Pun Salad

■ Proverbs 19:2 is … pretty good, actually:

² Desire without knowledge is not good—
    how much more will hasty feet miss the way!

… especially when one makes a (textually unwarranted) connection between the two parts: if you're already fumbling in the dark while acting on some imprudent urge, don't make things worse by being in a hurry.

■ @kevinNR notes that, when it comes to the GOP, Unity Is Overrated:

The Republican party is either going to be a political outfit that supports free trade or it isn’t. The Republican party is either going to be a political outfit that supports free speech or it isn’t. Republicans will throw in their lot with Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan, or they will throw in with Putin, Le Pen, and Götz Kubitschek. The Republican party is either going to remember “When Character Was King” or it is going to forget all that happy talk about “family values” and make its peace with habitual dishonesty, adultery, and betrayal — so long as those things go along with winning elections. Which they very well may, but the Republicans will have to do it without my vote.

Unlike Kevin, I am still nominally a Republican, but only because I enjoy voting in primary elections (seemingly invariably voting for losing candidates, though). [Yes, I know there's a way around that, but it involves too much talking to people at City Hall.]

■ [Adapting a previous confession re Tina Fey:] I confess: I love Mayim Bialik. And when I say "love", I mean in a way that's completely inappropriate, given our age difference, our respective marital statuses, our incompatible social circles, geographical separation, and a host of additional irreconcilable differences.

So I was sad to read that she apologized for her NYT op-ed column about the Harvey Weinstein imbroglio.

In a perfect world, women should be free to act however they want. But our world isn’t perfect. Nothing — absolutely nothing — excuses men for assaulting or abusing women. But we can’t be naïve about the culture we live in.

And, well, if you are acquainted with how a certain type of feminist mind works, you'll know what happened after that.

VIctim blaming at its finest @missmmayim https://t.co/8DWw6BgRRl

— Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) October 15, 2017

Et tu, Emily Ratajkowski?

Anyway: you were right before, Ms. Bialik. You had nothing to apologize for.

■ Bryan Caplan diagnoses the ills of our current debate. We (and when I say "we", I mean "all those other people") are driven by Resentment Not Hate.

People often claim that their political opponents are motivated by sheer hatred.  Thus, we have "hate-mongers," "hate speech," "hate groups," and even "hate maps."  But almost no one openly claims "hate" as their political motive.  When accused of hatred, the normal reaction is something like, "My God, you're naive.  You can't even imagine that anyone on Earth sincerely disagrees with you.  Oh, we're all horrible villains."

I try not to "hate". But I will admit to a maybe-unhealthy degree of loathing. I should maybe work on that?

■ Veronique de Rugy provides an update in the continuing struggle over the Export-Import Bank: Ex-Im Cronyism Redux

Last week, Representative Charlie Dent (R., Pa.) introduced a bill trying the make the Export-Import Bank less accountable. This is yet another attempt by the lawmaker to get rid of the bank’s quorum requirements that there be three members on the board to approve loans of more than $10 million. Needless to say, this move is not meant to benefit the little guys but the Boeings and GEs of the world. The bank has only had two members for the last two years and yet, as you may have noticed, the sky didn’t fall. Exporters are exporting, foreign buyers are buying U.S. goods, Boeing is getting richer selling planes that don’t even have government support, and GE is still doing well too.

As I type, Dent's bill has 32 GOP co-sponsors, which pushes me a little bit more out the GOP door. And with respect to the item above this, I can't help but loathe these people.

■ At Power Line, Paul Mirengoff notes another milestone on the road to campus fascism: The campus shout-down movement takes its next logical step. At UC Santa Cruz, the activists were summoned to wreck a meeting of College Republicans.

Heeding this call, lefty students disrupted the meeting by banging open the door to the meeting space and shouting accusations that the members were “fascists,” “racists,” and “white supremacists.” The College Republicans say they offered to discuss the concerns of the protesters. The brownshirts replied: “dialogue is violence.”

Coming soon to the University Near Here? Or near you?

■ And Manchester Ink reports on the efforts to put Amazon's new headquarters in our fair state, with an LFOD shout-out: Ship free or die: Will Amazon find Londonderry a good fit for HQ2?

Londonderry is the new sweet spot for business in NH – or at least, that’s the pitch. On Wednesday Gov. Chris Sununu unleashed a formal invitation to Amazon to move to the “Live Free or Die” state and build it’s new headquarters. The 78-page proposal  promotes the state’s freedom loving motto, includes a big endorsement from Dean Kamen, and also a small jab at our metropolitan Massachusetts neighbor, with a section called: “All the benefits of Boston without all the headaches.”

There was considerable whining from Boston about the "trash talk", but Boston's Mayor Walsh was pretty classy in his remarks.