Pun Salad

Power Line points us to our Eye Candy du Jour:

That's from WalletHub's ranking the Hardest-Working States in America in 2026. Boy, New Hampshire really stands out there in the Northeast, doesn't it? (I have to admit, being retired for over ten years: I'm not doing my part.)

My other Eye Candidate was from Mr. Ramirez: AI wishes you a happy Labor Day. But (caveat clicker) I disclaim any responsibility for any nightmares you experience as a result.

Also of note:

• Sounds like a plan! A totally demented plan, but what are you gonna do? The WaPo editorialists discuss President Trump's latest unhinged rant: Trump’s new plan to lower interest rates? Extort the Fed. (WaPo gifted link)

  President Donald Trump’s preferred monetary policy is simple. Is the economy sluggish? Cut interest rates. Is it heating up? Also cut interest rates. Now there’s a new addendum: If his handpicked Federal Reserve chair won’t play ball, hold the economy hostage.

  At least, that’s what Trump threatened on Friday on Truth Social. He wrote that if the Fed doesn’t “get smart” and lower rates, he will halt trade entirely with any country that maintains a trade deficit with the United States. That would include China, Mexico, Canada, Vietnam, South Korea and dozens of others — in short, many of America’s top trade partners.

  Perhaps related is Frank Miele's speculation at Real Clear Politics Does Trump Really Want To Win the Midterms? It would explain a lot of his actions if the answer is "no".

• It's "direct action", James. Mr. Lileks looks into the leftist snakepits, and wonders: Is There Any Capitalist’s Murder That ‘Isn’t’ Justified? (NR gifted link)

  The stabbing death of a New York mother and Bank of America vice president by a mentally unstable woman has brought out the absolute finest in revolutionary commentary. From a Palestinian-American filmmaker who tweeted out a bat signal with Luigi Mangione’s face instead of America’s favorite gravel-voiced vigilante, to various commie-kids on X justifying the murder because the victim was involved in (waves hands) all the capitalism, we see how ethically wretched political systems corrupt the humanity of people who believe them.

  The fact that she was a VP at a bank was reason enough to spit on the corpse, because her job surely consisted of meeting with poor hopeful people who sat across the desk twisting their caps in their calloused hands, begging the bank not to foreclose on their lean-to. She looked at them with a glacial expression and said no and then refused to validate parking for their pack mule. She did this all day. Her job title was probably Vice President in Charge of Maintaining Structural Poverty, so yes, those are precisely the people whose demise Luigi would have nodded with Che-like sagacity. Also, the Bank of America has ties to Israel, which means that when you deposit your check there, it’s instantly converted into a bomb designed to strew tetanus-infected nails in a Gaza preschool. Also, Bank of AMERICA. Say no more.

  That's a free link, so all you participants in capitalistic enterprises will want to check out the imagined interview with the "young DSA woman who lives in a $1.7 million townhouse" setting out the guidelines for justifiable homicide.

  (I note that the Wikipedia entry for direct action waits until the second paragraph to admit "Direct action may include activities that can be either violent or nonviolent …")

• "Where we're going we don't need roads." At USA Today, Ilya Somin observes: Democratic socialists and MAGA share a dangerous flaw.

  Democratic socialism is a terrible ideology. If implemented, its agenda would cause grave harm and imperil democracy itself. And in seeking massive state control of the economy, today's socialists ironically have much in common with the MAGA nationalists they claim to oppose.

  Both promote government control over the economy, and both paths undermine liberty, prosperity and democracy. Socialists do not control the Democratic Party in the way MAGA largely dominates the Republicans. But their influence is growing.

  Yes, it's "bothsidesism". But … isn't it appropriate when (metaphorically) both sides are fighting over the steering wheel of a car careening down the Read to Serfdom?

• Won't be missed. Becket Adams sees little reason to mourn, anyway: The Professional Fact-Check Is Dead.

  The crisis of professional “fact-checking” is not new. For more than 15 years, observers have watched with alarm as the genre degraded itself to serve partisan politics.

  Yet little has been written about the discipline in its present state. Its original raison d’être long discarded, it lingers now as a zombie, ambling aimlessly in pursuit of mindless satiation.

  Take Snopes, that relic of the early web that once existed to dismantle viral myths and spare the public from conspiracies, humorous hoaxes, and harmful falsehoods. Recently, it sought to calm concerns that the late Dolly Parton might have done something nice for Jews.

  “Did Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library donate books to children in Israel?” asked a Snopes headline. The subhead reassured readers: “PJ Library, which provides free books to Jewish children, was inspired by Parton’s organization. But the two have no formal relationship.”

  Phew! That was close! (This episode is funnier when one discovers that the article’s author, Nur Ibrahim, “started her career as an associate producer with Al Jazeera English” — because of course she did.)

  Becket provides plenty more examples from Politifact, FactCheck.org, the WaPo, USA Today, the AP, and NBC. A diverse field of partisanship disguised as "fact".

  And he doesn't even mention Wikipedia!

It's on X, used to be Twitter:

I repeat: the two great lessons of the 20th century—taught to us through buckets of blood, human misery, and pointless cruelty—were that we need a better grasp of economics, and that ideology is how you turn IQ points against themselves, good people into monsters, and rich…

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) September 5, 2026

Continues:

Easy prediction: We'll be seeing plenty of examples of the kind of thing Greg's talking about over the next few weeks and years.

And… Maybe even today:

• We could also use a better grasp on that whole "checks and balances" thing. Eric Boehm points out that Trump is expanding executive power. Democrats are already eyeing the new tools.

  President Donald Trump has greatly—and, in many cases, quite recklessly—expanded the executive branch's power over private businesses.

  The Trump administration has invoked claims of "national security" to levy higher tariffs on everything from steel to musical instruments. It has used the same argument to seize equity shares in more than two dozen private companies, including a so-called "golden share" in U.S. Steel that grants the president the authority to veto future attempts to relocate headquarters or make changes to its production facilities.

  And if you think a future Democratic administration will try to stuff those executive powers back into their proper, constitutional boxes, well…don't hold your breath.

  Further down in the article, J.D. Vance is quoted: "We cannot be afraid to do something because the left might do it in the future." Or that classic second-grade taunt: Come on, don't be a scaredy cat!

  A mere couple days ago I pointed to Daniel Hannan's observation: JD Vance declares war on economics. He's also declaring war on our country's Constitutional structure.

  "We cannot be afraid"? J.D., with people like you running the country, why the hell not?!

• Continuing our theme du jour… At the Dispatch, Matthew Mitchell & Steven Globerman look at Socialism: The Newest Old Idea That Won’t Work. And guess who's one of their bad examples?

  “It is characteristic of the unlearned,” observed Calvin Coolidge in 1919, “that they are forever proposing something which is old, and because it has recently come to their own attention, supposing it to be new.”

  “I think what is so unique and refreshing about Donald Trump’s economic policies,” says Vice President J.D. Vance in 2026, “is that it is not the same old economic ideas that you would have heard 30, 40 years ago.”

  Vance is right to a point. It’s hard to imagine Bill Clinton directing the federal government to take ownership stakes—totaling $26.7 billion—in 30 private companies. Or Ronald Reagan hiking the average U.S. tariff rate to Sudanese levels, thereby imposing thousands of dollars of additional taxes on American families. George H.W. Bush would have never claimed a “golden share” in U.S. Steel, gaining a say in a private company’s board membership, factory locations, capital investment, employment, worker pay, and naming rights. And, it is safe to say that no past president would direct the Pentagon to go into the oil business with an accused money launderer and an unelected Venezuelan socialist.

  Ironically, the tweet linked in the second paragraph above is sourced from Fox News, and Fox's chyron says "GOP FIGHTS BACK AGAINST SOCIALISM".

  Fox, I wish!

• Good question. And Jeff Maurer asks it: Does the U.S. Already Have Universal Health Insurance?

  In lefty circles, “Medicare for All” is often treated as a synonym for “universal health insurance”. But the phrases are different; M4A is one type of universal coverage, and conflating the two is like saying “Ferrari” when you mean “micropenis compensation device”. Contrary to what some people think, there is not one health insurance system used by every advanced country except the US; other countries achieve close-to-universal coverage through various combinations of public insurance, private insurance, regulation, and Dutchness.

  About eight percent of Americans don’t have health insurance. Obamacare cut the number of uninsured almost in half, but the eight percent figure has held remarkably steady for several years. According to Twitter accounts with a red rose and a Palestinian flag next to their name — my #1 source of news — the existence of that eight percent represents a profound failure of the American system. And there’s some agreement here: I would like 100 percent of Americans to have health insurance. If I were in charge, I’d make big changes, and only most of them would involve getting other people to bankroll my shit. But even while acknowledging that it would be better if more American had health insurance, a closer look at the eight percent of uninsured Americans reveals that not every uninsured person is a destitute peasant being ground to dust by capitalism. In fact, you could argue that we kinda, sorta already have something close to universal coverage.

  Jeff does a super-wonkish job at crunching the statistics, and (my take, not his) you'll get an appreciation for how far down the Road to Serfdom we are already.

• Learn from this history: Thomas W. Hazlett explains how it came to be that "freedom of the press" doesn't extend to ABC vs. Trump and the Broadcasters’ Free-Speech Sellout. (WSJ gifted link)

  While most media operate in a laissez-faire regime, terrestrial radio and television broadcasting are licensed, and their airwave access has sometimes been deemed a privilege, not a right. Harvard Law’s Laurence Tribe traces the anomaly to a technical error: “a profound fallacy about spectrum scarcity.” Or as comedian George Carlin put it, “radio and television [are] the only two parts of American life not protected by the free speech provisions of the First Amendment to the Constitution. I’d like to repeat that because it sounds vaguely important.”

  Whose cockamamie idea was this? Why, the broadcasters’ own.

  The 1927 Radio Act’s “public interest” language was written by the National Association of Broadcasters, as the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Clarence C. Dill (D., Wash.), explained in his 1938 book, “Radio Law.” From the start, Dill saw that “the ‘twilight zone’ between censorship and the refusal to renew a station license because of the service rendered, is undetermined.”

  The broadcasters traded freedom for free licenses and a lucrative, protected market. Upstart rivals—the DuMont Television Network in the 1940s and ’50s, then cable TV and satellite in the 1960s—were suppressed, while only a handful of viable stations were assigned to more than 80 TV channels. In return, regulators gained clout over an industry and influence over content.

  Which has led to a long history of threats and abuse. Think of the broadcasters as battered wives who are learning that their spouses are inherent, unreformable, short-fused bullies.

• But maybe Nellie will cheer us up? Nope, sorry. Her TGIF column, written before the mistrial was declared, is pretty bleak, especially if you're a kid.

  → Lindsay Clancy jury deadlocked: I know the Lindsay Clancy trial is not technically the most consequential story of the week, but in my circles (moms) it is The Only Conversation, so bear with me. The jurors are deadlocked. Twice they have gone to the judge to say the jury cannot come to a decision. If they cannot reach a verdict, the judge could declare a mistrial. There are some clues as to what may be happening. For example, at least three of the female jurors were spotted curiously wearing pink, the color worn by Clancy supporters who think she is the victim of pharmacology and maternal stress and believe that—after a stint in a healthcare facility where she will be declared no longer a danger, which, by the way she has already been declared—she should go free. The deeper idea being proposed here seems to be that moms should kind of be able to kill their kids. Like, if they’re really, really stressed. In Canada, that’s the law already. If a parent kills a kid under the age of 1, it’s a maximum five-year sentence. We’re now going to see a movement to bring that to the U.S., and also to expand it to older kids. Death cults will death cult.

  Here’s the CBC this week. They called up criminal law expert Isabel Grant, a professor at the University of British Columbia, to say how this is a perfect example of how the infanticide law should expand to older kids.

  Technically, in Canada, Clancy could have raised infanticide as a defense for the murder of Callan, who was eight months old, said Grant, the criminal law professor at UBC. But the killing of Clancy’s older children could not be defended as infanticide even if she hadn’t recovered from the birth of the youngest child when she killed them, she added. “That is a shortcoming in the Canadian law.”

  A shortcoming in the law, says the law professor, is that a mom might be in jail longer than five years if she kills a bunch of kindergartners since the postpartum might not carry over to each killing. Maybe postpartum should last until the kid’s 18, right? Maybe moms—if they’re under a lot of pressure and like, super, super stressed and changing Zoloft dosages and can’t figure out the Snoo—should be able to kill her offspring at any age? It’s pro-choice taken to the nth degree. My moderate take on “pro-choice until the second trimester” will soon be seen as the radical right position. New battle lines: Are you pro-choice till 1, 5, or 18 years old? The new moderate is saying you draw the line at a 5-year-old. A psychologist will be like, after 5, the children have too many neurons and are, in fact, not fair game.

  I assume beating your kids is still illegal in Canada? Just killing them seems like an easy out.

It's Andrew Heaton, so: watch, learn, and laugh.

You'll learn stuff. About data centers, sure. But also how to fill in the blank: "The best thing you can do with an almond is              ."

The answer might surprise you!

Also of note:

• Another reason for Washington State taxpayers to be peeved. The state's university got caught violating one of their instructors' civil rights: Washington professor who parodied university ‘land acknowledgment’ wins $600K settlement. FIRE has the story:

  The University of Washington paid $600,000 after punishing Professor Stuart Reges for parodying a university-approved “land acknowledgment” in his syllabus.

  The payout comes after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held administrators liable under the First Amendment for retaliation and viewpoint discrimination.

  Today’s settlement concludes the legal battle that began with a 2022 lawsuit by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression on Reges’s behalf. Besides the monetary settlement, the agreement stipulates that the university cannot take any further action against Reges. While Reges’s appeal was pending, UW also rescinded and replaced the vague antiharassment policy used to punish the professor for his speech.

  “I am deeply grateful to FIRE for this legal victory which will remind public universities that they are obligated to respect the First Amendment rights of their students, faculty, and staff,” said Reges. “More importantly, I hope that my protest can help reverse a decade-long trend towards ideological conformity in academia and help to convince them that instead of ‘protecting’ students from controversial ideas, they should be helping them to learn how to cope with disagreement. Only then can we heal the deep divisions that confront us today.”

  So, good for Stuart, and good for FIRE. I first blogged about him back in 2018, when UWash was pissed about an article he wrote at Quillette: Why Women Don't Code.

• 

  Darn. Noah Smith has a long and thoughtful review of Where Is My Flying Car? by J. Storrs Hall. Unfortunately, Noah's headline is discouraging: Why you won’t get a flying car.

  In 2011, Peter Thiel famously said: “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” When I first saw that quote, I chuckled, because for my entire life, we’ve had flying buses. And again and again, as I sit on a flying bus and marvel at the thrill of takeoff, and reflect on how amazing it is that man has conquered the air, I look around and see my fellow passengers with their window shades drawn, their noses buried in a book or staring at a phone.

  If we had flying cars, we’d enjoy the thrill for a few weeks, and then we’d be back to tweeting on our phones and wondering when the trip would be over.

  I’ve noticed a loose collection of beliefs and attitudes that I’ve decided to call “engineerism”, because I see it most often among engineers. I coined the term when I was in college, when I noticed that the engineering majors in my physics classes tended to think differently about the world than the physics majors like myself did. Later, I recognized “engineerism” in various sci-fi novels — Lucifer’s Hammer and Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, The Peace War by Vernor Vinge, and so on.

  When I say “engineerism”, I am not talking about Friedrich Hayek’s “engineering mentality” — the belief that society can be designed and optimized like a machine.2 Nor am I referring to Evgeny Morozov’s “technological solutionism”, which is the idea that social problems can be fixed with technology. If I had to define what I call “engineerism” in succinct, simple terms, it would be something like: “The idea that if a technology can be built, we ought to build it.” Simply put, engineers like to engineer things, and they become disgruntled when society does not give them the resources to do this.

  I reported on Where Is My Flying Car? back in 2022, but Noah's review is better.

• Actual trickle-down economics at work. Our state's outgoing senior senator, Jeanne Shaheen, made Commie Radio New Hampshire Public Radio notice her turn at the pork barrel: Shaheen requests $5M to study 'sailor campus' at old Portsmouth Naval Prison.

  A feasibility study on the future of the former Portsmouth Naval Shipyard building, long ago abandoned by the Navy, may be on the horizon.

  This spring, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, requested $5 million in federal funding in the fiscal year 2027 appropriations legislation for a planning study. The funds would be used to determine whether “The Alcatraz of the East” could be given new life and reutilized as a “sailor campus" over a phased process, according to Shaheen’s request.

  (Originally an article at the Portsmouth Herald, where it is paywalled.)

  Now $5 million, while it might be a lot of money to you or me, is a very small drop in the very large bucket of federal spending.

  But I can't help but wonder into whose pockets that money will eventually go. Like any good Democrat, Jeanne has long been a foe of "trickle-down economics", which is how they refer to any proposal that lets people keep more of their own money.

  But when it comes to doling out millions for a "study"… well, good luck on tracking down the cui bono there.

• On the LFOD watch. Louis Cannon writes at the Pagosa Daily Post (the "online community magazine for Pagosa Springs, Colorado") and my Google News Alert rang for his recent article, READY, FIRE, AIM: Live Free or… You Know… Like, Die. Yes, it concerns New Hampshire's motto. And it's not awful; he talks about George Maynard's effort in the 1970s to not display it on his car's license plate, which eventually went to SCOTUS.

  I did want to mention where Louis goes badly wrong, in discussing the state quarter released in the year 2000:

  The coin also includes an image of ‘The Old Man of the Mountain’ — a peculiar rock formation which happens to be one of the few tourist attractions in New Hampshire.

  Well, practically anyone coulda told Louis that he shoulda put that in past tense: the Old Man's face fell off Cannon Mountain back in 2003.

  Also: tourism is, in fact, New Hampshires second-largest economic sector. (Mainly we get a lot of folks stopping on US3, wondering "So where's the Old Man?")

  And, for the record: Colorado's official state motto is Nil Sine Numine, which is Latin for "Nothing without Providence" or (perhaps) "Nothing without the Deity". There is no danger of it ever appearing on Colorado license plates.

Recently on the book blog (finally):

Of course, our Amazon Eye Candy du Jour provides one possible choice. But Christian Schneider's headline in NR is pretty good too: There's No Problem Government Creates That It Can’t Make Worse. His current example:

It would probably make the motto too long, but I'd add the infuriating punchline: "… while insisting at every step it was doing you a favor."

But speaking of government-created problems, here's Gabriel R. Llanes at the Federalist describing another one: The Wealth Gap Is Real, And Washington Created It.

I'm not a fan of the class-warfare implications—it's not the fault of the wealthy that they're in position to take advantage of monetary policy, and they don't deserve to be punished for it. Still…

Coincidentally, Bryan Caplan has a number of insightful Reflections on Americans’ Net Worth. Those reflections are based on the Federal Reserve's "Survey of Consumer Finances". And, as Bryan says, they demonstrate "the chasm between populist pessimism and actual data on Americans’ net worth."

Bryan has 20 of them. Here are the first three:

… and I recommend you check out numbers 4-20.

Also of note:

• Unfortunately, we're all collateral damage. Daniel Hannan notes bellicosity: JD Vance declares war on economics.

  JD Vance is the latest postliberal to embrace what is now, for all intents and purposes, an anti-growth position.

  In his latest book, Communion, Vance inveighs against those perennial straw men, the GDP-obsessed economists. We keep hearing about these mysterious figures, cold-hearted calculators who believe that GDP is the only measure that counts. Oddly, despite running the world’s foremost classical liberal think tank, I have yet to meet one.

  Vance, though, is convinced that people who “struggle to put a value on anything that can’t be specifically measured” not only exist, but run America. The country is governed, he tells us, “by numbers on a spreadsheet and the people who built those spreadsheets.”

  Also in the running for Pun Salad Official Motto: "Beware politicians who claim to know what would make you truly happy."

• Good question. And the WaPo editorial board asks it: State control over oil broke Venezuela. Why is Trump doubling down? (WaPo gifted link)

  President Donald Trump’s removal of socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro in January offered a generational opportunity to counteract the failures of Venezuela’s socialist policies. A pro-America opposition appeared ready to usher in a free market and end the state’s suffocating grip on oil production. Eight months later, the White House’s deal with Maduro’s former vice president risks entrenching the people and policies that tanked the country’s economy in the first place.

  Under the sketchy terms of an agreement Trump unveiled this week with Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, the Pentagon receives a 35 percent stake in North American Blue Energy Partners, which has just been granted 100-year concessions to drill in 17 oil fields that contain an estimated 65 billion barrels. The State Department receives rights to buy 20 percent of the output at cost and gets first dibs on purchasing the remainder. The Venezuelan government would purportedly receive $200 billion in tax and royalty payments over the next 25 years.

  The Trump administration has earned a bad reputation for crony capitalism by taking equity stakes in at least 30 private companies, including Intel and Westinghouse. But a deal of this magnitude makes the U.S. government, at least on paper, one of the world’s largest corporate holders of oil. State control of the industry was an original sin of Chavismo, named for left-wing populist strongman Hugo Chávez, whose despotic rule from 1999 to 2013 included a nationalization drive that kicked off Venezuela’s economic death spiral.

  Also in the running for Pun Salad Official Motto: "Beware politicians who think they can run businesses."

• And finally: do not vote for any pol who babbles about "genocide". And don't believe what you read in the New York Times, either: Because, as David Harsanyi documents: The 'Gaza Genocide' Is a Hoax.

  In May 2025, Tom Fletcher, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, went on BBC Radio and told the audience that 14,000 babies in Gaza were going to die "in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them."

  According to UNICEF, there are around 20,000 babies in the entirety of Gaza. Which means 70% of all infants were in danger of dying in mere hours. An "utterly chilling" figure, Fletcher stressed.

  The New York Times, along with numerous other establishment media outlets, relayed Fletcher's allegation to its credulous audience without any skepticism. The usual experts were summoned to discuss this unfolding famine on cable news. And the antisemites across social media amplified the claim.

  No matter how far-fetched a story is about Israel, including preposterous evidence-free accusations that it trains dogs to rape Palestinians, papers such as The New York Times will spread it to feed the perception that the Jewish state operates as a genocidal entity. And no matter how often the claims are debunked, they keep at it.

  David lays out the facts. His bottom line: "There is no genocide. And there was no famine. There was a war. And the bad guys lost."

Recently on the book blog:

James Freeman notes an embarrassing vote in the House of Representatives: Handful of House Democrats Vote to Denounce Murderous Marxism. (WSJ gifted link)

"Embarrassing" in the sense that the GOP designed it to embarrass Dems. But there's a local angle for Granite Staters:

For those not plugged into New Hampshire politics, the democratic socialist running against Pappas in the primary next week is Karishma Manzur. Her latest allegation is described by Michael Graham in NHJournal: Manzur: I’m the ‘Real Democrat,’ Pappas Is the Sellout.

Pappas was one of 22 Democrats voting to censure Tlaib. This was back in 2023, before his spine gelatinized.

Tomorrow I plan to blog David Harsanyi's column, but here's a sneak preview link: The 'Gaza Genocide' Is a Hoax.

I'm torn about whether I want Manzur to beat Pappas in the primary. She'd be a weak candidate against her probable opponent in November, John E. Sununu. On the other hand, I'd like to think New Hampshire Democrat voters weren't buying the socialist shtick.

Also of note:

• 

  More from Slade. I promise that I will report on my reading of Stephanie Slade's great book, Fusionism, Real Soon Now. Just not today. But to further whet your appetite, here's an "adapted-from" article at the WSJ: Meet the ‘Bronze Age’ Young Men of the New American Right. (WSJ gifted link)

  When the Supreme Court this summer upheld the constitutionality of birthright citizenship, the right-wing internet erupted with rage. Prime among its targets were the four female justices who had signed on to the majority opinion. In one representative post on X, the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh declared that “the worst Supreme Court Justices of all time have all been women. That’s just a fact. Republican presidents should take the hint.”

  The outburst was in keeping with a strain of rhetoric popular among a subset of very online young men. It holds that women are too emotional to occupy positions of influence in society; that female suffrage was a mistake; and that the fairer sex’s purpose in life is to look good, make babies, and serve a husband’s every need.

  To understand where all of this is bubbling up from, it helps to be acquainted with the “vitalists,” a certifiably weird subculture led by internet personalities with pseudonyms like “Bronze Age Pervert” (real name: Costin Alamariu) and “Raw Egg Nationalist” (real name: Charles Cornish-Dale), who look back longingly to a time when white men were in charge and other groups submitted humbly to rule by their betters.

  And of course, you can always use the Amazon link at your right.

  I'd like to think that Slade's just "nut-picking", and the "vitalist" influence is negligible compared to (say) the DSA's influence on the Democrats. But I dunno for sure.

• And ego. Don't forget his ego. Jacob Sullum notes that we'll soon have a Trump Monument in DC. Specifically: Trump’s White House ballroom is a monument to his lawlessness.

  After President Theodore Roosevelt began building the East Wing of the White House in 1902, he thanked Congress for approving the project and appropriating the necessary funds. When President Donald Trump demolished the East Wing last fall, by contrast, he acted without permission from Congress, which the Constitution empowers to control federal property.

  That difference is unlikely to matter in practice, thanks to a stay the Supreme Court issued on Monday, which allows Trump to continue work on the huge ballroom he is building on the site of the East Wing. But Trump's insistence on acting unilaterally will make his vanity project a monument to his disregard for the rule of law and the separation of powers.

  But that's not all…

• Are there no limits to this guy's narcissism? On a related matter, Noah Rothman looks at yet another example of Trump's Petty Caesarism, as exhibited by…

  Available for purchase today at 12PM ET: 2026 President Donald J. Trump $1 Coin. These coins are also in circulation, so check your pocket change. Collect them today! #CoinCollecting #America250https://t.co/g4eJes21ER pic.twitter.com/4OqkQ2sa9W

  — United States Mint (@usmint) September 2, 2026

  Donald Trump’s visage is already circulating on these gold-finished brass coins. Some have taken exception to the “controversial move” of putting a sitting president’s face on legal tender, but their objections are unreasonable.

  Sure, this hasn’t been done in 100 years, and the last person to do it was arguably the least imperial president in that century: Calvin Coolidge. Never mind that his face was partially eclipsed by George Washington’s. And like the 1926 coin, this one will cost a lot more than it’s worth.

  “The rolls of $1 coins (25 to a roll) go for $61. A bag of 100 coins goes for $154.50,” ABC News reported. Likewise, back in 1926, “few people cared to part with the required $1 to purchase a commemorative half dollar,” the historian David Bowers observed. “When all was said and done, the staggering quantity of 859,408 half dollars went back to the Mint to be melted!” Perhaps the same fate is in store for Trump’s coins.

  "Gold-finished brass"? Kinda cheesy, Don.

Recently on the book blog:

My brilliant idea to rename 'Lake Erie' as 'Lake Inferior' doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Also of note:

• Well-deserved but futile and stupid. Social Security is going broke, the overall economy is shaky due to massive deficit spending, but instead it appears we're in for (according to Jim Geraghty) The Inevitable Impeachment Rerun.

  Democrats are quite likely to win back control of the U.S. House of Representatives and appear to have a decent shot at winning the Senate. And then, apparently some Democrats fervently believe that finally, this time, for real, they’re going to get him.

  The “him,” of course, is Donald Trump, a man who has already survived two impeachments the way a cockroach survives a nuclear test, and who has almost cheerfully dared Democrats to try a third. As the president put it to Will Cain back in January, his Democratic foes will “find something,” because that’s simply what “very nasty people” with “bad policy” do.

  As far as more pressing problems go, I didn't mention "health care is unaffordable" and "our roads and bridges are crumbling" above, because Jim notes as an aside:

  (Hey, remember the Affordable Care Act? Remember when the Obama administration insisted, “President Obama promised that he would make quality, affordable health care not a privilege, but a right. After nearly 100 years of talk and decades of trying by presidents of both parties, that’s exactly what he did.” Here we are, 16 years after its passage, and ten years after that declaration of a promise kept, and Democrats are still running for office saying that health care is unaffordable. It’s like “crumbling roads and bridges.” No matter how many massive, big-spending infrastructure bills get passed, lawmakers come back a short while later and argue we need to pass another one, because of our “crumbling roads and bridges.” Whatever the U.S. government has spent in recent years, some candidate out there will insist this vital priority is desperately underfunded.)

  I think that the infrastructure spending is likely to deliver roads and bridges pre-crumbled.

• I'm still trying to figure out why that darned caged bird is singing. Kevin D. Williamson says he knows Why Everybody Hates Capitalism. (Dispatch gifted link)

  I have written many versions of this sentence, and I’ll repeat myself here: Pretty much everybody in the rich world would be enthusiastically pro-capitalism if not for their experiences with a handful of firms concentrated in financial services and telecommunications: insurance companies (especially health), banks and credit card issuers, collections firms, streaming and (especially) cable services (there is a reason that fewer than 1 in 3 U.S households subscribes to cable today, down from a peak of 90 percent or so), mobile providers, things like that. The problem seems to be nearly exclusive to providers of intangibles, whereas providers of physical goods have a relatively good reputation. However overpriced their goods may seem, nobody hates Gucci or Cartier the way some people hate their banks or insurance companies—UnitedHealth’s profit margins run around 3 percent vs. 22 percent for luxury-goods giant LVMH, but you will not win any votes calling for the nationalization of Louis Vuitton or Moët & Chandon. It is true that luxury goods occupy a special cultural position, but you could make much the same case about Adidas or Dell or Black & Decker.

  But don't worry: KDW is a capitalism fan, like me.

  Two Cheers for Capitalism, Irving Kristol advised in his famous book of that title. Two, two and a half, maybe two and three quarters.

  Or: Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.

• 

  Slade, you magnificent writer, I read your book! Specifically, I finished Fusionism yesterday. I will report on it over on the book blog Real Soon Now. But until then you should read Stephanie Slade: J.D. Vance and the post-liberal right’s politics of victimhood, adapted from the book.

  In September 2021, when he was still a long-shot candidate for the Republican Senate nomination in Ohio, J.D. Vance made an appearance on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight. At the time, it was widely understood that Vance's chances were limited in the bright-red state by his earlier refusal to support Donald Trump for president.

  "My god what an idiot," he had tweeted of Trump in 2016. "I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us," he posted the same month. In the wake of Trump's infamous "grab 'em by the pussy" Access Hollywood tape, Vance implored his "fellow Christians" to realize that "everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man."

  By the time of his Senate race, those comments had become a political liability. He deleted them and began an apology tour. "I've been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them," he told Fox News. "I regret being wrong about the guy."

  Slade (I call her Slade, apparently that's how she's known around the Reason offices) calls Vance's transformation "a head-spinning reversal in tone and policy alike." I didn't fully appreciate that before.

• But for more Slade… Freedom Conservatism is also cheering the book's appearance, calling it a Lit fuse. Their article is a compendium of well-deserved praise, full of links. If you're on the fence about getting a copy, it should push you over.

• Thinking long-term. At Ars Technica, Eric Berger has a jaw-dropper: Private group wants to launch "cheapest possible" mission to Alpha Centauri.

  There are, by various estimates, several trillion planets within what is known as the Local Group of galaxies—our closest galaxy neighbors, including our own Milky Way. Many of these planets are within the habitable zone of their stars. So if life finds a way, where are the alien civilizations?

  This is the crux of what is known as the Fermi paradox, which posits that if life is fairly common in the Universe, humans should have collected credible evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations by now. People who think about this paradox believe there may be some “filter” that limits or entirely prevents an advanced civilization from sending out probes or even life-bearing spacecraft to nearby stars.

  But what about that mission?

  On Tuesday, [entrepreneur Philip Johnston and a handful of other entrepreneurs announced the “Fermi Explorer” mission. In concept, it is simple. They seek to raise $15 million to build a small spacecraft, carrying a 1 kg payload, and launch it to Alpha Centauri such that it reaches that system in fewer than 80,000 years. Why? In conversations about the Fermi paradox, Johnston realized such a mission would knock two “filters” off the list: Species won’t want to send spacecraft beyond their home star, or species will find that interstellar transit is too difficult.

  When they say "fewer than 80,000 years", unfortunately they don't mean five or six.

  There's a website, of course.

Recently on the movie blog:

Of course, having a doddering old fool in charge of the Executive had its downsides too.

Oh, wait, now we just have a different doddering old fool.

Also of note:

• Another day, another demand to desecrate the Constitution. One of the headlines in Mr. Ramirez's cartoon refers to this matter: Trump tells FCC to punish journalist for calling his election results "mixed"

  President Trump [Sunday] demanded that the Federal Communications Commission punish or rebuke an NBC journalist for saying he has “mixed results” in his election endorsements. In the latest example of how Trump is using the FCC to harass reporters and news organizations that he dislikes, he said Meet the Press host Kristen Welker “will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment” for what he claimed was a “purposeful inaccuracy.”

  “Kristen Welker, the Unpopular ‘Hostess’ of the once great Meet the Press, now considered Meet the Fake Press, just stated that Donald Trump has ‘mixed results’ on his Endorsements of Candidates, when the recent WINS of Darline Graham and Mike Mazzei, stand at 100% for the U.S. Senate, and 98% for the U.S. House, recently and over the longterm. How can anyone be allowed to say this, working for freely given Public Airwaves? Results are attached. Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

  The Ars Technica article goes on to observe:

  Poynter Senior Media Writer Tom Jones writes, “What Welker said about Trump’s endorsements having mixed results was true. Trump just didn’t like it.” While Trump praised himself for his successful endorsements, he didn’t mention primary losses by Republican gubernatorial candidates Burt Jones in Georgia and Randy Feenstra in Iowa and the failed re-election bid by Rep. Cory Mills (R-Florida).

  It's true enough that Ars Technica leans left. That doesn't excuse Trump for taking yet another dump on the First Amendment.

• "Worse than Biden" is a high bar. But Trump has been doing his best to clear it. The WaPo editorialists take a look at the numbers, and find … Trump’s tariffs aren’t reducing the trade deficit. (WaPo gifted link)

  The trade deficit doesn’t matter, but even if it did, tariffs aren’t an effective way to reduce it.

  In July, the monthly trade deficit in goods hit its highest level since March 2025, the Commerce Department revealed on Thursday. That was the month before President Donald Trump’s announcement last year of massive tariffs on products from nearly every country in the world.

  The Supreme Court’s February ruling against Trump struck down only tariffs he imposed under one law. He has imposed import duties under other laws before and after that ruling. They remain in effect. The average tariff rate is currently about 11 percent, which is more than four times higher than it was when Trump started his second term.

  I also liked their last paragraph:

  The trade deficit is a number, nothing more. It is primarily determined by differences in saving and investment patterns between countries, not by trade policy. Trying to control it with tariffs is like trying to change the score of a football game by yelling from the bleachers.

  Metaphorically "yelling from the bleachers" seems to be Trump's preferred tactic in many areas.

• Oh well, enough about Trump. As I've previously pointed out, I have to choose among eight GOP candidates for US Senator on my primary ballot next week. If I were to choose the one with the coolest name, that would be: Sky Danley.

  The link goes to his campaign website, and … gosh, he says a lot of things I agree with. E.g.:

  Our current subservient legislatures, beholden to the legalized payola of special interests, shirk their constitutional duties because, on both sides of the aisle, they’re more interested in protecting their individual office holdings and associated monetary power than in promoting the general welfare.

  And thus, in all three branches, we have a wanton abandonment of civic virtue, an abandoning of the common good in favor of perpetual, self-serving interests.

  James Madison, the father of our Constitution, warned that without civic virtue, a republic cannot survive. One can easily conclude that our republic may already be gone, existing in name only and no longer in function. If so, the goal must be to get it back, to restore the last best hope.

  He also says some things I disagree with; I think he's too hard on the current SCOTUS, for example. (He has an associated term-limit scheme for SCOTUS that he insists is not court-packing.)

  But another thing I like: he claims (I haven't checked) to be the only candidate who's answered all 34 questions on the Citizens Count questionnaire.

  But another thing I don't like: he favors a partial repeal of the First Amendment to "absolutely get the corrupting money out of politics."

  Sorry, Sky. Red flag there.

• 

  Still available from Amazon! James Freeman notes that the proud winner of my state's four electoral votes in 2024 (by 50.65% to 47.87%) is weighing in on our state's D-side primary: Kamala to the Rescue! (WSJ gifted link)

  Remember when Democrats nominated a presidential candidate in 2024 who had endorsed positions so progressively wacky that not even her friends in the media could believe they were real? Such is the speed of the Democratic party’s continuing leftward lurch that believe it or not former Vice President Kamala Harris now appears to be a relative moderate as she intervenes in a key Senate race against a democratic socialist.

  Last week this column noted that Democrats’ dreams of a U.S. Senate majority have been complicated by rising difficulty in New Hampshire, where Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is retiring and her expected replacement, Rep. Chris Pappas, suddenly appears to be struggling. A recent Granite State Poll from the University of New Hampshire found the relatively unknown socialist Karishma Manzur surging against Mr. Pappas just ahead of next week’s Democratic primary.

  To remind us of our "choice" back in 2024, check out Charles C.W. Cooke's take at that time, agreeing with our Amazon Eye Candy du Jour: Kamala Harris Is an Idiot.

• Turns out it was terrorism after all! Shocker! National Review notes a small bit of recovered sanity in the Great White North: CBC Reverses Course, Will Describe 9/11 Attacks as Terrorism After Backlash.

  After directing staff not to refer to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as acts of terrorism, the Canadian Broadcasting Company has reversed course and published new guidance acknowledging that the term is in fact accurate.

  Basem Boshra, the senior director of journalistic standards and public trust at CBC News, issued a memo earlier this month, first reported by the Toronto Sun, instructing staff not to refer to the events of 9/11 as terror attacks in accordance with the network’s “longstanding language guidance.” Boshra rescinded that guidance last week following significant backlash.

  "And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for that significant backlash!"

My thoughts on Mr. Ramirez's cartoon: Trusting government to "help" us raise our kids is inherently crazy.

Also of note:

• Fascism: Is there nothing it can't do? Ann Althouse embeds:

  Hollywood actress Hannah Einbinder blames “fascism” for women wanting to be slim.
  
  “As we see a rise in fascism, there is a direct correlation with thinness to make women take up less space.” pic.twitter.com/0VTlRFqe2e

  — Oli London (@OliLondonTV) August 30, 2026

  Ann headlines Hannah Einbinder's "fashion hot take": "As we see a rise in fascism, there is a direct correlation with thinness to make women take up less space."

  Of course, she's getting trashed on X. She's "trending." That's why I saw it. I don't really know her, but I see she's highly praised for her role in "Hacks," and also that she's the daughter of Laraine Newman.

  Anyway, it's cheap and easy to go after an actress who expresses any opinion that seems to require intelligence and background knowledge. I would prefer to isolate what she said and explore the various issues there: […]

  My disjointed reactions:

  • Ann has (as always) hangs some worthwhile thoughts on Ms. Einbinder's slight allegation. The commenters there are pretty good too.
  • But Ann misses Ms. Einbinder's hand motion when she asserts a direct correlation, lending it a further faux profundity.
  • Longtime readers (if there are any out there) will be unsurprised by my usual quote from George Orwell's 1950 essay, "Politics and the English Language":

    The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’.

  • I did not know that Ms. Einbinder was Laraine Newman's daughter.
  • She's talking with the star of the HBO "comedy" series Hacks, Jean Smart. I watched a number of episodes of that show… until I realized that I'd watched three episodes in a row without laughing once.

• But what about Total Boomer Luxury Communism? Andrew G. Biggs goes to the WaPo to freak out my fellow Boomers: The rich don’t need that retirement check.

  Federal spending on retirement benefits is running riot. Social Security swallows nearly a quarter of the federal budget and is less than a decade away from insolvency. The government loses hundreds of billions per year on tax breaks for retirement savings.

  And who gets most of this money? It isn’t the most vulnerable seniors. It’s the richest.

  The wealthiest fifth of households receives 38 percent of taxpayer dollars spent on Social Security and retirement tax preferences, more than the bottom 60 percent. But Congress can solve the problem by capping federal retirement benefits at middle-class levels. The change would eliminate most of Social Security’s funding gap, reduce federal deficits and improve economic growth — all without threatening low- and middle-income seniors.

  Biggs proposes a $24K per-person yearly cap on Social Security benefits. The AI summary of the (as I type) 2419 comments says this recommendation "has sparked significant backlash among readers."

  Even though I'd be OK with it, I doubt it will happen. Remember the freakout over the (comparatively minor) cutback in the state and local tax (SALT) deduction? This would be a much bigger freakout.

• The old aphorism applies: "If it weren't for double standards, [fill in your political opponents] would have no standards at all." But John Tierney explores The Political Violence Double Standard.

  

  When a leftist turns violent, Democratic politicians and their media allies offer a familiar response: yes, this is terrible, but right-wing violence is the greater threat. They have made that claim for decades, and it has always rested on a dubious premise.

  The premise depends on statistics compiled by advocacy groups that exclude a vast catalog of left-wing violence—from the George Floyd riots to murders committed by pro-Palestinian activists and attacks on synagogues, Catholic churches, Tesla dealerships, and ICE facilities. Meanwhile, conservatives are routinely held responsible for the actions of violent loners, drug dealers, and conspiracy theorists with no coherent political program. Deranged anti-Semites, racists, incels, and antigovernment extremists get classified as right-wing, even when their targets span both parties.

  John quotes Hayek extensively, and also refers to Sean McMeekin’s To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism. Which I've grabbed via Interlibrary Loan via the University Near Here. And you, reader, should feel free to use the Amazon link at your right. My report is coming at some point! Stay tuned!

• Speaking of Hayek, what road are we on again? The WSJ editorialists note some full-speed-ahead socialism: Trump Takes the Oil in Venezuela. (WSJ gifted link)

  President Trump has long said he favors “taking the oil” when the U.S. intervenes overseas, and now he is doing so in extraordinary fashion. His deal announced late Friday with unelected President Delcy Rodríguez for rights to 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves looks less like a normal commercial transaction than it does the famous scene of U.S. businessmen meeting with the Cuban strongman in “The Godfather Part II.”

  “This Historic Transaction MORE THAN DOUBLES American Oil Reserves, greatly increases our Oil Supply, and will substantially lower Gas Prices for all Americans, long into the future,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. He said he’ll use Venezuelan oil to refill the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve that has been extensively tapped by him and Joe Biden.

  Okay, so it's more like The Godfather than it is The Road to Serfdom? Okay, fine I guess.

I can't say that I haven't walked into a room like this:

Who broke Farnsworth? pic.twitter.com/uEtDd7ursC

— Futurama on Hulu (@futurama_hulu) August 19, 2026

The new season of Futurama is in full swing. It's about average for the series. Which makes it better than just about anything else on the tube these days.

And, in a stunning show of unwarranted optimism, I've already received my 2027 Futurama Calendar from Amazon. Fingers crossed!

Don't even get me started on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds!

Oh, wait, you did. Well the first episode of the new season was good, everything else has been a horrible embarrassment.

Also of note:

• When are they going to stop calling it the New Republic? Virginia Heffernan takes to its virtual pages to take a look at our oddball state: New Hampshire’s Senate Race Leans Dem, but the State Is—Well, You Know.

  Of all the American political traditions we’ve lost in Trump times, one of them never got its moment of silence: “As New Hampshire goes, so goes the nation.”

  That chestnut rested on New Hampshire’s status as host of the first presidential primary election. When I was growing up there, we earnestly believed our parents were a solid-gold prediction market. Whoever they picked would land on the national ticket. New Hampshire was the belle of the primary season ball then, and many rural kids got their first taste of politics when they spotted George W. Bush or Barack Obama campaigning in a local Grange hall.

  Heck, I shook Ronald Reagan's hand at UNH's Snively Arena in 1976! And Jack Kemp's at the Dover Shop 'n Save (now Hannaford) in 1988! Things are different now.

  Anyway, Virginia does a decent job of analyzing this year's Senate race. And waits for her final paragaph for …

  That impulse might point to Pappas, who defends trans rights, for example, because “I’m from a state that cherishes liberty and freedom, [and I] want to make sure that the government is not interfering with how you live your life.” Those words, more than any other, are music to the ears of the Granite State. New Hampshire may give up its first primary but never, ever its awesomely incendiary slogan, “Live free or die.”

  … the inevitable LFOD reference.

• We're also known for our loons. I've been shamefully lax in looking at the candidates on my ballot for the upcoming primary. My excuse: even for the contested races, there are candidates who are considered prohibitive favorites (Ayotte, Sununu, DiLorenzo).

  But New Hampshire's ballot-access rules for candidates are very light. If you have $100, or 200 signatures on a petition, you too can run for US Senate!

  So we have eight candidates to choose from. Among them are some perennials. For example, Tom Alciere. The Laconia Daily Sun wrote him up a few days ago: Alciere makes bid for Senate with non-traditional platform. The opening sounds promising…

  LACONIA — Tom Alciere has run as a Republican, Democrat, and an independent in previous races. This time, he's running as the “anti-Trump” Republican, vying for the open U.S. Senate seat.

  Alciere is running on a number of non-traditional views, with ideas to open borders entirely, legalize all drugs, abolish public school, abolish zoning, and repeal “all other unjust laws.” He also voiced opposition to rights for the LGBTQ+ community.

  Well, except for that LGBTQ+ thing. From further in the article:

  He was elected to the Statehouse in 2000, representing Hillsborough’s 29th district. He resigned after only about a month, after publicly supporting violence, including murder, against police.

  […]

  Alciere has run for office unsuccessfully on numerous occasions, including U.S. Senate Republican Primary in 2004; the 2006 state Senate Republican Primary; the 2008 U.S. Senate Republican Primary; the 2010 U.S. Senate Republican Primary; the 2016 U.S. Senate Republican Primary; the 2018 Libertarian Primary for Congressional District 2; the U.S. Senate Democratic Primary in 2020; and the 2022 Republican Primary for Congressional District 1.

  His campaign website has more.

  Back in 2018 , I linked to Brian Doherty's Reason article about Alciere's troubles with NH's Libertarian Party: Candidate Kicked Out of New Hampshire Libertarian Party Nonetheless on House Primary Ballot as a Libertarian.

• Tom's not alone on Loon Lake. Also on the ballot is Mary Maxwell. According to her website, she's "run in several elections". She was on my Presidential Primary ballot back in 2020 and also in 2024.

  Mary also has a substack, where she seems reasonably active.

  I think it's fair to say that Mary's never met a conspiracy theory that she didn't embrace. The devastating 2003 fires on Maui? Caused by directed energy weapons!

  And I still have fond memories of our back-and-forth in the comment section of her Granite Grok article about the Boston Marathon bombers: It Is Completely Impossible To NOT Acquit Tsarnaev.

  Reader, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was not acquitted; he's currently on death row at the SuperMax prison in Colorado.

EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY: Lake Ontario is renamed to LAKE AMERICA! 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/ZFww8PexiW

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 27, 2026

I'm just gonna quote Jeffrey Blehar: Lake America? Spare Us.

I concur. If he doesn't want to do President-stuff, then he should quit and toss the Air Force One keys over to JD. Who wouldn't be great, or even good, but he might take the job more seriously.

Also of note:

• Nice try on that Constitution-trashing thing, Steve. Back in 2024, I noted the effort of the Bow (New Hampshire) School District to ban pink armbands emblazoned with "XX" from the spectator stands at a soccer match. My headline: They're Not Really Getting the LFOD Thing in Bow, New Hampshire.

  I speculated that "the most probable outcome will be some expensive litigation paid for by Bow taxpayers, which Bow will lose."

  Ah, but I did not foresee that the litigation would first go before United States District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe (Christa's husband). NH Journal:

  [Judge McAulliffe] ruled Bow High School has the right to ban parents from wearing pink XX wristbands to girls’ soccer games to show their opposition to allowing biological males to compete against females. The judge said the protests weren’t protected speech, and he accused the parents of “harassing” individual trans-identifying athletes.

  … and I noted his decision appeared to be 1A-problematic.

  So now I get to say "toldya so". In the College Fix: First Circuit rebukes judge who ruled parents can’t wear ‘XX’ wristbands to protest boys in girls’ sports.

  The First Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled against the judge who sided with a school district in forbidding parents from wearing “XX” wristbands to protest males playing in female sports.

  The case has been remanded back to Judge Steve, so we'll see what happens there.

• "Insane Circumcision Analogy" would be a good name for a rock band. But instead it's in the headline of a David Harsanyi column: El-Sayed's Insane Circumcision Analogy.

  "Sex changes for minors. Do you support that?" Fox News host Jesse Watters recently asked Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed.

  "So you think it's OK for a parent to slash his kid's ding-a-ling off?" Watters finally interjects.

  "Are you circumcised?" El-Sayed asked.

  "Circumcision's different than castration," Watters shot back.

  "It's a problem that you think you get to decide what happens between a parent, a doctor, and a patient," El-Sayed argued. "I'm just saying that, yes, circumcision is surgery on a kid's ding-a-ling."

  Fun fact: "My Ding-a-Ling" was Chuck Berry's only number one single.

• Those pesky jets. Nellie Bowles' TGIF, among other things, notes some Orwellian doings up north:

  Anyway, another reason to invade Canada: the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has issued new guidelines for how to report on September 11th. Here’s from the internal memo:

  “Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks. The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, and Manhattan. The World Trade Center (WTC in second reference) was destroyed.” The memo was reportedly authored by Basem Boshra, senior director of journalistic standards and public trust at CBC News.

  “The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes.” By next year it’ll be that it was just a total accident, a setback for passenger plane safety. After that, it’ll have never happened.

  If you want a picture of the future, imagine a snowshoe stamping on a human face— forever.