Pun Salad

Jonathan Turley throws a beanball at Merrick Garland: ‘Shoeless Joe’ Weiss and the fixing of the Hunter Biden game

I guess that would make Garland Charles Comiskey in this analogy? If Comiskey had not suspended Jackson.

Anyway, Turley provides a list of the many ways now-"special counsel" has fixed his "investigation" so far. It's daunting.

Also of note:

• Try to be amused. Like Pun Salad, Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. follows the Elvis Costello path: ‘Special Counsel’ Becomes a 2024 Election Joke

  Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Friday’s announcement in the Hunter Biden case is bizarre in a different way when examined against special counsel logic. Mr. Garland said the Hunter investigation had “reached the stage” where such an appointment was appropriate. But the stage the case had reached, after being slow-walked for years, was the stage where Hunter and his prosecutors were caught trying to wave through a plea deal that would end the investigation even as prosecutors told the public the investigation was “ongoing.”

  The absurdity of Mr. Garland’s announcement making David Weiss now a special counsel was all the greater because of the other “stage” the probe had reached. This would be the stage where IRS collaborators publicly accused Mr. Weiss and his Justice Department overseers of violating normal procedures to go easier on Hunter than they would on any other alleged offender.

  Welp, I guess we'll have to wait for some enterprising journalists to uncover the truth here, like Woodward and Bernstein. Oh, wait…

• Oh, yeah, it's easy to forget but… J.D. Tuccille reminds us that The U.S. Government’s Bad Credit Means Higher Costs for Us All.

  Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen got huffy earlier this month after Fitch Ratings lowered the credit rating of the United States. Insisting that the downgrade is "arbitrary and based on outdated data," she assured the world that "Treasury securities remain the world's preeminent safe and liquid asset, and that the American economy is fundamentally strong."

  Of course, it's Yellen's thankless job to blow sunshine up the asses of the world's financial markets even as the U.S. government ignores constant warnings that its fiscal policies are reckless. But blow though she will, nobody seems to find her especially convincing.

  Fun Fact from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation:

  The growth in interest costs presents a significant challenge in the long-term as well. According to CBO’s projections, interest payments would total around $71 trillion over the next 30 years and would take up 35 percent of all federal revenues by 2053. Interest costs would also become the largest “program” over the next few decades — surpassing defense spending in 2029, Medicare in 2046, and Social Security in 2051.

  Hey, it's not our problem; it's our kids' and grandkids' problem. I'm sure they'll remember us fondly.

• We're wrong about everything… but Arnold Kling thinks especially that We're All Wrong About AI.

  Looking back at the Apple II, in 2018 Michael Halvorson recalled marketing blurbs

  stating that you can use the device to teach your kids arithmetic and make learning fun, manage household finances, chart the stock market, track your recipes and record collection, and control your home.

  I don’t have to spell out the applications for personal computers that have emerged since then.

  Yeah! Like looking at cat videos! Nobody saw that coming!

  But seriously, Arnold outlines some common AI misapprehensions. Dare we hope for the "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" that Neal Stephenson described in The Diamond Age?

• 

  I'm working on mine. Dave Huber of The College Fix reports with a straight face: Major news network offers guide to ‘neopronouns’. (That network would be CNN.)

  Much has been discussed over the last few years regarding people’s “preferred pronouns,” but have you heard about so-called “neopronouns”?

  Early last year, the U.K.’s University of Bristol offered guidance on neopronouns, defined as “third-person pronouns that are not officially recognised in the language they are used in.”

  Examples? Well, sure. From the CNN report:

  Leaf, sun, star — nounself pronouns are neopronouns that use nature and other inspirations as nonbinary or genderless descriptors […] For someone who uses the nounself pronoun “leaf,” that may look like: “I hope leaf knows how proud we are that leaf is getting to know leafself better!” or “Leaf arrived at the coffee shop before me; I was mortified to have been late to meet leaf.”

  Advocates, like Danish linguist Ehm Hjorth Miltersen, note that all is not rosy for leaf:

  Miltersen added that “some critics” of neopronouns say they’re “silly” and “make it harder for transgender and nonbinary people to be taken seriously.”

  Tsk! Those nasty critics!