THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN ARCH DELUXE IS THE END OF ANY KIND OF DELUXE.

New York Times restaurant reviewer Pete Wells calls it a career, and his valedictory is an E-T-T-S moment.  "I Reviewed Restaurants for 12 Years. They’ve Changed, and Not for the Better."

No, it's not about zebra mussels with a dollop of special sauce on a bed of swamp grass.  "Mr Lapham and P. J. O'Rourke might find common ground making mock of overpriced starvation-chic eateries, although they'd likely disagree on whether plenitude as symbolized by food is a good thing."  Rather, its another manifestation of the transactional crowding out the experiental.  And here I thought Starbucks epitomized neglecting the customer.  "Perhaps that was an improvement over the sort of studied indolence that used to greet walk-in customers."  That "inclusive and welcoming space" decal they post by the drive-through sounds more like a mainstream Protestant church than a coffeehouse, but I digress.

DONE.

The special run of the James E. Strates Shows carnival train for the centennials of the Erie County Fair and the show has turned out to be a ceremonial final trip.

The James E. Strates Shows carnival train made a triumphant final trip Thursday (Aug. 1) when it delivered midway attractions to the Erie County Fair via shortline Buffalo Southern.

The nine-car train — which made its way from Strates headquarters in Taft, Fla., to Buffalo, N.Y., in CSX merchandise service last month — arrived to fanfare at the former Erie Railroad depot near the fairgrounds. A band played and a throng had gathered trackside to greet the train, which had not run since the end of the 2019 fair season.

Strates have already sold seven of the cars on the train.  The company retain other railway cars, including some flat cars purchased from Ringling Barnum, in Florida.  Whether any carnival rides will ride the rails again remains doubtful.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE CON.

From the founding of the American Republic, the use of public moneys to build internal improvements has been a Necessary and Proper way to spend tax dollars.

How has that worked out for us?

Answer me this, dear reader, what was the longest canal in the United States?  "The 468 mile long Wabash and Erie Canal, built between February 22, 1832 (George Washington’s Birthday) and 1853, was the longest canal ever built in the Western Hemisphere. It is surpassed only by the Grand Canal in China, which was 1,200 miles long."  By 1874, some sections had been taken out of service.  So it was with canals throughout the United States east of the Mississippi: apart from the Erie Canal, construction commenced on these projects after experimental railroads were beginning to prove their worth.  (Most famously, work on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal commenced in the Swamp, er, the Federal Capital, the same day the first stone was laid in Baltimore for the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road.

Now contemplate the map above.  In Cincinnati, the dry bed of the Miami and Erie Canal provided a cut for a subway that was later covered by a boulevard.  (No tracks were ever built in that subway.) Elsewhere in the Midwest, what remains of those mid-nineteenth century canals have generally become linear parks.  The promoters and subsidizers couldn't even get their scantlings together, thus the technically advanced Hennepin Canal of the early twentieth century was too narrow and too shallow for what was emerging as the inland waterway barge.

AMTRAK, THIS IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

What was I just saying about enabling incompetence?  Amtrak ‘Carl Sandburg’ route to return to normal Saturday.  What went wrong?

If you’ve had to take a bus this week or last to Chicago thanks to Amtrak here in Galesburg, you’re not alone.

Amtrak has had a number of canceled routes on its Chicago to Quincy “Carl Sandburg” service.  But they say things will return to normal starting Saturday, after the passenger railway had been using chartered buses since last week.

Amtrak claims the change in service had been occurring because of “a shortage of available state-owned locomotives,” as the route is operated by Amtrak under a deal with the Illinois Department of Transportation.

It's been like that much of the summer, with the new Charger diesels failing, and regional trips on the Quincy line and the Milwaukee service being scrubbed.  Yes, the Milwaukee trains ran reasonably dependably the week of the Republican convention, if with anything that would turn a wheel, including the ancient Dash-8 diesels and cabbage cars coming out of semi-retirement on some turns.  That's contributing to the troubles.  "As Amtrak will be using other locomotives from its fleet instead, the railway says it will work with the state and manufacturers to streamline the repair-making process."  That people speak of a repair-making process might tell us more about the carrier's troubles than the questionable motive power and rolling stock alone.

KAMALA'S DANCE PARTIES.

For the past couple of weeks, the Democrats' nominees have delivered closing remarks at rock concerts.  I'm not sure, though, the extent to which people are turning out for the politics or for the local performers-made-good who offer in-kind campaign contributions in the form of free concerts.  I'll leave it to people who pay closer attention to such things to work out whether people who come for the concert and leave when the pep rally starts are likely voters.

SURRENDERING WITH A SHRUG.

For a long time, Cold Spring Shops has called attention to the folly of admitting unprepared students and calling it access.  "[S]tate institutions that were separate but not equal during Jim Crow remain less than equal today.  And thus, does access beget assessment and remediation and fretting about retention."  We've always been clear-eyed about where that leads.  "When you admit unprepared students and call it access, what do you have to do to boost retention?"

At Inside Higher Ed, you decide to redefine "prepared."  The article's link title is "Three Strategies to Support College Readiness."  It's more accurate to understand the article, as the text will bear out, as three strategies to redefine readiness.  No, seriously.  "Rather than asking students to catch up and mold to higher ed’s traditional structures, experts in the field are asking, are colleges set up to help students succeed?"

What would we ever do without experts?

Student readiness has declined from a number of angles: historically low ACT scores, a lack of study skills, class attendance, classroom participation and meeting deadlines consistently. Teenagers entering higher education are also more likely to say they struggle with their mental health and loneliness.

You could stop enabling dysfunction, and maybe you'd get less of it.  That's not Received Wisdom at the house organ for all wokeness all the time.  Standards?  That's so last century.

College readiness is the idea that a student should be prepared and equipped to succeed at their institution, but many in higher ed want to shift the conversation to institutional readiness. Student success leaders share their perspective that, if a college enrolls a student, that is the indication the student can be successful there.

That has always been the perspective, but the successful students don't go through four years fat, dumb, and drunk.  These days, being unprepared is simply another challenge to be accommodated.  "Instead of placing responsibility on students ... colleges and universities can model institutional readiness."

What's it going to take, a fatal accident on the Space Station or a complete breakdown of a government function before people who should know better catch on that enabling helplessness only produces more of it?

STEAM TRAIN A-COMING!

We can't have all gloom and doom on a Monday, can we?  Union Pacific have posted their Heartland of America Tour for Big Boy 4014.  There will not be many public stops.  One of them will be in Rochelle, Illinois, on Sunday, September 8.

The train will leave Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on the morning of September 6, due at Sterling, Illinois for servicing, 1.30 pm to 1.45 pm; arriving Rochelle, probably at Global Three for an employee event on the Saturday; the public is welcome on the Sunday.

Monday the train pauses at the Rochelle Railroad Park from 8.45 am to 9.00 am; due into Watseka, Illinois at 5.00 pm.  There might be train-watching opportunities along the Elburn line at midday.

The train will subsequently venture into Kansas City Southern territory, is that letting Canadian Pacific know that an Empress is not a Big Boy.

CREDIBILITY GAPS AND LOST TRUST.

Lyndon Johnson's presidency was the tragedy.

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

Back then, it wasn't only State Department briefers making statements that would later be declared "inoperative."

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

Joe Biden's presidency is the farce.  Conceal the senility, market the candidate as a centrist Democrat, suppress inconvenient stories about his family's corruption.

But again, it wasn't only the White House and its palace guard media making statements that were later deemed "inoperative."  As the corona tyranny went on and on, it became clear that all the experts stunk.

TIFFANY HENYARD IS BRAT.

Dear reader, you could see this coming.  "I don't know, perhaps 'brat' is the latest street term for 'sassy,' er, your authentic self."  Last winter, Dolton mayor (and Thornton township supervisor) Tiffany Henyard let her brat self fly.

The authentic schtick, perhaps with some righteous indignation thrown in, recently surfaced in Dolton, an inner suburb of Chicago now down on its luck and governed by Coleman Young's soul sister, Tiffany Henyard.  "The tract houses of the American High have trickled down to a less-liquid class of buyer, and the industries that used to surround the railroads through there have been subject to the tender mercies of Illinois taxation, and like Ferguson outside St. Louis, the Suburban Experiment has ended, only in a scrap over who is the most authentic ward-heeler."

Not before the mayor indulged herself like some potentate on the city's credit card.

Dolton, Illinois is in a world of financial hurt, thanks to Mayor Tiffany Henyard. For those who remember, this “super mayor” of a small village seemed to think she had been elected as empress, not mayor, and her spending of taxpayer dollars followed suit.

Mayor Tiffany Henyard became famous nationally this last February, with her hit single “I am the leader” as she complained that she was being attacked because she was “a black woman in power.”

It was all too much for the Combine, which sent former Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, probably displaced by former White Sox manager Pedro Grifol on the list of Spectacular Chicago Failures, to dress Super Brat Mayor down.

When the news broke nationally about Mayor Tiffany Henyard and her lavish lifestyle on the taxpayer dime, the Dolton board of trustees decided to hire former Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot (she didn’t have anything better to do) to investigate what Henyard had been doing with all the money. Naturally, Henyard vetoed the hiring of Lightfoot, but for once, the board overruled her. The mayor then went on to make the investigation as difficult as possible, but Lori Lightfoot presented her findings – while admitting that they were limited – last night to a very angry audience.

The video runs the better part of an hour, should you be interested.

But will that audience get angry enough to recognize the ward-heeler schtick the brat mayor has engaged in?

There's a symbiosis between desperate people who like having a ward-heeler "fighting for them" and a ward-heeler who mau-maus the rest of the polity about the continued parlous condition of his or her constituents.  A ward-heeler cannot call out the constituents for engaging in self-destructive behavior, nor get re-elected in a district in which constituents discover, or re-discover bourgeois habits.  Better to have constituents rendered helpless by years of Democratic policies.

If I'm Team Trump, do I have supporters knocking on doors in Dolton or Harvey or Matteson?  Come the spring local elections, do I encourage like-minded citizens to run for mayor or township supervisor or the school board or dog-catcher?  Victory Girl Deanna Fisher hopes so.

While national elections absolutely do matter (consider the chaos that Biden’s foreign policy has created), it is also true that local corruption can ruin your life a whole lot faster, because unless you move, you can’t get away from it. The people of Dolton and Thornton Township are now looking at crippling budget deficts, thanks to one woman, that will affect them for years to come. You think they might pay more attention to who gets elected next time?

Perhaps, although perhaps the Combine will clean up an egregious manifestation of corruption now in order to substitute in a more conventional ward-heeler next spring, when training camps are open and there's no presidential news cycle.

MARKING OFF.

One of the Motivational Myths of These United States is that anyone can become president.

We are seeing that play out in real time.

Trump’s entire election campaign could just spend millions to play this clip around the clock on every screen in America pic.twitter.com/Y6gH8qHKxQ

— Joel Berry (@JoelWBerry) August 5, 2024

That was a few years ago, but in character.

Kamala Harris: "As a woman, there's a balance to be struck between being tough, and being a bitch."
*Laughs for nearly 15 seconds straight like a supervillain*

Her laugh makes her sound unbalanced. No one sees you as tough, Kamala.
Do you want a president who has Dr. Evil's… pic.twitter.com/ZcKfyBIH8I

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) August 4, 2024

Just before the #KamalaKrash came this.

As the stock market implodes, the jobs market is in the tank and we are on the brink of another major war-
don't worry, be happy, because Kamala says:
"All that ladies and gentlemen and everyone else, that is called Bidenomics and we are very proud of Bidenomics!" pic.twitter.com/oY1TuK9acA

— Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) August 5, 2024

Oh, and the lady is an absolute master of information technology.

If you’re wondering why Kamala hasn’t been let off the teleprompter for 14 days as the Dem nominee — she still hasn’t done a single interview or any unscripted voter meetings at all — here she is explaining cloud computing: pic.twitter.com/6OpDpAXD0C

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 4, 2024

I thought running a reality show host against a corpse was bad enough, the same reality show host running against an empty pantsuit is even less edifying.

Posting will resume sometime next week.  There will be no Friday short takes on August 9.  Happy birthday Mighty Mouse.

TIM WALZ, CORONA TYRANT.

Reason's Robby Soave calls attention.  "The Minnesota governor actually defended the state's disastrous nursing home policies."  His article opens with a bit of spin.

Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz was a moderate Democrat when he served in the House of Representatives but veered left during his two terms as governor. He referred to socialism as synonymous with neighborliness, pursued an extremely progressive governing agenda, and earned an F from the Cato Institute on fiscal policy.

Another notable thing about Walz is that he served as governor during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is thus possible to parse his approach to the virus—and that record is extremely disturbing. Indeed, Walz's coronavirus policies were extremely heavy-handed and restrictive; under his leadership, the state endured the pandemic in a fundamentally anti-libertarian fashion.

Nikita Sergeyevich represented a median voter district near the Iowa border, and during at least part of his Congressional service, his party was the minority.

Under such circumstances, it is no Botox off Nancy Pelosi's nose if he votes his constituents' wishes on votes the Democrats stand to lose, or if she has whipped sufficient votes from her caucus that he goes his own way.

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO DESPISE MSNBC ENOUGH.

Apparently some production assistant at Pravda-by-the-Rock selectively edited segments of a recent Joe Rogan interview to make it sound like he was praising Kamala Harris.  But he and his guests dished on two political women.  "One part of the video @joerogan was talking about Kamala; on another part of the video, he was talking about me. MSNBC combined it together to make it look like everything said was about Kamala and that he was endorsing her. Of course this is completely false."

Do you really want to cross a lady who is still commissioned in the Army?

MSNBC is again EXPOSED as a propaganda machine for the Democrat Elite, and how they will brazenly try to deceive the American people.

One part of the video @joerogan was talking about Kamala; on another part of the video, he was talking about me. MSNBC combined it together to… pic.twitter.com/E8701iZ8dh

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) August 2, 2024

I'm aware of talk of lawsuits. So far there's nothing substantive to report.

TODAY IN IDENTITARIAN PARANOIA.

OK, it's Medea Benjamin, meaning one should consider the source.

Representative Cori Bush, a progressive black woman from St. Louis, Missouri who is a member of “the Squad” in the U.S. House and has been a powerful voice in Congress for poor people, women’s rights, healthcare, housing–and Palestine—just lost her primary because pro-Israel lobby groups flooded the race with outside funding. Her loss is a tremendous blow to progressives and to the U.S. electoral process itself.

This is the pro-Israel lobby’s second “win” of the season. The first was the June defeat of progressive, black congressman from Westchester County, N.Y., Jamaal Bowman, who was a forceful critic of Israel’s attacks on Gaza.  AIPAC and its mis-named super PAC, the United Democracy Project, barged into Westchester County to anoint an opponent—white, pro-Israel Westchester County Executive George Latimer—and then shower him with cash.

At Insta Pundit, contributors understand what is going on as "the Corbynization of the Democratic Party."  That might have contributed to Nikita Sergeyevich, er, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, becoming the presumptive vice-presidential nominee.  "The antisemites of the Democratic Party had their say."

WHY THE MAN OF SYSTEM FAILS.

Walter Lippmann might not have grasped the knowledge problem as economists now have it.  His understanding of why the fatal conceit is fatal to the technocrats' ambitions is spot on.

Any fool, it has been said, can govern under martial law and any tyro can enjoy the delusion of having advanced the interest of mankind by establishing an armed official with a mandate to advance the public welfare. But it is only a delusion to think that the infinite complexity of human affairs has been put in order by calling in an omnipotent official. All that the thinker has done is to relieve himself of his own perplexities by passing them on to the bureaucracy. He has solved no problem. He has merely appointed officials with a mandate to solve the problem for him.

That might be so, and as Don "Cafe Hayek" Boudreaux notes, the thinker will pat himself on the back for his Good Intentions, never mind that after the bureaucracy has taken on the task, things will not be that much better.  There is no magic button.

CHOOSING THE TRANSACTIONAL OVER THE EXPERIENTAL?

Strong Towns contributor Asia Mieleszko has an E-T-T-S moment at the coffee house. "From Hang Out To Hurry: Why Starbucks Wants To Redefine 'Third Place'."

Starbucks built its brand on being a third place.

“It never really was about the coffee to me with Starbucks,” Matt Dollinger wrote for Fast Company in 2008. “When I think about Starbucks, I think about Comfy Chairs, Great Smells, Pretty People and WiFi.”

The company prided itself on being a hideaway between home and work, even billing itself as the “world’s conference room.” Its ambiance was a far cry from competitors like Dunkin’ Donuts. Everything from the dim lighting to the plush armchairs, the earth-toned color scheme and even the ceiling height conspired to maximize what the company’s representatives called the “Starbucks experience.” For Dollinger — and millions of consumers — the “experience” made the detour worth it, even if Dunkin’s coffee was a little better and nearly $1 cheaper.

Rounded tables were as much an aesthetic choice as they were a means of encouraging conversation between coffee drinkers. The store playlists were an invitation to linger. It was as if the company’s handbook was [sociologist Ray] Oldenburg’s criteria for a third place.

Mr Oldenburg, being a sociologist, had to say something stupid about Normals. “The beer joint in which the middle class American takes no pride can be as much a third place as the proud Viennese coffeehouse.”  But I digress.  Let's get to the E-T-T-S moments.

When every other fast food establishment was expanding its drive-thru offerings in the late 1980s and '90s, Starbucks resisted. “We don’t want to become just another commodity product,” the company’s finance chief said in a 1995 profile. “The drive-thrus are a way for the converted to get their coffee a little quicker. It’s not the way we want people to discover the Starbucks experience.”

Yet, by 2022, Starbucks appeared to have scrapped the “Starbucks experience” entirely. Across the country, cozy lounge chairs were replaced with metal stools — where seating wasn’t done away with altogether. Bathrooms, outlets and tables also disappeared. The company even departed from its 1990s ethos and promised to outfit 90% of new locations with “state-of-the-art” drive-thrus. Even New York City, of all places, has Starbucks drive-thrus now.

You might deny that your company offers a "commodity product." Whenever you offer something for sale with the expectation of harvesting a profit, you are engaging in the exchange of commodities.  In the case of Starbucks, the target clientele was people of means, who might have had high opportunity costs of their time.  And, thus, the sort of walk-in trade that works on a culture studies paper or plots with fellow wokies to overthrow the government isn't making much use of those round-end tables and lounge chairs.

Some changes were pandemic-necessitated adaptations that were never reversed, while others were a response to new norms. According to the company, most purchases are made through its mobile app, the majority of drinks ordered are cold, and apparently, people just don’t want to sit inside a Starbucks as much anymore.

Yet, this isn’t simply a company adjusting its business model to reflect consumer trends. The brand is still holding onto its legacy as a third place, going so far as to redefine the third place as a feeling rather than a physical space:

“The Third Place has never been defined solely by a physical space, it’s also the feeling of warmth, connection, a sense of belonging,” a press release stated. “Digital technology is helping augment and extend that feeling of connection with customers — whether they are in Starbucks stores, in their cars, on their doorsteps.”

Part of “reimagining the third place,” as Starbucks described it, involved investing $450 million into new coffee-making equipment and a better mobile ordering system. The focus of both upgrades was to speed up the drink-making process at drive-thru locations. Efficiency was core to this new feeling, as was suburban expansion.

Even if a third place is more than just a physical space, it’s difficult to see what any of these upgrades have to do with it.

It’d be one thing if the company kept the locations long beloved for their ample seating, WiFi and culture while increasing suburban options. However, that’s not the case. Since 2020, Starbucks has set out to close 400 of these centrally located stores, the bulk of which patrons could access by foot. It reduced and removed seating from the few remaining urban locations. Its leaders claimed that nobody wanted to sit in a Starbucks anymore, and they made sure that nobody ever would.

In reimagining the third place, Starbucks has removed all the hallmarks of one. The Starbucks where you studied for finals with your classmates, recovered from that awkward first date, won a chess match and took that job interview no longer exists. It’s now a conveyor belt where speed rules and the ideal customer experience is spending as little time in the store as possible. “Next!”

Perhaps that was an improvement over the sort of studied indolence that used to greet walk-in customers.  High time value and all that.  I'm not going to get into the spats over whether the panhandlers linger too long in the urban Starbucks and shoot up in the bathrooms.  I will note that one of those suburban outlets I sometimes call at, located in stroad hell at Randall and Stearns, recently very much reduced its indoor dining area and augmented its drive-through, while the campus outlet is still in its older configuration (never had any comfy chairs) and the collegians do use it as a study hall.

Elsewhere, well, perhaps Ms Mieleszko misses the five-stool corner taverns of the Burnham Street neighborhood of Milwaukee.  "In the end, maybe it’s not that fewer people want to sit inside a Starbucks; maybe it’s that Starbucks wants fewer people sitting inside."  Those other hangouts will emerge.

WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND THEY ARE US.

That aphorism never loses currency, does it?  There is a real debt ceiling, and when it falls in on us, Reason's Brian Riedl notes we shall have nobody to blame but ourselves.

Should we blame Biden and the politicians applauding him for their unwillingness to risk addressing our looming fiscal insolvency?

Actually, voters are mostly to blame.

We simultaneously call for a balanced budget, higher spending, and no more taxes. We vote for Santa Claus candidates from both parties. We're the ones who selected those craven politicians. And eventually, we'll pay the price.

The fashionable nonsense will go on, until it can't.

SOCIALISM SUCKS. MAYBE WE CAN BE FREE OF IT.

Remember three months ago?  "Salon contributor Kirk Swearingen is hoping to be an English-language correspondent for Brezhnev's Pravda.  'Don't like this economy? OK, just wait for Trump and the GOP to ruin it.'"

Not long after that, the vice-president's interns went into brat mode.

Four years ago today, Trump claimed the stock market would “crash” if Joe Biden was elected

(The stock market has reached the highest levels ever recorded in history under President Biden) pic.twitter.com/4ZXsmtgh7z

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) May 24, 2024

Some years from now, there will be monetary economists working out precisely the extent to which those high stock market indices reflect all that printed money.  The responsibility doesn't fall on the Jarrett regency alone, there will be a serious research project or seven looking at efforts dating back to the Troubled Assets Relief Program or perhaps to the winding up of the savings and loans in the early 1990s.  Nor does it follow that The Donald was right.  Cagey old J. P. Morgan always cautioned that stock prices would fluctuate.

He was right. pic.twitter.com/JE9Gq6nIEU

— Ada Nestor (@AdaNestorWC) August 5, 2024

I doubt, though, that the usual sorts of identity-politics conscience-cowgrrls will tout today's epochal event.  "Historic: Kamala Harris Becomes First Black Woman To Destroy World Economy."

Experts predicted that today would go down as a historic day, as Kamala Harris became the first black woman to destroy the world economy.

The achievement was the first of its kind, with members of the media and prominent political leaders all hailing it as an impressive step forward in the pursuit of equality and the advancement of women of color.

"It's a day for the history books, folks," said President Joe Biden. "Not only is Kamala the first… the first… black… the first black… president of the… president, but she is now the first black woman to completely wipe out the global economy. Old white guys like me have been doing it for years, but now she's breaking all the barriers. The idea… the idea... that a colored broad from… Jamaica… India… wherever the place… it's big stuff, folks. I'm proud to have been serving as her vice president of Delaware for the last four years. And now, this November… harbinzifarginator."

Harris's presidential campaign released a statement from the vice president on the achievement: "It is a great honor to be honored," Harris said. "To be the first anything to do anything is something. And by doing something, something is done. The word ‘something' means ‘some' and ‘thing,' which is what I have now done. And that is something."

At publishing time, insiders said Harris, if elected, would likely look to continue leaving a path of destruction until she would go down in history books as the first and only woman of color to preside over the end of human civilization.

Sometimes we crack jokes to keep from screaming.

THE STIMULUS WEARS OFF.

The Market's About to Crash and WWIII is About to Begin.  Fauxahontas on warpath.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Friday demanded that the chairman of the Federal Reserve immediately "cancel his summer vacation" and slash interest rates following the release of government data showing weaker-than-expected job growth and an increase in the unemployment rate last month.

Warren (D-Mass.), an outspoken critic of the Fed's aggressive interest rate increases, argued in a social media post that Fed Chair Jerome Powell "made a serious mistake not cutting interest rates" at the Federal Open Market Committee's (FOMC) meeting earlier this week. The central bank's policy-setting group opted to hold rates at 5.25% to 5.5% for the 12th consecutive month.

The FOMC's next scheduled meeting isn't until September 17.

"The jobs data is flashing red," the senator wrote. "Powell needs to cancel his summer vacation and cut rates now—not wait six weeks."

The U.S. Labor Department said Friday that employers added 114,000 jobs in July, the lowest number since April. Economists projected 175,000 new jobs.

Not surprisingly, the Free Stuff Caucus within the Harris coalition are calling for more social spending, and more money printing, which is to say, more of what brought us to this pass in the first place.

WELCOME TO KAMALALALALAND.

Power Line's Lloyd Billingsley isn't impressed with what I call the ongoing unserious presidential cult.  "A strange woman from the Washington swamp, distributing lies, is no basis for a government."

LET'S TAKE A TRAIN RIDE.

On the weekend, I noted some commuter cars spotted toward the west end of Milwaukee's railroad station.

A Milwaukee area transportation enthusiast was flying a drone in the Walker's Point neighborhood and captured Thursday's Hiawatha Service train 342 transiting the old Washington Street interlocking and rattling the ceiling of the Model Railroad Club of Milwaukee.

Milwaukee, 2024 pic.twitter.com/W5XJB47XU4

— Isaac Rowlett (✡️ for 🇵🇸) (@IsaacRowlett) August 2, 2024

The Veterans Tribute cabbage car 90221 leads five Horizon coaches, and two Metrolink suburban coaches headed for California behind the propelling Charger diesel.

The truncated track at right is what remains of the connecting track The Milwaukee Road and Chicago and North Western built to bring their trains into Milwaukee's new station, which was for five years a true union station.  One way of providing additional passenger train capacity on Amtrak's current line (to do so involves spending way more money than anybody wants to) is to restore that connection in order to move freight trains off the Canadian Pacific here and onto the old Chicago and North Western Freight Main.  If you're feeling really ambitious, raise The Milwaukee Road's tracks up and have them jump over that track at left, which moves freight trains out of Muskego Yard onto the main tracks at Kinnickinnic Draw.

Residents in Chicago's northern suburbs are not interested in having any more freight trains in earshot.  At the same time, they put up with delays on the Edens and the Chicago expressways whenever some aggressive motorist gets sideways with a semi, or there's a police investigation of a road-rage shooting, or is it settling all family business?  Go figure.