Stuart Rothenberg lays out the actions by which Democrats could hold on to the Senate:

• Localize the elections. The more the midterms are about the president and his policies (or the Senate leadership for that matter) the worse things will be for Democrats in the “battleground states”. In those states the president’s taking an active role energizes Republicans and independents while Democrats are lukewarm about him. In a low turnout election whose voters turn out is all-important.
• The ground game. If Democrats can register more voters and get them to vote it could make a big difference. As the percentage of registrations rises, that’s a strategy with a shelf-life and it may already be less effective than it once was.
• Outspend the Republicans. Contrary to mythology, Democrats are highly dependent on large donors and those donors, especially public sector labor unions, have been spending as though there is not tomorrow because, as it works out, there is no tomorrow.

Finally, there’s what is ultimately uncontrollable—the news. If unfolding events break in a way favorable to Democrats it could make the difference in a close election. That’s the greatest longshot of all and I hope that Democrats aren’t relying on it.

It’s just three weeks until the general election and I honestly don’t know who will prevail in the Illinois governor’s race, the incumbent Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn or the challenger, wealthy Republican businessman Bruce Rauner.

On the one hand I don’t see how the same policies that have dug Illinois into the hole in which we now find ourselves will eventually succeed if we just persist at them long enough. On the other hand Rauner’s proposals consist largely of Underpants Gnome schemes and the reality is that his campaign is predicated on his not being Pat Quinn.

I think whatever happens it will be close and it will be largely dependent on turnout. If Cook County doesn’t turn out for Quinn, he’s in trouble. My guess is that there will be record-breaking low turnout just as there was in the primaries.

You know I wonder how long it will take before the cognoscenti in Washington figure out that the Islamist regime running Turkey today is on the other side in the fight against the “Islamic State”?

The Wall Street Journal is amused that, being unable to ignore the report from whistle-blower Carmen Segarra and the reports based on her tapes from the radio program This American Life, journalists have just discovered regulatory capture:

The financial scandal du jour involves leaked audio recordings that purport to show that regulators at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York were soft on Goldman Sachs . Say it ain’t so.

The news is being treated as shocking by journalists who claim to be hard-headed students of financial markets. One especially impressionable columnist calls it “a jaw-dropping story about Wall Street regulation.” The real scandal here is the excessive faith that liberal journalists and politicians continue to put in financial regulation. The media pack is discovering regulatory capture—a mere 43 years after George Stigler published his landmark paper on the concept.

The editors of the WSJ, sadly, don’t propose a solution to the problem. Eliminating regulation, presumably their preference, will not happen. Banks need bank regulations as much as non-bankers do.

I’ve proposed my solutions before. We need to increase fines on miscreant banks to a level where breaking the law isn’t considered an acceptable risk any more. We need to pay large bounties to whistle-blowers. And, most of all, we need to cultivate an adversarial relationship between bankers and regulators. There needs to be a career path for a young lawyer, economist, or accountant in which fame and fortune can be achieved that doesn’t run through the banks and that, indeed, makes you poisonous to banks. I think regulators should be allowed to keep a percentage of fines. It would at least align incentives.

Last weekend we went to Minneapolis for a family wedding—one of my nephews married his long-time girlfriend, a genuinely lovely girl. I couldn’t be happier for them. It was a joyous occasion but exhausting.

If you’ve never been to Minneapolis, it’s a bit like a Midwestern version of the TV show Portlandia. Very organic, artisanal, etc. Alternatively, Garrison Keillor has been explaining what Minneapolis is like on the radio for the last 30 some-odd years.

It was a whirlwind visit. We flew in on Saturday, took a few minutes to drop in to the shop in St. Paul from which we regularly buy our tea mailorder, checked into the hotel, went to the wedding and reception, went back to the hotel, collapsed, woke the next morning, checked out of the hotel, got onto a plane, and flew back.

I have been roundly informed that I am wrong about the Administration’s approach to the “Islamic State”. Since my position has been that our interests in Syria and Iraq do not rise to the level of war and that the Administration’s present tactics will not effect its stated objective (a view shared by most military experts who’ve dared to venture an opinion on the subject possibly including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, it’s a bit hard for me to see how.

If in a year’s time we have “degraded or destroyed” the “Islamic State”, I will freely acknowledge my error. I would remind people that the “Islamic State” actually controls more territory now than it did when we started bombing. I don’t know what will happen. We’ll find out in due course but it’s early to be proclaiming victory.

It’s still early days in the case of the man who hopped off a plane in Dallas two weeks ago carrying Ebola, was checked into a local hospital a week later with symptoms, to be discharged after, presumably, being told (in the nicest possible way) not to be such a whinger. I’ve read reports that Mr. Duncan is not doing well. It’s not to early to draw a few lessons from the incidents.

First, voluntary quarantines or limitations on travel don’t work. I’ve read multiple reports that Mr. Duncan fortified himself with ibuprofen to reduce his fever before getting on the plane. People lie. They’ll do what they need to do when their lives are on the line.

Second, the protocols presently in place in the United States for healthcare workers to identify and isolate Ebola are inadequate and will never be adequate because they’re implemented by human beings. This is no six sigma affair.

There are more lessons ahead. For example, if Mr. Duncan dies it will be because Ebola is a deadly disease rather than because he’s being treated in a Third World country. And if Ebola becomes endemic in West Africa, as may well occur, or, worse, if it travels to Brazil or Indonesia and becomes endemic there as well there will be future lessons.

Are the multiple breaches of White House security about which the editors of the Wall Street Journal complain in this editorial:

Whatever resolution the agents of the Secret Service used to call upon to protect the lives of the President and his family has apparently long since departed this once-elite corps. This month’s astonishing breach of the White House, supposedly one of the world’s most secure complexes, has exposed a culture of incompetence and duplicity. Government failures are legion, but rarely are they so dangerous.

The core mission of the Secret Service is to prevent an attack on the chief executive’s person and that includes defending the White House. Yet this crude intrusion would be implausible in an airport thriller. The guy waltzed in the front door.

consequences of executive incompetence or a change in culture in the Secret Service? Ultimately, I don’t think we have a ready substitute for doing things because they the right thing to do or because your honor requires it. How many are only apparent due to a changing culture in a press in which the compact to reflect only the best in certain government institutions has broken down? We may simply know too much about the Secret Service or, as Voltaire put it, no man is a hero to his valet.

These are questions not answers. I do think the reaction to the man getting into the White House is overly agonistic but that’s par for the course these days. The truth about the incident will come out in due course.

From time to time I’ve mentioned the addition my wife and I put on our house several years ago. I don’t know that I’ve ever explained what originally impelled it. We were faced with the prospect of needing to take care of both of our elderly mothers.

We added a full first floor wheelchair accessible bath and created what is in effect a complete efficiency apartment on our first floor. Our new kitchen adjoins a “hearth room” as my architect brother-in-law calls it in open plan and that room would make a perfectly suitable bedroom.

As it turned out the need never arose. My mother-in-law needed more care than we could provide and my mother was nearly completely independent until the day she died. If our addition turns out to have been practical, it will be for our needs as we become less willing to climb stairs rather than for our mothers.

I think that one of the things missing from th lifestyle adopted by so many of my peers, transitioning from oversized house to empty nest to condo (or, in some cases, even more oversized house) is that aspect of care. We don’t care for our elderly relations any more. That has been professionalized and I believe we are poorer for it.

Virtue is a habit. We become courageous by acting courageously and caring by performing acts of care. That is the good sense in Cheryl Magness’s reaction to Emanuel Ezekiel’s expressed preference for dying at 75:

My 84-year-old mother lives with me. She has done so for more than five years now, and it has not been easy. She is not bedridden, nor does she suffer from a debilitating illness. But she is old, and old age, as the saying goes, is not for the faint of heart. My mother has pain and she forgets things. She can be quite negative. She is not very active, nor is she a fountain bubbling over with wisdom day in and day out. She is tired, and spends her days watching television, doing crossword puzzles and Sudoku, and taking naps in her chair. But her mere presence in our house is a blessing because of what it requires of those around her.

If we want a more caring society, we will not accomplish it by paying our taxes dutifully or voting the right people into office but by caring for others ourselves. She’s right. It’s a blessing.