YET ANOTHER CONTESTED THANKSGIVING.

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

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

There will be no Friday short takes this week.

I give thanks for your readership and your comments.

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

Postings will resume in December.

THE ADVANCE AUCTION OF STOLEN GOODS HEADS TO MARS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DOES GET-HOME-ITIS GET LAKE BOATS WRECKED?

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BART STARR COULDN'T RETRIEVE THE MAGIC.

Neither, apparently, can Aaron Rodgers.

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

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

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

We've heard this story before.

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE MARGIN OF ERROR IN FORECASTING.

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

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

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

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

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

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

YES, THERE IS A SIMPLER EXPLANATION.

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

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

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

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

THE BELPOT TROPHY.

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

THE END OF THE LITTLE STEAM ERA.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MY NAME IS ACADEME, AND I AM A FAILURE.

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

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

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

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

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

FRIDAY short TAKES.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WASTE NOT, WANT NOT.

Second-hand Rose, second-hand clothes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE EXURBAN ENVIRONMENT CONTINUES TO BE EMERGENT.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LOSING SKIPPERS BLAME THE WEATHERMAN.

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

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

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

CARRY-OUT PIZZA UPSTAGES CURATED CATERED MEAL.

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

THERE THEY GO AGAIN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FINDING THE MISSING MEN.

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

SAFETY APPLIANCES MAKE DRIVERS LESS VIGILANT.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Professors Peltzman and Stigler would approve of the inference.

LIFE GOES ON.

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

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

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

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

ELECTION AFTERMATH WISDOM.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SNOWFLAKE, GET A LIFE.

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

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

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

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

ILLINOIS, RUNNING OUT OF DEMENTIA JOE'S HANDOUTS.

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

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

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

NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR A WIN.

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

No apologies pic.twitter.com/rc1aAkxJWs

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

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

IS THERE NOTHING DONALD TRUMP CAN'T DO?

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

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

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

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

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

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

MAKE COLLEGE GREAT AGAIN.

Kamala, you're FIRED.

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

— Fox News (@FoxNews) November 10, 2024

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

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

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

— AG 🔥 (@Yolo304741) November 10, 2024

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

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

— Byron Donalds (@ByronDonalds) November 17, 2024

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

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

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

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

OH, GET A LIFE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I kept writing.

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

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

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

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

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

But she's the foolish one.

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

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

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

SUMMONING THE ECHOES.

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

FRIDAY short TAKES.

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

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

IMITATION BEARS.

They weren't wearing blue jerseys with orange trim.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's Packer weekend, no less.

FIRST, FIRE ALL THE DEANLETS.

The tenured faculty are stewards of the university.  Years ago, their recognition of that point might have come too late for dropout factory Chicago State.  "Do the working conditions and the academic environment have to deteriorate to the low estate of Chicago State before the faculty push back?"  I've been calling attention for a long time.  Perhaps those diversity hires who embarrassed themselves in Congressional hearings should have listened to their dissident faculty.  Some dissident faculty might be rediscovering their responsibilities.  Let the reckoning continue.

I don't care who gets the credit, as long as it gets done.  There are two sources of the current problem, first, the replacement of much of the tenured faculty with contingent lecturers and instructors, second, the faculty shares the sensibilities of the student affairs types, and went along with the early administrative usurpations accordingly.  Thus we find ourselves at the pass where Claudine Gay is no Drew Faust who is no Henry Rosovsky.

The punishment will have to continue, if Inside Higher Ed contributor Peter Eckel, associated with Penn's graduate school of education, is representative of the best and the brightest.

Higher education doesn’t give enough intentional attention to the variety of jobs of faculty governance.

Most of the talk about faculty governance, instead, centers on roles and responsibilities (stay-in-your-lane discussions, faculty handbooks), relationships between faculty and administrators (how to make them better), and power dynamics (how to change them or overcome them). But by focusing on the work itself, institutions will be able to construct more comprehensive and meaningful agendas for faculty governance.

Lots of management babble, seasoned with the therapeutic, and no recognition that it's the administrative usurpations that have demoralized faculty whilst doing nothing to make the students any smarter.

THE JOKES PRACTICALLY WRITE THEMSELVES.

Wind Blowing Out of Uranus Makes It Hard to Probe.  No, that's not scatological humor incoming, rather, it's bad luck, with a solar flare travelling much faster than Voyager hitting Uranus about when Voyager passed.

[Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Jamie] Jasinksi reexamined the data collected by Voyager 2 during its 1986 flyby and found that the probe had examined Uranus shortly after an intense solar wind event, which saw a huge surge of charged particles blast its way from the Sun.

The event compressed the planet's magnetosphere, they found, causing it to deform into a significantly asymmetrical shape that appeared to lack plasma.

"We postulate that such a compression of the magnetosphere could increase energetic electron fluxes within the radiation belts and empty the magnetosphere of its plasma temporarily," the researchers wrote in their paper.

Even if Voyager 2 had come to visit a mere week earlier, the researchers suggest, it would have found a far more recognizable magnetosphere, like those surrounding other planets in our solar system, including Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune.

"Owing to the variation of the solar wind at Uranus, we suggest that there may be two magnetospheric cycles during solar minimum," the researchers suggested, referring to the calmest period of the Sun's 11-year solar cycle.

Intriguingly, Uranus' two most distant moons Titania and Oberon may be orbiting the planet outside the magnetosphere, which could give astronomers an unprecedented look at their subsurface oceans without any electromagnetic interference.

In short, we shouldn't draw any definitive conclusions from NASA's flyby almost 40 years ago.

I wonder if the auroras were spectacular, or if ionized particles require some sort of atmosphere.  It's not, though, as if there's a space probe standing by to do a Uranian fly-by in the next year or so, or if their luck avoiding a solar storm would be any better.

If I recall correctly, the two early Voyagers took advantage of alignments of the outer planets that made fly-bys of all of them practicable.  Thanks to the long orbits, those alignments are rare.

THE SUGAR HIGH WEARS OFF?

During the last Democrat nominating convention, former president Bill Clinton sought to credit his party with taking "It's the economy, stupid" seriously.

"You're going to have a hard time believing this, but so help me, I triple-checked it," Clinton said. "Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, America has created about 51 million new jobs….What's the score? Democrats 50, Republicans one"—meaning 50 million new jobs created under Democratic presidents, 1 million under Republican presidents.

Harvard's Jeffrey Frankel sees Mr Clinton and raises him the end of an earlier war.

Since World War II, Democrats have seen job creation average 1.7 % per year when in office, versus 1.0 % under the GOP.  US GDP has averaged a rate of growth of 4.23 percent per annum during Democratic administrations, versus 2.36 per cent under Republicans, a remarkable difference of 1.87 percentage points. This is postwar data, covering 19 presidential terms—from Truman through Biden.  If one goes back further, to the Great Depression, to include Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, the difference in growth rates is even larger.

That's long been a ritualized dance in politics.  Republicans blame Democrats for wars and Democrats blame Republicans for recessions.  That the whole spat validates old-school Marxists who see war as the natural order of capitalist competition seems not to stop those partisans.

LOSING SKIPPERS BLAME THE RACE COMMITTEE.

Wisconsin law specifies that absentee ballots cannot be counted until Election Day.  "At poll closing time, election workers announce, 'The polls are closed. We are now counting the absentee ballots.'"  Those generally get counted after closing unless there are quiet times during election day.  In Milwaukee, all the absentee ballots go to one counting site.  Counting can begin when polls open, although it takes a while to feed all those scan-trons through a properly calibrated counting machine.  Those returns come in all at once.

Conspiracy theories about this have raged on in the years since, often in false or misleading ways on social media. Visually, people can see red and blue lines going up concurrently along an arc as votes are tabulated, and then there’s a point where the blue line indicating votes for Joe Biden goes vertical and overtakes the red line for Donald Trump. This is the “ballot dump.”

What’s happening here is actually quite simple. It’s the city of Milwaukee reporting the results of all of its absentee ballots, all at once, in accordance with state law. In the 2020 election, because of the larger number of absentee ballots that were used during the covid-19 pandemic, these results were not counted and reported until after 3 a.m. local time.

Milwaukee is the most populous city in Wisconsin by a significant margin, with more than 550,000 residents. It has nearly twice the population of Madison, the second largest city, and therefore, there are a whole lot of votes to count there. Milwaukee uses a process called “Central Count” where all of the ballots are tabulated and counted all in one location. But because of decisions made by lawmakers at the state capitol in Madison, election workers at Central Count in Milwaukee are not allowed to begin counting those absentee ballots until the morning of Election Day. This is not how things work in most states.

What happened Tuesday a week ago was completely forseeable.

So on Nov. 5, or into the wee hours on Nov. 6, you should know two things. First, you should know that the results from tens of thousands of absentee ballots from Milwaukee will be reported all at once. This is the process that state lawmakers have allowed for, election workers will begin counting the ballots at 7 a.m. on Election Day, and the results will be reported once all the votes are counted. Second, you should know that the Wisconsin State Legislature had every opportunity to reform this process over the last four years and even passed a bipartisan bill through the Assembly to do so about a year ago, but it did not pass and become law because of a few Republicans in the State Senate.

So now, we’re back to the same process we had four years ago. Hopefully, for this year, there will be a better understanding of how this all works and there won’t be as many conspiracy-laden accusations leveled at the city of Milwaukee and on election workers who are just doing their job in accordance with state law. And for future years, let’s hope we can build on the level of bipartisan cooperation established, and get something done to improve this process. But for now, we can expect another late night of reporting election results from absentee ballots in the city of Milwaukee.

The late night returns came in, the Trump campaign had secured enough of a cushion to win, pending certification, but senatorial candidate Eric Hovde had not.  Unleash the conspiracy buffs!

Milwaukee’s traditional early-morning ballot dump would be delayed from 1:00 on Wednesday morning to as late as 4:00 am. When those votes were finally counted and entered, Hovde’s statewide lead vanished. President-elect Donald Trump, who had been running very slightly ahead of Hovde all night, was able to withstand the overwhelmingly Democratic vote dump and went on to win Wisconsin by about one percent of the vote. Hovde, however, fell behind Baldwin by 0.9 percent.

Once again, the open doors on Milwaukee’s vote tabulators were suspect but not per se evidence of illegality. However, the lack of curiosity among members of the media and the Wisconsin Elections Commission has been apparent but should not be misinterpreted. What happened in Milwaukee on Election Day was suspicious in the extreme and, given the city’s past behavior in counting and reporting election results, it warrants a detailed investigation.

Even if the Baldwin campaign and Democratic Party did not benefit from outright fraud in Milwaukee, they most certainly engaged in the dirtiest of dirty politics by recruiting and funding a fake conservative candidate to siphon votes from Hovde, ultimately costing him the race.

Unofficial results Tuesday afternoon showed Baldwin leading Hovde by exactly 27,364 votes out of more than 3.2 million cast. That margin was nearly a thousand votes less than the 28,711 earned by America First Party candidate Thomas Leager.

First, there is no reason for voters not to vote their consciences.  Feel free to vote your conscience.  Second, let's suppose that Democrats ran advertisements suggesting either the Libertarian or the America First candidate offered a better policy bundle than Eric Hovde.  Maybe the way to win over voters might have been for him to call attention to Senator Baldwin's voting record, without invoking her Manhattan-based lady friend.  You know, stick to the substance.  Third, it might not have worked anyway.  Wisconsin voters are, to use long-ago Washington Senator (the elected kind, not the baseball kind) Henry "Scoop" Jackson's terminology, "independent as a hog on ice," and two years ago Republican Ron Johnson won re-election, now the ticket-splitters returned the Democrat, whilst favoring Donald Trump as president.  Fourth, Milwaukee stopped their absentee count when a Republican poll-observer observed defective seals on the tabulators.  The machines were reset, sealed, and all the ballots were counted. Fifth, the phantom registrants are back.

Hovde claims that people have raised numerous concerns about potential irregularities to him, including reports of “certain voting precincts in Milwaukee having a turnout of over 150% of registered voters and in some cases over 200%.” He also noted the anomaly that, despite a population decline in Milwaukee and a decrease of 26,330 registered voters, Kamala Harris received only slightly fewer votes than President Biden did in 2020.

As of this posting, though, Mr Hovde has not requested a formal recount.

When I note that all seekers of elective office have to do is not be crazy, that can be true of Republicans as well as of Democrats.

SCHADENFREUDELICIOUS.

The smart thing for university presidents might be to eschew using their status as academic leaders to hold forth on Controversies of the Day.  "I hold the position that university officials be circumspect in issuing statements about Matters of Public Import.  At the time, I noted, 'Too often, those statements make the professional protest communities within the university comfortable with their prejudices.'"

EXISTENCE EXISTS.

If the known universe as we understand it began with a Big Bang, what was before that?

There is no way of knowing that, although the opportunities for speculation, whether aided by prayer or by strong drink, proliferate.

Perhaps, particularly as very deep space anomalies come to the attention of researchers, and researchers look for ways to model those refractory phenomena, perhaps the good old principle of parsimony is there, deep in the math.  "What if the universe had no beginning?"

In the realm of physics, quantum mechanics and general relativity have provided powerful frameworks for understanding the universe. However, these theories have limitations—particularly when describing extreme conditions, like those at the centers of black holes or the beginning of the universe, where gravity becomes extremely strong. Traditional physics considers space and time as continuous, allowing for the possibility of infinitely small points. This, however, leads to mathematical breakdowns at singularities like the Big Bang, where traditional equations produce infinite densities and fail to work.

That's going to be interesting, a theory that squares the existence of black holes, for which we have evidence, with a universe that has always existed, with hints of something much like a big bang.

THE TELL-ALL MEMOIRS PROMISE TO BE EPIC.

Red State's Streiff asks, "Did an Angry and Bitter Joe Biden Sandbag the Democrats' Chances in 2024 Out of Spite?"

Clearly, the Democrats could have recognized long before the Iowa caucuses and their South Carolina primary that they had a problem, which was becoming clear on Super Bowl weekend when their president couldn't even keep it together for the lighthearted pregame interview, even with regime friendly CBS carrying the game.  Militant Normals were noticing, and calling attention.

The Super Bowl preceded a belated State of the Union, which took place early in March, and the Jarrett regency's cheerleaders hailed it as pugnacious and had fun with the rebuttal from Mississippi's junior senator Katie Britt.  (Who is way hotter than Kamala Harris, but I digress.)

Then the Democrats got Our President to bait Our Once and Future President into a debate before the conventions adjourned, and it didn't go so well.  Then the Biden loyalists started bailing.  But even when the president abdicated the nomination, we saw none of the logical exits, which might have involved nods to the actuarial tables.  Into the void step the conspiracy buffs.

By now, it is generally accepted that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama were working behind the scenes to push Joey SoftServe out of the race because they thought he couldn't win a rematch against Trump. At the time, reporting based on informed sources indicated the plan was for Biden to withdraw and for a new candidate to emerge at an "open," and by that, I mean "Obama-controlled," convention.

I've already broken down how any political hardball involving the 25th Amendment would require the participation of the vice president, and her dominant strategy would be to support that threat in return for a guarantee of the nomination.  That's not, though, how Madame Speaker saw things unfolding.  “'Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,' the former House speaker said in an interview with The New York Times, suggesting she had anticipated an 'open primary.'”  If, as scuttlebutt has it, she was among the Democrat poobahs advising Mr Biden "we can do this the easy way or the hard way," what, if not the 25th Amendment, did she have in mind?  Disclosures of Biden Family involvement in corrupt bargains?  If so, that could have given Mr Biden incentives to behave in the way he did?

Taken as a whole, the facts paint a picture of Biden as an embittered man who was elbowed out of the way rather than voluntarily stepping aside. His decision to endorse Kamala in his withdrawal speech locked the Democrats into a convention that was a coronation rather than a contest. As a result, the Democrat king-makers lost their say on who would lead the party in the upcoming campaign and created an electoral Chernobyl that will smolder for years to come.

Think this through, dear reader.  If he abdicates the nomination, the Democrats don't start leaking those records.  But if Donald Trump wins, doesn't his administration have the opportunity to release those records as part of a general swamp-draining effort?  That is to say, fight the Democrat poobahs or lose the election, the Biden Family corruption becomes public.

Well, no.  Eight years ago, to the great disappointment of the Breitbart wing of the Trump coalition, "Crooked Hillary" ended with the campaign.  "Trump says he’s not interested in pursuing case against Clinton."  In like manner, getting his Cabinet appointees confirmed (for what it's worth, some I like, some are clinkers) might take a lot of his energy.

In that game tree, the Biden camp's dominant strategy is to abdicate and undermine the Harris campaign by endorsing it.

I hope the tell-alls will tell all.