NATIONAL REVIEW Give university trustees a role in faculty hiring.

An excellent idea - every lawn needs weed control.

JEFF JACOBY: Liberate government workers from forced union fees.

Government workers should never have been allowed to unionize in the first place.

EPA HEAD SCOTT PRUITT: 'sue-and-settle' is gone. That's a good beginning, but the environment will be better served by getting the government completely out of the protection racket.

(Note: the Regional Haze rule referred to is here.)

FOUR GOP SENATORS standing in the way of progress. Actually six, with the addition of Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Bob Corker (R-TN) joining the 'Never Trump' legion.

On the bright side, though, it does appear that the Republican establishment (the GOPe) is beginning to get the message from the voters that 'go along to get along' is outside the bounds of Trump's new Republican party.

The swamp will be drained.

POWERLINE: Is the Left cracking up with this 'we can achieve diversity by all thinking alike' nonsense?

From the comments:

This is not unique to Apple or even Silicon valley. These people populate the human resources department of every corporation large and small, and they have foisted this stuff on all workers, who have learned to "keep your mouth shut or else." We used to call it the Personnel department, which assumed that employment was about people who were persons with personalities. We've reduced them the human resources ... like a bin of scrap wood or nails. Just another basket of inanimate objects. The HR department of your company is the political commisar of the left. All those Republican establishment types who occupy the boardroom have allowed the left to make their companies into communist "re-education" camps. Hopefully you guys will begin to catch a clue and understand Trump's appeal. I'll be throwing my support behind Steve Bannon in the upcoming election.

I saw this coming when Personnel departments started becoming Human Resources departments. Still, the sheer depth of this lunacy is astounding.

WELL, THERE ARE LOTS OF THEM OUT THERE: I see stupid people.

EVERYONE CAN WIN ON IMMIGRATION if we stop playing politics.

Which won't happen....

TRUMP TO REPUBLICANS: leave our 401Ks alone!

Don Surber: "I paid far more into Social Security than I did my 401k plan. Now retired, I draw down more from my 401k (even as it grows) than I do Social Security."

Similarly here: my wife's and my 401K required minimum distributions (RMDs) are 193% of our combined Social Security income.

Here's how it works.

THOUSANDS OF AMERICANS will scream helplessly at the sky on Trump's election anniversary.

With luck, the resulting laryngitis will give the rest of us a few days of peace and quiet....

THE ESTABLISHMENT flunks out.

But I do agree with Instapundit that the chess club is treated unfairly.

ALGEBRA AND GEOMETRY perpetuate white privilege.

[C]urricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem ... perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans.

So would he prefer the Native American version of the Pythagorean theorem?

NEW DARWIN AWARD CANDIDATES: 'Idiots of the century' swim into crocodile trap.

HEH: "In a recent speech to the San Mateo County, California Republican Party, House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes said that at this moment investigators have more evidence of Democrats colluding with Russians than of President Trump doing so."

Swords have two edges....

MORE ON REP. FREDERICA WILSON (D[UMB] - FL): "An empty hat rack, only dumber."

DIMOCRAT FREDERICA WILSON: Don't confuse me with facts; my mind (such as it is) is already made up.

(Note: that's not a spelling error above.)

BERNIE SANDERS: Sure, you'll pay higher taxes, but look at all that 'free stuff' you (read as 'I') will get in return.

THE FINGER-POINTING at the finance firm TIAA (formerly TIAA-CREF).

I never trusted them and got out years ago - but it took 10 years to withdraw all my assets.

POWERLINE'S http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/10/the-week-in-pictures-continuing-liberal-freakout-edition.phpWeek in Pictures is up. Most of the cartoons are about the Democrats' hurricane 'Hollywood Harvey Weinstein', but some were NFL related. My favorite:

From here on out I'm no longer watching NFL football when I noted that the networks are no longer televising the pregame National Anthem.

Now go and see the rest of the cartoons.

I’M MAD AS HELL and I’m not taking it anymore.

We have a real cultural problem in this country, the result of the Leftist multicultural agenda. Multi-ethnicity is perfect and should be encouraged. Having more than one American culture is destroying the country. But then again, that is what the Left wants.

Read the whole thing. And welcome to the crowd....

AUTUMN LEAVES, October 22:

This week's pictures were taken in the early morning, rather in the mid-afternoon as I usually do. The bushes in last week's picture have been trimmed back to get a better view of the pond; otherwise the view is relatively unchanged. The trees are sparser, as we had winds that took down most of the dead leaves, so the view is a bit greener.

From the driveway very little has changed, although the trees - especially across the road - do look a bit sparser as a result of the winds.

Next are two photos of the pond area. Since I rarely take pond pictures from a consistent location they're a bit harder to compare week-to-week. This one was taken from the dam, looking back toward our 'spare' lot, which was cleared of the brushy undergrowth last week. The bridge over the creek feeding the pond is at the right side of the picture and for all practical purposes marks the property line boundary.

This last picture is taken from the stairs down to the pond, about midway up. The sun is just above the treeline to the right. As with the other pictures, the dead leaves have mostly been blown away, leaving the evergreens dominant on the other side of the pond.

No blaze of color this year; next week I expect to see mostly yellows and the evergreens.