the bucktoothed bastard’s concrete haven. The large yellow sign rises above the landscape to request your presence. You must tithe to your god, little one. Bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been two years since my last fill up on pump 82.

Read on, though, and maybe there's a "just kidding" at the end.

This country is a seriously bizarre place to live, and Buc-ee’s is a microcosm of our American existence at present. This combination gas station-grocery store-way of life is a mirror we have erected to show us ourselves. It’s the highway equivalent of junk food. It almost certainly shouldn’t exist, and we are worse as a culture for having had it, but goddamn does it flip the right switches in our collective brain. It is truly junk that shouldn’t be great, but the rot at the core of America is what makes us who we are. Buc-ee’s, the Bass Pro Shops pyramid, and ordering shit we’ll throw away in a month from Temu, these are the new Gods of America, and they deserve their shrines.

Of course, being the trash bag normie all-American dork that I am, I fucking love the place. Buc-ee’s is the store we deserve. I am a beaver believer. There are cathedrals everywhere for those with the eyes to see.

My peregrinations are more likely to take me into Casey's or Kwik Trip's or Speedway's or sometimes Wawa's turf, generally for the mundane purposes of providing a pit stop for the car and for the driver, it being bad form to use the loo without making a purchase afterward.  Props to those stores that are again stocking Nacho Cheese Combos.

To Twitchy's Warren Squire, though, it's another foray in the Culture Wars.

Buc-ee’s are popping up all over America. It’s to the point that the beaver-emblazoned beacon is becoming a roadside attraction in its own right. Why? Convenience and cleanliness - the giant gas stations are known for having massive, ultra-clean restrooms. There’s also every kind of snack, sandwich and soft drink you could ever want all under one roof. It’s no surprise then that a Trump-hating writer for Jalopnik (yep, we never heard if it either) would call these shrines to roadside comfort and capitalism, a ‘sickness'.

It's possible that a lot of people rage-reposted the link to the article without reading to the end.  "It’s easy to imagine the next Jalopnik roadtrip article will focus on how horrible McDonald’s is and then have a last paragraph reveal of ‘I really love it, fooled you! The fries are delicious!’ So boring."

MONEY IS FUNGIBLE.

Politifact takes issue with America First advocates complaining about tax dollars going to the Third World.  "Aid to Africa doesn’t detract from disaster relief for U.S. hurricane victims."

But the claims ignore how domestic disaster relief and foreign aid are funded. Congress separately determines funding for each through appropriations or supplemental bills. The claims also ignore the $3.1 billion the Federal Emergency Management Agency has spent so far responding to Hurricane Helene, which left a trail of destruction across six states in late September, and Hurricane Milton, which struck Florida in October.

"Comparisons between foreign aid and domestic disaster funding often reflect a misunderstanding that aid to other countries reduces resources available for domestic disaster survivors," said Francis Torres, associate director of housing at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. "In reality, these funds come from different accounts, with Congressional authorizations for foreign assistance being separate from appropriations for disaster relief and recovery programs."

Complaints about spending taxpayer money on foreign aid instead of U.S. citizens are common.

The fun begins when you look at the various ways Congress spends that money.

The money Biden pledged for aid in 31 African countries had already been appropriated by Congress to federal agencies. Most of it comes from the United States Agency for International Development, which is providing about $823 million of the $1 billion. Of the $823 million, more than $202 million comes from the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Commodity Credit Corp., and nearly $186 million comes from the State Department, a USAID press release said.

The remaining money comes from a supplemental bill Congress passed in April, the press release said. The bill provided funding to U.S. agencies "for assistance to Ukraine, Israel, and U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific region," which includes Africa’s east coast.

Congress can write supplemental appropriations, and they can also write supplemental rescissions should the correlation of forces favor them.  Doing so might make governing more transparent.  But defenders of business as usual tend to treat appropriations as set for all time, and they engage in all sorts of verbal gymnastics to defend them.  Case in point: Hal Sparks, on Saturday (and I really ought to bring CDs along for any midday Saturday trip, as that's the time for investment and home improvement programming even less interesting) and he was making the case that rolling back government was going to be hard because of common law and Congressional appropriations.  It's not that hard, go through all the statutes and flag all the "The Secretary shall issue" passages and have the new departmental secretaries issue new, simpler regulations.  But when a president is grousing about "subsidized dumping," will he be more receptive to zeroing out the Commodity Credit Corporation, and how will his rural voters react?

It is on us, though, as citizen taxpayers, to pay attention, and to call attention, to where the money is going.

Stupid people like you and I think that our taxes go to Washington, and policymakers spend it in ways that, at least theoretically, are supposed to best benefit the American people. There are priorities that get evaluated, and the limited resources available are distributed based on sound (or not-so-sound) judgments of how best to meet those priorities.

How naive! What really happens is that the pie gets divided up into various pots of money determined by political considerations, and each pot of money is treated as independent of all the others. And, as a practical matter, the bureaucrats in charge of any one pot are determined to get as much of the available cash (plus whatever they can from deficit spending) away from the other pots of money.

If you are part of the blob, that seems perfectly normal, and Politifact is little more than the propaganda arm of the blob. Hence the absurdity of saying that the failure to take care of North Carolinians is a separate issue from raining cash from helicopters in Africa or now Syria.

They are totally different pots of money!!!! Are you stupid? Don't you see?!

It was on Militant Normals to call attention to those line items for the Commodity Credit Corporation and public radio and the national endowments and the essential air subsidy, and to pressure their Members of Congress to reduce or eliminate those things.  One reason the debt-ceiling-government-shutdown-continuing-resolution drama goes on and on is the manufactured crisis mentality is a good way to sneak in all those things while people pay more attention to whether the "omnibus" or "supplemental" or what have you passes than to what's in it.  Thus we have to pass it to find what's in it.

REALITY HAS NO REGARD FOR YOUR PROCESS WORSHIP.

Arnold Kling says that about the likely future of Syria.

It is not ready to become a democracy. North, Weingast, and Wallis describe two forms of order: one is the natural state, in which violence is contained by having the violent groups form a coalition to rule. The rulers exclude everyone else from forming large organizations, either political or commercial; the other form is an open-access order, in which anyone can form a political party or a corporation.

Syria does not have the background conditions or institutions to be an open-access order. If Syria attains any stability at all, it will be as a natural state. But I am not sure that a stable coalition can be had there.

Loosely, because several of Syria's neighbors disagree on the nature of that natural state.

DISREGARD THE RENT GRADIENT AT YOUR PERIL.

In the Federal Capital, the provision of bike lanes on arterial avenues becomes a racial flash point.  Marc Fisher, an associate editor with Washington's Post, argues those lanes are not about the bikes.

Despite its reputation as a liberal enclave, D.C. is not and will never be Amsterdam, Portland or one of those college towns where the streets teem with more bicycles than cars.

But sometimes, it’s not for a lack of trying.

The District’s planners are intent on putting many of the city’s most important streets on what’s called a “road diet,” which sounds healthy and nutritious but is actually a recipe for traffic constipation and commuter headaches — and maybe a stealth mechanism for encouraging a wholesale shift in race and class in certain neighborhoods.

The bike lane wars have been cycling through the city for about as long as the endless battles about gun ownership, weed legalization and abortion funding. And though they might seem a narrow concern, bike lanes have proved an enduring and powerful symbol of Washington’s central divide: Who is the city for? Is it forever Chocolate City, proud capital of Black America, or is it a fast-morphing magnet for hyper-educated young people — most of them White — who migrate to the city to populate think tanks, law firms, nonprofits, and government and its contractors? Can it be both?

On either side of Rock Creek Park, bike lane battles become seething debates about home prices, gentrification, school quality and crime rates. In affluent upper Northwest, residents and business owners have pummeled the city with protests against narrowing Connecticut Avenue to install bike lanes. For the moment, the people are winning.

Isn't it simpler to think of the Federal Capital as the Federal Capital?  And as long as that Capital becomes more involved in the generating and dissipating of rents, the migration of those "hyper-educated" people is going to continue, and with it, the bidding up of housing prices.  Whether that will lead to more motor vehicle ownership or not is a separate matter from whether or not the road diets will tame traffic.  You can pick your form of congestion: the stroad with lots of turn lanes and traffic light delays, or the shared road with bike lanes and rotaries.  But you will get congestion.

Across town, on South Dakota Avenue NE, the fight is ongoing, and, as The Post’s Rachel Weiner reported, this squabble reveals an essential truth about bike lanes as weapons of civic planning: They are often installed not to satisfy the barely measurable trickle of residents who pedal to work but mainly to make car traffic worse enough that people will be discouraged from driving.

A popular crosstown route, “South Dakota Avenue is a very dangerous roadway,” says VJ Kapur, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in the Langdon area of Northeast and a road diet advocate. “It’s very common for residents to have cars crash up onto their lawns. And any driver attempting to observe decorum and drive 25 mph is swerved around by reckless drivers.”

South Dakota features four through lanes, two in each direction. The city proposes to slim that down to three narrower lanes, one in each direction plus a turn lane where needed and room for a bike path.

“Just as the big, wide lanes we have now induce speeding and reckless driving” Kapur tells me, so too would bike lanes induce slower driving — and maybe more bike riding.

That "weapon of civic planning" is a common canard.  Does anyone ever complain that those traffic lights and left-turn-only cycles that hold everybody up are some conspiracy to discourage people from driving?  Has anyone considered that perhaps building a stroad through a residential or commercial area, then posting it at 25 mph, simply invites people to drive fast?  On the other hand, unless those bike lanes are protected from motor vehicles, Washington might experience what we understand as the "Milwaukee slide," people using those bike lanes to pass on the right and they sometimes wind up on lawns.  Change the visual cues, change the reckless driving.

The Federal Capital is older than Dallas or La Jolla or Los Angeles, all places famous, or notorious, for car culture, and yet each of those cities has made arterial streets safer.  You have to do the design work first.  It's about the road design, though.

In Milwaukee, that "slide" sometimes has a racial connotation to it, and that might be creeping into the Washington conversation.

Rodney Foxworth, a longtime civic activist who now leads an anti-bike lane group, says the city “has a bias in favor of bike lanes no matter whether residents or businesses want them, and a lot of these lanes are being installed in Black, low-income communities. There is a nexus between bike lanes and gentrification.”

Many of Milwaukee's traffic taming measures are being built in such communities as well, often at the urging of local adults worried about their children or their aging parents.  But bike lanes accompanying gentrification?  No.  Gentrification in the Federal Capital is part of the rent-seeking that goes on in the swamp.

THE PROPER RESPONSE TO DISINFORMATION OR MISINFORMATION IS INFORMATION.

I'm old enough to remember advocates of "liberating tolerance" complaining that freedom of the press was limited to those who owned one.  The political economy of that argument, loosely, was that people who had the means to own a printing press had enough of a stake in the existing order of things to foreclose people with serious reservations about the existing order of things from calling attention.

THE JOYS OF PROCESS.

Over the weekend, the Assad family dynasty relinquished control of Syria to management yet to be determined.  There's a United Nations special envoy for Syria, Geir O. Pedersen, who issued a perfect bit of bureaucratese.

The challenges ahead remain immense and we hear those who are anxious and apprehensive. Yet this is a moment to embrace the possibility of renewal. The resilience of the Syrian people offers a path toward a united and peaceful Syria.

To this end, the Special Envoy underscores the clear desire expressed by millions of Syrians that stable and inclusive transitional arrangements are put in place, that the Syrian institutions continue to function, and that the Syrian people are enabled to begin to chart the path to meeting the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people and restore a unified Syria, with its sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, in a way that can receive the support and engagement of the entire international community.

Has there really been a united and peaceful Syria at any time since Cyrenius served as governor with the approval of Caesar?  Isn't that another chunk of the Ottoman Empire carved out after The War to End All Wars?  The process-worship, though, is what keeps the striped-pants types in work.

Mr. Pedersen urges all Syrians to prioritize dialogue, unity, and respect for international humanitarian law and human rights as they seek to rebuild their society. He stresses that there must be a collective effort to secure peace and dignity for all. The Special Envoy stands ready to support the Syrian people in their journey toward a stable and inclusive future decided and shaped by the Syrian people.

Let us honor the memory of those who have suffered for decades by committing to help Syrians build a Syria where justice, freedom, and prosperity are shared realities. Let us stand in solidarity with Syrians to help them ensure that this new chapter is one of hope and opportunity for every Syrian.

That sounds good at Turtle Bay or in the faculty lounge, but will it change any minds on the road to Damascus?

HOW SUNDAY DINNER BECAME SUNDAY BRUNCH.

It's almost all about the calories.

The terms “supper” and “dinner” can be used pretty interchangeably, but “dinner” is typically used more often. Regardless, if someone says one or the other, most people will know they’re referring to the last meal of the day. But we came across some shocking news: they’re not the same thing after all and if your grandparents or parents used the term “supper,” there’s a good chance your ancestors were farmers.

“[In the 18th and early 19th centuries,] Americans regularly ate a light supper as their evening meal because they were eating dinner—the biggest meal of the day—around noon,” food historian Helen Zoe Veit told NPR. The purpose of eating their biggest meal at noontime was so farmers would have more strength and energy to get through the rest of their workday, according to the English Language & Usage Stack Exchange. Dictionary.com confirms, “dinner” doesn’t necessarily refer to a specific time of day. It simply means the main meal of the day. “Supper,” however, stems from the Old French word “souper,” meaning “evening meal.”

That checks out in part, longtime readers might recall from this visit to a threshing bee in Dalton, Minnesota. "Among other things, they re-enact a proper thresherman's dinner (the noon meal, for you clueless coasties) of hot dish and jello salad with store coffee, and there's a steam train calling at an honest to Yim Hill Great Northern depot."  There's also a New England custom of referring to the evening meal as "supper," er, "suppah," although that, too, might have its rural origins.

So what changed? Eating the biggest meal of the day around noon started to become a thing of the past when more Americans began working away from their homes and farms. “They couldn’t readily return home to cook and eat in the middle of the day,” says Veti. And so, more and more people shifted their main meal of the day to the evening, when they could spend more time enjoying their food and spending time with their family.

Well, you couldn't really speak of a "three martini dinner," could you? I will withhold comment on the emergence of that twee "luncheon" that got into society circles. As Sunday conventions of fasting before church changed, so too might have changed the idea of that big midday Sunday meal.  If you're not getting up early to spruce up for church, maybe skipping breakfast and putting something together late morning makes sense as well.

II. ADVENT.

We've noted the always sold-out-in-summer Santa Trains at the Fox River Trolley Museum.  Sometimes the theme of the event is a pajama party, and sometimes it's a toy drive.

Unattributed Fox River Trolley Museum photo retrieved from Facebook.

On the first weekend of operation, the Museum apparently combined the pajama party with a working party from the Marines Toys for Tots Foundation.

Unattributed Fox River Trolley Museum photograph retrieved from Facebook.

Patrons of the first weekend's runs got the memo to bring an in-kind contribution to Toys for Tots and they came through.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PRESIDENTIAL MANDATE.

That's straightforward enough that a middle school student should be able to grasp it.  "While students have an obligation to go to school, presidents are often believed to have an obligation to make changes they promised their voters would see. This obligation, known as the presidential mandate, gives them power and legitimacy in government."  Mightn't it be simpler to note that politicians, from selectman to president, campaign on platforms, meaning they make campaign promises, and doing anything other than attempting to implement those promises is politics as usual nyekulturny?

"NORMS AND TRADITIONS" ARE PROBABLY OPPRESSIVE.

It's Sunday, bringing in train a familiar sermon.  "Is anybody surprised that when you deconstruct bourgeois norms, bad things happen?"

Sometimes, the beginning of a restoration of a state of good repair begins with organized sports.

The Mid-American Conference (MAC) commissioner wants the NCAA to crack down on what he calls “abysmal behavior” at college sports events, which he said has shown a “lack of respect for norms and traditions.”

The letter, sent on Thursday from Jon A. Steinbrecher to NCAA president Charlie Baker and shared with CNN, argued that sportsmanship and ethical conduct are “urgent issues” that need to be addressed.

It comes days after several of college football’s top rivalry games descended into chaos, with all-out brawls breaking out between teams and players planting flags in opposition stadiums.

“Let’s face it, the behavioral trainwreck we have witnessed is probably great for television ratings, talk show fodder, and social media intrigue,” Steinbrecher wrote. “However, none of this is acceptable to an activity connected to the Academe."

I hope that "academe" is another voice transcription error and he properly used "the academy," although "connected to higher education" or "connected to academia" scan better.

THE FINAL SUMMIT.

Sad news from Chicago Boyz, where longtime contributor Michael Kennedy has departed this life.

Michael was obviously a brilliant man, accomplished, full of energy and with many interests. He must have been an excellent physician. He was a student of history, a skilled and experienced sailor, and a father. His observations on politics, current affairs, technology and other topics were always well informed and insightful.

The New Neo also reminisces. R. I. P.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The issue is competence, not credentials.  "There’s a difference between competence and expertise. One of the most profound political changes in recent years has been the separation of notions of credentialed expertise from real world competence. This isn’t a new theme in American life, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the lurch toward identity politics amplified distrust of experts in unprecedented ways."  Their reign of hectoring is over.  Turf them out.  "Trump certainly presents a lot of problems for the transnational elite--but their dreams of a world in which elites can hire technocrats to run a utopia have run up against the realities of living in a tough world with some evil people."  What would we ever do without experts?  "Joe Biden is leaving office, making the strongest possible case for Donald Trump that anybody could possibly make it. And that's that our government and our justice system is of, by, and for the elites and nobody else. He ran to banish Trumpism from our political system in this country, and he has left it politically and now institutionally, the strongest possible political force in this country."  Remember, they, too, are mortal.  "We’re done being talked down to by the so-called experts."  By their fruits shall we know them.  "There's something not just gross but outright psychopathic about the arrogance with which so many in Washington carry themselves. "

Hell, Our Intellectual Betters can't even get urban land use or urban roads right.

The Fourth Turning might be reaching its climax.  "In this new paradigm, institutions like the United Nations and the International Court of Justice are largely irrelevant, as are climate confabs and the high-minded pronunciamentos of the World Economic Forum."  The whole establishment house of cards finally came tumbling down.  It deserves to.  "By its fruit the tree is known, and the fruits of our ruling class, which has long based its authority on an assumed, and increasingly implausible, expertise have not been impressive. The election of 2024, as Silver rightly notes, represents a repudiation of those failures."  This is your country on Donald Trump.

To be a Biden is to be above the law.  The people thought otherwise.  "Biden and his fellow Democrats made the party so unattractive that millions of self-identified Democrats decided to call themselves independents instead."  Pray that he took the hectoring Karens down with him.  "If a losing party wants to win another big national election, it must try to understand the Americans who have come to dislike and distrust it. Aversion to the Democrats is actually not an insane reaction to the state of the country and world, or to the pinch of one’s own conscience—there might even be members of your own family who have arrived at just this assessment of reality, for perfectly nondepraved reasons."  Maybe Democrats can regain credibility by running Normals in local elections.  Make democracy local again.

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

LOOSEN THOSE PRIORS.

During the early days of the Jarrett regency, as Militant Normals forced their Intellectual Betters to loosen the corona tyranny, I warned the academic cadre of the errors of their tyranny of expertise.  "'The science' and 'Our democracy' have become incantations, more akin to the phrases invoked to denounce heretics than to concepts suggesting room for active contestation.  That's not going to end well."  That post went on to note, "There's plenty of that sort of supposedly principled unreason floating around, all of which can be summarized as "If a thing is hard to prove, therefore, we should skip the proof and simply assume it."  That's called faith, dear reader.  These times, however, are times in which more than a little healthy skepticism is desirable."  I concluded, "I'd be amused with the observation that the denial of coherent beliefs is itself a coherent belief, but for the consequences being what they are.  'You know you're dealing with encroaching Medievalism when a subject brooks no dissent.'"

Now comes Minding the Campus contributor Rebekah Wanic, suggesting "Activism Does Not Belong in the Academy."  Her objection is not to students being students, and using some of their thinking time to Get Involved and pretend they are Making a Difference, nor is it to faculty who might advise such students.  Rather, it is to scholars pretending that the tightness of their priors matters more than the quality of their argument.

In recent years, activism has become increasingly visible in academia, often permeating classrooms, faculty hiring practices, and research agendas. This trend has generated both support and concern across university campuses. While, in some cases, activism can be a powerful force for social change, its growing presence in academic settings has raised important questions about its effect on the integrity of higher education and the mental health of students. Activism-driven pressures not only reduce academic rigor but create a psychological burden on students that compromises their intellectual and psychological well-being. Here is what to consider:

[First of several points,] Academia is traditionally tasked with fostering critical thinking, promoting knowledge, and encouraging open-minded debate. This foundation relies on an environment where ideas can be freely explored, even if they challenge dominant ideologies or accepted norms. However, when activism intertwines with academia, it creates biases in research priorities, course content, and faculty hiring, shifting focus from intellectual rigor to ideological conformity.

Instead of teaching students how to think critically, activism-driven education teaches them what to think, framing certain perspectives as morally or ethically superior—namely, leftist perspectives. This approach stifles debate and discourages intellectual diversity, as students and professors feel pressured to adopt or conform to dominant activist viewpoints. Over time, this erodes academic integrity and limits students’ exposure to a balanced and comprehensive education.

[Second,] When activism guides academic discourse, academic freedom suffers. Professors and students alike often feel that they cannot freely express ideas that diverge from prevailing activist narratives without risking backlash. In fields like history, political science, and social studies, where multiple interpretations of complex issues exist, debate is shuttered, compromising the search for truth. A culture that enforces ideological conformity discourages professors from pursuing certain research avenues or proposing courses that challenge dominate activist perspectives. As a result, students miss out on a well-rounded education that includes exposure to multiple viewpoints, weakening the robustness of their education and the overall intellectual climate.

The essay continues in a similar vein for a few more points.  The greatest danger to placing too much weight on one's priors, particularly if they're not that well founded, is that people attempting to argue based on those priors aren't as well equipped to defend their positions as defenders of contrary positions, who have had to learn the weaknesses of their own arguments, are.

THE PUSSYCATS OF GILEAD.

Rush Limbaugh used to crack wise about leftists (still liberals by his lexicon, before the split between corporatist and communist Democrats grew more pronounced) becoming wacky and stupid when they were out of power.  Here we are, with the people again voting for a gridlocked federal government: the House a special election or two from having a Donk majority, a Senate with Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and a filibuster, and Donald Trump undoubtedly facing down Official Washington types in his own party, and it's enough to compel Rebecca Gordon (yes, dear reader, another Common Dreams contributor) to hoist her crazy cat lady flag.

I never realized before that men hate us so much.” That was the lesson drawn by one of my fellow organizers in Reno, Nevada, the morning after the 2024 general election. She’d turned 21 during the campaign, a three-month marathon she approached as a daily opportunity to learn as much as she could about everything she encountered. “Of course, they hate immigrants, too,” she added, “and I’m both.”

Welcome to Gilead.  "Welcome to the Republic of Gilead, where they really do hate us that much and they’re not afraid to say so."  Get your tubes tied, go on a sex strike, and break all ties with men.

EVERYTHING I LIKE GOES AWAY.

Years ago, when I was pursuing the higher learning in Madison, a substantial share of my discretionary spending went to Paul's Book Store, which stayed the course even after the passing of founder Paul Askins in 1975.  And yes, some of those books are still at Cold Spring Shops headquarters.

The family is now calling it a career.

After a 70-year run, Paul’s Book Store announced in a Tuesday Instagram post that it will close in early 2025. The bookstore is located at 670 State St. and has been well known for its vintage and cozy feel since its opening in 1954.

Paul’s Book Store was founded by Paul Askins, and the business was given to his wife and University of Wisconsin alum Caryl Askins in 1975 after his death, according to On Wisconsin Magazine.

“It’s been an adventure and a labor of love, and now it’s time to say goodbye,” the bookstore said in its Instagram post. “Stop in, find a good book, say hello and goodbye, and keep on reading!”

Thanks for the memories.

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."