Pun Salad

Reading to my kids was fun, and good books were easy to find. But nowadays? WSJ writer Meghan Cox Gurdon looks at the sea of woke that you might find at your local Barnes&Noble, and describes what happened to the author of the Eye Candy du Jour when he pointed it out: Mac Barnett, Come on Down. (WSJ gifted link)

(Subhed: "You’re the next contestant on ‘Cancel the Straight White Male.’")

But before Meghan tells Mac's story:

Mac Barnett's crime was, well, writing the book pictured on your right. His response to his accusers was kind of craven, read Meghan's article for that, but you can't expect everyone to be J.K. Rowling.

And today's hodgepodge:

• Mental illness or power lust? Billy Binion wonders at the motivations: These Politicians Want To Tax the Rich. But Why Do They Seem To Despise Them?

  Our politics have been analogized to Veep. A more apt comparison some days is that we are living in a cartoon. Every good cartoon needs a supervillain or three. Our supervillains created millions of jobs, made goods cheaper and far easier to obtain, and revolutionized access to information, among other terrible, terrible things.

  I am referring to billionaires. Reasonable people will debate, and disagree on, the best way to sketch out the tax code. Protestations to "tax the rich" have long been central to progressive politics. But last week's Met Gala was a reminder that there is something else undergirding those calls: what seems like legitimate hatred or, at a minimum, disgust. Why?

  The Met Gala, of course, is a convenient backdrop for this kind of criticism: a ludicrous event where many of the ultrarich gather together, hobnob in opulent costume, and, at least in one case, protest their own existence. This year, however, was even more convenient, because the gala was sponsored by our main cartoon villain: Jeff Bezos.

  Being a cynic this month, I strongly suspect that AOC, Bernie, Liz, and the Zohran are operating on cold-hearted calculation rather than working out their twisted psychological quirks.

  Specifically, following #13 in Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

  But it's also useful to follow Big Brother's tactic in 1984: Set up Two Minutes Hate sessions directed at any semi-plausible instantiation of Emmanuel Goldstein.

• A useful digest. Jerry Coyne surveys some reactions to the vile slanders the NYT saw fit to print: More criticism of Kristof’s allegations about Israel.

  By now the whole world–at least the world that reads the news–knows about Nicholas Kristof’s long NYT op-ed column accusing Israel of systemic, institutional sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners. For those who already hate Israel, his unsubstantiated allegations will serve only to reinforce their hatred and antisemitism. For those who are open-minded or sympathetic to Israel, well, they do have to admit that the allegations are unsubstantiated. But, as the saying goes, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” Kristof is no dummy, and surely he knew that his claims would be snapped up by Israel haters and antisemites.

  That is a good reason for Kristof to have verified all his sources and ensure that they had no history of bias (or at least the bias should have been made explicit)—something he did not do. This is in contrast to the Civil Commission on the October 7 Crimes Against Women and Children report, documenting Hamas’s sexual abuse during its invasion of Israel. The Commission has verification of all of its sources, including forensic evidence like photographs and bodies.

  As most of Kristof’s critics have said, it is impossible to affirm that there was never any abuse of Palestinians by the IDF. But if you make an accusation that the abuse was both widespread and systemic, you’d better be able to back it up with evidence. Unfortunately, the NYT sees no need for that. relying on Kristof’s two Pulitzer Prizes and his claim that he interviewed witnesses brought forth by groups or people who can hardly be said to be unbiased. But yes, his claims should be investigated, but he would have to help the investigators by providing identities and documentation. I wouldn’t hold my breath until he does that.

  Jerry excerpts five responses to Kristof, and they're pretty brutal. It should be career-ending for him.

• Let's not go off half cocked. David R. Henderson reviews The Unseen Costs Of A Universal Basic Income.

  Elon Musk, Sam Altman of OpenAI, and some other major executives of artificial intelligence (AI) firms are sure that AI will destroy millions of American jobs and that many of those who lose work will not find gainful employment. Musk, Altman, and Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, advocate a universal basic income (UBI) for those who they think will never find work. I’ve written elsewhere about the fact that a UBI, even one that replaced means-tested welfare programs, would enormously increase both government spending and our federal budget deficit.

  There’s another problem, and it’s the one I focus on here. A large UBI would assure that millions of people will never work. As a result, we would miss the products and services that those people would have produced. One way to see that is to imagine that at various times in our history the federal government had implemented a UBI.

  David looks at the non-catastrophes caused by (1) the mechanization of farm labor and (2) the shift from the manufacturing sector to the service sector. Insight:

  [I]f at any time in our history, you had predicted that new jobs wouldn’t replace old jobs, you would have always been wrong. If you predict that AI will be the exception, you will probably be wrong.

  I realize that "probably" carries a lot of weight there. But I think we can afford to work on actual problems as they occur, not the most dire ones that we can imagine.

• Something to take to your next appointment. Dave Barry looks at Modern Medical Care. Hilarious as expected. And he provides something that will no doubt cause your doctor to …

  IMPORTANT: If you ever, somehow, get to see an actual doctor in person, remember to ask him or her about the prescription drugs advertised on TV. I’m talking about those commercials alerting you to the many, MANY alarming medical conditions that you never heard of before but that you might very well be suffering from, which is why the announcer always instructs you, in an authoritative voice, to “Ask your doctor about (name of drug)!” There are a LOT of these drugs, so to make sure you ask about all of them, you should print out the boldface question below and read it to the doctor verbatim. (All of these are actual TV-ad drug names, which I got from a list maintained by my wife.)

  QUESTION TO ASK YOUR DOCTOR:

  “Doctor, what about (deep breath) Apretude, Arexvy, Austedo, Biktarvy, Bimzelx, Breztri, Cabenuva, Caplyta, Comirnaty, Cosentyx, Dovato, Dupixent, Emgality, Eucrisa, Farxiga, Fasenra, Humira, Ibrance, Ingrezza, Jardiance, Kerendia, Kesimpta, Keytruda, Kisqali, Latuda, Linzess, Lo Loestrin Fe, Mounjaro, Myfembree, Nubeqa, Nucala, Nurtec ODT, Ocrevus, Opdivo & Yervoy, Opdivo Qvantig, Opzelura, Ozempic, Pluvicto, Qulipta, Quviviq, Reblozyl, Repatha, Rexulti, Rinvoq, Rybelsus, Saxenda, Skyrizi, Sotyktu, Stelara, Taltz, Tepezza, Trelegy, Tremfya, Tresiba, Trulicity, Ubrelvy, Ultomiris, Vabysmo, Veozah, Verzenio, Vraylar, Xeljanz, Xifaxan, Zepbound and Zeposia?”

  Unfortunately, your doctor will be unable to answer this question, because he or she is running behind schedule and thus will have exited the examination room somewhere around Pluvicto. This is probably just as well, because for the majority of these drugs the side effects include death.

  So good luck with that.

From the Heaton/Bragg team at Reason: If doctors acted like politicians....

I'm pretty sure I pissed off one of my doctors by showing him my recent discussion with Claude about my prostate. I thought he'd be amused!

Also of note:

• Betting on anything is risky, but this? Stephanie Slade asks and advises: Are Democrats Now the Party of Free Markets? Don't Bet on It.

  Here's a fact about partisanship and public opinion that may surprise you: According to Gallup, Democrats have been warming toward foreign trade since 2008, and they have been more positive about it than Republicans have been since 2012. With all the talk of political realignment in recent years, data points like these have led some to wonder whether Democrats are becoming the major party that better aligns with libertarian commitments to free markets and limited government.

  That's Slade's first paragraph, but (after making many valid insights) here's her bottom line:

  Democrats frequently discover a strange new respect for limited-government ideals when they're not in power, but it doesn't last. The moment they're back in the White House, expect progressives to experience sudden-onset amnesia about the lessons they weren't really learning during the Trump years.

  As the Bonzo Dog Band observed long ago: No Matter Who You Vote For The Government Always Gets In.

• Lotta cynicism out there today… On that score, Veronique de Rugy observes: When Businessmen Enter the Beltway, It's Business as Usual.

  Something strange is happening in Washington. A generation of investors and entrepreneurs who built careers championing private capital and intuitively understood the power of market discipline and limited government have joined the Trump administration, taking charge of hundreds of billions of dollars of other people's money. They assure us that they are deploying it strategically, with accountability and a businessperson's rigor.

  From Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (who is apparently convinced he can rearrange the American economy through tariffs and industrial policy as if it were a trading desk) to former Commerce official Michael Grimes (who led the IPOs of Meta, Uber and Airbnb and reportedly spearheaded a federal "venture arm" last year) to President Donald Trump and his proposed U.S. sovereign wealth fund, the rejection of markets is real. And as with all such schemes, these too will damage the economy.

  At least the stock market is doing well.

• Insightful, with dirty words. Jeff Maurer is shaking his head: How Did the New York Times Wave Through "Israel Trains Rape Dogs"?

  On Monday, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an article alleging that sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails is widespread. The claims are extremely serious — so serious, in fact, that it makes me wish that it was possible for our society to talk about Israel/Palestine without our brains melting down and dribbling out of our ears in a trickle of neon pink goo.

  Personally, I find the general narrative sadly plausible. Prisoner abuse happens everywhere, societies in violent conflicts often see their moral standards erode, and my own country engaged in a prisoner abuse scandal in the aftermath of a horrific attack. Of course, I have no real way to assess the veracity of the claims in the article — I am, after all, just some dickweed with a laptop. The New York Times, however, is a 175 year-old newspaper that basically won the Squid Game-style deathmatch that American publications have been forced to endure. They do have resources to vet, fact-check, and otherwise verify the news stories that fill the dead space in between their lucrative puzzle games.

  Since I know the name "Walter Duranty", I don't have any expectation that the NYT will let journalistic integrity get in the way of publishing narratives it prefers.

  Jeff's conclusions, after looking at the "evidence" cited for the dog-rape fantasies: "the level of scrutiny for claims about Israel at the Times is absolute zero." If they didn't balk at publishing that, then they probably didn't bother checking anything else.

• And for once, I'm blogging Nellie Bowles' TGIF column on Friday. Concerning another different garbage NYT story:

  → One last note on antisemitism and the media: Check out this weird 2,500-word New York Times investigation into Israel and Eurovision, a music contest.

  

  That headline sure looks scary. I’ll bet most people stopped reading after “Israel’s efforts to influence. . . ” The reporters “traveled around Europe, interviewed more than 50 people, and reviewed internal Eurovision documents.” Well, what did they find? The article ultimately admits there were no bots, no hacking, no vote-rigging, and no evidence any rules were broken. The “scandal” amounts to Israel encouraging supporters to use the voting system as designed, something virtually every Eurovision participant has done for decades. The only huge dark arts political effort is to ban Israel from performing. The whole article is basically: Did you know that the Jooos are still allowed in the singing contest? Isn’t that odd? Is Adam Levine spinning his throne around on The Voice also a “soft power tool”?

  Well, I'll still keep my NYT Games subscription. But…

Recently on the book blog:

… when I read this headline at Ars Technica: Solar drone with jumbo jet wingspan broke a flight record—then it crashed.

To be fair, it had a good run, longer than the Titanic's:

Keep trying, guys.

Also of note:

• Could they all please just crawl back under their rocks? Barton Swaim looks at Antisemites Right and Left. (WSJ gifted link)

  An “antisemitism problem” exists on both the left and the right, according to the latest political cliché. Like most clichés, this one contains truth, but its expression sounds like an excuse to keep quiet and do nothing.

  Jew-hatred thrives in some precincts more than others, and for reasons nobody fully understands it does so more among the credentialed and allegedly better-educated Americans than it does among the rest. What makes antisemitism in the 2020s so menacing isn’t its ugliness or brutality but its subtlety and intellectual appeal, its expression by gullible journalists and kaffiyeh-wearing postgraduates using big terms they don’t understand: “Zionism,” “genocide,” “occupation.”

  The zeal with which a sizable part of the Democratic primary-voting electorate fixates on the Jewish state—a sliver of a country on the other side of the world—defies explanation. Even granting some of the cockamamie claims about Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank, lots of countries around the world commit ill deeds. Why the obsession with Israel but not Myanmar or Sudan? Why such expressive pity for the Palestinians but none for the Uyghurs?

  Barton notes a right/left disparity though: numerous voices on the right call out and condemn antisemitic slurs made by "our side"; on the left, not so much.

  Also at the WSJ, the editorialists summarize a new report containing The Truth About Hamas (WSJ gifted link).

  Reading “Silenced No More,” the new report by the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children, we were transported back to Oct. 27, 2023, and a screening of the raw footage of Hamas’s atrocities. The mouths of journalists were agape, but time dulls horrific reality.

  "Horrific" is, if anything, an understatement. Read if you think your stomach can stand it.

• From the newspaper that published the rape dog fantasies … The New York Times has a softball interview with University Near Here's Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, who is headlined-described as A Physicist Who Thinks in Poetry from the Cosmic Edge. This stood out (interviewer in bold):

  How do you want readers to approach this book?

  There is this feeling that you’re supposed to read a book like this and walk away an expert. That’s actually not the point of this book at all. The point is to wander through physics. Even if math terrifies you, you are entitled to spend some time with it.

  And so here, I have made you a book with a bunch of tidbits on the oddities of the universe. The universe is stranger and more queer and more wonderful and more full of possibility than whatever limitations you might be experiencing right now. Physics challenges what we are told are social norms. For example, non-trinary neutrinos are fundamental to our standard model of physics.

  “Non-trinary,” as in they shift between three different forms.

  Non-trinary is natural. It’s such a challenge to the current anti-trans rhetoric that says people can only ever be one thing.

  A short physics tutorial: there are three "flavors" of neutrinos: electron, muon, and tau. They are almost massless, rarely interact with any matter they encounter, and travel nearly the speed of light. And their extra-special "queerness" is that they oscillate between flavors as they zip through space.

  And of course this implies that guys can oscillate into girls while travelling through ladies' locker rooms! Take that, J.K. Rowling!

  CPW has a new book out, and I have requested a hold for it at the Portsmouth (NH) Public Library. Should be a fun read!

I composed today's headline while reading William A. Galston's WSJ column. He wonders: Are There Five Parties in America’s Future?. (WSJ gifted link)

(And Betteridge's Law of Headlines might not apply!)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Never mind the Limeys! What about us?

I would guess that candidates from the "Traditional Conservative Party" and the "Market-Oriented Socially Liberal Party" might say things that would appeal to me. They would also say things that would make me grit my teeth, hold my nose, and roll my eyes.

The Quote Investigator discusses the various ways Groucho Marx worded his version of today's anti-social headline, and its possible precursor.

Also of note:

• Look out below! Deirdre Nansen McCloksey has demographic thoughts: World Population Will Fall.

  Have you noticed that we keep finding new social problems? Every year. Before the second half of the 19th century, people didn’t use the phrase or have the idea.

  The problem with problem-talk is that it results in more intervention by the state. So the state gets bigger. In Brazil, insult comedians are viewed as a social problem. Bring in our brilliant masters in the US Congress or the Brazilian Parliament. Make a law. Put the comedians in jail.

  My fear is that we will repeat the terrible damage to humanity from our earlier great fear of over-population. An unscientific article in Science magazine in 1968 by Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” recommended compulsory sterilization of women. An even more unscientific book in 1968 by Paul R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, then panicked the entire world, leading, for example, to the Chinese one-child policy. The science of both men was biology, not history or economics or demography or political science.

  Deirdre is apparently in favor of government treating people as responsible adults, capable of making their own decisions. Unfortunately, I fear that would make a relatively tiny political party.

• Paying off the kidnappers. Does that sound like a good idea to you? Inside Higher Ed has the latest example: Instructure Pays Ransom to Canvas Hackers.

  Instructure has paid a ransom to a gang of cybercriminals that have twice hacked the company’s learning management system, Canvas, over the past week and a half.

  According to an update published by the education-technology company Monday night, the deal means that the hackers have returned the compromised data of some 275 million users across more than 8,800 institutions.

  The company—whose LMS ["Learning Management System"] is used to deliver courses by 41 percent of higher education institutions in North America—said it “received digital confirmation of data destruction (shred logs)” and assurance “that no Instructure customers will be extorted as a result of this incident, publicly or otherwise.” It added that the agreement “covers all impacted Instructure customers” and that individual customers have “no need” to engage with ShinyHunters, the extortionist group that has breached and temporarily disabled Canvas twice so far this month.

  Among the higher education institutions using Canvas: the University Near Here. No indication of whether Instructure will pass through the ransom costs to institutions, but I wouldn't expect them to publicize that.

• I'm pretty sure George Orwell did not see this specific thing coming. National Review's language columnist, Bryan A. Garner, reviews Trash Talk from the Oval Office. (NR gifted link)

  There was a time, not so long ago, when the president of the United States could be counted on to embarrass the republic only through inept decisions or lofty platitudes. Now, presidential disgrace is also linguistic, rhetorical, even psychological. With Donald Trump, the vulgar torrent became the message. The method was bluster, the attitude an amoral indifference to truth, the idiom a kind of gutter demotic that dragged every exchange down to the level of the pro-wrestling ring or the casino floor. For a people once taught to regard the presidency as a moral tribune, this wasn’t just a comedown. It was a national intoxication in which intoxication itself became the new sobriety.

  The first and most obvious mark of this coarse dispensation lies in its diction. Political language once at least gestured toward civility of tone. Though its meanings could be evasive, its grammar was usually correct. Trump’s breakthrough was to treat coarseness not as a liability but as a credential of authenticity. The profanity, the name-calling, the brawling with “losers” and “morons,” the yells about “animals” and “vermin” became ritual displays of his supposed proximity to the national id. What would have been a gaffe for any other politician he turned into a virtue by claiming persecution from the “politically correct.” The man who bragged of his genius for “the best words” could rarely manage a paragraph without syntactic collapse. Yet this triumphant incoherence passed as sincerity, the errors and misspellings paraded as badges of manly candor against effete literati who couldn’t “connect with real people.”

  From Orwell's famous 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language:

  [I]t is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

  Orwell thought (or hoped) that the trend was "reversible". Well, maybe, but to quote a different famous writer: "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

Today Pun Salad features a double play brought off via Jess to Goldberg to Lukianoff:

Famous tells:

“It’s not you, it’s me.”
“This isn’t about the money.”
“We have nothing to hide.”
“I’m just asking questions.”
“This is not a golden calf.” https://t.co/YYl7Hb7l9K

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) May 9, 2026

Ah, but wait, there's a play at the plate! Jeffrey Blehar posts his punchline at his Carnival of Fools newsletter:

And in case you need a hint about that last bit, Jeffrey's link goes to…

I assume that if Pastor Mark found it necessary to repudiate the golden calf parallel, it was only because he had been hearing it a lot from people familiar with Exodus 32 (or at least the movie).

Also of note:

• Kevin D. Williamson made me realize that I've been using the word "Orwellian" a lot over the past year or so. And even more so with his recent Wanderland newsletter, summarizing The Empire of Baloney. (Dispatch gifted link)

  An item from NBC News: “U.S. and Iran exchange fire near the Strait of Hormuz; Trump says ceasefire still holds.” Wha? “The attacks highlighted the fragility of the ceasefire in the area around the Strait of Hormuz ....”

  An item from the Wall Street Journal: “Muted U.S. Response to Iranian Attacks Deepens Gulf Fears About Cease-Fire.” Fears about what? More WSJ:“The efforts to play down the attacks came as the Trump administration tried to protect a fragile cease-fire and keep peace talks moving forward.”

  In the words of that great philosopher Jules Winnfield: “English, m----------r! Do you speak it?”

  And in case you need a hint about that movie reference (or help with de-expurgating that word), here you go.

• Explain it to me like I'm five, or a US Senator from Massachusetts. Christian Britschgi tries to do that: Why the Bipartisan War on Housing Investors Won't Make Housing More Affordable.

  In March, the U.S. Senate passed a bill full of tweaks to federal grant programs and regulations. Although nearly all of the bill's provisions are aimed at increasing the housing supply, one would undermine that goal.

  That provision, inserted at the last minute, bans investors from owning more than 350 single-family rental homes. Investors could still acquire homes built as rentals, but they would have to be sold off within seven years. Because of these restrictions, the Senate bill, which otherwise could be expected to have a modest positive impact on the housing supply, probably would reduce yearly home construction.

  Proponents of the large-investor ban argue that it's necessary to preserve owner-occupied homes. "An overwhelming majority of Americans across party lines want to stop private equity from snapping up single-family homes," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) said on the Senate floor after the bill's passage. "This bill does exactly that."

  It should go without saying that prohibiting people from buying homes necessarily bans the current owners from selling those homes.

  But Christian does a good job of pointing out the other junk economics involved.

• It's tough out there for a barista. George Will looks at one possible explanation for youngsters that take Elizabeth Warren seriously: It’s graduation time for disappointed little Lenins. (WaPo gifted link)

  There is a growing subset of graduates who, propelled by the applause of grade inflation, emerge from the political monoculture of campuses with high grades, low learning and a talent for blaming. They blame capitalism, markets, society, something for their frustrations and disappointments. Their vast sense of entitlement includes an assumed exemption from common life experiences.

  Many supposedly underemployed graduates are casualties of the siren call of “college for all.” This gave the political class something more to subsidize, and gave the academic industry opportunities to raise tuition, siphoning up the subsidies to fund expansions. Thus were millions of young people lured onto an expensive — in time and money — path away from well-paid and satisfying trades, and into a curdled adulthood nursing vague grievances about foregone status.

  The predictable result of market saturation resulted in a 2024 report that 45 percent of graduates held, 10 years after graduation, jobs that do not “require” a college degree. But the meaning of this is murky.

  As usual, the AI summary of the (as I type) 1,222 comments is a hoot. Excerpt: "The conversation explores a wide range of criticisms directed at George Will's opinion piece, with many participants expressing dissatisfaction with his portrayal of young college graduates and his perceived condescension."

  Translation: the "little Lenins", and their enablers, got their feelings hurt.

• In case you were wondering who to blame… The WSJ editorialists note 535 (or so) possible culprits for the the fact that The U.S. Postal Service Is Going Bust. Blame Congress. (WSJ gifted link)

  The U.S. Postal Service is again barreling toward insolvency, and on Friday it reported a $2 billion quarterly loss. “We are in a cash crisis,” Postmaster General David Steiner said. “We require urgent Congressional action to expand our borrowing authority and to address outdated constraints on the organization.” The important part for lawmakers to hear is that last part.

  The USPS has been raising prices and trimming costs, but it keeps falling short in trying to make ends meet. The reality is that its business model is an anachronism in a digital world, yet Congress has refused to recognize that. As paper correspondence—letters, bills, party invites—shifted online, total mail volume fell off a cliff. Last year the USPS handled 108.7 billion pieces, down 49% from a peak of 213.1 billion in 2006. A majority of what’s left is euphemistically categorized as “marketing mail.”

  Providing a data point on that, a little Googling shows my state's senators are firmly stuck on the unsustainable status quo: Shaheen, Hassan Join Colleagues to Urge Postal Service to Pause Planned Changes to Mail Delivery Network

  And so is my current CongressCritter: Rep. Pappas' bill to stop USPS downsizing passes House committee.

  And now I'll head out to the mailbox to pick up today's "marketing mail".

If I remember correctly, it did eventually work out for Odysseus. Not so much for his fellow-travellers.

Andrew C. McCarthy brings up another feature of the ongoing onslaught against constitutionality, one not explicitly mentioned in Mr. Ramirez's cartoon: The Latest Lethal U.S. Caribbean Strikes Fit a Troubling Pattern (NR gifted link).

Well, at least we got those UFO pics released. Literal bright shiny objects to distract your attention!

Also of note:

• Don't we all? Matthew Hennessey has a suggestion for Sandy: AOC Needs New Friends. (WSJ gifted link).

  It helps to have friends who are willing to call you out, to bring you down to earth. Something tells me Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has no such friends. Something tells me she surrounds herself with people who love to hear her pontificate.

  “There’s a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned,” AOC told podcaster Ilana Glazer last week. “You can’t earn a billion dollars.”

  “You just can’t earn that.”

  “That’s exactly correct,” agreed a nodding Ms. Glazer.

  “You can get market power. You can break rules. You can do all sorts of things. You can abuse labor laws.”

  “Yup,” agreed Ms. Glazer with gusto.

  “You can pay people less than what they’re worth.”

  “Yup,” agreed Ms. Glazer, who looked like she was falling in love a little bit.

  “But you can’t earn that, right?”

  “That’s right,” agreed Ms. Glazer.

  “And so you have to create a myth that—since you didn’t earn that—you have to create a myth of earning it.”

  At this, Ms. Glazer was so profoundly in agreement that all she could do was exhale through her nose in a sigh of satisfied concurrence.

  That isn’t the kind of friend Ms. Ocasio-Cortez needs. She needs someone to say, “Yeah, OK, I hear you, some people are really rich, and that’s hard for most of us to comprehend, but, you know, I’m just thinking, what about Tom Steyer?”

  Tu quoque isn't the best rhetorical comeback, but (sheesh) it's better than making nose-noises in agreement.

  Also looking askance at AOC's theories of moral desert is Jonathan Turley. Looking at Sandy's "you can't earn that" assertion:

  

  In other words, you can only make a billion dollars through theft and exploitation rather than actual entrepreneurial enterprise. This statement comes as support builds for the California billionaires’ tax which, even before it has a chance to pass in November, has already cost the state trillions due to an exodus of these billionaires.

  In my book, “Rage and the Republic,” I discuss common myths spread by the left to fuel economic factionalism. One common myth is that the “wealthy do not pay their fair share of taxes.” In truth, the top ten percent of taxpayers pay the vast majority of taxes in the U.S. In the book, I also dispel the claim that most millionaires inherited their wealth or came from privileged backgrounds.

  These myths are designed to make redistribution schemes more palatable. And Democrats are ramping up the “eat-the-rich” rhetoric ahead of the midterms in pushing both millionaire and billionaire taxes. Democrats from Washington to Virginia are pushing millionaire taxes, and the mere conversation has already set off a stampede of high-earning taxpayers to red states like Texas and Florida, which have no state income tax.

  I'm reading Rage and the Republic right now. It's very good! Report coming sometime, Amazon link at your right.

• I knew there was something I didn't like about DS9. It took Alan Jacobs to put it into words for both of us: enough is enough?

  One season into ST:DS9 and am trying to decide whether to continue. The season concluded with the straightforward message that (a) Science is Good, (b) Traditional Religion is Evil (not merely intolerant but murderous), and (c) Revisionist Religion is … Not Great But Acceptable, Whatever, We Can Sorta Work With It.

  And the show seems to promise more of the same. Also: it’s not exactly subtle to have your representative of Traditional Religion played by an actor (Louise Fletcher) known only for playing one of the most monstrous characters in the history of cinema.

  I once wrote that Philip Pullman created an imaginary world so that people he hated would have a place to be evil in — I could also have said as much about The Handmaid’s Tale — and I suspect that this will be the old familiar story.

  I’m just so tired of it: the same beats over and over and over again. After half a century of this crap I just want a different critique of religion. I’m not asking for friends, just for more interesting and reflective haters.

  I liked The Handmaid's Tale slightly better than ayjay did; I thought Pullman's The Golden Compass was pretty bad though.

• We should emulate Joe Rogan in all things. I don't listen to podcasts any more, not even Joe Rogan's, but I was impressed by the transcript Ann Althouse posted of his session with Julia Mossbridge ("a cognitive neuroscientist"). Skipping down to the bit I really wanna emulate:

  And I'm not a person that needs to be taken seriously. It's not my job. I'm literally a comedian. You can make fun of me. I'll make fun of me. It's fine. My future doesn't rely on people taking me seriously. So I think having that ability to have conversations about all kinds of different things has really changed the way the entire world is discussing reality—everything about reality, from quantum computing to alien life to international politics to the way human beings misrepresent each other purposefully for their own gains.

  If I seem whimsical at times… that's why.

  And, not that it matters, but: I see that Joe's net worth is estimated at $200 million, and I wonder if AOC thinks he "earned" that?

From five years ago, an image grabbed from Daniel J. Mitchell's Statism in Five Images; scroll down enough so you see the punchline.

Back in 2021 we were doing that Covid thing, so some of those items were arguably more relevant then. But, to be fair, some seem even more applicable now.

Also of note:

• As far as "Control what you read, watch, and say" goes… Roger Pielke Jr looks at Media Coverage (or not) of RCP8.5 RIP.

  Last week here at [his "Honest Broker" substack], I published a post announcing the most significant development in climate science in decades. It is truly huge news.

  The international committee responsible for official IPCC scenarios had declared the high-end scenarios — RCP8.5, SSP5-8.5, and SSP3-7.0 — to be implausible. These scenarios have dominated climate research, headlines, and policy for the better part of two decades.

  Today I review who in the “mainstream” media has covered this major story and who has so far ignored it.

  Bottom line: although the death of the doomsday scenarios has gotten some play in Danish and German-language media, "there has not been a peep from the major U.S. or international news outlets that publish in English."

  But (good news) I found something in the WSJ. Albeit, in an op-ed: You Can’t Trust ‘Climate Economics’ (WSJ gifted link) Excerpt:

  For more than a decade, researchers built many of their climate projections on the back of a hypothetical standardized scenario called Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5—a vision of the future which required coal consumption to quintuple by 2100 based on assumptions about future energy use. Those assumptions have already diverged sharply from actual energy trends, and we know today that the scenario is implausibly extreme. That conclusion isn’t fringe or even controversial. Yet many scientists continue to emphasize RCP8.5 in climate research, with new studies published daily. The outdated scenario likely persists because of the slow schedule for updating scenario assumptions, the incentive researchers face to publish headline-grabbing results, and a climate advocacy ecosystem built on apocalyptic warnings.

  Thousands of studies use it. Projections of flood damage, heat mortality, agricultural disruption and wildfire risk have rested on an implausible baseline that describes an imaginary, modeled future. Governments and financial institutions have treated these projections as the accurate scientific picture of the climate future.

  The author of that op-ed: Roger Pielke Jr.

• Worst new dance craze ever. Jonathan Turley observes the latest ugly steps in the partisan pas de deux: The Gerrymander Debacle in Virginia Leaves the Democratic Party with a Dangerous Agenda.

  “Eff around and find out”: That taunt from Hakeem Jeffries celebrating Virginia’s gerrymander did not age well.

  On Friday, the House minority leader found out that Virginia’s Supreme Court was not quite as gleeful as he about Democrats’ attempt to virtually eliminate Republican representation in the purple state.

  The court just cooked the party’s infamous lobster, a district over 100 miles long that was designed to help devour the GOP’s slender majority in the House of Representatives.

  Jonathan's column is from the NYPost, and adheres to that paper's one-sentence-per-paragraph style.

I've really grown to like Nellie Bowles' weekly "TGIF" column at the Free Press, her acerbic look at news stories that catch her fancy. This week, she discusses FBI Director Kash Patel's habit of distributing personalized bottles of Woodford Reserve bourbon (pictured at your right). (A 750mL non-customized bottle of the stuff will set you back $31.95 at our state's booze stores this month.)

But Nellie's headline for this edition is "Too Crazy and Not Crazy Enough", and we will excerpt the relevant item:

More at the link, reader. Some funnier than this.

Also of note:

• Look out below! You may have seen dire news stories in the MSM about SNAP ("food stamps") changes causing mass starvation. Here's an antidote from Jack Salmon: SNAP Enrollment Is Finally Falling.

  For the first time since the pandemic-era expansion of the welfare state, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is beginning to shrink back toward normalcy.

  Between January 2025 and January 2026, the number of individuals receiving SNAP benefits declined by nearly 4.3 million. Roughly 3.5 million of that decline occurred after the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) in July 2025.

  However:

  Even after the recent drop in enrollment, SNAP participation remains approximately 1.7 million individuals above pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, the average cost per household (adjusting for inflation) is still about 18 percent higher than before the pandemic.

  Jack provides context you may not have seen elsewhere, and recommends further changes, including:

  [C]urrent reporting rules only require disclosure of payment errors exceeding $57 per individual. That threshold should be eliminated entirely so that all payment errors are disclosed and tracked. Since states will now bear part of the financial burden of erroneous payments, greater transparency would strengthen incentives to identify and prevent errors.

  SNAP is a prime example of Milton Friedman's observation:

  People who spend Other Peoples' Money on Other People simply lack incentive to do it efficiently or even wisely.

• Magic 8-Ball Says: Oh, Probably. Jeff Maurer wonders: Are We Blaming Phones for Our Bullshit?

  A new study about the effects of phone bans in schools is out, and if you’re thinking “I’d like to have the study summarized by a comedian who browsed some articles about the study after a few beers,” you’re in luck. The study said that bans have a minimal impact on student behavior and test scores. That doesn’t mean that the bans are a bad idea — the solution isn’t to un-ban phones and have teachers try to teach sine and cosine to a classroom full of students browsing Pornhub. But phone bans aren’t a magic bullet; there remains no easy solution to our nation’s Dull Child Epidemic.

  Becoming a parent has made me familiar with the discourse around phones (and screens, generally). In some circles, saying “I let my child have a phone” is like saying “I let my child have a machete,” or “My child runs an adorable li’l meth lab in his room.” My boy is three, the big decisions around phones are well in the future, but it’s practically received wisdom among my peers that the culprit for everything from anxiety to depression to restless leg syndrome has been found, and it’s smartphones.

  But I wonder if the story is not so simple. As much as I take the points of those who worry a lot about phones — and I’ll address some of those points in a minute — I’m becoming something of a skeptic. Already, by the standards of the ultra-blue place where I live, I’m practically the “let the kid have a BB gun” dad. I agree that kids are subject to some bad, new pressures, and that phones are part of the story, but I think we often often misunderstand and misrepresent phones’ role in that story.

  I'm also well out of the demographic that has to worry about this. But if you're not…

• Just do it, Trump. Listen toe Erick Erickson: Finish Him.

  It is time for the President of the United States to finish the job in Iran. Yesterday, the President engaged in what he called a “love tap.” He needs to love the Iranian leadership to death.

  If we’re going to pay high gas prices, at least make it worth it. Allowing Iran’s Islamic revolutionary leadership to fester will cost more lives long term. The Saudis, Kuwaitis, Emiraties, and others are furious that the President has pulled punches, even after Iran bombed an oil export facility in the United Arab Emirates.

  The President and his team seem desperate for a deal. In the process, Iran is learning that if it holds the United States’s economy hostage, they can have their way with us. The only way to show them otherwise is for us to finish them.

  I think Congress should quickly authorize that, too. Constitution, y'all.

My eyebrows got raised by this tweet:

This table shows the 15 most expensive metropolitan areas in the United States, where the real value of $100 is the lowest.

See the value of $100 in your area: https://t.co/tag06IIWDk pic.twitter.com/k0nSQFixan

— Tax Foundation (@TaxFoundation) May 6, 2026

All those California locales rank pretty high on the unaffordable scale. But down there in twelfth place:

Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH (Metropolitan Statistical Area)

See that "NH" at the end? The Census Bureau includes New Hampshire's Rockingham and Strafford counties in this "Metropolitan Statistical Area". And Strafford County contains the town of Rollinsford (estimated population 2,626). Where I live. The most populous towns in the county are Dover (about 33K), Rochester (33K), Durham (15K), and Somersworth (12K).

None of these places are to be confused with Boston. Cambridge, or Newton.

And yet, the Census Bureau does confuse them.

This sometimes causes outright deception. See this Antiplanner post from last month: Where Americans Ride Transit. The Antiplanner posts a US map that purports to show "where more than 5 percent of Americans take transit to work." And yes, although the transit-using blobs on the map are tiny compared to the rest of the country, the "Boston" blob does extend up here.

And, of course, there's no way that more than 5% of the populace here take transit to work.

Who do I write at the Census Bureau to get us taken out of the Boston MSA?

Also of note:

• Apparently there's been some firing during the cease-fire. Very Orwellian. But Andy McCarthy strikes a blow for clarity and constitutionality: Congress Should Authorize Military Force Against Iran. (NR gifted link)

  President Trump’s dereliction in failing to prepare the nation for war with Iran, and his inconstancy about the war’s objectives — and even regarding whether it is, in fact, a war and whether it is, in fact, ongoing — have predictably had harmful effects. It’s past time for Congress to assert its constitutional power and authorize force, at least to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. No matter what one thinks of how we got here, Iran cannot be allowed to annex a vital global trade route whose closure is hurting Americans.

  Because of the administration’s poor messaging, the real good done by American combat operations has been obscured: the significant setbacks to Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions and ballistic missile capabilities, the virtual destruction of its navy and air defenses, and the infliction of economic distress that undermines its capacity to abet its jihadist proxies. To repeat what I’ve said before, politically speaking, a security win can look and feel like a loss if Iran appears to hold the whip hand.

  The Strait of Hormuz was open to free international trade on February 28 and, as a result of the war, Iran has closed it. Because Trump failed the basic duty of communicating the national security risks, the American people did not feel a threat from Iran. Now, however, they now feel financial pain inflicted by Iran in what they perceive as a war Trump gratuitously started. The most visible, tangible outcome of the war, as far as most Americans are concerned, is that Iran now dominates the strait. That’s politically catastrophic.

  You would think that Trump might realize he's being played.

• 

  An even more pointless and illegal war. And, as Kevin D. Williamson points out, an expensive one: The Cost of Forever Trade Wars. (Dispatch gifted link) (The Reason mag cover for June 2026 over there on your right refers to Iran, but it's applicable here too. Maybe more so.)

  Donald Trump campaigned against open-ended wars but as president has launched at least two of them so far: his unconstitutional war on Iran and his unconstitutional war—possibly more consequential in the long term—on the U.S. economy.

  Trump may have lost his tariffs case in front of the Supreme Court, but his destructive, costly, and idiotic campaign against low prices continues.

  The administration is seeking novel legal authority—much of it implausible—to keep up some version of the import taxes Trump had imposed under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) until the 6-3 ruling in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump clarified for the administration the question, supposedly tricky, of whether a law that does not so much as mention tariffs gives the president the unilateral power to effectively rewrite the U.S. tax code on the fly according to his own liking. And so tariff rates were adjusted in response to such world-shaking events as a few words of criticism from the prime minister of Switzerland, a person who does not—I am still convinced this part matters, at least a little bit—actually exist.

  Worse, the trade war doesn't actually blow up any bad guys, and we are all collateral damage.

• Among the many things you can expect to get worse… Christian Britschgi adds to the list: Expect the data center backlash to get worse. With an opening paragraph that will bring a smirk to the face of any Simpsons fan:

  In a recent meeting of the Box Elder County Commission in Tremonton, Utah, a man yelled at the cloud.

  "It's false. This is not real information," shouted an attendee at the assembled commissioners, who were considering a massive new data center project backed by celebrity billionaire Kevin O'Leary, in a video posted to X by progressive group More Perfect Union.

  Kevin O'Leary's massive data center was approved by a county commission in Utah last night.
  
  At 40,000 acres, it would be 2.5x the size of Manhattan.
  
  The commission approved the proposal despite opposition from hundreds of locals. pic.twitter.com/1pF9JZD30w

  — More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) May 5, 2026

  Needless to say, there's a lot of populist anti-tech panic involved. That never works out well.

• You might not have expected the WSJ to weigh in on this topic. Nevertheless, Rob Henderson's column in their Free Expression newsletter gloats: Free Will Is Undefeated.

  A fashionable view of human behavior holds that because everything has a cause, no one is truly responsible for their actions.

  In his 2023 bestseller “Determined,” Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky argues that free will is an illusion. “We are nothing more or less than the cumulative biological and environmental luck, over which we had no control, that has brought us to any moment,” he writes. Author and podcaster Sam Harris has spent 15 years making the same case to a popular audience. “Our wills are simply not of our own making,” he writes in “Free Will” (2012). “Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.”

  Common sense pushes back. Consider an example from the psychologist Paul Bloom. Imagine a man who thrashes violently in his sleep and accidentally strikes his wife, breaking her nose. They both wake up, and he is horrified and ashamed. Now imagine a second man who resents his wife and wants to hurt her. He waits until she is asleep then hits her in the face. When she wakes up, he pretends it was an accident. The difference between these two men is obvious. Any legal or moral system that doesn’t recognize that would collapse.

  True enough. Rob hits many of the points I've made myself over the years. (See my take on the Sapolsky book here, and my report on the Harris book here.)

  Unfortunately, Rob's column goes astray:

  Stuart Doyle offers a useful analogy that challenges this claim. Suppose we ask whether an apple is red. The determinist looks closer. He realizes the apple is nothing but atoms. Because no individual atom is red, he concludes the apple can’t really be red. The error is obvious. Color exists at the scale of the apple, not at the scale of an atom.

  Ackshually, apples are red down to nearly the atomic scale. Their color occurs thanks to idaein molecules, which preferentially reflect red light, thanks to their tasteful arrangement of elecrons. (Which is purely accidental, and in no way caused by Intelligent Design, don't even think of such a thing!)

  A better analogy (I don't know if Stuart Doyle makes it) is life itself. Living organisms are made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur; none of those elements are alive.

  Even when you start combining them into proteins and nucleic acids: those aren't alive either.

  But eventually, keep building, and somewhere along the line, you get to something sufficiently complex and functional enough to be deemed "living".

  I think free will is something like that. Determinists like Sapolsky and Harris look at neurons synapses, etc., and because they don't see free will there, they assume it doesn't and can't exist. There should be a word for that kind of fallacy.

Jonathan Turley cheers for the Colorblind Constitution: The Roberts Court Ends a ‘Sordid Business’.

It is indeed.

At the WSJ, Jason Riley urges the Gerrymander to not let the screen door hit it on its way out: Good Riddance to Racial Gerrymandering. (WSJ gifted link)

To repeat: It's a nasty business indeed, and you have to be a Democrat cheerleader to like it. But as to today's headline: all this aggravation could have been obviated if we had implemented the crackpot scheme I proposed back in 2017. Essentially: the problem with the current system is that it's "winner take all".

To take an egregious example from the 2024 election: In California's 13th congressional district Adam Gray (D) defeated John Duarte (R) by 187 votes out of over 200,000 cast. A statisical 50/50 tie, but Gray goes to Washington, casting one whole vote there. The 105,367 voters who favored Duarte get nothing, no representation at all.

Pun Salad solution: send both Gray and Duarte to DC, with a half-vote each. (And repeat for the other 434 Congressional districts.)

Also of note:

• Me too. Erick Erickson comments on the (apparently very fluid) situation in and around Iran: I Hope I Was Not Wrong.

  I have to admit it. I hope I was not wrong, but I’m starting to wonder if I was wrong.

  I support bombing Iran and destroying the regime. I presumed there had to be a plan, and I have had friends with deep roots inside the Trump Administration tell me this was all very much an impulse play by the President flying by the seat of his pants.

  I did not believe it. But as I see it playing out now, I am wondering if they really were right. There never really was a plan. There was a hope to bomb them into submission. The President saw Venezuela and was on top of the world.

  So he decided to use the American military against Iran. Until he decided otherwise.

  I sympathize. And kind of feel the same way. Things could still work out, but that's what you get when the Commander-in-Chief operates on narcissistic whim.

• Can we call them RINOs yet? Eric Boehm describes some fiscal shenanigans: Republicans Want To Borrow Every Single Dollar of the $72 Billion Bill To Fund ICE and Trump's Ballroom.

  Senate Republicans have unveiled their plan to fund immigration enforcement and President Donald Trump's ballroom, and the proposal might take fiscal irresponsibility to a new record high.

  The two bills included in the package call for spending nearly $72 billion. Remarkably, every single dollar would be borrowed.

  That's according to the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) analysis of the bill, which was released on Wednesday morning. According to the CBO, the bill would direct $38 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and spend $26 billion on various programs run by Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

  And they want to do this via "reconciliation", hoping to bypass a Democrat filibuster. Some see that as a problem:

  That process was "originally designed to make deficit reduction easier. Republicans are using it to make deficit expansion easier," wrote Dominik Lett, a fiscal policy analyst for the Cato Institute, in an email to Reason.

  After reviewing the CBO's assessment, Lett confirmed that every single dollar in the spending bill will be borrowed. "They don't even attempt to include offsets," he wrote.

  I have never been more ashamed to be a registered Republican.

• Of course, the other side is worse. Jack Butler notes the latest from a totalitarian fanboy: Bernie the Dupe.

  Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is worried about artificial intelligence. He wrote last month in the Journal—we publish a variety of viewpoints—that AI could “displace tens of millions of workers,” “threatens our privacy” and is “reshaping how we as human beings relate to one another.”

  Mr. Sanders’s economic concerns are consistent with the consistently wrong antiprogress socialism that has arisen before almost every wave of ultimately beneficial technological transformation. AI is currently propping up our tariff-addled economy. But the noneconomic potential of AI to drive further atomization, increase distrust and drown everything—politics, art, relationships—in a sea of slop is something worth at least discussing.

  None of these anxieties, however, are sufficient reason to trust the Chinese Communist Party. Yet that’s exactly what Mr. Sanders advocates. Recently he brought U.S. and Chinese AI experts to Capitol Hill to discuss the new technology. His rationale is that the “existential threat” it poses ought to get the two rival powers to lay down their arms and figure out how best to confront it. “We need to cooperate. We need dialogue,” he said.

  Jack provides a brief history of fellow-travelling. Bernie's just the latest.