Pun Salad

Senator Warren has a bone to pick. Specifically, a nice spare rib slathered with various combinations of …

Hellmann's mayo McCormick spices Cholula hot sauce Frank's RedHot What do these products have in common? One company could soon control them all. I have concerns that McCormick and Unilever's $45 billion merger could increase YOUR grocery prices.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) October 13, 2026

Now that's hilarious, but the responses were better. For example:

Imagine if you will a world where a panopticon conglomerate owns two brands of hot sauce https://t.co/qbfxkgWrzN

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) October 15, 2026

But for more substantive criticism:

People really underestimate how stupid Elizabeth Warren is

— Christian Britschgi (@christianbrits) October 15, 2026

And at least one commenter pointed out that while Senator Warren hastens to air her "concerns" with hot sauce concentration, she's pretty much OK with Uncle Stupid taking over control of the entire American health care sector.

Also of note:

• But Scott, creeping is what creeps do! Scott Lincicome asks an important question: Will Anyone Stop America’s Creeping Socialism?

  When I first checked in last year on the Trump administration’s unprecedented ownership stakes in private U.S. companies, I warned that the 10 equity deals—and “the year America went (kinda) socialist”—gave us plenty to worry about. Ten months later, Uncle Sam’s equity portfolio has now grown to cover 35 deals across the steel, critical minerals, semiconductors, quantum computing, nuclear power, rocket motor, and crude oil industries, using a variety of laws and agencies to acquire the stakes. Even more deals are likely on the way—including ones, such as the new Andruil submarine arrangement announced last week, that give Washington a stake in certain projects instead of entire companies.

  Given the radical and opaque nature of the Trump administration’s moves—recall that Washington hadn’t taken a non-crisis stake in a healthy company in decades—Cato this week launched our Restoring Free Enterprise project to document, analyze, and counter the trend. As I wrote in the project’s introductory essay and in an August piece for the Washington Post, the government’s ownership stakes raise serious problems that have already begun to materialize: capital misallocation, politicized business decisions, preferential treatment, state coercion, corruption, and more.

  Time to recycle my ChatGPT cartoon from last year:

  As Scott points out (and you should RTWT, check out his links, etc.): it's not just Intel any more.

• Properly understood, it's a better way forward. At National Review, Eugene B. Meyer summarizes Fusionism, Properly Understood. (NR gifted link)

  That both freedom and virtue are essential to human flourishing is one of the great truths of Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian ethic. The two can be in tension — freedom obviously subsumes the option to choose vice — but they are never in total conflict. Freedom is achieved primarily through the political world, and virtue primarily through intermediate institutions like family and church. Fusionism does not provide specific answers to many of the practical questions we face today, but it does provide a framework for thinking them through. It takes its foundations in theories of natural law going back centuries.

  While the term “fusionism” has stuck, it should be remembered that it was coined by its opponents to attack the idea (nonetheless I will use “fusionism” in this piece as described in the first paragraph). It’s often suggested by current skeptics that fusionism may well have been an apt tool to fight communism, but its pragmatic value in that battle has become outdated.

  That’s incorrect because it takes too cramped a view of the philosophy. Fusionism was indeed helpful in fighting communism, but it wasn’t — and isn’t — so limited. Its central ideas were true yesterday, are true today, and will be true tomorrow. My father, Frank Meyer, outlined them in his 1962 book In Defense of Freedom. One of the most ominous dangers to human flourishing is the concentration of unearned power in state actors — concentration that inevitably leads to favoritism and corruption. Robust individual freedom is one key to preventing such concentration. The other is virtue. Neither is spelled out in the back of the book; both require judgment.

  I'm a fan. Feel free to read my 2026 Fusionism-related content here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and (finally) here. (That last link is my report on Stephanie Slade's recent book on Fusionism, which Eugene Meyer also mentions favorably.)

• Economics 101 predicts… Restricting supply is an effective way to cause increased prices. That's why Jeffery L. Degner's AIER article Explaining Certificate of Need is an important piece of the healthcare story.

  Certificate of Need (CON) laws are state-level regulations that require entrepreneurs, healthcare systems, and nonprofit organizations to obtain government permission before building new facilities, expanding existing ones, or offering new medical services. Before a hospital can add beds, before a nursing home can open its doors, before a surgery center can install an MRI machine, each must first satisfy an administrative board that the new capacity is “needed.” In the 39 states and Washington, DC that impose these restrictions, incumbent healthcare providers that stand to lose business from new competitors can participate in the approval process and, in some cases, block new entrants.

  […]

  Certificate of Need boards have been a cartelizing force and a policy failure, 80 years in the making. While the benefits of these politically created restrictions have been concentrated among incumbent healthcare providers, the costs have been dispersed across society, including through higher Medicare and Medicaid expenditures. Those costs, however, have become too great for the public to ignore.

  New Hampshire repealed its Certificate of Need law in 2016. It and Pennsylvania are the only states in the eastern half of the US to have done so. It's not a panacea, but it helps.

• Doubleplusungood. Pun Salad is a sucker for anyone invoking George Orwell and his observations about language and politics. So here you go: James B. Meigs notes the current crop of Politicians Play Orwell’s Word Games. (WSJ gifted link)

  George Orwell warned us to be on our guard when people play games with words. Writing in the aftermath of World War II, the great British essayist shuddered at how communist regimes hid their brutal crimes behind smokescreen euphemisms. And he bemoaned the way his fellow socialists churned out high-minded tracts that revealed little about their concrete policies. Sloppy writing conceals sloppy thinking, Orwell argued. In turn, “the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” Especially about politics.

  Orwellian doublespeak is making a comeback, particularly on the left. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani sets a high bar here. With a genial grin he speaks of “dignity,” “affordability” and “abundance.” These are vague, positive words that few could argue with. His administration’s more divisive goals remain pleasingly blurred. Some of the mayor’s allies on the Democratic Party’s ascendant far left employ similar strategies. U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed promotes “All-American values.” But he mostly dodges questions about his ties to anti-American influencer Hasan Piker and has dissembled about his family’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

  Orwell noted that words like “democracy,” “freedom” and “justice,” while broadly seen as positive, are also dangerously indistinct. “Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way,” he wrote. “That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.” Progressive politicians perfected this style of communication years ago. They employ grand patriotic language knowing most voters will hear those words in the traditional sense. But their activist followers understand the same words quite differently.

  James doesn't restrict his criticism exclusively to the left. Later in the article:

  The left isn’t alone in using uplifting phrases to obscure messy realities. President Donald Trump may be uniquely averse to highfalutin language. But many in his orbit have become quite creative in finding new meanings for old words. Republicans used to abhor tariffs and warn against centralized industrial planning. Today, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defends those policies as “economic sovereignty” and “leveling the playing field.” As with Mr. Mamdani’s sunny platitudes, Mr. Bessent’s words delicately sidestep the costly trade-offs imposed by the administration’s policies.

  It probably shouldn't be an impeachable offense, but I wish Doublespeak got a more hostile and immediate response.

The CongressCritter who would be representing me had I stayed in Omaha is retiring, and showing some spine on the way out, as reported at National Review:: Don Bacon Blasts Trump’s Russia Moves: ‘Kissing Putin’s Ass’.

Not to be pedantic, but I'm allergic (but also pedantic) about people saying "literally" when … they don't mean "literally".

More refined language is available from the NR editorialists about Trump’s Desperate Diesel Deal:

So what's the problem? Well…

Not good. Shameful, in fact. Erick Erickson has even less measured words: Buying Russian Diesel is an Americans Dead, Not America First, Policy.

I can't imagine how impervious the epistemological bubble that Trump has inflated around himself must be.

Jim Geraghty looks at the three stooges: The Geriatric Strongmen Who Hold the Fate of the World in Their Hands.

Note the correct use of "literally" in the second paragraph above. Good job, Jim.

Also of note:

• I'd say it's not even a problem, per se. But I'm willing to give Deirdre McCloskey a listen when she argues that Inequality Is Not the Problem.

  Robert Reich argues that the problem must be measured by inequality, Gini-coefficient style, not by the absolute condition of the poor. “Widening inequality,” he declares, “challenges the nation’s core ideal of equal opportunity”:

  Widening inequality still hampers upward mobility. That’s simply because the ladder is far longer now. The distance between its bottom and top rungs, and between every rung along the way, is far greater. Anyone ascending it at the same speed as before will necessarily make less progress upward.1

  Reich is mistaken. Horwitz summarizes the results of a study by Julia Isaacs on individual mobility 1969–2005: “82% of children of the bottom 20% in 1969 had [real] incomes in 2000 that were higher than what their parents had in 1969. The median [real] income of those children of the poor of 1969 was double that of their parents.”² There is no doubt that the children and grandchildren of the English coal miners of 1937, whom Orwell describes “traveling” underground, bent over double walking a mile or more to get to the coal face, at which point they started to get paid, are much better off than their fathers or grandfathers. There is no doubt that the children and granchildren of the Dust Bowl refugees in California are. Steinbeck chronicled in The Grapes of Wrath their worst and terrible times. A few years later many of the Okies got jobs in the war industries, and many of their children went to university. Some became university professors who think that the poor are getting poorer.

  Deirdre takes on Piketty and other inequality-bashers.

  I suspect I've said this before: a very simple model of a population where (a) everyone's income grows, year over year, but (b) the growth rate differs between members of the population results in an increased Gini coefficient. Even though everyone's better off. We may not live in that exact world, but it shows that a mindless demonization of "inequality" is lazy thinking.

• Sabine can get pretty cynical. Her latest video claims Big Oil’s Plan Is Working Beautifully. Can't you just see the "Big Oil" fat cats cackling and rubbing their hands together?

  Sigh. See what happens when a scientist wanders outside her field?

  Big Oil's "plan" is to start emphasizing carbon capture solutions; they seem to have found a method that can be scaled and makes economic sense. Sabine describes this with a lot of thinly-disguised contempt, but if you ignore her spin, what shines through is the possibility of a pretty neat scheme.

  Of course, there are government subsidies involved. But you wouldn't expect the oil companies to do this out of the goodness of their hearts. It would (probably) be better if governments simply instituted a net carbon tax, where a firm's bill reflected CO₂ emissions minus however much CO₂ they managed to suck out of the atmosphere and sequester.

  Sadly, the very green "solution" of Artificial Photosynthesis is not mentioned. (But see that article for the usual caveats.)

• Affordability III: Return of the Unready John Cochrane has good reason to be grumpy in his answer to Why is the free market so unpopular?

  Today I’m going to follow up on affordability, sparked by a remarkable Wall Street Journal poll in which large majorities, left and right, support populist economic policies.

  “The rent is too damn high.” So, people respond, pass rent control, subsidize rents, force builders to construct and rent out so-called “affordable units,” or have the government build and provide housing. They give the same answers for childcare, health care, prescription drugs, and energy.

  Why are people so enamored of policies that have failed time and again, over centuries? Why are simple cause-and effect truths seemingly so hard to understand?

  “Don’t transfer income by distorting prices” is a bedrock economic principle. If a government wants to tax landlords, and send the results to current tenants, giving more money to wealthy people who pay higher rents, let it do so: Tax the landlords, and send the renters a check, whether they stay or leave. Don’t get in the way of who values which apartment more, who should stay, who should move, which apartment should get fixed up, and which should be left alone and rented cheaply.

  It's a masterful essay, well worth your time.

Mr. Ramirez goes in a different, but equally valid, direction:

And, in words, Jeffrey Blehar finds the "deal" to be Futile But Revealing.

We had a chance to avoid this with Nikki Haley. If only…

Also of note:

• Bad news for geoengineers. Ars Technica brings us the post mortem: They war-gamed dimming the Sun. It went even worse than you think.

  When it comes to deciding the fate of the planet, Colleen Golja always thought science and reason would have a seat at the table. That was until one morning last September in London, when the climate researcher took part in the first in a series of war games. The goal: to prevent an uncontrolled global race to develop a technology aimed at cooling the planet but that comes with vast, unknown risks that could reshape life on Earth.

  “I thought that would be such an easy thing. Like, we can all agree to do ethical research and make sure it’s for the better of all humans,” she told WIRED. “And boy, was I wrong.”

  The simulation, titled Exploring Geopolitical Tipping Points and Climate Cooling Strategies, saw a couple dozen foreign-relations experts, scientists, military personnel, and former government officials from across the world convene in a meeting room at Queen Mary University of London. After making introductions over coffee and little yogurts, they sat at tables arranged in a square with the name of the country or organization each person was playing: national governments, climate NGOs and nonprofits, indigenous groups, and tech companies. Golja was assigned to provide technical advice to help participants make scientifically literate decisions.

  Caveat Lector: This article "originally appeared at wired.com", a longtime foe of anything that doesn't involve AOC-Approved Green New Deal climate policies.

  But it fits in well with something Pun Salad said over twenty years ago (and many times since then):

  There's a sense in which technological solutions to global warming are even scarier than global warming itself. You think you have conflicts setting the thermostat in your house, with Pa wanting to save energy and Ma wanting it warmer, and the kids complaining no matter what? Multiply that kerfuffle by a few billion, erase the familial love, and give everyone armed forces. Uh oh.

  But if geoengineering our way out of global warming seems difficult, it's even less likely that we'll do it via legislation and the heavy hand of regulation. I know where I'd be putting my money.

  It's difficult for True Believers to imagine that their schemes aren't immune from exactly the same problems they note in the proposals of others.

• It's just down the path from the Meadow of Mendacity. Dan Greenberg at Cato updates Lewis Carroll with J. D. Vance's Walk in the Forest of Forgetfulness. (The Forest is an area of Neverland where all who enter forget the names of things.)

  In a press conference last week, our vice president displayed such forgetfulness. In J.D. Vance’s discussion of new restrictions on H‑1B eligibility, he was asked what he understood “socialism” to be. He responded:

  “It’s honestly a hard term to define these days. Classically, you would think socialism is about prioritizing workers. And yet in reality, most of the self-described socialists running across the United States of America are going to howl about this announcement today, which is prioritizing American workers over foreign workers. So I don’t know what the term means anymore. I think in reality, what it actually means in the American context is that you want to replace American workers with foreign workers, and you want boys to play in girls’ sports. That’s what united the socialists that I see running across the United States of America today.”

  Vance was playing at forgetfulness here: Of course, socialism has little or nothing to do with immigration or gender. But many of us have not forgotten what socialism is: those who want to know “what it actually means in the American context” could look at “Workers Deserve More!” a recent platform statement of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) — or at my colleague Alex Nowrasteh’s recent analysis of it.

  More broadly, many of the DSA’s recommendations target political and legal institutions that are central to a free society — the ability to offer, bargain about, and make agreements concerning prices; the right to petition the government; the institution of private property; and a government composed of competing branches and separated powers — for elimination. The DSA platform treats them as hindrances, but these institutions serve as political solutions to basic problems of political life.

  And then they cried "Off with their heads!"

• Good news and … not so good news. John H. Cochrane brings us Part 2 of his Affordability Trilogy.

  Affordability? It does seem a bit petulant. American’s standard of living is greater than any large country, and better than ever in the past. We earn on average 40% more than Europeans, British, Japanese, and Canadians. Poverty just hit an all time low. Health indicators hit an all time high. Inequality is falling. Some things have gotten more expensive, but other things are cheaper. Real wages are rising. Is a new multi-bedroom house in a nice suburb of a hot city expensive? Yes. But ask Europeans, who live in tiny apartments. What is everyone complaining about?

  Well, the level of prices, as measured by the consumer price index, is 27 percent higher than it was just before inflation hit in January 2021, and 14% higher than it would have been had inflation been 2% that whole time. Though average real wages largely kept up with inflation, that’s not true for everyone. Many people who got new jobs got raises. But many people in old jobs did not. People on fixed nominal incomes or who want to buy houses or stocks are worse off. Inflation creates a lot of churn: some gain, some lose. Anyone who held government bonds lost about 14% due to inflation, and more as long-term bond prices fell.

  People hate inflation. People hate higher prices. You can lecture them all you want about real wages, about “transitory,” but people hate higher prices. That ought to be an important lesson.

  John makes an interesting point about the Federal Reserve that I didn't fully appreciate before:

  Congress gave the Federal Reserve a “price stability” mandate. The Fed interpreted that mandate to mean 2% inflation forever. Prices should double every 35 years. And even that 2% is only a forward-looking aspiration. The Fed lets bygones be bygones. If inflation hits 10%, as it did in 2022, the Fed does not try to run inflation lower than 2% for a while, or even slight deflation, so that inflation will average 2% over time. The Fed does not even think of trying to bring the level of prices back to where they were. Even so-called transitory inflation means permanently higher prices.

  That certainly makes their job easier. And it makes me more sympathetic to the dangerous libertarian wackos who cry "End the Fed". Maybe they have a point.

• Oh, good. We found something on TV to be outraged about. At Reason, Robby Soave thinks The Shane Gillis SNL backlash is really stupid. To get you up to speed, if necessary:

  Shane Gillis is an actor and comedian. He first came to my attention in September 2019, when he was hired to be a new cast member on Saturday Night Live—and then abruptly fired after it was revealed that he had (gasp) told offensive jokes. (SNL creator Lorne Michaels subsequently said that the network forced him to fire Gillis, and he thought the whole controversy was stupid.)

  Since then, Gillis's career has really taken off, to the extent that he has repeatedly returned to SNL as a guest host. He did so again on October 10, delivering a monologue in which he made the following observation: "I haven't been to the gym in so long, I didn't know women just dress like whores now."

  Confession: I'm easily amused, so I watch SNL every week there's a new episode. And c'mon who could not avoid laughing at…

  "… and I paid with a check." I've seen that maybe a dozen times, and it still makes me laugh.

Recently on the book blog:

Trump continues to find new ways to make me despise him, as Mr. Ramirez illustrates…

… and Andrew C. McCarthy uses his words: Trump’s Diesel Deal with Putin Is a Gross Abuse of Power. (NR gifted link)

Andrew observes that the "Graham Act" to which Mr. Ramirez refers has some weasel-wording that doesn't make the legal case against Trump a slam dunk. But…

What is straightforward, though, statute or no statute, is that the president of the United States is empowering and emboldening a murderous anti-American regime even as it persists in a war of aggression, savage war crimes, provocations of America’s allies that verge on acts of war, and the provision of intelligence and assets to Iran that the latter uses in its warfare against the United States. Regardless of whether statutes have been transgressed, President Trump is grossly abusing the executive power entrusted in him.

I'd append an "… as usual" there.

Also of note:

• The science is settled? At the WSJ, Allysia Finley examines The ‘Scientific’ Socialism of Abdul El-Sayed. (WSJ gifted link)

  Apparently, “following the science” means embracing socialism. So argues Abdul El-Sayed, the left-wing Democrat running for Senate in Michigan.

  “Once you train in the sciences, you don’t leave that scientific approach to thinking and that rigor of thinking. And I try to bring that to policy problems,” Mr. El-Sayed, who has a medical degree but has never practiced as a physician, told Scientific American. “You construct a hypothesis of the world and you test it . . . and then you’ll study the outcome of the intervention to see if it works.”

  A drug maker would scrap an experimental medicine that fails to help patients and causes severe adverse effects. Mr. El-Sayed and his fellow Democrats want to rerun failed policy experiments at a higher dosage.

  El-Sayed has advocated, in addition to raising income tax rates on "the rich", a "wealth tax", which has been tried and repealed in a number of European countries. And he's also in favor of "Medicare for all". Which, as Allysia points out, "doesn’t exist anywhere in the world."

  Neither local Democrat candidates, Chris Pappas (running for US Senate) and Stefany Shaheen (running for CongressCritter) haven't explicitly embraced a wealth tax. And while Pappas isn't a fan of "Medicare for all", Stefany is all for it.

  To the extent that this blog has recurring themes, here's a biggie: opposing the "progressive" notion that "science" demands ever-increasing government regulation, taxation, subsidies, prohibitions, nagging,…

• Abdul doesn't know what he doesn't know. I don't often link to Town Hall articles, but Dmitri Bolt is also Debunking Another Socialist Lie: Abdul El-Sayed Thinks Billionaires Make Money by ‘Doing Nothing’.

  One of the more obnoxious myths pushed by the socialist left, and echoed by parts of the right that have lost faith in free markets, is that wealthy people never earned their fortunes. It's convenient sequel: Once you’re rich, your money does all the work, and you collect millions for doing nothing.

  Progressive Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed gave that argument another airing over the weekend, defending a wealth tax in part because the wealthy “make [their] money off of [their own] money.” His explanation reduced wealth creation to a rather simple and shallow routine: Be a billionaire, collect the interest, and watch more millions pile up. Unfortunately for those who hate the wealthy, the reality is not so simple.

  As Dmitri points out, that simply does not stand up to economic analysis.

  If you can stand a personal note: I've been retired for 10 years, so I guess by El-Sayed's lights, I'm "doing nothing". And my investment portfolio is over at Fidelity, where it is "doing all the work."

  And guess what? Even though I'm no billionaire, it's working pretty well!

  But "doing nothing?" Abdul, my money is funding hundreds of businesses that are doing work, providing goods and services that people are voluntarily buying.

  This is in contrast to the job you are running for, which involves coercing masses of citizens to fund your silly schemes. Without getting your hands dirty, I'm pretty sure.

  So I'll choose my own version of "doing nothing", thanks much.

• When Honey-Nut Cheerios are outlawed… Jeffrey A. Singer poses a relevant question: The government doesn't know what's best for you. Why let it decide what you should eat?

  Governments have spent decades issuing dietary guidelines, sponsoring public health campaigns, and encouraging consumers to cut back on sugary, salty, and fatty foods. Now they're moving beyond persuasion and adopting more aggressive measures to influence what people eat.

  In an October 8 article titled "Nagging People to Eat Healthily Does Not Work," The Economist describes a growing international movement to tax unhealthy foods, restrict advertising, require warning labels, and regulate how supermarkets display and promote their products. Such measures are needed, officials argue, because the earlier approach failed to curb rising obesity rates.

  Jeffrey recounts the long history of Uncle Stupid's shifting dietary guidelines. Currently under the food-nanny microscope are "ultra-processed" foods; that label sounds pretty damning, but isn't actually something that nutritionists have managed to define consistently, or figure out what it is about "ultra-processing" that might actually be bad for you.

  And, yes, Honey-Nut Cheerios are considered by many of the nannies to be "ultra-processed". Maybe I should stock up while they're still legal.

  I'm in agreement with Jeffrey's bottom line:

  Adults should be free to seek dietary advice from physicians, nutritionists, researchers, or anyone else they trust—and to decide whether to follow it. They should also be free to disregard that advice, even if that might increase their health risks.

Recently on the book blog:

Mr. Ramirez notes the countries that "Secretary of War" Hesgeth wants to imitate:

George Will provides commentary on the issue too: Fill the government with barbarians, you get barbaric government. (WaPo gifted link)

My own state, New Hampshire, abolished the death penalty in 2019. Although one guy, Michael Addison, remains on death row: he murdered a policeman in 2006, and was convicted for that in 2008. NHJournal has the story, and it's become an issue in this year's race for governor.

Also of note:

• A long history of wanting to shut people up. As Jacob Sullum reports, we should not be surprised at Trump's contempt for the First Amendment: Trump has been trampling free speech for more than 40 years.

  Three decades before he was first elected president, Donald Trump had big plans for a 26-acre building site near the South Street Seaport in Manhattan. "New York City deserves to have the tallest and greatest building in the world, and I would be very interested in doing it," he told The New York Times on July 30, 1984. He imagined a 150-story structure, including offices, apartments, and a hotel, that would be 1,940 feet high, surpassing Chicago's Sears Tower, then the world's tallest building, by nearly 500 feet.

  Paul Gapp, the Chicago Tribune's architecture critic, did not think much of that plan. "The only remotely appealing aspect of Donald Trump's proposed 150-story Manhattan skyscraper, announced several days ago, is that it would not be done in the Fence Post Style of the 1970s," Gapp wrote. "The world's tallest tower would be one of the silliest things anyone could inflict on New York or any other city." Trump was indulging in "Guinness Book of World Records architecture," Gapp said.

  Trump did not like what Gapp said. And according to Trump, Gapp had no right to his opinion. Two months after the Tribune published Gapp's column, Trump sued him and the newspaper for defamation. The complaint alleged that Gapp's criticism of the theoretical skyscraper, which also included a Wall Street Journal interview in which he called it "aesthetically lousy," had damaged Trump's reputation to the tune of $500 million, the equivalent of $1.6 billion today.

  Jacob's article is an overview of Trump's anti-speech efforts since then. It's very long, and infuriating. Bottom line:

  Trump promised something quite different at the beginning of his second term, when he issued an executive order aimed at "restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship." He said he was determined to "ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen." Given Trump's long history of trying to punish speech, that commitment was hard to believe at the time. It becomes an even sadder joke every time he betrays it.

• "We would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you independent online journalists." NHJournal snarks at Commie Radio's latest snafu: Tote Bags for Terrorism? NHPR Apologizes For Sponsoring Pro-Antifa Political Event.

  An anarchist book fair in Hanover that was held in solidarity with antifa terrorists who assaulted an immigration detention facility and shot a police officer was sponsored in part by New Hampshire Public Radio. After an independent online journalist reported the network’s involvement, NHPR issued an apology.

  The Live Free Anarchist Book Fair on Saturday advertised the Northeast Anarchist Union, Socialist Rifle Association NH, and Workers Congress of New Hampshire among its participants. Its promotional website declared, “Solidarity with the Prairieland Defendants.”

  NHPR's tweeted "apology":

  NHPR erred in accepting an invitation to sponsor and host a table at the Anarchist Book Fair in Hanover on Saturday. Our code of ethics (https://t.co/phejk7NxvC) makes clear that we should not compromise the integrity of our journalism by involvement in anything that can be viewed as political. No one from NHPR’s newsroom was aware of or involved in the decision to participate in this event. We remain committed to our mission of independent, trustworthy journalism for everyone in New Hampshire, and we are evaluating our internal processes to ensure mistakes like this don’t happen again.

  — NH Public Radio (@nhpr) October 11, 2026

  [Continues:]

  […] viewed as political. No one from NHPR’s newsroom was aware of or involved in the decision to participate in this event.

  We remain committed to our mission of independent, trustworthy journalism for everyone in New Hampshire, and we are evaluating our internal processes to ensure mistakes like this don’t happen again.

  I admire their transparent weaseling: "No one from NHPR’s newsroom was aware of or involved in the decision…" Well, who was aware or involved? Did any money change hands? Do your donors deserve to know?

• No wonder he's grumpy. The self-described "grumpy economist", John H. Cochrane, kicks off a three-part series on "Affordability" with Part 1. He notes depressing results from a WSJ survey that reports favorable attitudes for a whole steaming pile of bad policies. Example: “Cap credit card interest rates at 10%?” gets the thumbs-up from 78% of Democrats, 83% of Republicans, and 76% of Independents.

  Ack. Well, you either know why this (and other popular populist poopy policies) are bad, or you don't. John provides a laundry list of Things We Should Do Instead:

  What could the government do to make things more affordable? Start by getting out of the way A lot of policy and regulation deliberately makes things more expensive. The biggest price rises are education, health, and housing, exactly where the government intervenes the most. When you’re in a hole, first of all, stop digging.

  Housing? Let’s get serious about zoning and permit reform. Allow portable mortgages. Remove rent controls, forever. Allow people to rent rooms. Gas? Get rid of ethanol requirements, which add about 30 cents a gallon to diesel, drive up corn prices and agricultural land prices, and do nothing for the environment. Abolish the Jones act, which restricts shipping between states to US manned and made ships, and has driven up transport costs as it has destroyed the US ship building industry. Eliminate all the tariffs. Let Americans buy Chinese cars, at about half the price of domestics. (Yes, with data controls). Washing machines assembled in Mexico do not threaten national security. Allow automated ports. Get going on environmental permit reform, used by NIMBYs to block projects in ways that do nothing for the environment. Keep deregulating business (an unsung achievement of the Trump administration. Did you know that the Department of Transportation regulates font sizes on airline websites?) End agricultural price supports and quotas. Free up labor markets. Remove unneeded occupational licensing. Stop subsidizing higher education with basically free student loans. Open up health care and insurance to competition. I could go on. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” As Aesop advised, “Doctor heal thyself.”

  I'm pretty sure I agree with every one of those things.

• 

  But … but … wait a minute! Arthur Brooks has a recommendation: Don’t Pursue Happiness. (Free Press gifted link)

  Don't worry, fans of the Declartion of Independence. Arthur clarifies:

  As someone who has dedicated my life to studying happiness, I am often asked two related questions: What is happiness? And how do we pursue it? During this semiquincentennial anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, those questions have taken on new urgency. Two hundred and fifty years ago, after all, Thomas Jefferson famously declared that we have the God-given right to “the pursuit of happiness.”

  What did he mean? And what does this mean for us in 2026?

  This column is named for the Declaration’s founding promise, so you’d hope that I would know something about exactly how to pursue happiness. The problem is that when this tricky phrase is followed as we often understand happiness today—a physical sensation to be obtained—it leads in the wrong direction. The more you pursue feelings of happiness, the less of it you will get.

  I recommend Arthur's column, and also Charles Murray's book from back in the 1980s, Amazon link at your right. (But I'd also recommend you check Amazon's "Used and New" paperback editions.)

Sabine Hossenfelder brings the (maybe) news: Scientists identify what it takes for AI to become conscious.

I can't help but point out that Sabine makes similar observations to those I made just a few days ago.

And the Headline du Jour is from a great old (albeit very repetitious) song, popularized by George Harrison in 1987. "Got My Mind Set on You". I've spent way too much time (but no spending money) this morning watching George's videos for the song; there are two, here and here. You're welcome.

Also of note:

• 

  On topics related to that "consciousness" thing… There's a recent book from Kathryn Paige Harden, Original Sin: On the Genetics of Vice, the Problem of Blame, and the Future of Forgiveness. (Amazon link at your right.) Damien Morris reviews it for Quillette: The Genetics of Crime and Punishment. Unfortunately, there's a paywall, but here's an unpaywalled excerpt:

  The behavioural geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden opens her latest book with a line straight out of a Hunter S. Thompson novel: “It was a sweltering, tedious summer … when Travis and I decided to go to the West Texas desert to drop acid.” But what was supposed to be a psychedelic holiday to escape the monotony of the COVID lockdowns takes a dark turn when Harden’s boyfriend has a bad trip. He gets trapped in a hallucination that he has crashed his car and killed Harden and is racked by guilt for his imagined actions. “What,” Harden asks, “was the ghastly belief at the core of Travis’s waking nightmare? There’s nothing you can do about it, and you will be responsible.”

  Harden uses this autobiographical episode as a springboard into deeper philosophical questions about what it means to be responsible in an era when science can predict who is more likely to commit a crime based purely on their DNA. She ponders whether we should take people’s genetics into account when deciding “whether and how they should be punished for the sins they commit.” She asks, “Does science let us off the hook … or is science, in the end, as accusatory as a bad acid trip…?” Importantly, she tackles these questions about causation and responsibility as someone who was “raised religious and fled the church as an adult,” addressing her book to “modern, enlightened” readers like herself who “don’t believe in God anymore.”

  Note to self: avoid dropping acid with Kathryn Paige Harden in the West Texas desert.

  I've put in an Interlibrary Loan request at the University Near Here for Original Sin; I fully expect it will be a hate-read outside my comfort zone, but I should get some enjoyment from hate-reporting on it here.

  (Back in 2021, I made two hate-reports on Harden's previous book, The Genetic Lottery, here and here. Damien Morris also reviewed the book at Quillette: The Culture War is Coming for Your Genes. If anything, he hated it more than I did, winding up his review with "… what I see is a boot stamping on a human face—forever.")

• Oh, sorry. I thought you said "optional." Nellie Bowles took a break from TGIFing at the Free Press, but Chelsea Jacobson filled in ably with the headline "Nudity Is Optimal." As always, there are many items I could excerpt, but I'll go with one of the more serious ones, Chelsea's reaction to Mayor Mamdani's October 7 tweet:

  In New York, far away from The Hague, pro-Palestinian protesters found an exciting new genocide culprit: Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In a demonstration of the warmth of collectivism, Mamdani managed to piss off everyone this October 7 anniversary: Jews and jihadis. He started by infuriating the pro-Israel crowd with a post that included a drive-by mourning over the massacre of October 7 before a much more passionate outcry over Israel’s response to it.

  Here’s the post:

  This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss. The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes. Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment. To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.

  — Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) October 7, 2026

  [Continues:]

  […] loss.

  The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes.

  Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.

  To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.

  When he said October 7 is unthinkable, I think he meant “don’t think about it.” But my favorite part of this is that he rounded down to 1,100 (about 1,200 people were murdered). In three years of October 7 coverage, I have never seen anyone round down. Next year he’ll post that Hamas killed “at least one Israeli.” Technically true! Touché, Mr. Mayor.

  New York City voters, are you proud of the guy you voted for?

• As of today, it appears to involve selling out Ukraine. James Freeman asks: What Is Trumponomics? (WSJ gifted link)

  Nearly halfway through the second Trump presidential term, it’s still not easy to define a governing philosophy. The president’s economic policy features historic tax and regulatory reform to unleash markets along with heavy-handed tariffs and industrial policy that restrain them. Call him what you will, Donald Trump is no ideologue. The president’s odd mixture of governmental restraint and federal intrusions may explain why the American economy is enjoying solid but not spectacular growth.

  On the plus side of allowing individuals to make free choices, the Trump administration continues to show a beautiful and historic reluctance to impose new federal rules upon the citizenry. And when Trump officials do issue new rules they are often simply to repeal the misguided rules imposed by his predecessors, so even his new rules often cut red tape.

  I probably don't write enough about the regulatory reform that's happening under Trump. Is it enough to make up for his loose-cannon tactics elsewhere? Eh.

• Duh. Holman Jenkins points out our current Unintelligence on Super Intelligence. (WSJ gifted link)

  What’s behind the confusingly unspecific demands for government intervention from AI leaders? I reject the cynicism argument (it’s all about regulatory capture) in favor of cultural determinism—they’re true believers.

  That said, Anthropic and OpenAI have valuations now to defend. The people who founded these companies may be deeply invested in the idea of artificial intelligence as the most important technology ever. But they’re also in a situation where the investing public, including sophisticated venture capitalists, interpret their creations as potential cash machines, worth maybe $2 trillion. However, under an equally plausible reading of the evidence, the companies are black holes of spending on rapidly commoditizing capabilities. Their specialty, the highest-end AI potential, the U.S. government won’t even let them sell to customers.

  I'm having too much fun to be scared of AI. Make of that what you will.

At Reason, Billy Binion brings us the latest on AI: Anthropic Is Banning 'Cruel Behavior' Toward Claude. Chatbots Are Still Not Your Friends..

My own experiences with Claude have been positive. I relate them over on the Geekery sub-blog here and here.

And looking back on my conversations, I've always been civil to Claude, and sometimes gushingly complimentary. Why would anyone be cruel to Claude?

Also of note:

• We'll see how that works. The WSJ editorialists weigh in on my state's US Senate race: John Sununu Wants to Save Social Security. (WSJ gifted link)

  Social Security is only six years from insolvency, with an automatic 22% cut in benefits coming in 2032, and Democrats are naturally assailing Republicans for even contemplating reform. “It’s the younger generations that are going to bear the biggest burden,” John Sununu, the GOP’s Senate candidate in New Hampshire, told an event this year. “I was willing to do it before. I’m willing to do it again.”

  That’s a reference to his last stint in the Senate, 2003-09, when President George W. Bush was trying to save Social Security. Mr. Sununu supported those efforts. His Democratic opponent in November, Rep. Chris Pappas, apparently thinks this is politically damning. But the truth is that America’s entitlement system is unsustainable, as has long been obvious. Mr. Pappas is trying to use Mr. Sununu’s record of responsible leadership against him, calling him a “leading figure” in efforts “to privatize Social Security.”

  What a slimy attempt to scare grandma. “First of all, it didn’t privatize anything,” Mr. Sununu told a WMUR candidate forum recently. What he wanted 20 years ago “maintained a guaranteed government benefit, equal to, or greater than, we have today,” with benefits still funded by taxation. “But what it also did, is it made the system solvent,” he added. “We need a different approach today, but if it had been passed, we wouldn’t be having this debate today, because the system would be solvent.”

  I'm glad that Sununu isn't running away from his past efforts. The editorial's bottom line:

  Mr. Pappas isn’t offering voters any real proposal to save Social Security. His plan is simply to win an election by scaring seniors, while quietly leading them toward the crisis of a 22% benefit cut before the end of his first Senate term.

  We seniors are famously easy to scare.

• We're number five! The latest report from the Fraser Institute on the Economic Freedom of the World is out, and I was surprised that we were so high in the country rankings. Behind only Hong Kong, Switzerland, Singapore, and New Zealand.

  But note: the EFotW report is based on 2024 data. Their 117-page PDF "previews" what that implies for next year's report:

  President Trump’s second term was supposed to portend the dawn of a new era. The preliminary data suggests that the new era will be one of less economic freedom for Americans. Government is bigger, property rights and the rule of law are weaker, and trade is more restricted. We currently project a significant decline of 0.12 points in the country’s overall EFW index (see figure 1.7). Assuming other countries do not change, this would drop the US from 5th to 7th place in the world from 2024 to 2025 and mark the country’s largest oneyear decline in economic freedom since the 2020 COVID drop. A drop from 5th to 7th may not sound like much but the relative ranking in the country’s overall score obscures what is going on under the surface at the area level.

  That will come as no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention.

• Woke II is still pretty craaazy. Jonathan Turley notes you can still have your career wrecked in unexpected ways. Hair-Raising Case: White Baltimore Arts Executive Fired for Wearing Cornrows.

  A White Baltimore arts executive was recently fired in September from the Baltimore Rock Opera Society. The reason was not that Kelly Carnes was chronically absent or failed to perform her duties as the new executive director. Rather, it was the hairstyle that she briefly adopted on vacation. You see, Carnes is white, and co-workers were apparently triggered by her getting cornrows while attending the Burning Man festival. It was not deemed a fun hairstyle choice adopted on a vacation but rather a despicable case of cultural appropriation that warranted her termination.

  Carnes was hired on Sept. 8 and was heralded for her more than 21 years of experience in arts leadership, nonprofit strategy, communications, fundraising, and operations.

  The relevant local TV news report contains the telling detail:

  A spokesperson for the Baltimore Rock Opera Society declined to comment and said it is focused on caring for their internal community. However, the group posted a statement on social media two weeks ago after backlash from a video posted on social media showing Carnes wearing cornrows.

  Carnes says the video was taken at a puppet karaoke fundraiser on September 10th, two days after she started the job.

  Geez Louise. If you can't wear cornrows to a puppet karaoke fundraiser without losing your job, are any of us safe?

That's Alinsky 101. I thought Nick Gillespie had a good response:

Is this a parody? If you think it's a tragedy that 'brands' like Brookstone, second only to SkyMall as a crap distributor of marked-up junk, or Claire's, the nation's leader in mall-based earlobe infections, have an infinite right to exist in a free market, you're high.

— Nick Gillespie (@nickgillespie) October 8, 2026

I was particularly amused by "the nation's leader in mall-based earlobe infections".

Also of note:

• But I'm also tweeting.

  I'm a pragmatic balancer, what about you? Try these strategies to lower national debt. https://t.co/23XVgX95Ip #debt #policies #deficit

  — Paul Sand (@punsalad) October 9, 2026

  The WaPo article referenced is a fun, interactive exercise in attempting to bring Uncle Stupid back to fiscal sanity. My choices caused the Post to deem me a "pragmatic balancer". So I've got that going for me, which is nice. See if you can do better.

• They deserve to get it good and hard. At Cato, Romina Boccia and Krit Chanwong reveal the answer to the burning question: Who Would Pay If Congress Eliminated the Social Security Payroll Tax Cap?

  Eliminating the Social Security payroll tax cap is often presented as a simple way to close the program’s worsening financing gap. Setting aside that this change would at best close 30 percent of the funding shortfall, who would end up paying the higher tax? Our analysis identifies where workers earning above the cap live and which occupations would be most affected.

  • Affluent Democratic congressional districts would bear the largest share of the tax increase. 62.7 percent of individuals who earn more than the taxable maximum live in districts represented by Democrats. 
  • The average Democratic district has 92 workers earning above the taxable maximum per 1,000 residents, compared with 53 in the average Republican district.
  • The top ten congressional districts with the highest shares of workers earning above the taxable maximum are all represented by Democrats and are concentrated in New York City, Seattle, and coastal California.
  • The workers most affected by the elimination of the taxable maximum are surgeons, physicians, nurse anesthetists, architectural and engineering managers, and dentists. 

  For the record, the tax cap elimination was one of the choices offered by the WaPo's interactive exercise linked above, but I did not choose it. Let those overpaid Democrat fat cats keep their money!

  Please note, however, that I made the similar observation about (nearly entirely) Democrat CongressCritters in rich districts demanding that the SALT deduction be brought back in full. I was against that.

• He's speaking his tiny little mind. John McWhorter wonders What to Make of Trump’s Uptick in Profanity. (NYT gifted link)

  President Trump has been especially potty-mouthed lately. In his second term, he has used significantly more profanity in public than in his first, according to an analysis by The Washington Post in May. Just last week we were treated to him telling interviewers from Time, “You haven’t asked me one positive question” — but dropping an F-bomb to modify “positive” — and at a rally in Ohio calling Democrats “dumb son of a bitches” and saying he was “working my ass off.”

  At that same rally he made another gluteal reference of a more pugnacious nature when he said that a Republican victory would “shove it up” Democrats’ something or other.

  Some have argued that the uptick in Trump’s lexical filth is a symptom of cognitive decline, a disinhibition suggestive of dementia. I doubt it. The increase in his use of profanity is what you would expect, given how language works.

  Professor McWhorter's analysis is interesting and (somewhat) amusing. He asserts that "Profanity is all about escalation." Which caused me to grep the number of times the four-letters-starting-with-f word has made its way into Pun Salad over the years. Result:

  2005	1
  2006	1
  2007	0
  2008	2
  2009	0
  2010	2
  2011	0
  2012	0
  2013	0
  2014	0
  2015	1
  2016	0
  2017	2
  2018	3
  2019	5
  2020	2
  2021	4
  2022	15
  2023	16
  2024	36
  2025	44
  2026	11 (so far)

  In my defense, those are all quotes from others. I think I just got tired of expurgating the word.

• Oopsie! At Reason, Billy Binion points out a recent "Kinsley Gaffe" (an inadvertent political misstatement where a politician accidentally tells the truth): J.D. Vance accidentally comes out as a socialist.

  Gather 'round! A new definition of socialism just dropped.

  "I don't know what the term means anymore," said Vice President J.D. Vance today when asked by a reporter how he defines it. "I think in reality, what it actually means in the American context is that you want to replace American workers with foreign workers, and you want boys to play in girls sports."

  That response has been roundly mocked for predictable reasons. Did Venezuela implode because Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro let boys play in girls sports?

  The fuller context, however, paints a more nuanced picture—one in which Vance is more knowledgeable about, and more sympathetic toward, socialism than at first blush.

  I'm long past being disappointed, or even surprised, at J.D.

• So I've been playing with ChatGPT image-generating prompts suggested by others, and yesterday's result is up there in the right-hand blog column. Click to embiggen if you dare.

  Disclaimer: I haven't had that much hair since… well, I don't think I've ever had that much hair. Definitely never had that musculature.

Today's Amazon Eye Candy is Ryan Bourne's book on various governmental efforts to obfuscate economic reality. (If you missed it, my report on Ryan's book is here.)

But it sort of sets the theme for a few items:

First up is Veronique de Rugy, who urges us to Judge the 'Populist' Push for Price Controls on Populist Grounds. After relating the various (very popular) efforts/demands to make goods and services "affordable":

Another scheme that won't work as claimed, as described by Tosin Akintola at Reason, is Ruben Gallego's plan to save America's middle class: Higher taxes and more unions.

The best of intentions! What could possibly go wrong?

Well, I can think of one thing: If you tax robots, won't they start pointing out the pre-Revolutionary War slogan, "No Taxation Without Representation!" And before you know it, it's Terminator time.

Which brings up another peeve: my weekly trip to the Rollinsford Town Dump Transfer Station, where an irritating sign reminds me that the "Live Free or Die" motto on my license plate doesn't apply there: recycling is mandatory!

If only they would read Bjorn Lomborg's WSJ column: Most Recycling Is a Waste. Nevertheless, the eco-craziness is international in scope. And (as usual with government), there's the arrogant assumption that the citizen labor involved is "free":

But, as our headline says, it's war. And in war, truth is the first casualty. So I'm not hopeful that my town's mandate will be going away in my lifetime.

Also of note:

• La guerre, c'est la paix ; la liberté, c'est l'esclavage ; l'ignorance, c'est la force. Jonathan Turley notes the bad news about France: Macron Goes Full Orwell: The French President Makes One More Pitch for Censorship.

  French President Emmanuel Macron went full Orwell this week. While long the darling of Western media, Macron has been one of the most anti-free-speech leaders in the world. This week, he declared that “The so-called American ‘free speech’ today, which some people have promoted, is the opposite of free speech.” Having Emmanuel Macron holding forth on free speech is akin to Joey Chestnut proselytizing on veganism.

  France has been in a headlong plunge into censorship and speech criminalization. These laws criminalize speech under vague standards referring to “inciting” or “intimidating” others based on race or religion.

  For example, fashion designer John Galliano has been found guilty in a French court on charges of making anti-Semitic comments in a Paris bar.

  Can you think of a worse idea than putting governments in charge of deciding what speech will be allowed?

  Gee, I wonder what Nina Jankowicz thinks about all this?

  Well, her American Sunlight Project (still) seems moribund. The latest output on its "Research" page is from September 2025.

  Ah, but she has a Substack! And it's a little more active. I could find no reaction to Macron's antics there, but a few days ago she reported cheerfully reported that The UK Gets Serious About Countering Disinformation. She pooh-poohs Nigel Farage's contention that the UK's "National Centre for Information Defence" will be used to "clamp down on free speech.” Not at all, Nina says. It will only focus on Russian disinformation campaigns!

  Gee, that couldn't happen here.

  Meet your new head of the Homeland Security Disinformation Governance Board, America https://t.co/l1s9BtJ6DO

  — Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) April 27, 2022

• Nothing to worry about here! Jim Geraghty notes the ‘High-Risk Research’ and ‘Shoddy Biosafety Measures’ at Russian Plague Lab.

  The World Health Organization finally offered a brief statement about the dead Russian plague researcher; CNN reported this morning:

  “If they’re not transparent, if they’re not open to independent accountability, how is it possible to trust the Kremlin is telling us the full and accurate information?” said Lawrence Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown University who has worked closely with WHO. “Clearly, on its face, the lab was conducting extremely high-risk research and using shoddy biosafety measures.”

  “Extremely high-risk research and using shoddy biosafety measures.” Boy, where have we heard terms like that before?

  Well, maybe we'll have more cheerful news tomorrow.

I admit that I was confused by Mr. Ramirez's cartoon at first. It looked like a parody, but a parody of what?

But eventually, I noticed a poster for the movie Digger, Tom Cruise's huge box office flop:

Ah. Perhaps Mr. Ramirez drew the cartoon before it became apparent that its inspiration would be so obscure. Nonetheless, it's good advice for the GOP: When you're in a hole, stop digging.

It doesn't help that the guy in charge is doing the other side's work for them. At the UnPopulist, Tad DeHaven is talking about Donald J. Trump: The DSA President.

I admit, I did not see this as a possibility even a few years ago.

Otherwise, it's a WSJ linkfest:

• Fallacious analogies should be called out. At the WSJ's "Free Expression" newsletter, Matthew Hennesey points his finger at Voodoo El-Sayedonomics. (WSJ gifted link) A long excerpt:

  The socialists are in can’t-stop, won’t-stop mode.

  Every day a new impossible promise. Every day a new fairy tale. Every day a new display of economic ignorance.

  “I’d rather an economy that makes 1,000 millionaires than one billionaire,” Abdul El-Sayed said recently in a clip featured on his X feed. Mr. El-Sayed is the Democratic candidate for U.S. senate in Michigan. “Most billionaires don’t park their money making more businesses. They park their money in the stock market. That is not meaningfully investing in opportunity. It’s just investing in other billionaires.”

  Mr. El-Sayed isn’t dumb. He earned an M.D. from Columbia and a doctorate in public health from Oxford. Those are heavy duty credentials. His ignorance couldn’t be the result of accident or confusion. It has to be willful.

  Start with the numbers. The U.S. has more than 1,000 millionaires. Something like 23.6 million, actually. So we’re doing pretty well on that front.

  But here’s the critical thing: A stock market isn’t a parking garage. Nobody “parks” money in an investment with the expectation that he’ll come back later and pick it up. Investors seek return. They want action. No risk, no reward.

  It's not too different from the (literally) cartoonish picture of the Malefactors of Great Wealth taking their daily swim in their Money Bins. (Previous Pun Salad use of that image: here, here, here, here, and here.)

• Another pitfall to avoid is… Steven E. Koonin and Scott W. Atlas take a look at Covid, Climate and the ‘Consensus Trap’. (WSJ gifted link)

  Three of the costliest policy failures in recent decades—the 2008 financial crisis, the Covid lockdowns and the campaign for rapid decarbonization—share a pathology we call the Consensus Trap. Problems began with the output of complex, unvalidated models presented as facts. Institutions and public figures under pressure to appear authoritative ignored uncertainties. Along with the press, these institutions and people became arbiters of truth, amplifying the declared consensus rather than critically assessing the evidence. Once “the science” was declared, dissent was treated as misconduct. In all three cases, as we examine in a paper with Terrence Keeley, the consensus was wrong and the public suffered severe consequences, while the architects of failure avoided accountability.

  Looking at Steven's and Scott's examples, it's uncanny how the "arbiters of truth" came to resemble Tina Fey's "mean girls" cliques.

• A sweet story. Christopher J. Scalia tells it: Michael McDonald Meets His Long-Lost Son. (WSJ gifted link)

  St. Louis TV station KMOV reported last week that area resident Michael Goessling, adopted as an infant, had recently met his birth father. That’s already a much better personal interest story than the kind you usually get at the end of the local news broadcast, like Nutty the water-skiing squirrel. But it gets better.

  It turns out that Mr. Goessling’s birth father is Michael McDonald—a five-time Grammy winner and member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In the 1970s, Mr. McDonald’s distinctive voice elevated Steely Dan songs like “Peg” and “Bad Sneakers” before his songwriting brought new life to the Doobie Brothers with the hits “What a Fool Believes” and “Taking It to the Streets.” In the 1980s, he enjoyed success as a solo artist (“I Keep Forgetting,” “Sweet Freedom”) and a duet partner (“On My Own” with Patti LaBelle, “Yah Mo B There” with James Ingraham).

  The bottom line? It's pretty good too:

  Mr. McDonald never forgot about his first child. “I always carried that guilt with me,” he told KMOV. The New York Times reports that he and Diane have kept in touch and spent decades looking for their child. But it was his son Dylan who broke the case, learning through 23andMe that he had a half-brother in the St. Louis area.

  I wish I could report that Dylan called Mr. Goessling and said, “You don’t know me but I’m your brother.” Instead, a lawyer representing Mr. Goessling’s birth parents contacted him. He met his birth mother last year, on his 58th birthday.

  He spoke to his father on the phone later that year. Mr. Goessling picked up on clues to his father’s identity before blurting out, “Are you Michael McDonald?” That’s a risky thing to ask your birth father. What if he’s only Christopher Cross?