Pun Salad

Stanley Kubrick would be very proud of #Trump. pic.twitter.com/RaVOOBEEar

— Neil Morrow (@mrneilmorrow) August 25, 2023

The logic seems to be that "Stanley Kubrick used this shot to show that characters were demented, therefore Trump is demented." Amusing, but the logic isn't exactly ironclad.

WRT the headline above, et's see if I'm remembering correctly… yeah, pretty close I think:

Also of note:

• Don't look at me that way, Matt. Matt Vespa has a plaintive question: New Hampshire, Why Are You Doing This?. Where "New Hampshire" is "Some people sending mail to the New Hampshire Secretary of State". And "This" is (quoted from the Boston Globe article):

  A debate among constitutional scholars over former president Donald Trump’s eligibility for the 2024 presidential race has reverberated through the public consciousness in recent weeks and reached the ears of New Hampshire’s top election official.

  Secretary of State David Scanlan, who will oversee the first-in-the-nation presidential primary in just five months, said he’s received several letters lately that urge him to take action based on a legal theory that claims the Constitution empowers him to block Trump from the ballot.

  Scanlan, a Republican, said he’s listening and will seek legal advice to ensure that his team thoroughly understands the arguments at play.

  I have zero expertise in the Constitutional law involved. Seems a stretch, though.

  If violating the presidential oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" is grounds for disqualification from the ballot, Biden would make a pretty good test case (just one example).

• I hate this. I hate Chris Sununu. Therefore… Another bit of less-than-compellng logic on this issue from Steve MacDonald: Is Chris Sununu Pressuring Sec-o-State David Scanlan to Block Trump from NH's Primary Ballot? With the "several letters" the NHSOS says he's received:

  Are those letters subject to RSA 91a, the Granite State’s Right-to-Know Law, because “several letters” sounds to me like from Chris Sununu. Or maybe they are from his “girlfriend in Canada.”

  It would put His Excellency in the same category as Gavin Newsom or Kathy Hochul.

  True fact: back when I worked in the IT department at the University Near Here, an edict came from above: we shall ensure all mail to and from UNH's bank (TD, Toronto Dominion) be encrypted.

  Sure enough. It's just a pretty easy tweak to sendmail configuration files … whoa, look at all that mail being rejected.

  It took a few weeks to straighten this out with my opposite number in Toronto. A very nice young lady that I referred to in our meetings as "my Canadian girlfriend."

  The intersection of people who (a) got the reference and (b) were amused was pretty much the null set as I recall.

• The perfectly Constitutional things he wants to do are pretty bad on their own. Eric Boehm has another good reason to vote against Trump, if you needed one: Trump Floats Tariff Plan That Will Make Everything More Expensive

  Inflation apparently has not been high enough in the few years since former President Donald Trump left office—so he's proposing new import taxes that will raise prices for American families and businesses.

  In an interview last week with Larry Kudlow, the former president floated plans for a new 10 percent tariff on all imports to the United States. Trump described the proposal as putting "a ring around the collar" of the U.S. economy.

  "When companies come in and they dump their products in the United States, they should pay, automatically, let's say a 10 percent tax," Trump said on Fox Business. "I do like the 10 percent for everybody."

  Note (as does Eric): American tariffs are largely borne by Americans.

• This is Joe's brain on… whatever meds Joe is on. Charles C. W. Cooke has been shocking some people by noting that President Biden is an asshole, and getting that unexpurgated word into the sacred pages of National Review. (Apparently, for some people, accurate truth is not a defense.) More recently, he took a look at Biden’s Twisted Idea of Empathy

  For the living, the news of a death brings with it a peculiar mixture of the transcendent and the mundane. There is shock to absorb, anguish to process, and passion to assuage, and then, in the midst of all that, there is the bureaucracy. Within hours, one must turn one’s attention to the dull but necessary questions that all mourners face in such times. Questions such as: “Where can we get hold of the coroner?” “What should we do with the body?” And, “How swiftly can we get Joe Biden here to make this event about himself?”

  I joke, but only in part. Last week, political spectators marveled at the seeming callousness of the president’s repeated insistence that he had “no comment” about the devastating fires in Hawaii, but it turned out that the taciturn approach had been the correct one all along. Eventually, Biden consented to visit Maui and to say a few words about what had happened, and, as everyone ought to have anticipated, it did not go well. Addressing the news that 114 Americans had died thus far, and that 1,000 more were yet to be found, Biden told the families that his wife and daughter had died in a car accident in 1972, and that he, too, grasped what it’s like to “lose a home,” because his house suffered an insignificant kitchen fire back in 2004 and he almost lost his Corvette.

  It's a close call: who can hold their nose harder, Republicans voting for Trump, or Democrats voting for Biden?

• It was only a matter of time. If it's a conflict between Constitutional liberties and "democracy", Jacob Sullum notes that one institution has made a choice: The Washington Post Says Democracy Demands Less Freedom of Speech.

  Donald Trump was back on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, last night for the first time since he got the boot in 2021 following the riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol. Trump posted the mug shot of him that was taken at Atlanta's jail this week when he was booked on the charges laid out in his Georgia indictment, which stem from his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in that state. He included a caption that described the indictment as "ELECTION INTERFERENCE" and urged his followers to "NEVER SURRENDER!"

  After taking over the platform that was then known as Twitter last year, Elon Musk, an avowed "free speech absolutist," reinstated Trump's account. But this is the first time that Trump, who started a competing platform that is still known as Truth Social, has made use of Musk's permission. The Washington Post, in a news story published this morning, portrays Musk's decision and the attitude underlying it as part of a worrisome trend that threatens "democracy" by allowing "political misinformation" to proliferate on social media. The piece nicely illustrates the confusion, obfuscation, and hypocrisy that characterize mainstream press coverage of that subject.

  You would think that even the Washington Post might notice that (1) press freedom and (2) freedom of speech are protected by the very same amendment. If you blow up (2), why would you think (1) is safe?