LOSING SKIPPERS BLAME THE CREW.

Psephologist Nate Silver recently posted "24 reasons that Trump could win," quite possibly in sadness rather than anger, or perhaps to stir up his fellow establishmentarians to do something right in the next ten days or so.  Town Hall's Matt Vespa honors the work.  "I do like Silver calling out the uber-left, hyper-condescending Democratic consulting class who are so weird they don’t know how to talk to real people."

SURF'S UP.

Former Hawaii Member of Congress Tulsi Gabbard, who declared her independence from the Democrats, has taken the next step after endorsing Donald Trump and affiliated with the Republicans.

The Babylon Bee catches the wave.

There was great rejoicing in the GOP yesterday as former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard finally realized that she's far too good-looking to be a Democrat.

Sources close to Gabbard say the realization was a long time in coming, but that she finally decided to switch sides after realizing that she didn't blend in at all.

"I'd felt very out of place for a while now," Gabbard said as she announced she was now a Republican. "Everyone around me was either a creepy perv like Walz or a mummy like Pelosi or some uggo like Kamala. And then half of the Dems were just trans and pretending to be the other gender, honestly. I'm just glad to be joining the party with all the lookers, you know? Finally settled that one. Second Amendment, can I get an amen?"

That post closes with a Serious Point.  "At publishing time, Gabbard had been demoted another three spots on the GOP Attractiveness Index after conservative and ridiculously handsome political commentator Ben Shapiro had called out her abortion policies."  Victory Girl Toni Williams continues the elaboration.  "Welcome Tulsi Gabbard To The Republican Party, But Remember."

Purity tests, dear reader, are for those who deny freedom to others.  That means ... Democrats.

Last night at the Trump Rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, Tulsi Gabbard made the stunning “surprise” announcement that she has joined the Republican Party. Welcome her and Mazel Tov. She is bright, telegenic and well-spoken. No party can possibly have too many of those types. Liz Cheney and Tulsi both entered the Transfer Portal, we lucked out. We traded old, bitter and unreliable for young, happy and a stand-up girl. Yay us. But remember Tulsi has been in politics for a lifetime. Her politics have changed or evolved, but are still Liberal.

That's fine. Next week I might have time for some longer posts sorting out what "conservatism" even means any more.  For now, having national-security-minded former Democrats who aren't into pointless nation building wars on the Trump Train will do.  It's good enough for Ms Williams.  "From a Bernie Bro in 2016 to a Trump Surrogate and the Republican Party in 2024 is a heckuva trip. Tulsi’s growth and the sclerosis of the Democrat Party are both to blame."

DESPERATION?

Last week, the Narrative from the establishment press was that candidate Donald Trump looked ... tired.  All weekend, it looked like he was having fun. and that has been taking its toll on his opponent.

You gotta lay off the sauce, lady. pic.twitter.com/L01gWRwJL9

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) October 20, 2024

This week, his opponent took Monday off to sober up prepare for some friendly interviews, but first she had to react to more spin from serial fabulist Jeffrey Goldberg, currently of The Atlantic, formerly of Salon.  "Consider the source" is often good advice.

VP Harris: "In a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against [Trump's] propensities and his actions. Those who once tried to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses would no longer be there to rein him in." pic.twitter.com/7rBzc9OZCr

— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) October 23, 2024

Nor will there be anyone to look askance at the #MAGA armband the county Gauleiter issued me in 2017.  Oh, sorry, that's as true as Kamala Harris's story about making fries in Oakland.

THIRTY YEARS AND NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

Years ago, I asserted "Universities are failing to carry out their mission."  Martin Center contributor F. Andrew Wolf words it as "Universities Are Doing Education Badly."  His continuation is "By regurgitating high-school curricula and ignoring the virtues, higher education is delivering a flawed product."

It might help if the universities called out the high schools that are sending the Distressed Material their way.

WHERE THE JOY AND THE VIBES ARE.

On Sunday, Donald Trump was having some fun at a McDonald's calling attention to an episode of résumé-enhancement by his opponent.  "McDonald’s itself has no record of Harris having worked at any of its outlets."  Nor have any of her classmates, co-workers, a former manager, or neighbors who remember saying hi to her there come forward.

STEAMING INTO INDIAN SUMMER.

I'm referring to a series, "Steam in Indian Summer," in Trains nearly seven decades ago.

The first frost arrived in DeKalb about on time, last week, although it was kind of anomaly in the midst of a prolonged late summer warm, dry spell.  (No, I'm not going to wish for rain, you have to be careful what you ask for these days.)

The preservation railways, though, have been wrapping up their summer season, and getting into fall harvest mode.

MORE EVIDENCE THAT THERE IS AN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION ASTERISK.

I told you so.

A quarter century ago, when university administrations came up with the idea of filling faculty posts without regard to field or area, should a candidate ticking the desired diversity boxes come to their attention, their enablers in the faculty governance committees would respond to complaints raised in meetings that doing so was not judging those candidates on their merits with the not unreasonable argument that against a background of vocational tracking or outright segregation in the common schools, or the more rigidly defined sexual divisions of labor back in the day, nobody was really being judged solely on the merits.

If the purpose of those hires was to expand the talent pool and produce more broadly shared intellectual excellence, that might have even been a good idea.  A quarter-century on, though, it appears as though that talent pool is weaker.

Not that it stops the house organ for all wokeness, all the time, for denying that the talent pool is weaker.  "Black, Hispanic Faculty Far Less Likely to Get ‘Gold Standard’ Tenure Recommendations."

A recently published study of tenure and promotion cases for nearly 1,600 faculty members across five universities didn’t find racial disparities in either provosts’ decisions or in department-level tenure and promotion committees’ recommendations on which professors should advance.

But the study, published earlier this month in Nature Human Behaviour, did find a divergence in the middle of the process—when collegewide committees weigh in.

There, underrepresented minority faculty, defined as Black, African American or Hispanic, received 7 percent more negative votes from individual committee members than white or Asian faculty. And underrepresented minority faculty were a full 44 percent less likely to receive unanimous recommendations from these college-level committees.

Tenure is a hire, tenure is a political decision, and who knows the internal dynamics of the departments recommending the candidates for tenure, let alone the faction fights among departments in a college or of the colleges within the university?  Don't let any of that get in the way of a good gripe.

While a unanimous recommendation isn’t required for a promotion and tenure, the study’s authors note it’s considered a “gold standard.” They wrote that, because “faculty probably learn about the voting results through their network,” negative votes may make underrepresented minority professors feel less supported.

“Learning that a portion of one’s colleagues did not vote for your tenure or promotion is likely to lead to greater feelings of isolation and a lack of belonging,” they wrote. “Second, even if they do not learn about the result of the vote, the other (senior) faculty members will know. Receiving more negative votes may therefore make other faculty members view [underrepresented minority] faculty as less competent academics, potentially affecting the likelihood of seeking collaborative relationships or advocating for colleagues.”

Perhaps it shouldn’t be a gold standard. Christiane Spitzmueller—one of the authors and a psychology professor and vice provost for academic affairs and strategy at the University of California, Merced—said a lack of unanimity only requires “a single person who brings potentially negative attitudes towards marginalized groups to the voting process.”

Or a single person who has a grudge against that college, or views the department as a nest of troublemakers, or has old grievances about some decision that only matters to that committee member and perhaps to people long dead.  Any of which might lead to the outcome that these scholars presume to be contrary to diversity.

“There’s limited discussion oftentimes, and then oftentimes it’s anonymous,” she said of promotion and tenure decisions. “People write on a piece of paper whether it be yes or a no, so nobody is held accountable. So people who think, ‘Oh, maybe there are too many faculty of color in the academy now, or the standards have been lowered’ … Without even having to ever say that, they vote no.”

Spitzmueller and her co-authors suggested in the study that because faculty who serve on these college-level committees are more removed from the candidates compared with department-level panels and less likely to be familiar with their research, “they may be more likely to rely on race-based perceptions when making their decision.”

Theo Masters-Waage, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Houston and the paper’s lead author, surmised that part of the difference between what authors saw from college-level committees compared with department-level ones is “at the department level, the individual has a personal relationship with that faculty member, which means that they know more about them, they might understand their research.”

Yes, and in practice, colleagues within a department have a better idea what their juniors are working on, if they're doing their jobs properly they're reading and commenting on the juniors' working papers, and showing up at the department workshop.  I'll offer that charitable interpretation, rather than be cynical and propose that it's within the department that the desire not to have a diversity hire exposed as a fraud, leading to departmental recommendations with less dissent.

IS GAME THEORY TOO DIFFICULT FOR POLITICAL STRATEGISTS?

Hill pundit Douglas MacKinnon asks, "Did political correctness and backroom dealing doom the Democratic ticket from the start?"  I suppose if you're a political pundit your salary depends on the superficialities.

It didn’t have to be this way. The Democratic National Committee as well as the Democratic powerbrokers behind the scenes could have engineered a much stronger and much more electable ticket. They simply chose not to. Why? In part, because they were afraid of the optics and the potential blowback.

That's the kind of thing you expect from people who say "at the end of the day" a lot, or speak of "articulating" a policy position.  Democrats knew about Dementia Joe's incapacity, and Flibbertigibbet's difficulties dealing with Normals.

One of the main tripwires was that, for political and survival reasons, they didn’t want to give any oxygen to the Republicans or Trump staff pushing that same scenario. Better to deny the obvious for as long as possible, so as not to give Team Trump an issue to exploit.

Arguably, the next major tripwire was that many Democrats — as well as many in the liberal media — truly did not feel Harris was up to the task of stepping in for Biden. They surely remembered 2019, during the 2020 Democratic primary, when no one voted for Harris. She had to drop out of the race before the Iowa caucuses. She did so because her campaign, which started off with a great deal of buzz and media attention, flopped with an embarrassing thud.

That first paragraph credits Team Trump with more competence than Democrats and their willing accomplices in the legacy media otherwise credit them with.

THE SUCCESSION PROBLEM CATCHES UP WITH THE JETS.

USA Today sports pundit Nate Davis notes, "Aaron Rodgers is out of excuses. The Jets' problems point back to him."

Let us pause to note the significance of the passage of time.

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.

In New York, the magic left Aaron Rodgers a snap or two into last season, and, this season, it has been more hope than honors.

The four-time league MVP, who will not win a fifth this season at age 40, needs to stop looking for outside answers – and what more can he ask for after Tuesday’s acquisition of wide receiver and BFF Davante Adams and Sunday’s news that linebacker Haason Reddick is finally inbound? – and look in the mirror … or at least within if he finds himself on a mini darkness retreat in the coming days. The Jets have lost four in succession – and the common denominator is not fired coach Robert Saleh, or kicker Greg Zuerlein, or a banged-up defense or vilified wideout Mike Williams.

It’s Rodgers.

Sports pundits can be unsparing in a way political pundits generally are not.  Scroll over to the article for the details.  "Rodgers knows there’s no more time to R-E-L-A-X to salvage this J-E-T-S season and only one thing left to say in the face of so many questions."

Cold Spring Shops were calling for the transition even before the Packers drafted Jordan Love.

THE HIDDEN PERSUADERS.

That comfort food?

“Modern American culture is just essentially a product of advertising,” says Christina Ward, author of American Advertising Cookbooks: How Corporations Taught Us to Love Bananas, Spam, and Jell-O.

Even most of the Norman Rockwell-esque Thanksgiving spread was born in American test kitchens belonging to General Mills (the faceless entity behind Betty Crocker), Campbell’s, and other corporations. In the early 20th century through the post-war years, Madison Avenue and the increasingly large food conglomerates it repped reshaped the ways in which Americans ate.

Sometimes it borders on the odd, as in peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches, and sometimes it becomes almost customary, as in that green bean and dehydrated onion chip casserole at Thanksgiving.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The brat energy is gone.  "She's terrible."  Americans are getting to know the real Kamala Harris.  Kamala Harris is extremely unlikeable.  And that was before she went on Fox News.

She came off as defensive and almost adolescent.  She grimaced, scowled, and proved as petulant and unlikeable as she was vacuous.  She ends as an historical prank on her own country.

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

HELENE WASHED THE RAILROADS AWAY.

Immediately after the clouds cleared, Trains reported "Heavy rain makes damage assessment difficult."  The hurricane rains came after a spell of heavy rain, wringing out that atmospheric river.

Communities along the former Southern Railway and Clinchfield Railroad in western North Carolina have seen record-setting rainfalls in the days prior to Hurricane Helene. Now, tropical weather is pouring additional rainfall into the area, creating what local meteorologists are calling a once-in-a-generation storm.

Places along NS’ former Southern S-Line on the French Broad River, and east along the Catawba River toward Old Fort, could see rain totals of 12-14 inches. About 10 inches of rainfall was expected 50 miles away in Spruce Pine on CSX’s ex-Clinchfield on the North Toe River. And Watco’s Blue Ridge Southern, operating west and south of Asheville, passes over many streams and creeks along the I-40 and I-26 corridors. Rainfall amounts are being compared to the historic Flood of 1916 when the French Broad River crested at 21 feet. The National Weather Service expects the river to crest above 30 feet Friday evening, breaking all previous records.

The north-to-south Clinchfield Line, a favorite with ferroequinologists as well as with the sort of modeller who is into coal country railroading, is "largely unrecognizable after historic flood."

It is still too early to determine the full extent of damages, but photos along the famed Clinchfield route are revealing extensive damage exacerbated by the region’s remoteness. High waters are prohibiting emergency responders and railroad officials from gaining access to communities along the right-of-way, and in some cases, roadway and railroad bridges have been compromised or destroyed.

With roadways out of service and railroad washouts prohibiting inspections and repair, CSX’s Blue Ridge Subdivision and much of its Clinchfield are likely to remain out of the service for the foreseeable future. It will be several days, at the earliest, before the railroad is able to provide full details on the impact and next steps.

Widespread damage was seen along the right-of-way between milepost Z 138.0 at Erwin, Tenn., to Spruce Pine, N.C., at Z 182.0, a distance of 44 miles. An approximate 375-foot bridge crossing the Nolichucky River at Poplar is gone, with only concrete piers protruding from swollen muddy waters. The railroad follows the banks of the Nolichucky and North Toe rivers for about 40 miles between Erwin and Spruce Pine. In downtown Spruce Pine, waters were 8-9 feet above the right-of-way, almost up to the roof of the city’s restored train depot.

Coal traffic is much down from previous years, and the two through freight trains using the route are going the great way around either via Nashville or Richmond.

BURYING THE LEDE.

Cold Spring Shops, nine years ago.

Investors Business Daily.  "Water is a commodity just like any other, and its allocation should not be left to governments." The one complication is the rule of capture with respect to ground water, and the common-property problem that follows.  Even so, prices communicate incentives: is it worth digging deeper, and can the water be more profitably sold to someone else rather than used by the well digger?

It all seems so straightforward, and yet policy makers and Allegedly Smart People introduce unnecessary complexities.

Thanks, Allegedly Smart People.

Humanity has thrown the global water cycle off balance “for the first time in human history,” fueling a growing water disaster that will wreak havoc on economies, food production and lives, according to a landmark new report.

Decades of destructive land use and water mismanagement have collided with the human-caused climate crisis to put “unprecedented stress” on the global water cycle, said the report published Wednesday by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, a group of international leaders and experts.

The water cycle refers to the complex system by which water moves around the Earth. Water evaporates from the ground — including from lakes, rivers and plants — and rises into the atmosphere, forming large rivers of water vapor able to travel long distances, before cooling, condensing and eventually falling back to the ground as rain or snow.

There's more to the water cycle than the extra atmospheric water boiled up by volcanic eruptions.

“For the first time in human history, we are pushing the global water cycle out of balance,” said Johan Rockström, co-chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water and a report author. “Precipitation, the source of all freshwater, can no longer be relied upon.”

The report differentiates between “blue water,” the liquid water in lakes, rivers and aquifers, and “green water,” the moisture stored in soils and plants.

While the supply of green water has long been overlooked, it is just as important to the water cycle, the report says, as it returns to the atmosphere when plants release water vapor, generating about half of all rainfall over land.

Disruptions to the water cycle are “deeply intertwined” with climate change, the report found.

A stable supply of green water is vital for supporting vegetation that can store planet-heating carbon. But the damage humans inflict, including destroying wetlands and tearing down forests, is depleting these carbon sinks and accelerating global warming. In turn, climate change-fueled heat is drying out landscapes, reducing moisture and increasing fire risk.

The crisis is made more urgent by the huge need for water. The report calculates that, on average, people need a minimum of about 4,000 liters (just over 1,000 gallons) a day to lead a “dignified life,” far above the 50 to 100 liters the United Nations says is needed for basic needs, and more than most regions will be able to provide from local sources.

Watch for the Doomsday Environmentalists to go after your shower, your washing machine, your back yard pool.  There's nothing like a coordination problem for the Allegedly Smart People to find ways to expand their authority.

Richard Allan, a climate science professor at Reading University, England, said the report “paints a grim picture of human-caused disruption to the global water cycle, the most precious natural resource that ultimately sustains our livelihoods.”

Human activities “are altering the fabric of our land and the air above which is warming the climate, intensifying both wet and dry extremes, and sending wind and rainfall patterns out of kilter,” added Allan, who was not involved in the report.

The crisis can only be addressed through better management of natural resources and massive cuts in planet-heating pollution, he told CNN.

The report’s authors say world governments must recognize the water cycle as a “common good” and address it collectively. Countries are dependent on each other, not only through lakes and rivers that span borders, but also because of water in the atmosphere, which can travel huge distances — meaning decisions made in one country can disrupt rainfall in another.

Dear reader, you have to scroll to the very bottom of the well, er, closing paragraphs of the story, to find the wisdom.

The report calls for a “fundamental regearing of where water sits in economies,” including better pricing to discourage wastefulness and the tendency to plant water-thirsty crops and facilities, such as data centers, in water-stressed regions.

“The global water crisis is a tragedy but is also an opportunity to transform the economics of water,” said Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director general of the World Trade Organization and a co-chair of the commission that published the report. Valuing water properly is essential, she added, “so as to recognize its scarcity and the many benefits it delivers.”

If you can trade it, you can value it, and you can allocate it efficiently.

WHEN THE REAL DEBT CEILING CRASHES IN.

Nobody will know the day or the hour.  In "Debt Doom is Coming," Glenn "Insta Pundit" Reynolds breaks down what we will bear when that comes.

Of course, every institution in our government, media, and academia will be – and to a degree already is – mobilized to paper over the problem as long as possible, and then for a bit after that.  But the truth is, there was some major enthusiasm for curbing spending during the Tea Party era, a decade-and-a-half ago, but that enthusiasm, along with the Tea Part movement itself, was quickly abandoned and undercut by the political establishment (along a more or less bipartisan line) because cutting spending to sustainable levels would have knocked a lot of politicians off the gravy train.  Something that nobody who matters wants to be done, won’t be, at least not any time soon.

And who knows?  Politicians have been kicking the national-debt can down the road for as long as I’ve been alive.  There were predictions of doom at debt levels that seemed high back then, but that seem comically low now.  So maybe they’ll keep that can moving for a while longer.  Maybe new technology developments in AI, robotics, or nanotechnology will set off so much economic growth that we’ll grow our way out of it.  Maybe they’ll be able to inflate it away to manageable levels without setting off hyperinflation or riots.  Maybe aliens will come and offer us a new monetary system that will make debt meaningless, or enslave us all as food animals, also making debt meaningless.

That's being silly to make a point.  Read on, however, and consider how best to act locally.

A financial collapse will – like all crises and catastrophes – also be a political opportunity for someone. You can bet that the lefties will be ready to move in and take advantage. But what about people on the small-government side?

We need to think about what resources will be available, and how to put them to use. State and local governments will still be there if the federal government goes broke. States have their own credit ratings, their own bureaucracy, their own police and military forces. Local governments retain the main role in maintaining order and providing essential services. States have issued their own currency in the past, and can do it again if necessary.

States can do a lot of things when the federal government is rendered largely helpless. In a limited way, activist governors like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott have demonstrated some of that. If I were preparing my state for federal collapse, I’d make sure its debt was manageable and its credit good, invest its “rainy day fund” in things that would still be valuable when treasuries weren’t, and build up my State Guard, state police, and other state resources so that they could pick up some of the slack when the feds fell down. I’d also start boosting my state’s independence in terms of resources and food supplies as much as possible. Also, stockpiles of essential medical supplies and other goods, mutual aid agreements with neighboring states, emergency communications systems independent of federal networks, plans to temporarily pay unpaid federal workers, or find them alternative employment, and more.

There’s only so much you can do with that, but I’d do what I could.

He also proposes a number of changes to the national government, including an Article Five constitutional convention, and an enlargement of the House of Representatives, both of which might be worth considering whether the Federal Reserve Notes are as solid as the old Pennsylvania Railroad or not worth a continental.

AFTER THEY'VE TRIED EVERYTHING ELSE, MAYBE THEY'LL TRY EQUAL PROTECTION.

Inside Higher Ed kibitzer Craig Wynne posts a "Letter From a Child-Free Cat Guy."  The "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" this isn't:  "Craig Wynne calls for adding childlessness—and childfree-ness—to DEI conversations."

DOESN'T ANYBODY HERE KNOW HOW TO PLAY THIS GAME?

Hot Air contributor David Strom asks, "Do the Democrat Elites WANT Kamala to Lose?"  He opens with a disclaimer.

It sounds crazy, and perhaps it is. But there is a lot of suspicion that Democrats are either throwing in the towel on the presidential race or that members of their elite are so unenthusiastic that they want her to lose.

There could be many reasons why that might be so, and many more why that seems crazy to me. But I am not a mind-reader, so all I can do is look at the facts as they present themselves and then try to figure out what is going on.

It's possible, as he notes, that Dementia Joe is still capable of being peevish and resentful, those being his base traits when he had more than two brain cells to rub together.

The case for Joe Biden wanting Kamala to lose is most compelling. Harris, after all, helped push him out of the campaign, sidelined him, and made him look like a weak fool. It was obvious that Biden didn't want to budge--he said so often and loudly enough--and it was similarly obvious that he resented being pushed out.

Many people speculated at the time that Biden's endorsement of Harris hours after the obviously written-for-him letter bowing out of the race was a big screw-you to the Democratic Party. Harris was thought to be a terrible candidate without a chance of winning, and Biden put our his endorsement separate from the statement pulling out of the race, and was likely not filtered by an establishment which had been pushing for an open process.

Part of the deal in getting Biden out of the race was that there would be no criticism of Biden--at all--and that he would be presented as a George Washington figure putting country above ambition. And Biden is enforcing the deal--every time anybody mentions Harris separating herself from Biden, out he pops with a bear hug to draw her back in. And when he is unhappy with her he goes further--dons a MAGA hat or steps on her messaging.

But when he gets into the internal jealousies among the Donks, and there are many, he loses sight of the path of play.  Yes, there is plenty of tabloid-worthy material on the campaign trail, and it no doubt cheers up the Militant Normals who follow everything from Pajamas Media, Town Hall, and the rest of the insurgency.

Obama loves power, and Kamala Harris is even more brain-dead than Joe Biden. Her being in office would extend his reign for another four years. He has deeply infiltrated the Biden administration (look at the ranks of administration officials), and his people are running Kamala's campaign in an uneasy alliance with Kamala's team.

I think this was pure elitist arrogance, not sabotage. Obama has always aspired to be at the top of the elite and achieved that goal in 2004 when he burst onto the scene at the DNC. He has never looked back.

Bill Clinton's gaffe (?) is the most mysterious. Biden hates Harris, Obama is now in an elite bubble and can't understand ordinary black men, but what is Clinton going on about? He basically blamed Kamala Harris for Laken Riley's death and called for the Great Replacement to become a reality.

Perhaps, though, the problem is with Democrat operatives who can't unwind a game tree.  Recall, dear reader, the way the nomination changed hands.

Tell me the Democrats haven't just eased the sitting president out of office and made the sitting vice-president the interim president without the formality of invoking the 25th Amendment.  Yes, Old Joe made a trip to the Lyndon Johnson presidential library today, where he offered some new end runs around the Constitution, the better to keep Democrats in power, because it's only democracy when they win.

That is, if the substitution is a winning move.  "Carville: ‘Excitement’ around Harris has to be tempered with ‘realism.’"  Yes, all the predictable pop-culture cultists are doing what Democrats do so well, turning the next nominee into the Last Best Hope for Weimarkind.  They do have Old Joe's disastrous record to run on, though, that is, if Republicans and Libertarians can keep their focus.

Recall the scuttlebutt, back when Dementia Joe renounced the nomination, that either he suffered a medical emergency and the party poobahs decided the actuarial tables were against him serving out another term, or the internal polling was so disastrous that his continuing on the ticket would have wiped out Democrats from the Senate to the school board to the dog-catcher.  But if he would not renounce graciously, there had to be a more persuasive way to get the renunciation.  "In game theory, the advice to expect the Red Baron is one way to motivate the concept of subgame perfection (each player picks the best available response at each decision node, whether that node is on the equilibrium path of play or not.)"

That more persuasive way might have involved invoking the 25th Amendment on presidential incapacitation.  The most direct method requires the vice president and a majority of the departmental secretaries to request its application.  How, then, might the party poobahs get the vice president on board with that threat, particularly if she's maintaining that her boss is fit to govern?  Can't the vice president hold up that strategy by going along with it only with a guarantee of the nomination?  If the party poobahs have any understanding of the path of play, they will offer the nomination to the vice president in order to have the vice president on board with the invocation of the 25th Amendment.  Then, the threat to remove the president the hard way is credible, and the president's renunciation of the nomination while finishing his term is a preferable outcome to being tossed.

The correlation of forces, however, might not be favorable to the continuation of a Democrat presidency, irrespective of who is running and whether or not the vice president is an empty pantsuit.

THE RELEGATION ISN'T OVER UNTIL THE PAPERWORK IS DONE.

A few years ago, I cracked wise about Big Time College Football shaking up the conferences in the British fashion.  "How best deal with the dominance of the Southeastern Conference and the embarrassing presence of weak teams in some of the other power conferences?  Create a hierarchy of teams, with footie-style promotion and relegation."  Little did I know that something like that was taking place in the Milwaukee City Conference.  "Here's how the Milwaukee City League works: at the end of each football season, the lowest team in the Richardson division and the top team in the Blackbourn division swap places."  There's not a whole lot in the Milwaukee Public Schools athletics page explaining the divisional alignment, let alone who Richardson and Blackbourn were.  It appears as though the Richardson division started with the larger enrollment schools whilst the Blackbourn division contains the smaller enrollment schools, and each year the top team in the Blackbourn gets to play a big school schedule in the following season.

LET THESE FACTS BE SUBMITTED TO A CANDID WORLD.

My Chicago Boyz colleague David Foster quotes at length from a lengthy tweet (excuse the oxymoron) by financial manager Bill Ackman detailing the repeated injuries and usurpations inflicted by the Jarrett regency on the citizens of these United States. A commenter quips, "Only 33? Luther managed 95. He’d better not get caught close to the White House with a hammer and nail."  I submit, dear reader, that Mr Ackman has the structure of the Declaration of Independence in mind, with tyranny in this life rather than the sale of indulgences to be redeemed as it is in Heaven being the heart of the matter.

Consider the first fact so submitted.  "Open the borders to millions of immigrants who were not screened for their risk to the country, dumping them into communities where the new immigrants overwhelm existing communities and the infrastructure to support the new entrants, at the expense of the historic residents."  That's a different sort of "Obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners," and yet, that is the effect: is anyone going to be in the mood for expediting permanent residency and citizenship after the past three years of chaos, whether along the Rio Grande or in Woodlawn or Springfield?

Or consider the fourth point, "Introduce thousands of new and unnecessary regulations in light of the existing regulatory regime that interfere with our businesses’ ability to compete, restraining the development of desperately needed housing, infrastructure, and energy production with the associated inflationary effects."  Swarms of Officers, harassing our People and eating out their substance, anyone?

Combine the tenth through twelfth points, "Encourage and celebrate massive protests and riots that lead to the burning and destruction of local retail and business establishments while at the same time requiring schools to be shuttered because of the risk of Covid-19 spreading during large gatherings, encourage and celebrate anti-American and anti-Israel protests and flag burning on campuses around the country with no consequences for the protesters who violate laws or university codes and policies, allow antisemitism to explode with no serious efforts from the administration to quell this hatred."  Dear reader, might that be what exciting domestic insurrections amongst us looks like?

Taken together, Mr Ackman's post combines the serious with the mundane objections, and yet I cannot fault him for including "Seek to ban gas-powered cars and stoves without regard to the economic and practical consequences of doing so."  Thank you.

Should the upcoming presidential election give us more Trump, well, the Protected brought it on themselves.

HONOR THE MIDIANITES AND THE OLMECS, THE PHILISTINES AND THE TOLTECS.

I take a few days away from the internet.  Although it's turmoil, trouble, and your tax dollars at work slowing you down for road improvements that will never give you that lost time back, it's still business as usual at Common Dreams.  Meaning abject foolishness.  "Human Rights Defenders Decry 'Cynical' Indigenous Peoples Day Celebration Amid Gaza Genocide."

WILL THE SECOND TIME BE THE CHARM?

There used to be a Wing Stop within walking distance of Northern Illinois University's main campus.  Like many other DeKalb businesses, that might have been done in by Governor Pritzker's corona tyranny.  "The kind of places that might have offered variety are gone: the pho restaurant by the grocery store, the Panda, Wing Stop, and a local pizza delivery service in a complex that only hosts a Starbucks, and some of the more conventional hot dog and Italian beef outlets have given up." The store front where Wing Stop used to be has recently been turned into a cheese steak outlet, but the locations used by Panda Express, a pizzeria, and a cell 'phone dealer (!) are still to let. The Starbucks are still active, and with students returning, still functions as a study hall.

If you want Wing Stops, head to stroad hell, not far from Buffalo Wild Wings.  "A Wingstop location has opened in Sycamore, located at 2682 DeKalb Ave."

Co-owners John Hooper and Mike Zak discussed the beginning of their franchise.

“Mike (Zak) approached me (Hooper) about three years ago, he wanted to have a second brand (in addition to Wendy’s), and it was Wingstop,” Hooper said. “So we went and tried it out, and I was like ‘I’m all in’ so he hired me to run the Wingstop side of the business, and we’ve been growing that company for the last two years. We’ve opened six Wingstops. We have four in Wisconsin, and this is our second in Illinois.”

Hooper emphasized the benefits of having a location in Sycamore.

“We’re super excited to be in the Sycamore area. We think there is a lot of upside with the college here and the populations between the two cities,” Hooper said.

While the location is fully staffed, it is still looking for employees.

Members of the DeKalb community were enthusiastic about Wingstop’s long-awaited opening.

Gracie Craft, a DeKalb resident, is excited to have a wing spot in Sycamore.

“It’s exciting. Now we have a place to go (for wings) that is close,” Craft said.

Jose Vasquez, a DeKalb resident, is looking forward to having a Wingstop open up in the DeKalb/Sycamore area.

“I love Wingstop. I used to have to drive all the way to Aurora to get some Wingstop, now it’s only just a few minutes away. Me and my wife are both very excited,” Vasquez said.

Perhaps a few things have changed in five years, and perhaps there's a better business case for a Wing Stop at a distance from campus but closer to the regional hospital.  A Northern Star poll, probably not regionally representative, identified fans of Lemon Pepper, Garlic Parmesan, and Spicy Korean BBQ seasoned wings.  Student reporters might be forgiven for ignoring anything that happened before they matriculated.  "It’s also the closest Wingstop to NIU!"  I wonder what Corporate told the owners about the adjacent-to-campus storefront, which was vacant until recently.