TO REALLY FOUL THINGS UP REQUIRES A COMPUTER.

The Bridge Base artificial intelligence algorithms sometimes get to some strange contracts.  I might still have notes of one in which the opposition bots bought a slam contract without checking aces properly; I had one ace, gleefully doubled the contract, and cashed the ace.  There was an earlier post in which the partner bot got me into a grand slam with insufficient support: that went three down.

Today's very irregular Saturday bridge column shows very irregular bidding by the bots.  What happened to them next was not amusing.

I open One No-Trump, the West bot doubles, which is an odd sort of takeout, or signal of two long suits; North with seven points prudently passes; the East bot shows its longest suit, and with minimal opening values I pass.  Why the West bot didn't venture Two Spades, which East-West had a fighting chance of making, I don't know.

That's a sweet looking sequence in trumps, and I lead the ♥ Ace.  Down comes the dummy, and a human East would be sweating: one Club loser, two or three Diamond losers, at least three Heart losers, which aren't encouraging, even with a possible extra Spade winner or two.  Here I sit, able to control any ruffing opportunity from East, and with that lone ♦ King, establishing the ♦ Queen to play at an opportune time just got easier.  First things first, though: with all those Clubs to my right, cashing the ♣ Ace pronto might be prudent.  Next, I force out the ♦ King cheaply, and lo-and-behold, partner has the  ♦ Ace, and obligingly returns another Diamond, getting the ♦ Queen home without any annoying ruffing.  Because East played the ♦ Jack, that ♦ Eight also rolls home, as North covers with the Nine and leads the Ten.  No matter what East ruffs with, I over-ruff.

SUSTAINABILITY IS A SESQUIPEDALIAN SYNONYM FOR DEPRIVATION: THE SEQUEL.

Common sense comes to the editors of Chicago's regime-friendly Tribune.  "America’s energy boom has helped with global security. Biden should leave well alone."  Ya think?

North America’s amazing energy boom has been a huge plus for U.S. domestic security over the past decade. Thanks to the rise of shale fracking and other game-changing technologies, the U.S. and Canada have produced more oil and gas than ever before, reducing the need for imports while breathing life into export markets.

This oil-and-gas bonanza came just in time to help American allies in Europe support sanctions against Russian fossil fuels imposed after the 2022 attack on Ukraine. America has become the world’s No. 1 exporter of liquified natural gas, or LNG, and export demand for this important fuel is projected to double by the end of the decade.

The immediate benefits go beyond creating jobs and expanding the economy. Given how the LNG export market serves U.S. interests by helping American allies keep the lights on while punishing Russia for its aggression, you’d think President Joe Biden would be content to take the win and leave well enough alone. No such luck.

At the end of January, the Biden administration hit the brakes on LNG exports, announcing a “temporary pause” on federal authorizations for shipping gas to Europe and other strategically important destinations. The main effect is to halt construction of new export facilities that were in various stages of planning. No company can proceed with these multiyear projects now that the Feds have pledged to withhold the licenses for them until further notice.

In its announcement, the administration claimed that it needs time to assess the health impact of new export facilities on people living in their vicinity. It also cited the potential for increased costs to American consumers if more gas is shipped offshore, and it bemoaned the “perilous” environmental impacts of methane, which is the No. 1 ingredient in the natural gas used in furnaces, stoves and power plants.

Sometimes politicians take time to think about trade-offs.

There’s no mystery about any of those questions, however. Living near petroleum facilities does indeed expose people to the risk of pollution. The price of gas has been driven down by the current glut and probably would increase over time if more were shipped abroad. As for methane, it is well known to be a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming and climate change.

So, if all the administration wanted was answers, well, those are the facts and it’s hardly a revelation that the petroleum industry is dirty but necessary, at least for now. Unsurprisingly, given today’s politics, there is an unstated agenda.

More important to the politician than analyzing trade-offs, though, is getting re-elected. For the Jarrett regency, that means building a plurality from the base outward.

It’s no coincidence that Biden’s LNG decision comes at the start of an election year, and the only good reason for it is to shore up Biden’s support among hard-core environmentalists. Predictably, the greenest Democrats applauded the move against LNG exports, attacking natural gas as a planet killer while conveniently ignoring its essential role in replacing coal, which is dirtier to produce and far worse for the environment when burned.

That base, though, is a nest of True Believing Anointed.

In a perfectly green world, there would be no need for fossil fuels of any kind. In real life, it will take decades to make the transition to cleaner energy, and LNG is widely viewed as the best practical bridge to a future less dependent on the dirtiest fuels.

By attacking LNG, Biden is feeding the fantasies of the same people who think driving a Prius, recycling their kombucha bottles and banning plastic grocery bags at their local stores will single-handedly save the planet. It’s beyond frustrating to hear far-left nature lovers who oppose nuclear power and demonize natural gas then going on to applaud policies that put extreme new demands on the electrical grid.

Where will the juice come from to power the electric vehicles that environmentalists want so badly? Or to support the build-out of data centers and other technologies that require huge amounts of electricity?

You don't have to be Kurt Schlichter to see in those fantasies the tragic reality that the True Believers would prefer that a lot of Benighted go away.

REOPENING BALTIMORE HARBOR.

It's urgent, but not so urgent that recovery efforts and the environmental niceties can be slighted.

It could take days before the first piece of the massive wreckage is cut and lifted out of the way, according to Scott Spellmon, commanding general of the US Army Corps of Engineers. More than 1,000 engineers in Baltimore and across the country are studying the wreckage piece-by-piece to figure out the best plan to remove the wreckage.

“I believe it will be several more days of this type of analysis before we can start cutting and lifting members,” Spellmon told CNN. “There is a massive steel truss bridge going across that channel and at the bottom, 50 feet down, there are possibly some containers and other heavy debris that we have to get off the floor.”

He added it could take weeks for the channel to reopen. “I don’t think we’re talking days, I don’t think we’re talking months … I think we’re talking weeks,” he said. “I just can’t put a number on it yet until we get our analysis complete.”

It's apparently all hands if you own floating cranes right now.  The first order of business is to get the navigation channel open.

Demolition workers may be able to clear a channel large enough for ships to pass through as soon as a month after the required equipment arrives at the scene, according to an expert in the field familiar with ongoing discussions.

The expert, who spoke to CNN on condition that his name not be used, said it will likely take longer than that to remove all the debris. But clearing the 1,200-foot area between the two pillars that supported the bridge’s main span will be enough to reopen the port to traffic.

Over 2,400 feet of boom has also been deployed to contain any potential pollution leaks from the ship, Moore said.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators have said 56 containers on the vessel contain hazardous material, mostly corrosives and flammables, as well as some lithium-ion batteries.

The Army Corps will cover the full cost of clearing the channel where the bridge collapsed.

Sometimes, expediting the movement means getting the jackasses out of the way.

The United States still considering itself at peace, and being governed by unserious people, these days the jackasses walk upright and bray in English.

Federal transportation officials will provide the $60 million requested by Moore as a “down payment” toward clearing and rebuilding the Key Bridge, the governor said. The funds will go toward removing debris, rerouting traffic and ultimately rebuilding the bridge.

Maryland can request additional funding later, and the state’s congressional delegation said they would press fellow lawmakers to fund the rebuilding project.

We're talking about a toll bridge, the ship owner carries insurance, and the lawyers and process-worshippers will get to wet their beaks.

President Biden vowed Tuesday that the federal government would cover the massive cost of rebuilding the Francis Scott Key Bridge, a major artery feeding the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the country. The bridge was struck by a cargo ship, almost 1,000 feet long, that lost power as it was leaving Baltimore Harbor and drifted into a support pile in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Biden’s proposal is already winning praise from a number of Democrats, especially those in Maryland, who say the port’s value transcends the state, making the repairs an issue of national importance.

Only the federal government, they argue, has the resources to accomplish the task.

Yet the idea has sparked an immediate backlash from conservative spending hawks, who are already up in arms over Congress’s recent approval of a massive 2024 spending package and maintain that Washington simply can’t afford to pile more money onto the national debt.

Key Bridge, they argue, is a regional matter to be tackled by regional governments.

In the wrangling, perhaps we see why Congress enjoys those government-shutdown-continuing-resolution follies.

Republicans are not the only critics. Some liberals are also questioning Biden’s proposal, arguing that the blame for the tragedy lies, at least in part, with the owner of the cargo vessel, which should bear some portion of the repair costs.

“Let’s be clear about the tragedy in Baltimore. That bridge didn’t just collapse. There was no earthquake. The bridge was knocked down (apparently) by a private ship that lost control. Shouldn’t they be at least partly responsible for fixing it?” said Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist and Vice President Harris’s former communications director.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Wednesday on MSNBC that she expected insurance payments to cover part of the cost to rebuild the bridge.

The debate is sure to get only more spirited after Congress returns to Washington in mid-April following the long holiday break; party leaders will already be grappling with a number of radioactive issues, including an extension of the government’s domestic spying authority and military aid for Ukraine and Israel.

In that final paragraph, note a bundle of policies that have non-intersecting, noisy cheering sections.  None of them can survive an up-or-down vote.  "Bipartisanship" means assembling a crap sandwich with just enough sprinkles to satisfy each cheering section. An earmark for Baltimore's Key Bridge is one more sprinkle.

Given the certain resistance from the right, some Democrats are already voicing concerns that approving a federal fix will be a heavy lift in Congress, not least because Maryland is a relatively blue state, dominated by Democrats, which could sap the GOP appetite for the emergency funds.

With that in mind, some lawmakers are already floating the idea of attaching the bridge funding to a foreign aid package, including new military help for Ukraine, which Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is vowing to take up when Congress returns to Washington in mid-April after the long holiday recess.

“It could certainly be piled on, and if we’re going to move the national security supplemental, why not do that?” Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) said Wednesday by phone. “I don’t think that that has a lot of political sway. There’s not a lot of Republican senators from Maryland, so I would certainly not object.

“Sadly, it’s hard to get anything done. So if we need to get the bridge rebuilt, which we do, why not put it as part of the larger supplemental?”

As the debate evolves, some surprise voices have emerged in support of a federal fix.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), a spending hawk who hammered GOP leaders over 2024 funding, noted that the federal government should step in because an interstate highway — which is maintained by the U.S. Department of Transportation — was destroyed.

Burchett also argued that Washington has a vested interest in rebuilding the bridge given the importance of the port to national commerce and international trade. Any legal fights with the shipping company, he added, can take place afterward.

“My first inclination would be to — yes, that the federal government would pay for it and then they’d collect on the insurance,” he said. “Commerce would suffer ‘till we get our act together.”

I remember a concept called "mitigating your damages" that might apply here: you shoot the jackasses clear the channel quickly and let the lawyers and underwriters sort the liability out later.

PREPARING THE TRACKS FOR SUMMER.

The late February taste of spring gave the operators at the Rock River Valley Traction an opportunity to run an inspection train and clear the fallen branches.

It's the same idea as rolling out the track cleaning cars, and the vacuum cleaner, before the operating session on the model railroad.  Playback might only be available on You Tube.  Head over and take a ride.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The Baltimore harbor bridge is a metaphor for our fraying social fabric.  "Things don't seem to work as well as they used to."  Plus, "Victoria's Secret is now carbohydrates."  Whether it's widebodies crammed into nighties, or runaway container ships, the ominous signs proliferate.  "I believe that moment of clarity is upon us, or at least a bunch of us. And it's happening in several ways."  That's why I keep posting, dear reader.  "I just kept watching it and marveling at how consistently crappy and tragic everything is these days."  Maybe I have to keep others' spirits up.  "We're preconditioned to accept failure."  Don't be silly.  Government is there to help.  "The best time to repeal the Foreign Dredge Act was before the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed. The next best time to repeal it is right now."

Even before the ship hit the bridge, everything feels like it's collapsing. "A media people can’t trust anymore, movies people can’t watch anymore, even science and basic biology have flown the coop. It’s all to serve some ideology that is starting to feel more like totalitarianism than democracy."  That might be why we get more Trump.  "The people in power now can’t solve the problem; they ARE the problem."  We need to remember all of their failures.  "The temper tantrums, the lockdowns, the riots. the corruption, the increased crime across America, the blatant and willful bias delivered through the ol’ boob tube daily. We need to remember them all-each and every single one of them-the miserable, disgusting, self-absorbed, egotistical, backbiting, condescending, whiny-a$$ babies that our media has become."

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

SUSTAINABILITY IS A SESQUIPEDALIAN SYNONYM FOR DEPRIVATION.

A few years ago, Northern Illinois University called on geologist Robert Brinkmann to serve as the ninth dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.  Although his scholarly interests include caves, it appears as though his primary interest is in sustainability studies, complete with a web log.

A recent post at that site, "A Greenlash in Europe," offers an instructive insight into the way advocates use scholarly language in such a way as to distort debate.  "Before I get into the issue, it is first worth familiarizing ourselves with the term, greenlash. The term is similar to backlash in that it reflects a negative reaction."

THEY BOUGHT INTO THE COUNTRY.

Now it's on the country to buy into its 300 newest citizens.

On March 19, 300 people from 66 countries gathered at the Coronado Performing Arts Center, 314 N. Main Street to attend their naturalization ceremony.

U.S. Magistrate of the Northern Illinois District Lisa Jensen, ASM Rockford General Manager Gretchen Gilmore and Rockford Mayor Tom McNamara took part in the welcome celebration.

“It was a lot of hard work, my mom played a big role,” U.S. citizen Nghi Quach says. “I tried a lot by myself and I’m proud I made it this far.”

Nghi notes the two-year journey was filled with sleepless nights and uncertainties, but her drive and support from her parents helped her become a U.S. citizen. Nghi says becoming an official U.S. citizen has built her confidence in applying herself in the workforce.

Good. Can we have an end to this loose talk about Democrats importing future voters to go on welfare?  Our mission remains as it always has been.  "The task for the living is to continue to give young people, including immigrants, a country they can buy into, as well as to buy into the success of those young people."  I wonder how long Ms Nghi had to wait to be able to file that petition for citizenship, before it took the bureaucrats two years to get around to approving it.  Or how prone she might be to vote for people who throw around "Great Replacement" notions.

DON'T GIVE GOVERNMENT MORE POWER.

Reason's Steven Greenhut reminds readers of the wisdom of the ancients.  "The pandemic showed that America's founders were right to create a system of checks and balances that made it hard for leaders to easily have their way."  He continues:

The great conservative thinker William F. Buckley in 1963 wrote that he would rather "live in a society governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the 2,000 faculty members of Harvard University." Buckley recognized the great "brainpower" among the university's faculty, but feared the "intellectual arrogance that is a distinguishing characteristic of the university which refuses to accept any common premise."

I thought of that oft-quoted line four years after the COVID-19 panic. It was a very real public health threat, so much so that it enabled Americans to transfer wide-ranging and largely unchecked powers to the experts. For two years, it was exactly as if Buckley's fears came true and we were ruled by the type of people found in the faculty lounge.

It's no secret that American universities are dominated by progressives, who don't typically accept the "common premise" of limited governance. A core principle of progressivism, dating to its early 20th century roots, is the rule by experts. Disinterested parties would reform, protect, and re-engineer society based on their superior knowledge. Although adherents of this worldview speak in the name of the People, they don't actually trust individuals to manage their own lives.

Looking back, COVID-19 shows the nation's founders—rather than intellectual social engineers—had it right. The founders created a system of checks and balances that made it hard for leaders to easily have their way. "A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions," wrote James Madison. The pandemic stripped away those precautions, albeit (mostly) temporarily.

In fairness, the response to COVID by many ordinary Americans left much to be desired. Social media provided a megaphone for conspiracy theories and idiotic home remedies. Instead of acting responsibly by voluntarily embracing the best-known practices at the time, many Americans defied even the most sensible rules and acted out against store clerks and others. I was left disgusted by the edicts of our leaders and the behavior of many of my fellow citizens.

Nevertheless, the skeptics generally were correct. "The coronavirus shutdowns have created a dichotomy between those who tend to trust whatever the authorities say—and those who don't seem to trust any official information at all," I wrote in May 2020. "It's not even slightly conspiratorial, however, to question the forecasts, data and presuppositions of those officials who are driving these policies. They have shut down society, forced us to stay at home, driven businesses into bankruptcy, caused widespread misery, and suspended many civil liberties."

Yes, many of us told you so.

Four years ago, Cold Spring Shops ran "The End of Fashionable Nonsense" and "There Are No Solutions, Only Tradeoffs," both suggesting that Officialdom Panicked.  In his disgust with edicts of leaders and behavior of citizens, though, might be an indictment of the Trump presidency.  James Joyner notes,

Indeed, even as one who is virulently anti-Trump and who voted for Biden, I don’t blame Trump for the COVID collapse* and give Biden relatively little credit for the recovery. People less tuned in remember low gas prices and cheap credit under Trump and are angry about higher food prices and high interest rates under Biden.

The asterisk advises readers to scroll down, and read "I, of course, blame him for his politicization of the virus and poor leadership throughout the crisis. But the economy was going to collapse even if he were a perfectly normal President taking expert advice and making the best decisions he could in the interest of the country."  Maybe the problem is with the advice the experts offered, and perhaps future experts will be less full of themselves than the infectious disease popinjays both Mr Trump and Mr Biden relied upon.

STAY CLASSY, COMMON DREAMS.

Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman crosses the final summit, and because he wasn't the kind of Democrat the Common Dreams staff preferred, his departure was one more opportunity for them to slag on him.  "Joe Lieberman, Iraq War Cheerleader and Killer of Public Option, Dead at 82."  The post is a compendium of the late senator's detractors pointing out all the ways he failed to deliver on their vision of a better world.  Common Dreams brain-sister Mahablog is similarly nyekulturny.  "I’m not missing him already. Let’s see if No Labels continues to attempt to float a presidential ticket, as I suspect Joe, along with No Labels CEO Nancy Jacobson, were the primary forces behind that project."

LET THE VALUE PROPOSITION EMERGE.

Battle Swarm Blog recently revisited the Culture War themes we documented when Iowa's Caitlin Clark declared for the professional draft.  "You’d think the league would welcome an exciting, highly skilled new breakout player."

Let's wait and see.  The professional league plays during the summer months when the guys are recovering from their playoffs.  That's not the best time of year to watch a sporting event inside, is it?  All the same, if those tweens who are buying all those Clark 22 jerseys talk their parents into taking them to a game, won't that put a lot of Normal moms and dads into stands that up to now have a few spectators sending virtue signals?  If the regular fans stop going because it's too much like family night, perhaps a Minneapolis sports bar will draw more patrons.  More girls picking up girls at A Bar of Their Own.

REALITY WILL COME FOR YOUR $35 INSULIN.

Old Franklin Roosevelt thought he could cap the price of gold at $35 an ounce.  Presidential hopefuls have similar delusions about the price of insulin, which, to a diabetic, is worth its weight in gold.  "Do you also have the authority to 'reduce the cost' of bananas, in order that middle-schoolers enjoy access to affordable smoothies? Do you also have the authority to 'reduce the cost' of batteries, in order that aging baby-boomers enjoy access to affordable hearing aids and ultra-radiant tablet screens? How much additional authority do you expect to enjoy?"

IT'S A LITTLE LATE TO DEVELOP A CONSCIENCE.

University of Illinois at Chicago sociologist Barbara Risman gets mugged by reality.  "Does UIC want to outcompete the Ivies for antisemitism?"  She thought her liberalitas would get her a free pass from the Thought Police.

I came to the University of Illinois at Chicago as head of sociology, expecting to spend the rest of my career here. Committed to the university’s social justice mission honoring diversity, equity and inclusion, I co-chaired the universitywide committee on faculty equity for more than a decade. UIC has been my beloved academic home.

Then came Oct. 7. Across the country, support for Palestinians quickly escalated into ripping down posters of hostages and committing hate crimes against Jews. Members of Congress held hearings about antisemitism at Ivy League schools. Lawmakers spotlighted bias at elite institutions, but I’d bet UIC could compete with the Ivies for ranking in the top 20 for antisemitism.

As an adamant defender of free speech. I support the right of everyone on campus to voice opinions about Israel. To critique the Israeli government isn’t antisemitic at all. Israelis do it often and loudly, even during war.

Individual free speech and university programs declaring their political positions using state resources, however, are radically different. When university resources are used to support some and alienate others, a hostile environment is bound to emerge.

Bound to emerge? How epistemically closed is the sociology common room?  "Back in the day, the common room might have people who would respond to a contrarian viewpoint with "How can you say that???"  Often, though, you could talk them off the ledge.   Sometimes, though, they never learned how not to be stupid about being smart."  I wrote that post in the spring of 2022, and continued, "It takes a bit of nerve to defy conventional wisdom.  When being stupid about being smart goes from doubt to hectoring to condescension to outright rudeness, the epistemic closure might have unintended consequences."

WHY BACKWARD INDUCTION WORKS.

The objective of a basketball tournament betting pool is to pick the winner, and although the perfect brackets came undone before the round of 64 ended, this year, in the men's tournament at least, it was prudent to bet on the side of the big battalions.

The top two seeds from each region are headed to the Sweet 16 for just the fifth time. One double-digit seed will join them. Most of the Cinderellas that put the madness in March busted out of the bracket long before midnight.

The bluebloods and big boys — many of them, anyway — are going to the regionals and they all want more.

“I didn’t come back to make the Sweet 16,” Purdue big man Zach Edey said after the Boilermakers’ 106-67 victory over Utah State. “I came back to make a run, a deep run. Nobody is satisfied with where we are now.”

Last year’s Final Four was unlike any other, a bracket-busting foursome with no teams seeded better than No. 4 for the first time since the bracket expanded in 1979.

Reigning national champion UConn has looked good in its bid to repeat this year, but there wasn’t a dominant team during the regular season, opening the door for what was expected to be a wild NCAA Tournament.

It didn’t happen.

The upsets that punctuate March have been limited — 13-seed Yale and 12-seeds James Madison and Grand Canyon and 14th-seeded Oakland are all headed home. The only true buzzer-beater was a tying 3-pointer by Texas A&M’s Andersson Garcia to force overtime against Houston. The average margin of victory the first two rounds was 15.8 points, second-highest since 1985.

Read on, though, and note that Big East coaches are still grousing about not getting their fair share of bids.

THE RETURN OF THE LARK.

A company called Dreamstar proposes to operate a sleeping car service between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Dreamstar co-founders Joshua Dominic and Thomas Eastmond say the company’s discussions with Union Pacific were restarted last year after initial talks in 2018.

“We have provisionally identified terms for track access payments that will work for both of us,” they write. Regarding liability insurance, they say, “UP requires roughly the amount of the statutory cap on passenger rail damages. Our broker has sourced the necessary insurance stack; the premium isn’t cheap but fits within our model.”

Dominic, the company CEO, says in the release, “Dreamstar officials expressed their appreciation towards their counterparts at Union Pacific,” adding, “We’ve been really impressed with their willingness to think creatively about how we can work together for the benefit of both our companies and the public.”

The memorandum of understanding follows UP’s cooperation with another private operator, Rocky Mountaineer, on the Colorado route that also hosts Amtrak’s California Zephyr. Like UP’s Coast Line that Dreamstar would utilize, it is not a main freight corridor, and thus has extra capacity and scheduling flexibility to handle a passenger train making a leisurely trip.

That other train is an excursion to Moab, Utah, somehow a tourist destination again (once upon a time Union Pacific ran trains that served several national parks and monuments but using its own tracks) reached from Denver over former Rio Grande lines now hosting relatively few freight trains, and the proposed overnight train would use the San Francisco station mostly used by commuter trains these days, and the Coast Line, no longer a freight main even during sugar beet season, from San Jose into Los Angeles.

Dreamstar is also “working toward an agreement” with Metrolink, a tenant at Los Angeles Union Station, and Caltrain, which would afford access directly to downtown San Francisco. This would enable Dreamstar to recreate the overnight “downtown-to-downtown” convenience of Southern Pacific’s Lark that operated until April 1968.

We'll see whether a rolling upscale hotel is a meaningful value proposition in California.  If we had a bracket for Passenger Rail projects, I pick this one to turn a wheel before California's environmentally and politically hampered high speed rail project does.  "One small step in the right direction would be for Washington to stop bilking taxpayers for the sake of rail projects that might never be completed, let alone come close to being worth the cost."

DIDN'T EARN IT.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams has proposed using those three words as a mnemonic for "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion."  Let's see if it works: the alternative formula of flipping the word order to "Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity," rendered DIE, might only work as an inside joke.

Irrespective of how you render the formula, you're addressing a bad policy based on an untested academic fad that makes social justice warriors of a transgressive disposition comfortable with their priors.

“The salient tenet of Critical Social Justice is this: ‘The question is not ‘did racism take place’? but rather ‘how did racism manifest in the situation?’” [Cato research fellow Erec Smith] said. “So, according to Critical Social Justice, racism is always already taking place. There is no need to think for oneself; the narrative—one of perpetual oppression—does the thinking for you.”

He came up with another casting of the three letters that also works.  "Divisive, Excessive, Ineffective."

RIGGING THE BIG DANCE TO KEEP THE POWER CONFERENCES PLAYING.

Dear reader, if you thought I was being outrageous to make a point yesterday, think again.  "Yeah, we can't have those teams representing colleges and universities stealing the show from our developmental league and our name, image, and likeness money, can we?"

MORE INDUSTRY LEAVES CHICAGO.

Sometimes, the Power House camera showing the throat of the North Western Terminal and the north approaches to Union Station captures an unusual move.  Toward the end of December, the Union Pacific switched the freight cars at the Blommer Chocolate plant, one of the rare industrial enterprises where complaints about the smell are rare.

The cleanup trains have recently finished their work.  "Blommer Chocolate to close Chicago manufacturing facility."

Blommer Chocolate — the largest cocoa processor and ingredient chocolate supplier in North America — is closing their Chicago manufacturing plant after being in operation for more than 85 years.

According to a press release from the company, the reason behind the closure is the location and age of Blommer Chocolate’s Chicago manufacturing plant, coupled with increasing repair and maintenance of the building and equipment, which elevated operating costs and created production reliability issues to the point Blommer said it is best for the company to move on and invest in their other operations in Chicago, as well as Pennsylvania, California and Ontario.

Opened in 1939, the Chicago manufacturing plant is the original manufacturing facility of the Blommer Group.

The corporate offices remain in Chicago. The company's statements are full of the currently fashionable buzzwords.  Chicago was once Candy Packer for the World, but during my time in DeKalb, Brachs have gone, several of the other candy factories have gone, I'm not sure about M&M-Mars, and now Blommer.  Your tax dollars might have had something to do with this.

The US sugar program is a protectionist scheme destined to transfer income to sugar growers and processors at the cost of sugar users and consumers. The program’s nature has changed little over time, and it works by reducing the flow of sugar imports to the United States. Its existence had been threatened under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) because of increasing imports from Mexico, but a recent bilateral US-Mexico agreement has removed this threat. The entrenched US sugar lobby has been effective at blocking any meaningful reform and removing threats from preferential agreements with other sugar-producing nations. Sugar interests are concentrated, whereas losses born by most consumers and users are more diffuse and small at the individual level. Yet collectively, the losses to consumers and users are large in aggregate for the country, in the order of $2.4–$4 billion. The US sugar program should be repealed.

Too late, perhaps, for the confectioners of Chicago.

NOW IS THE TIME TO REJECT THE FALSE BINARY.

I'm prepared to fight it out on this line if it takes us through Oktoberfest.  Discourse's Jon Gabriel is at least considering that course of action.

Nobody liked the first Trump-Biden contest, and voters dread the sequel. The media and the candidates will hype it, but no marketing push will boost the box office. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the voting booth, you get “Krush Hope 2: Electoral Boogaloo.” And this time, it’s personal.

Exactly. There's a different sort of suck for different sorts of voters to embrace.

By the numbers, Trump performed well on the economy, the border and international crises, but continually alienated voters through erratic behavior and 24/7 reality-show dramatics. Biden provided a break from the chaos, only to fail on the economy, the border and international crises.

The resulting slanging match will be unedifying.

With so little enthusiasm, both candidates will run intensely negative campaigns. I know you hate my guts, they may say, but please hate the other guy a little bit more. Negative polarization will only deepen the nation’s surly mood, with no hope that Biden or Trump have any chance of improving things.

Whoever loses will claim the race was rigged, angry protests will follow and the “winners” will be stuck with a lesser of two evils they didn’t care for in the first place. Spoiler alert: It’s going to be a rough four years.

He concludes, though, recognizing that what goes on in the school board and city council and maybe the state house is what matters.

As general election season amps up, candidates are best to ignore the malaise at the top of the ticket. Even if voters are apathetic about the race to the White House, they care a great deal about issues closer to home.

It's fine, USA Today contributor Dace Potas asserts, to reject the false binary. "None of the above" is a choice.

Unfortunately for the countless principled Republicans like myself, we cannot justify a vote for Trump, no matter how bad a Biden presidency has been. I find myself now in the middle of two candidates I view as severely damaging to the future of our country.

He won't be swayed by the illogic of the binary choice. "If neither party will give us candidates worth voting for, I simply won’t."  Good.  I really must dig into the registration and turnout counts for the past forty years or so, see who was the last presidential hopeful to win a majority of registered voters.

NOW BATTING, REALITY.

Last week, I complimented Britain's Prince of Wales for telling the scandal-mongers off.  "[N]o matter how blasé the Europeans might be about side chicks, especially those who might be described as having a 'good personality,' the Prince would be very foolish to go tomcattin' around on the Princess."

THAT'S THE WAY THE INFRASTRUCTURE CRUMBLES.

Never mind the political posturing.  "I scoff at the Jarrett regency touting the 'Bipartisan Infrastructure Appropriations' as a victory, as the current ration of pork doesn't even make good this year's wear and tear on the roads, bridges, and mains previous rations of pork made possible."

Look no further afield than Marengo, Illinois, where a referendum adding a local sales tax to pay for street repairs was on the ballot.

I have reservations about any vote of general interest being part of a primary election ballot, with elaborations to come anon.  Think of it this way, dear reader, if the only contested primary is among tax-'-spend Democrats, a referendum to, well, tax-'n-spend is going to have a pretty good chance of passing.

That complaint noted, the recognition of reality is refreshing.  "The alternative to assessing the residents for street repairs is hoping that there will be another transportation porkulus and that your Member of Congress has enough juice to put your broken road into the list of projects."

WHAT'S DISGUSTING? BRACKET BUSTING!

Before a single basketball was tossed, Kentucky coach John Calipari expressed reservations about the size of the tournament field.

Speaking Wednesday from Pittsburgh ahead of his No. 3-seeded Wildcats' first-round matchup against No. 14-seed Oakland, Calipari urged officials to keep the tournament from ballooning past its current 68-team format.

Sources told ESPN's Pete Thamel last week there are ongoing discussions about expanding the men's tournament to one featuring no more than 80 teams.

"I hope it stays where it is," Calipari said. "You know, I know people get mad. They get mad at the committee. You won't believe this. I've been mad at that committee a few times. But you may be mad because of your seed or where they've shipped you to. ... But it doesn't matter who the committee is. We're all going to be upset."

"Upset" is exactly his state of mind a few hours later.

Eight-time national champion Kentucky is struggling to survive the NCAA tournament's opening round, let alone halt its nine-year Final Four drought. A Wildcats program that lost in the round of 64 one time from 1988-2022 now has done so twice in the past three seasons.

On Thursday, it was a catch-and-shoot specialist who played for Division II Hillsdale College last season who added to Kentucky’s misery. Jack Gohlke came off Oakland's bench to bury 10 threes, one shy of the single-game NCAA tournament record, propelling the 14th-seeded Golden Grizzlies to a stunning 80-76 upset over the heavily favored Wildcats.

Mr Gohlke played his high school basketball for Pewaukee, and all of Wisconsin has been wondering how none of Wisconsin, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, or Marquette signed him.  It is not, though, whether this coach or that should take his pension, that concerns us today.  Rather, it is whether that expansion of the tournament field isn't part of that evolution of College Sports, Inc. into four power conferences of sixteen teams.  Goodbye, Shawnee Mission.

IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE WEATHER, WAIT.

At the end of February, the Snow Moon got a chance to show its stuff.  The snow, not so much.  By March 2 there was another early warm spell, felicitously timed for a waterfront family gathering in the next subdivision to the west.

For the most part, March has offered near normal rainfall and temperature ranges, although that early warm spell got the daffodils in a protected spot that gets midday and afternoon sun started, just in time for last Friday's return of snow.

Hereabouts, that cover didn't stay too long, simply making for a drab day of watching more brackets being broken.  A few miles to the north, though, came a band of serious snow.  "Rockford officially observed 5.6" of snow at Rockford Airport, breaking its daily snowfall record for March 22nd (previous record, 5.0" in 1916). Chicago officially observed 1.0" of snow at O'Hare Airport."

To the north, the recreational areas of Wisconsin also received snow, probably not enough to salvage the winter season, but perhaps an opportunity for people to get a little snowmobiling or skiing in before fishing and sailing seasons begin.

At least the National Weather Service has not gone on record, the way some environmentalist wackos have, about snowfalls being a thing of the past.  That daily snowfall records for late winter or early spring might come over a century apart (and Friday's anomaly was not the usual sort of Panhandle Hook low that can bring the largest snowfalls any time of the winter, but more commonly in February through April) suggests that attempting to infer any sort of climate change from a few warm days in February isn't scientific.

WATCH THIS SPACE.

The model railroad swap meet and show season, which runs from November through March, is winding down, although the continuation of wintry conditions in the State Line make working on the railroad rather than doing yard work a better use of time.

The Gloucester Branch was available for layout tours on the Sunday last, as the Chicago area O Scale meet wound down.  Despite the competition of St. Patrick's Day events, Selection Sunday, and several other swap meets in Rockford and Lena, some 25 visitors looked in.  The powered display track was at work, along with more operable tracks than were on offer a year ago.

EXCELLENCE IS THE BEST RESPONSE TO RACISM.

We noted, previously, how Detroit mayor Coleman Young knew that maxim yet decided that accusing his detractors of racism whenever something went wrong in the hopes that the criticism would go away was the better strategy.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Believe your eyes.  "He was shouting at me!  He looked crazy."  The company he keeps, ditto.  "The Democratic Party has gone batshit crazy, and most young voters aren’t that nuts... The Democrats’ obsessions with transsexuals, illegal immigrants, reparations and squelching free speech offer nothing to blue-collar voters, especially minorities. The real question isn’t why voters are abandoning the Democrats, the real question is why it isn’t happening faster."  Faster, please.  "These people are nuts and they must be defeated."  Before the critical legal theorists annul the Constitution.  "Casual disregard for the Constitution is pervasive in the Democratic Party."  Strongman rule is a fantasy.  "The vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance. The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing. We get abused and we get used to it."  I underestimated the mendacity of these people.

What were we saying about sniveling brats?  "The final aim of the liberal agenda is, therefore, not to have a free and open society but to have a society in which everything is subservient to liberal dogmas. Consequently, the existing rules and practices can always be suspended and restructured."  Not if the Militant Normals have anything to say.  "Voters do not buy the Left's and media's lies about Trump anymore."  No more bull****!  "Context is really overrated when there's a false narrative to be created."

Thanks for noticing, Politico.  "Trump is not Hitler or Stalin or Mussolini."  The lawfare is backfiring.  "No American election has featured this much meddling by the judicial system, and this much naked partisanship from the Justice Department and its proxy, the state of New York. It does not sit well with the American sense of fair play. You blew it. You threw it all against the wall and nothing stuck."  The Narrative is backfiring.  "Such is the media’s contempt for Trump, it seems they’re prepared to consciously distort what he’s actually saying. This will cost them in the long run, as yet more people come to doubt their credibility. And such blatant bias will also benefit Trump, whose support grows with every attack on him from America’s media elites. Whether Donald Trump can make it to the White House again remains to be seen. But if he does, these fake-news merchants will have helped him along the way."  The punishment cycles continue.  "Each step of the way, participants felt they had every excuse and perhaps no choice but to ignore the rules of the game that might otherwise have reined in the excesses of the day."  As might the rising rage of the Militant Normals.  "By continuing to push this 'threat to democracy' nonsense, they are telegraphing to Americans that their problems don't matter. High prices? High interest rates? Rising crime? Illegal immigration? Democrats are too busy breathlessly shouting yet again about how Trump is Hitler to care about any of that stuff."  Let them keep up the breathless shouting.  "The sane have had enough about being pushed around by the insane."

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

STOP CRYING WITH YOUR MOUTH FULL.

Last week's story of voter discontent in Sheboygan elicited a very different reaction, "Strange things are afoot at the Sheboygan Piggly Wiggly," from Daily Kos diarist Hunter.

I almost love this story. Almost. Published by the Washington Post on Monday, the article is the latest in a long, noble tradition of "political journalist goes to random grocery store or diner to tell us what random passersby are thinking." But it's not often that you find a piece that really brings home the American Gothic tinge to all of it. You can almost hear it: the souls of the damned, crying out from behind the reporter's keyboard. The haunting wails of Americana as it shops for pork at the Piggly Wiggly.

Hunter's snark will likely elicit a few "preach it" responses from his fellow cosmopolitans.  Whether it will change any minds in Sheboygan, or among Cold Spring Shops readers, is another matter.

Aaaaah, that's the stuff. Just good old-fashioned Trump-supporting Americans, voters who don't mind migrant concentration camps or the undoing of democracy itself if it means bringing the price of a bottle of Coca Cola back under three bucks.

There's nothing in his article about Team Biden engaging in lawfare to keep the Greens off state ballots, which looks a lot like undoing democracy, but I digress, and the "migrant concentration camps" are crowding out youth sports in Chicago, but I digress some more.

THAT'S WHY THEY PLAY THE GAMES.

Five years ago, neurophysiologist Gregg Nigl cobbled together a bracket, then went on a ski trip.

Nigl always filled out a few men's brackets, deploying the same basic philosophy that so many people use -- a little strategy, a little eye test, a little wishful thinking.

For his 2019 brackets, he went heavy on his favorite team (Michigan) and his favorite conference (the Big Ten, except for Ohio State). He had always liked Gonzaga and hoped the school would win a title sometime, so he rode the No. 1-seeded Zags to go all the way. He even sprinkled in the time-honored tradition of picking a random school he had a loose tie to; in this case, he knew someone who lived near the UC-Irvine campus, so he went with the 13-seed Anteaters to upset Big 12 champ Kansas State in the first round.

We're not talking about purely random events, and people filling out brackets can rely on their information, their biases, who has the cutest cheer team, and yet, getting all 67 games right isn't easy.

The possibility of getting every game right is often reported as 1 in 9.2 quintillion. But that figure is slightly hyperbolic. It's computed by assuming all 63 games are coin flips, when, in reality, quite a few NCAA games have much higher percentages in favor of one team. The actual odds of a knowledgeable person picking a perfect men's bracket are closer to 1 in 120 billion.

And guess what? It's not getting any easier. Despite advances in analytics, accessibility of watching games and more experts than ever, the variance of men's college hoops has never been higher. The rise of the 3-point shot has played a huge part, for sure, but so has the transfer portal and NIL. A No. 1 seed hadn't ever lost in the first round of the tournament, then it happened in 2018 and 2023. A 15-seed has won in the first round three straight years, a first in NCAA tournament history. And last year's men's tournament featured a Final Four of no 1, 2 or 3 seeds, which hadn't happened before.

San Francisco State professor Paul Beckman did a study of every men's and women's bracket since 2000, primarily relying upon seeding of teams that made it to the Sweet 16. He found the women's tournament to be slightly more predictable (the odds of picking a perfect women's bracket are still something like 1 in 100 billion) and that the men's tournament has been wildly variable, even from year to year. For example, from 2018-20, the men's tournament Sweet 16 team total seeds went from 85 to 49 to 94. Even the predictability of the tournament is unpredictable, let alone picking individual games.

I'm still not sure how the pools handle those first four games, and with those pairings sometimes involving middling seeds, the rules for treating those teams as wildcards must be arcane.

A PLATINUM JUBILEE, MORE OR LESS.

The California Zephyr made its first trip on March 20, 1949.  Seventy-five years later, Amtrak held a rolling anniversary party on-board.

Passengers who drifted in to the westbound California Zephyr’s crowded Sightseer Lounge leaving Chicago on Tuesday found themselves in the middle of an Amtrak-sponsored onboard event commemorating the first runs of the original Burlington-Rio Grande-Western Pacific streamliner on March 20, 1949.

They were treated to an informative lecture by Thomas Whitt, director and president of the Illinois-based Burlington Route Historical Society. He brought along a generous supply of detailed handouts tracing the pre-Amtrak history of the CZ, and its speedy shovel-nosed predecessor, the Pioneer Zephyr.

Both onboard and at Galesburg, Ill., where Whitt repeated his talk for a large crowd that included the mayor of nearby Macomb, Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari filled in developments from 1971 on. His audience included some behind-the-scenes company employees and members of the Young Professionals in Transportation Chicago Chapter who came along for a trip on the Zephyr,with a return on the Illinois-sponsored Carl Sandburg.

Souvenirs for passengers included individually numbered “proof of travel” certificates signed by Amtrak’s top management. The handout was accompanied with stickers and pins featuring original branding artwork.

But the big surprise was the Zephyr’s brief stop at Princeton, Ill., where a raucous crowd of more than 50 townspeople sang “Happy Birthday” as the train pulled in. They presented Magliari with two boxes of Princeton tote bags, which the onboard crew promptly passed out to coach passengers.

I included that "more or less" in the title as the original California Zephyr made its last run in the spring of 1970,  being replaced by a "California service" of a tri-weekly extended Nebraska Zephyr to Denver, the also tri-weekly Rio Grande Zephyr continuing the daytime crossing of the Rockies, but without any sleeping cars, and a cross-platform connection to Southern Pacific's City of San Francisco, also tri-weekly, but with sleeping car space.  Upon Amtrak gaining control of the passenger trains, a through sleeping car returned, although the train was sometimes referred to as the City of San Francisco, on Southern Pacific and Union Pacific as far as Denver via Cheyenne, thence on Burlington.  That Rio Grande Zephyr remained as a day train until 1983, when Rio Grande joined Amtrak, and the through train regained its California Zephyr name and the Rio Grande routing between Salt Lake City and Denver.

IF EVER A VOTER HAD A GOOD REASON TO REJECT THE FALSE BINARY, THIS IS IT.

Here I stand, I can do no other.

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

None of which has yet had any effect on the sort of paid pundits who break down the ways the major parties will attempt to win over those Schrödinger voters.  Consider Matt Lewis for the Daily Beast, which is to say, one of those people who argues with but mostly votes for Democrats.

In case you missed the memo, “double-haters” are voters who don’t like either Donald Trump or Joe Biden. This is an emerging cohort that many of us can identify with (although I try not to venture into “hate” territory).

Every year, we are treated to a plethora of news stories about undecided voters. You know the cliché: people who are socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Because these voters (who somehow manage to make it through life without picking a team) are persuadable, they get a ton of ink and disproportionate attention from politicians. If you like receiving voter mail, tell a canvasser you’re not sure which candidate you like—but that you definitely plan on voting.

That "socially liberal and fiscally conservative" includes Reason readers and other libertarian-minded folk.  There might be some socially conservative and fiscally liberal people left, although whether those are ancien regime Democrats kicked to the curb by the McGovernites or are numbered among the RINOs the Trumpies squawk about I'm not sure.  But in a political environment where what the True Believers want determines the candidates, and there has to be some Serious Thinking about whether party primaries mean Reform, and where the political bundles, particularly at the national level, are too big, perhaps the only sane thing to do is to go through life without picking a team.  And perhaps Mr Lewis has identified the hill I would choose to die on.  "Still, if you put a gun to my head, I would give Biden the slight edge to win double-haters and, therefore, the election. That’s because, when push comes to shove, Trump is easier to hate."  If I'm told, pick Trump or Biden in a poll, or be shot, perhaps it would be better to be shot, or perhaps, with Abraham Lincoln, to request a one-way ticket to Tomsk, "where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."  Surely it is not a democracy if I am told I only get two choices, and the lawyers representing those parties are keeping their rivals off the ballot.  "For example, my theory assumes the election will be a binary choice. It might not be. As such, it’s vital for Biden that double-haters do not have a strong third-party candidate to choose from, especially in key states that could swing the electoral college."  It might be more vital for Trump, as in several of the battleground states, the Libertarian tally (socially liberal and fiscally conservative, pay attention!) exceeded the Biden margin of victory.  Republicans, though, tend to prefer having more parties on the ballot for the pragmatic reason that if you put two leftists in a room, you get six political parties, each of which has, as we shall see, its own reason to entice voters away from Democrats.

NOT THIS VALUE PROPOSITION EITHER?

With the basketball tournaments under way, the continuing quest for fans in the seats in the women's game pivots to ... diversity.  "Women's basketball needs faces of future to be Black."  We're not dwelling on the memory-holing of great players in the era before the NCAA became the governing body this time, although that remains germane.  "Giving the talented players a chance to compete is one thing; giving spectators a reason to attend the games or watch them play on television is quite another.  The story of women's basketball is one combining Horatio Alger and Technocratic Impulses."  It's not as if the sport hasn't appealed to the Woke in as many ways as the most creative of promoters can conceive.

TODAY IN THE TABLOIDS.

There is no end to the creative titles people bestow on their leaders, or perhaps on each other:  Grand Poobah of the Water Buffaloes.  The Patriarch of Constantinople.  The Tsar of All the Russias.  The Nizam of Hyderabad.  Then there's the Marchioness of Cholmondeley.  Yes, that is a hereditary title.

It seems that this time, Rose Hanbury isn’t messing around. For years now, people have been convinced that something has been going on between Hanbury and Prince William. And with Kate Middleton not performing royal duties or making public appearances, the rumors have increased tenfold. With the rumors hitting mainstream media, like during one of Stephen Colbert’s jokes on his show, it seems Hanbury is officially tired of this conspiracy.

Good.  And no matter how blasé the Europeans might be about side chicks, especially those who might be described as having a "good personality," the Prince would be very foolish to go tomcattin' around on the Princess.  "William’s lawyers reportedly issued a legal warning, but until now, Hanbury never responded to the rumors."

It's not as if there aren't lots of other People Behaving Badly for the scandal machinery to follow around, nicht wahr?

IF ANYONE IS UNHAPPY, NOBODY CAN BE HAPPY.

P. J. O'Rourke grasped the Woke Hive Mind years ago.  "At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child - miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, iII-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats."  All that misery is apparently making the unsatisfied sniveling brats miserable themselves.  "‘Woke’ people more likely to be unhappy, anxious and depressed, new study suggests."

WHEN POLITICIANS PANICKED.

In Reason, John Stossel offered up an ambulance-load of candidate Friday short takes in one article.  "'15 Days To Slow the Spread': On the Fourth Anniversary, a Reminder to Never Give Politicians That Power Again."  A sampling of bon mots:

Days turned into months and then years, while officials chipped away at our freedoms.

I have long been wary of politicians, but even I was surprised at how authoritarian many were eager to be.

Some demanded police to go after people surfing. They took down the rims of basketball hoops. Children's playgrounds were taped up like crime scenes. They told people in rural Utah and Wyoming to stay in their homes.

In the name of safety, politicians did many things that diminished our lives, without making us safer.

They complied with teachers unions' demand to keep schools closed. Kids' learning has been set back by years.

Politicians destroyed jobs by closing businesses. Some shutdown orders were ridiculous. Landscaping businesses and private campgrounds were forced to shut down.

I had hoped that by the end of March 2020 the fashionable nonsense would end.  Sadly, it was not to be.

It's clear now that restrictive rules were not the best way to protect people.

Sweden took a near opposite approach. They mostly left people alone.

Swedish officials encouraged the elderly and other at-risk people to stay home.

But beyond that, they let life carry on as normal. Sweden didn't impose lockdowns, school closures, or mask mandates.

They followed standard pre-COVID wisdom that the best protection is what epidemiologists call "herd" or "collective" immunity. Once a critical mass of people are infected and recover, collective immunity will reduce the total number of infections.

Arrogant American politicians and media "experts" sneered at Sweden's approach.

He counts coup throughout the article; it's a series of reinforcements of the same gripes I've offered all along about Officialdom.

It's another presidential election this year.  Vote as though your freedom depends on it.  It does.

Four years later, have media blowhards who were wrong apologized? Corrected their stories? No.

Have American politicians apologized and begged forgiveness for their arrogance, for destroying jobs, restricting our freedom, and needlessly pushing us around? No.

Let's not give politicians power like that again.

In the absence of a critical mass of voters rejecting the false binary, the best outcome we might expect is for gridlocked governments, state-by-state and in Washington.

A PRODUCTIVE PERSON'S FAIR SHARE OF TAXES IS NEVER ENOUGH.

That's what I keep telling you.  Now Dementia Joe confirms it.

Biden is randomly yelling again 😬 pic.twitter.com/EO4QFJenUy

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 19, 2024

His minders filled him up with triple espresso again and set him loose to yell "FIVE HUNDRED BILLION" as if that was meaningful.  Red State's Nick Arama quips, "You don't make America great again by taking more of Americans' money."

It's worse than that, dear reader.  Assuming people don't adjust their behavior in response to the new taxes, which is what they will do, over the next ten years the tax will bring in enough money to offset about half a year of the money-printing the Jarrett regency are currently engaging in to pay off their moocher base favored constituents.

Moreover, the way to reduce your tax bill is to engage in less-productive, nay, money-losing activities, which means there will be less money for the government to tax away, and less stuff to trade with others.  On the other hand, there might be some gifts of appreciated securities to preservation railways.

WHY NOT KEEP THE RUN GOING?

The house organ for all wokeness, all the time in higher education breaks down the basketball tournament brackets by academic performance rates.  I'm not sure whether it's for fun or for calling attention to the distortion of the higher education venture by beer-'n-circuses.

VOTERS, ADVISE CONGRESS WHAT CUTS TO MAKE, BEFORE THE BOND TRADERS MAKE THEM.

The college basketball tournament brings with it all sorts of knock-off brackets.  The Cato Institute offers their 2024 Spending Madness.  "Thirty‐two unaffordable federal spending programs are going head‐to‐head in a classic, single‐elimination tournament format. And you get to decide the worst of the bunch."

Note, should you choose to participate, your selections at each round are the expenditures you would rather do without.  Submit your cuts for the first round by Friday (much like the real tournament) or have somebody else make the cuts for you.

Or, opt to do nothing, and wait for the bond traders to concentrate minds in Washington by not bidding at the Treasury bill auctions.

SHOP THE PIG.

Remember, after Donald Trump surprised the Political Class by carrying Wisconsin and Michigan, how the sleazy pontificators on the coasts mused about establishing a Racine bureau?

And perhaps Chuck "Chipmunk" Todd was right about wanting to establish a news bureau in Racine.

What’s worse, we don’t make much of an effort to really understand, and with too few exceptions, treat the economic grievances of Middle America like they’re some sort of punchline. Sometimes quite literally so, such as when reporters tweet out a photo of racist-looking Trump supporters and jokingly suggest that they must be upset about free trade or low wages.

We have to fix this, and the broken reasoning behind it. There’s a fleeting fun to gang-ups and groupthink. But it’s not worth what we are losing in the process.

On the other hand, it's so much easier to sip those appletinis somewhere near Grand Central Terminal, than to actually journey to Racine.

At Reason, David Harsanyi keeps it pithy.  "The left is so enveloped by its identity politics that it may not understand that the other half of the country is sick of it."  There's more, but that's the key. A few more episodes of the Student Affairs weenies going after college football teams, and the schism between the gentry and the proletariat of color will emerge.

The corona tyranny and a few arrests gone wrong changed the timeline on that dynamic, although it is still with us.  As are the aftereffects of all the money printing during both previous presidencies.  A Washington Post reporter even went to Sheboygan to talk with shoppers.

Dawn Mohr stopped by the local Piggly Wiggly to pick up $6 worth of pork steaks last week and immediately remembered just how much she’s grown to hate grocery shopping.

“Everything is so damn high,” she said, shaking her head at $3.09 bottles of Coca Cola. “Good ol’ Biden.”

Mohr, a 54-year-old home health-care aide, mostly shops the clearance aisles. Her $17 hourly paycheck, which inched up 80 cents in the past two years, is hardly enough to cover the basics anymore. She says there’s no question she’ll vote for Donald Trump again. Every trip to the supermarket cements her resolve.

“When Trump was president, there wasn’t inflation,” she said. “We could afford food.”

The mood around the sodas past Aisle 9 of the Piggly Wiggly is a stark reminder of what matters most to Americans this election year. In poll after poll, voters say inflation — and grocery prices in particular — is a leading concern.

That’s true in this Midwestern manufacturing town overflowing with well-paying jobs, rock-bottom unemployment and some of the lowest gas, food and housing prices in the nation. Kitchen and bath product maker Kohler Co. and food manufacturers Johnsonville and Sargento Foods are all headquartered nearby, providing a steady stream of stable careers. The unemployment rate, at 2.1 percent, is one of the lowest in Wisconsin.

Still, Sheboygan residents have one persistent gripe: As in the rest of the country, grocery prices have risen 25 percent in four years, driving much of their economic discontent.

It's worth remembering, whether general economic conditions are good or not, that the equilibrium consumer is indifferent at the margin between buying another package of bratwursts or not, or heading to the fish fry on Friday or not.  That's how allocating scarce resources work, and, thanks to the money printing and all the subsidies to rent-seekers, the equilibrium consumer notices.

“Even though inflation is coming down, prices are still up and people feel it,” said Stefano Viglietti, who owns three area restaurants and a specialty Italian market with his wife. “There’s still a fair amount of angst about prices. People here aren’t bazillionaires. They’re working middle class, and when the price of eggs or milk goes up, they have to make adjustments for everything else.”

In interviews with more than three dozen shoppers at three stores, almost all cited high food prices as a major financial hurdle. Many said they were sticking with the candidate they voted for last time — either because Trump was better for the economy, or because they valued President Biden’s position on other issues like abortion rights. But nearly a third said inflation had led them to revise their opinions, and some were even considering voting for the first time because of food prices.

It's also worth remembering that voter participation increases in difficult times.  When Washington is not a drag on daily life, people are content to leave Washington alone and hope Washington reciprocates.

THE BIG DANCE, EVIDENTLY NOT BIG ENOUGH FOR THE GIRLS?

After the weekend's bloodbath of favored teams in the Mid-American conference women's basketball tournament, with Kent State surviving and advancing to play in South Bend, usually there's a flurry of participation trophies Women's NIT bids handed out to the Mid-American failed-to-qualify teams.

A CAT DOES NOT HAVE A BEAGLE'S SLEEPING SKILLS.

This feline's attempt to emulate Snoopy didn't work out so well.

Nothing happened.. 😂 pic.twitter.com/Fh9G47g3VJ

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) March 17, 2024

Yes, that's from the Pajamas Media morning briefing series.