Pun Salad

Apparently the plan is to bring the Starliner capsule back uncrewed sometime next week.

In this crazy year, I half expect a plot twist, with Suni stowing away in defiance of NASA's risk phobia. Then popping out after recovery saying, "See, it was fine all along! And I really wanted to get home!"

Also of note:

• Just a reality check. And it's from Frank J. Fleming, who points out: Israel Is the Only Legitimate Country in the Middle East.

  So, the Middle East is full of religious dictatorships that have little to no concept of human rights. They have little to no industry, and most would be absolutely dirt poor if it weren’t for oil money.

  But there is one tiny country in the Middle East that is actually prosperous. And — not coincidentally — is a democracy that recognizes human rights. It’s the one glowing bit of the first world in a third-world pit of despair.

  And guess which one is constantly yelled at by the rest of the world — including American “progressives”?

  I recently unsubscribed from Frank's substack; nothing personal, just shifted over to Lileks.

• The UN, in a credibility hole, keeps digging. Bjørn Lomborg looks at its latest spadeful: U.N. Climate-Change Alarms Cast Little Light on Heat.

  The reason you’ve heard a lot about extreme heat deaths this summer has more to do with demagoguery than data. Alongside the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres’s “call to action” on the topic in late July, mandarins across U.N. organizations have issued warnings that are heavy on emotion and light on facts.

  In early August, the World Health Organization trumpeted a disturbing figure: In Europe alone, more than 175,000 people die each year because of extreme heat. That was an about fourfold exaggeration. When called out, the organization quietly edited its online publication to remove the word “extreme” from the statement’s title, a concession that these deaths aren’t, as the WHO suggested, the result of a cataclysmic shift in temperatures.

  Unfortunately, the media had already spread the WHO’s original, mistaken claim far and wide. Moreover, the edited version left out other important context: While seasonal rises in temperature that have been the norm for decades do kill people, it’s a far smaller toll than that taken by cold. In Europe, cold kills nearly four times as many people as heat—a danger that a warming climate helps ameliorate.

  Click through the "gifted" link above to see Lomborg's debunking of other climate alarmist claims.

• What you gonna do when they come for you? George F. Will looks at a new book that causes him to wonder: Have you committed a felony yet? Probably so.

  Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s new book, which slays a cliché, should disturb prudent citizens. His readers will never again say ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it. If prosecutors had the inclination, most Americans could be convicted of felonies.

  In “Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law,” Gorsuch, with his co-author, Janie Nitze, notes that the Roman emperor Caligula posted new laws on columns so high, and written in a hand so small, that people could not read them, and hence lived in dread of committing criminal infractions. Gorsuch is too judicious to say so, but an ideological tendency is primarily responsible for the resemblance between Caligula’s Rome and this Republic. That tendency is progressivism.

  Less than a century ago, Gorsuch notes, a single volume contained all federal statutes. By 2018, they filled 54 volumes — about 60,000 pages. In the past 10 years, Congress has enacted about 2 million to 3 million words of law each year. The average length of a bill is nine times what it was in the 1950s. Agencies publish their proposals and final rules in the Federal Register, which began at 16 pages in 1936, and now expands by an average of more than 70,000 pages annually. By 2021, the Code of Federal Regulations filled about 200 volumes. And in a recent 10-year span, federal agencies churned out approximately 13,000 guidance documents.

  There is a strong whiff of "We've gotta keep our phony baloney jobs" motivation. There's every incentive to legislate and regulate, because that's how they justify their existence.

Recently on the movie blog:

ANother entry in the Action/Comedy/Romance/Dumb Fun genres. Big budget for stars Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, but also a lot for (obviously) the spectacular stunts. And I hope Mr. Gosling's eight stunt doubles were also well-paid. This movie will have you sympathizing with their faceless daring.

Gosling plays Colt Seaver, a one-time great stuntman who suffered a grievous injury acting as a double for spoiled famous action star Tom Ryder. Disillusioned, he now works as a valet. But he gets a call from producer Gail (Hannah Waddington) who demands his presence in Sydney, claiming that his old girlfriend Jody (Ms. Blunt) really needs his services on the latest Tom Ryder flick Metalstorm (Described as "Mad Max meets Star Wars".)

Colt is thrust into a convoluted, inexplicable plot. It turns out that Jody had no idea he was coming. Ryder seems to be missing. A body is found, which promptly disappears. Colt's no Sherlock Holmes, and it's pretty clear he's in over his head.

Fortunately, a combination of friends and foes spell it out for him.

I never watched the old TV show on which this movie is based. But there's a nice treat in the midst of the trailers for those geezers in the audience who did.

The Google News Alert Chimed for the artist Kang Haoxian’s "In Motion" Solo Exhibition. Which includes this interesting work:

What makes this even more interesting: the exhibition is at the WOAW Gallery in Hong Kong! As in China.

For your travel plans, it opens tomorrow, and is scheduled to run until October 14. Or until the authorities decide to shut it down and send Kang Haoxian to one of their Xinjiang internment camps. Good luck to him.

Fun fact: New Hampshire license plates are stamped out at the men's state prison in Concord, a tradition going back to 1932.

Also of note:

• There's nothing wrong with the Fed that Donald Trump wouldn't make worse. Jeff Maurer tells us Why Federal Reserve Independence Matters, With Jokes.

  One thing we know for sure is that the upcoming election will be decided by factors that are unspeakably dumb. That’s because our system is basically garbage data run through the world’s most broken supercomputer, interpreted by a glue-huffing simpleton and recorded by an otter with an abacus that he doesn’t know how to use. We’ll spend the coming months thinking and debating and writing capital-”i” Important columns about The Future Of Our Republic, but then one candidate will make a gaffe — perhaps audibly farting at a Waffle House, or something similar — and the course of history will be charted.

  That’s a shame, because our choice will have a major impact on people’s lives. I’ve written about how I think an important difference between the candidates is that Trump threatens the indepence of the Federal Reserve, while Harris doesn’t. I’m not hearing this talked about much outside of cobweb-strewn corners of Twitter that even I — a fake economist1 — find about as interesting as the Wikipedia page for silt. So, let’s talk about this because it should be talked about, and then we can go back to living our best lives, i.e. watching funny cat videos and masturbating to our coworkers’ Facebook photos.

  Well, I only do one of those things. (I'm retired, so: no coworkers.)

• The Surgeon General threatens my mental health. James Freeman remarks on the unremarkable: Surgeon General Prescribes Much Bigger Government…. After noting the damage done to today's youth by Uncle Stupid's disastrous Covid policies, you'd think a "new sense of humility and restraint" would set in. But:

  After the Covid political panic and resulting shutdowns that were as destructive to children as to the country’s finances, how can anyone not be suspicious of pronouncements from public health officials? Now along comes U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy with a warning about the mental health hazards of parenting—as if misguided government policies and the tax burdens to pay for them aren’t major stressors of parents with young children.

  Yet he seems to think that amping up the dosage with bigger and more numerous government programs offers the best course of treatment. Here’s a partial list of his prescriptions to be paid for by taxpayers:

  … policymakers should bolster support for child care financial assistance programs such as child care subsidies and child income tax credits; universal preschool; early childhood education programs such as Early Head Start and Head Start; programs that help nurture healthy family dynamics such as early childhood home visiting programs funded by the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program; and services and support for family caregivers like Healthy Start Programs and the Lifespan Respite Care Program.

  And there's much more that Murthy recommends, all very expensive. And reflective of an insane algorithm: if the vast amount we're spending on "programs" aren't "solving the problem" then the only possible solution is… spend more money on programs!

• And who could blame them? Tomas J. Philipson eyes an issue that will probably fly under the radar until we're safely past the election: Democrats Cover Up the Costly Failures of the Inflation Reduction Act.

  Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have clearly learned something from the 2020 election: They need to get rid of October surprises. Scandalous news that could make voters think twice about pulling the lever for Democrats — like Hunter Biden’s laptop — must be buried until after the election.

  The Democratic scandal of this cycle isn’t quite as salacious as the younger Biden’s hijinks. But it’s immensely damaging to ordinary Americans, which is why the White House is so keen on hiding it from the public.

  In a quiet move, the administration just launched a plan to transfer tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to the nation’s largest health insurers to cover up a massive Medicare policy failure.

  It's pretty sleazy, and obviously designed with the election in mind.

• A welcome re-evaluation. Robert Graboyes povides a public service for those who don't think bigger is necessarily better: The Super-Definitive Ranking of Presidents. He drops them into five buckets (plus a "died too soon" bin for William Henry Harrison, Taylor, and Garfield). Let's look at one of the stinkers:

  WILSON: worst racist in presidential history; reversed racial progress rather than tolerating status quo; Treaty of Versailles stoked rise of Nazis and WWII; imprisoned political opponents (e.g., Eugene V. Debs); despised constitutional limitations; scorned civil liberties (e.g., Red Scare raids); incapable of accommodation with Senate Republicans in foreign policy; saw his own election as divinely decreed; debilitating stroke was hidden for over a year, with Wilson’s wife effectively running the country; only Ph.D. president, which helps explains why he was such an asshole.

  Indeed.

Jeff Maurer finds his worldview disintegrating: It’s Hard to Accept That Robin DiAngelo Might Not Be the Intellectual Giant We All Thought She Was.

Short answer: yup.

Also of note:

• But you should keep it handy in case you need it later. Where was Kat Rosenfield when I could have used this advice? What School Didn’t Teach Us: You Need to Lose Control.

  There’s a scene I love, toward the end of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, after the adventure is over and ordinary life has begun anew: Our heroes, Frodo and Sam and Pippin and Merry, are drinking at the local pub, when Sam spots a girl across the room who he’s admired from afar all his life. Something flickers across his face, equal parts desire and determination; this is his moment, his destiny.

  But before Sam makes his move, he does one more thing: He throws back his pint.

  This moment is good because so many of us recognize it. Many of our best and bravest moments start with a shot or two of liquid courage. And yet, contemporary narratives about young people and drinking are all markedly and overwhelmingly negative. Optimizers warn that alcohol is an addictive poison, activists cite the link between drinking and sexual assault, and young celebrities who might have once made headlines for partying can instead be found touting the benefits of sobriety.

  Kat is pretty convincing that the overly-sober youngs need to lighten up a bit. Or a lot.

• Hitting the target. The College Fix reports on my alma mater: Caltech boasts ‘diversity’ efforts result in 50 percent female class.

  The California Institute of Technology’s incoming class is 50 percent female for the first time in history, sparking concern from one legal expert about a focus on gender parity initiatives rather than merit.

  A profile of the undergraduate class of 2028 highlights the students’ “gender diversity,” showing 50 percent of the students are male and 50 percent are female. The profile also breaks down the class by students’ race, financial aid awards, and home state or country.

  There's speculation in the article that the ladies are being admitted under looser criteria than are the dudes. Maybe, maybe not. Later, the article links to a graduation analysis, and the graduation rates for guys and gals are pretty similar.

  The racial "balance" on the profile page linked above doesn't have a lot of evidence that Caltech is doing the quota thing. 41% of the incoming class are Asian! Another 17% are "nonresident alien"; it's a safe bet that a chunk of them are Asian too.

  I think my class (1973) had 4 women. And they were all great.

• Will censoring the Internet protect kids? Senator Rand Paul answers that burning question: Censoring the Internet Won’t Protect Kids.

  If good intentions created good laws, there would be no need for congressional debate.

  I have no doubt the authors of this bill genuinely want to protect children, but the bill they've written promises to be a Pandora's box of unintended consequences.

  The Kids Online Safety Act, known as KOSA, would impose an unprecedented duty of care on internet platforms to mitigate certain harms associated with mental health, such as anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.

  While proponents of the bill claim that the bill is not designed to regulate content, imposing a duty of care on internet platforms associated with mental health can only lead to one outcome: the stifling of First Amendment–protected speech.

  KOSA is currently stalled in the House, after passing in the Senate. But it was a squeaker! 91-3!

• Throw out your Boars Head. I probably would have heard about this if I still watched TV news: Massive nationwide meat-linked outbreak kills 5 more, now largest since 2011.

  Five more people have died in a nationwide outbreak of Listeria infections linked to contaminated Boar's Head brand meats, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday.

  To date, 57 people across 18 states have been sickened, all of whom required hospitalization. A total of eight have died. The latest tally makes this the largest listeriosis outbreak in the US since 2011, when cantaloupe processed in an unsanitary facility led to 147 Listeria infections in 28 states, causing 33 deaths, the CDC notes.

  Well, that's scary. Something the Federal Government was supposed to protect us from. But now seems relegated to updating the body count.

Recently on the movie blog:

I might not have watched this movie on Netflix if not for the review from Armond White in National Review. He hates everything! And is this damning with faint praise?: "It’s a crock, but it’s the closest a Millennial film has come to recognizing the existence of the working class."

I liked it OK. And if you're wondering what Mark Wahlberg, Halle Barry, and J. K. Simmons are up to these days… it's well, this. (Also: Dana Delaney, Jackie Earle Haley, Lorraine Bracco.)

Mark Wahlberg plays Mike, a construction worker who's schtupping his old high school English teacher (Ms. Delaney). Out of nowhere comes Roxanne (Ms. Berry), Mike's old high school flame. Who promptly tranquilizes him and swoops him off to London. (You don't expect that sort of behavior from a girl you haven't seen in decades.)

It turns out that Roxanne works for "The Union", a spy organization even more secretive than the CIA. And she's fresh off a disastrous mission where a bunch of her fellow spies were killed, so she's looking for (literal, I guess) new blood. What follows is pretty standard fare, but I stayed awake and interested, which is a good sign.

And there's an obvious setup for at least one sequel. I'm in.

Remember how I try to adhere to the Costello Doctrine? "Don't get disgusted, try to be amused"?

That's not working for me today, because of…

Even if aspiring homeowners save for years, it is often still not enough.

My administration will provide first-time homebuyers with $25,000 to help with the down payment on a new home.

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) August 27, 2024

You can probably guess at the irritant, but I'll spell it out anyway: What Kamala says:

My administration will provide…

What she really means is more than slightly different:

My administration will force taxpayers to provide…

I know, it's not as if I was going to vote for her anyway. Still the obvious dishonesty grates; she can't even buy votes without lying.

Also of note:

• Can we impeach them both? James Freeman wrote this before the CNN interview with Kamala and Tim was announced, but it makes the DNC's paeans to "freedom" ring a little hollow. Biden-Harris Administration: No Remorse for Free-Speech Abuses.

  … [Dana Bash] should demand to know why the Biden-Harris administration still won’t repudiate its abuse of First Amendment rights. The government’s refusal to admit fault for pressuring social-media companies to silence dissenting voices virtually guarantees that such abuses will happen again if she’s elected president.

  Americans who treasure their rights to free speech desperately need independent and courageous journalists. We’re also going to need lawmakers to codify punishments for government officials who trample on our First Amendment liberties. It would also be nice to find someone with the resources and smarts to mount a new court challenge against the Biden-Harris administration. This column nominates a man whose company was on the receiving end of outrageous government coercion and knows the territory as well as anyone.

  And that man is … (tada!) Mark Zuckerberg, who recently admitted/revealed that Meta/Facebook was bullied into censorshsip by the Biden/Harris administration.

  Nina Jankowicz's American Sunlight Project seems to have nothing to say about this. Perhaps they read Zuckerberg's revelations and … stuck them where the sun don't shine.

  (Sorry for recycling that joke. I am inordinately fond of it.)

• A question I've asked myself a lot over my lifetime. But in Kevin D. Williamson's case, "she" refers to Kamala: What If She Meant It? KDW is (very rightly) skeptical about Kamala's newfound moderation and devotion to "freedom". But…

  But first, a few concessions. As my friend David French points out, there is at least one important policy priority with regard to which Kamala Harris clearly offers conservatives an approach preferable to that of Donald Trump: U.S. policy vis-à-vis U.S. interests in Ukraine, whose people are valiantly fighting off an invasion undertaken by a tyrant whose junta is entirely hostile to U.S. interests and who is in bed with every important U.S. enemy and adversary from Tehran to Beijing. Donald Trump is essentially pro-Moscow in his stance; Deputy Troll J.D. Vance is as close to explicitly pro-Moscow in his stance as it is permissible to be and still hope to have a political future after the crash and burn that his ticket seems to be headed toward. (Seems, as of this writing. I don’t do predictions.)

  There are a few other areas in which Harris is clearly the preferable candidate from a conservative point of view. Trump’s “instinct” to put the Federal Reserve under his personal control (a position he half-articulated and then abandoned, as is his habit)—on the justification that “I made a lot of money, I was very successful, and I think I have a better instinct than, in many cases, people that would be on the Federal Reserve, or the chairman”—is precisely the sort of thing that your thinking-type person does not want to hear from the serial bankrupt gameshow host and quondam pornographer who is so bad with money that he somehow lost his ass owning casinos. Harris’ affirmation of support for the Fed’s independence, even if pro forma, is by far the better position. And while they still generally prefer butter to guns and remain at least partly captive to the union goons who wield such disproportionate power in their party, the Democrats today are marginally more friendly to trade than are the Republicans, much better-disposed toward critical organizations such as NATO, and much more inclined toward engagement in multinational institutions with our most important allies, including the European Union. If we must talk about “vibes,” Harris still is giving more Olaf Scholz than Angela Merkel, more Olof Palme than Carl Bildt, more Ed Miliband than Tony Blair, etc., but the apparent rhetorical shift in her team and her party is remarkable.

  That's a long excerpt, but I did want to get in that "quondam pornographer" bit.

• Heretics from the Woke Religion need not apply. Joy Pullman at the Federalist notes the veep nominee's devotion to "freedom" doesn't include guess what? Under Tim Walz, Minnesota Banned Christian Teachers.

  Effective July 2025, teacher licensing rules passed last year in Minnesota under Democrat Gov. Tim Walz will ban practicing Christians, Jews, and Muslims from teaching in public schools. Walz is now the presidential running mate of current U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. His resume includes a stint as a high school social studies teacher who sponsored a student queer sex club in 1999.

  Starting next July, Minnesota agencies controlled by Walz appointees will require teacher license applicants to affirm transgenderism and race Marxism. Without a teaching license, individuals cannot work in Minnesota public schools, nor in the private schools that require such licenses.

  Can't have the kiddos learning wrongthink in Minnesota!

• Everything you know is wrong, episode 987. Ron Bailey says the science is settled, but I don't think this will make the people who like to say "the science is settled" will like it: Plastics Are Better for the Climate Than Aluminum and Glass.

  "Plastics are the new coal," declares Beyond Plastics. "Pollution from the plastics industry is a major force behind the heating of the planet," reports The Hill. The Natural Resources Defense Council says "reducing plastic production is critical to combatting climate change."

  Producing plastics from fossil fuels emits a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which contributes to warming the planet. An April study by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates that in 2019 "global production of primary plastics generated about 2.24 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent," which represents 5.3 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions. So switching to plastic alternatives would help slow man-made global warming, right?

  Not so fast, says a new study in Environmental Science & Technology, which finds that "replacing plastics with alternatives is worse for greenhouse gas emissions in most cases." The European researchers report that in "15 of the 16 applications a plastic product incurs fewer greenhouse gas emissions than their alternatives."

  Well, I'm glad that no counterproductive regulations were issued based on faulty data… oh, wait a minute.

Recently on the movie blog:

John Woo directing a remake of The Killer ? Free-to-me on Peacock? I'm there! But…

It's set in Paris, and the titular killer is "Zee", played by Nathalie Emmanuel, who does not resemble Chow Yun Fat in the slightest. She is a assassin, working for a French gang leader. Her initial mission is to infiltrate an exclusive dance club, and pretty much kill everyone. But she spares a beautiful singer, who's just blinded in the resulting carnage.

We also meet her ostensible opponent, Sey (played by Omar Sy). He's a cop who doesn't play by the rules, whose gunplay saves lives, but is disapproved by his superiors at headquarters…

Well, you've probably already guessed one trope involved: Contract on the Hitman. There are a number of others, which I won't spoil, or bother to look up.

It is pretty standard R-rated action movie stuff, with some John Woo trademark items. But people looking for some good old over-the-top creatively choreographed ultraviolence as Woo exhibited in his earlier movies will probably be disappointed. (YouTube clips from the old movies are available; there's no comparison.)

I was impressed by David Director Friedman's recent essay, Trump as Fargroup, because he managed to specify just about exactly my feelings about the presidential candidates and the campaign:

Me too, David.

Also of note:

• Also hitting uncomfortably close to home. The early AM contributor to Instapundit, Sarah Hoyt, is a little too red-meat for my taste, but she pointed to this post from the blog Professor Ornery Dragon, which makes a useful distinction between Arguing vs. Venting Emotions.

  Screaming your emotions at somebody is NOT arguing. How many times have you found yourself in an argument or discussion and realized that either the other person, or you, are arguing/commenting from a place of fact-free, analysis-free, and logic-free emotion? I know I’ve done it, and I catch myself doing it still (less often, but it creeps in there). You’d think I’d know better by now, but emotions can overtake before you really realize what’s going on. Emotions are also the strings activists and politicians pull or pluck to get you to fall in line with their side of the issue.

  A straight-forward example can be found in those ads the ASPCA used to run showing big-eyed puppies with mange or in a cage, or anything like that, with a caption asking you to donate to save the puppies. Or those ads with kids in third world countries with no shoes, please donate so this poor child can have shoes (my response was always “you’re standing right next to that child! Buy him/her some fucking shoes!”) Those are emotion-based “arguments” for why you should donate money and support a particular cause. The unstated implication of those ads is if you don’t donate, YOU are responsible for the death of this puppy or the sores on this child’s feet, you heartless cretin.

  I get it. This is why I try to live by the Costello Algorithm: "Don't be disgusted, try to be amused".

  But the thing is: I probably wouldn't notice if I were just venting. And I'd probably trot out some self-serving excuse for it.

  So, anyway, apologies in advance. And also apologies in retreat. Drop me a line if you think I've strayed.

• It's erotic! No, wait, she said "exotic". Megan McArdle says Harris has an exotic plan to tax the rich. But it’s not enough. And that plan is a hefty (25%) tax on unrealized capital gains for filers judged to have a high net worth.

  The good news is that Harris understands she needs to raise more revenue. Our national debt now stands at 99 percent of gross domestic product, and this year’s budget deficit is projected to be 7 percent of GDP, almost $2 trillion. Those numbers are of course projected to rise as more baby boomers retire and start tapping Social Security and Medicare. So unless politicians find some spending they’re willing to cut (other than the 0.3 percent of GDP we spent on foreign aid last year), we’re going to need to hike taxes on the rich significantly to put our national books in some sort of order. And the rich can spare the money more easily than the middle class.

  The bad news is that Harris, like Biden, has pledged not to raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year. That is simply not enough to fund our existing commitments and an expansive Democratic agenda.

  Megan makes the green-eyeshade "not enough" commentary. But also points out the nightmarish features:

  The cascading strictures introduced by the pledge are perhaps why Democrats are being forced into desperation moves such as taxing unrealized capital gains. These taxes have a lot of problems: They distort investment decisions, as wealth shifts toward hard-to-value assets such as art and privately held companies; they could impede capital formation; and they are an administrative nightmare for an IRS that doesn’t currently have the expertise to figure out exactly how much your mansion appreciated last year. Worst of all, these taxes don’t even raise that much money: $500 billion over 10 years, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. Moreover, some of that simply reflects tax payments shifted forward, rather than a long-term revenue increase, since taxing gains now lessens the taxes paid when the assets are sold.

  MM also notes that the European countries that tried something like this mostly gave up. It is mainly a sop to the folks in perpetual fury about the "rich".

• Another bad idea. Eric Boehm also does the green-eyeshade thing, and notes: Kamala Harris' Plan to Hike Corporate Income Taxes Would Fall on All Americans.

  In her acceptance speech at last week's Democratic National Convention, Vice President Kamala Harris promised to deliver "a middle-class tax cut that will benefit more than 100 million Americans."

  Her campaign has yet to flesh out the details of that idea, but what little is known about Harris' tax proposals suggests that middle-class families will face a tax hike in a Harris administration—albeit an indirect one.

  Nearly all Americans would face a higher federal tax burden if Harris followed through on President Joe Biden's proposal to raise the corporate income tax to 28 percent from 21 percent. The New York Times reported this weekend that Harris' campaign has signaled that she supports Biden's plan for $5 trillion in tax hikes—including an $1.3 trillion increase of the corporate income tax.

  The tax is indirect, reflected in increased prices. Which the Harris Administration will undoubtedly blame on "greed".

  It is greed. It's Kamala's greed.

Recently on the book blog:

Mary Roach is a journalist who takes her own (as near as I can tell) unique angle on science and technical subjects: concentrating on the gross, disgusting, horrible, edgy, pretty close to dirty, details.

Reader, if you're sensitive to such things, she's also put out Packing for Mars for Kids. Amazon says it's OK for ages 8-12. And also much shorter, 144 pages.

Mary—and I call her Mary, because if she's gonna talk dirty to me, I'm gonna use her first name—doesn't really do a lot of Mars-specific stuff here, despite the title. She interviews a handful of actual astronauts, but she's also interested in the army of mostly-unsung scientists, engineers, and medical personnel involved in getting the astronauts up, keeping them alive in a strange, often hostile, environment, and bringing them back safely. There's a lot of history, going back to the V-2 flights. (Didja know: "In May 1947, a V-2 launched from White Sands Proving Ground headed south instead of north, missing downtown Juarez, Mexico, by 3 miles.")

Weightlessness has always been an issue, with a lot of uncertainty about its short-term and long-term effects, and continuing health issues. (Not to mention vomiting.) Mary gets to take a ride on the "Vomit Comet", and reports on the pluses and minuses.

What are the psychological issues about being cooped up in a relatively small space with your co-workers? Experiments in this area are not without amusement, although usually not to the experimental subjects.

There's a lot of information about space pooping and peeing, and what happens when such things, um, get out of control. Urine collection involves a condom-like, um, attachment. But: "No one is excluded from the astronaut corps based on penis size." (Did that factoid get included in the "for kids" edition?)

And, at the (literal) other end, space nutrition. And booze? Beer is a no-no, or anything with bubbles for that matter; bubbles don't work well in zero-g. They tried cream sherry, and the reviews were poor.

And there's a chapter about sex in space. With a diverting aside about how dolphins, um, do it in their buoyant environment. And I learned something about guy dolphins that involves the word "prehensile".

Mary keeps things light, with only one exception. In her research about how astronauts might "bail out" of a damaged spacecraft, naturally the Columbia disaster is discussed. And as Mary interviews one of the researchers involved, she realizes he's the widower of one of those astronauts. That's a very somber note.

I've read a number of space books over the past few years, and this is a very valuable entry, simply due to Mary's down-to-earth honesty and relentless curiousity.

Superficial me, I was unimpressed with the lackluster cover art. Which is maybe why I waited so long to read this 2017 novel by Derek B. Miller. Ah, but what's between the covers is just fantastic.

The opening scene is 1991 Iraq. Saddam has been driven out of Kuwait, but remains in power. And is ruthlessly hanging onto power by sending out troops to ruthlessly suppress any possible Shiite sources of opposition. And murder their wives and children, just to be sure.

American policy is to not get involved (further), so Arwood Hobbes, US Army machine gunner has little to do at Checkpoint Zulu, 240 kilometers inside Iraq, just outside the town of Samawah. Which has had the temerity to overthrow their Sunni government. Arwood meets British newspaper journalist Thomas Benton, and (sort of) goads him into entering Samawah to report on the locals. Unfortunately, hell picks that time to be unleashed. Benton and Hobbes attempt to save a girl (wearing green) from the carnage, but tragically fail.

And then, twenty-two years later, Hobbes notices the girl in green again. In Syria. Under mortar attack. He contacts Benton and they inject themselves into that carnage, and things threaten to unfold tragically once more.

There's a lot going on here, and I've only skimmed the surface. Miller has a vast and detailed knowledge of the various forces and ethnicities in the Middle East, and also knows how NGOs and the UN play their roles.

Miller's also an expert at mixing horrible violence and offbeat humor. Sometimes on the same page. Seems like a difficult thing to bring off, but it worked for me.

This (sigh) means I've read all Miller's novels. Hope another one will drop soon.

It didn't take long for the rest of the family to denounce RFKJr:

I am sharing a personal statement that my family and I have made in response to my brother’s announcement. pic.twitter.com/j7vTTabNYZ

— Kerry Kennedy (@KerryKennedyRFK) August 23, 2024

I only briefly wondered what made this statement "personal". Being posted on Twitter for the Whole Wide World to see and all.

But (in any case) it didn't take long for John Podhoretz to make the obvious response:

Of all the repellent Kennedy spectacles of the past 60 years, today's spectacle of Kennedys disavowing other Kennedys for not being good Kennedys is really the kind of false aristocratic creepiness that makes me want to, you know, drive off a bridge.

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) August 24, 2024

If you're a Kennedy, leaving a girl to drown in the car you just drunk-drove off a bridge is forgiveable. Endorsing a Republican isn't.

At National Review, Jack Butler says it: The Kennedy Legend Deserves to Fade Away.

I bet many readers will be able to guess where that last link will take you.

(And, sorry, I ran out of NR gift links for August. Subscribe, peon.)

Jeff Jacoby makes a related point about pols: If you're crushing on a political candidate, you're doing democracy wrong.

And, don't worry, he gets to JFK later in the article. He doesn't get around to mentioning how the "giddy rapture" gets magically extended to envelop the family of the revered pols. That's really doing democracy wrong.

Also of note:

• What did you expect? At the WSJ, Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. urges us to Follow the Science: Biden Climate Policy Is a Fraud.

  Even Democrats don’t want to hear about climate change. The words were barely mentioned at the convention, and every transcript I examined omitted the once obligatory Biden modifier “existential.”

  The reason isn’t a mystery. Joe Biden’s policies are having not the slightest effect on climate change and yet somebody will still have to pay Ford’s $130,000 in losses per electric vehicle in the first quarter. This sum, a calculation shows, is equal to $64.80 per gallon of gasoline saved over four years of average driving. And yes, this amounts to a ludicrously costly subsidy to somebody else to use the gasoline that EV drivers are paid to forgo.

  Voilà, the flaw in the Biden strategy from the get-go, which completely defeats the goal of reducing emissions.

  Regular readers may feel vindicated by a new study this week in the prestigious journal Science. It examines 1,500 “climate” policies adopted around the world and finds only 63—or 4%—produced any emissions reductions. Even so, press accounts strained to muddy the study’s simple lesson so let’s spell it out: Taxing carbon reduces emissions. Subsidizing “green energy” doesn’t.

  It sounds like a real-world example of the Jevons Paradox.

  I guess this means increasing nuclear energy production, a policy I've mentioned favorably in the past, might have the same null effect on carbon emissions. (Might be desirable for other reasons, though.)

• Diogenes shouldn't bother looking here. He won't find much honesty in the presidential campaign. Jacob Sullum finds that Trump's New Take on Crime Still Does Not Show Skyrocketing Homicides.

  Last week, the Trump campaign falsely asserted that "homicides are skyrocketing in American cities under Kamala Harris." On Tuesday, the campaign offered a more nuanced and sophisticated critique of crime data cited by the Democratic presidential nominee. But it still does not support the earlier claim, which is inconsistent with numbers from several sources.

  A "memorandum" headlined "Joe Biden's Lies on Crime" (a title that makes you wonder whether Trump forgot who his opponent is) notes that the FBI changed its crime data collection methods in 2021, switching from the old Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program to the new National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The transition, which was aimed at generating "new and better data," resulted in a big decline in the number of participating law enforcement agencies. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the share of the population covered by participating agencies fell from the previous norm of about 95 percent to just 65 percent in 2021.

  If Trump wants to scare voters, he should publicize Uncle Stupid's fiscal insanity… Oh, but wait: (1) He was heavily involved in causing it; (2) he has no credible plan to fix it.

George Will notes plenty of voodoo doodoo: Abracadabra! It’s the dueling Harris and Trump economic magic acts..

But on to the other guy:

Like Mercutio, GFW wishes a plague on both their houses. The only silver lining: one of them will lose.

Our weekly table follows. Although pundits were impressed with the DNC, the bettors cooled a bit on Kamala over the past week:

Also of note:

• Apologies will be accepted, if you include a check. Noah Rothman observes that According to the Press, America Has Already Let Kamala Harris Down.

  According to two recent analyses in some of the country’s biggest media outlets, it’s we who are to blame for the fact that Harris’s far-left policy proposals have landed with a thud.

  A New York Times “news analysis” via reporter Jim Tankersley, both Harris’s “foes and allies may have the wrong idea” about her plan to set price caps on basic commodities — a proposal to fix prices that definitely does not constitute “price controls.”

  As Tankersley notes, “people familiar with Ms. Harris’s thinking” believe her “price-gouging ban” is neither a “price-gouging ban” nor a “Soviet-style” intervention in the private economy. It is whatever you want it to be, as long as you want it to be good because the Harris “campaign has created space for multiple interpretations.” What we can be sure of is that Harris’s plan would definitely not create scarcity by disincentivizing firms to meet demand where it exists in response to market signals — e.g., prices. Why? Mostly because voters wouldn’t like that.

  Similarly, Noah Smith is impressed that Kamala has "clarified" her position.

  Except he gets this "clarification" not from Kamala, but from an article in the Atlantic by Jerusalem Demsas.

  And Demsas didn't get the "clarification" from Kamala either, but from an (apparently) anonymous "enior campaign official".

  Anyway, Smith is relieved that, based on this third-hand information, Kamala "can be relied upon to listen to the relevant experts and avoid taking extreme and dangerous policy steps."

• Somewhat less gullible is Jacob Sullum at Reason: Kamala Harris' 'Price Gouging' Ban: A New Idea That Has Failed for Millenia.

  Harris, of course, says she would target only unjustified price increases, the kind that amount to "illegal price gouging" by "opportunistic companies." But as she emphasizes, there currently is no such thing under federal law, and any attempt to define it would be plagued by subjectivity and a lack of relevant knowledge.

  The fact that Harris pins the sharp grocery price inflation of recent years on corporate greed suggests that her judgment about such matters cannot be trusted. Economists generally rate other factors—including the war in Ukraine as well as pandemic-related supply disruptions, shifts in consumer demand, and stimulus spending—as much more important.

  High profits, in any event, are another important signal that encourages investment and competition. By forbidding "excessive profits," Harris' proposed price policing would undermine the motivation they provide.

  Perhaps she imagines that she can look into the hearts of CEOs and reliably detect illegal levels of "greed".

• But do Kamala's proposed price controls lead to socialism? If you've been wondering about that, David Harsanyi has an answer for you, Bunkie: Yes, Kamala's Price Controls Lead To Socialism.

  Kamala Harris certainly isn’t the first politician to suggest controlling politically inconvenient prices, but history has conclusively proven that price caps cause shortages, hoarding, black markets, and an array of other unpleasant outcomes.

  If you’re going to rationalize this policy by blaming the kulaks of “price gouging” and peddling the age-old notion that cabals of bad guys in competitive markets can get together and dictate prices, it’s going to raise alarm bells.

  There isn’t a scintilla of evidence that “price gouging” — a conveniently elastic term, to begin with — exists. Big Grocery is one of the least lucrative big businesses in America with a profit margin consistently under 2 percent — in fact, this year it was 1.18, a figure that lands on the lower end of the historical profit spectrum. While there’s nothing wrong with making a healthy profit, consistent margins tell us that price spikes are propelled by inflation, not some insidious plot.

  I have no idea how all this will play out politically.

  I am (however) impressed with how Kamala's penchant for loopy inappropriate cackling is being rebranded as "joy". A perhaps unfair tweet:

  Media is promoting Kamala Harris with two keywords "Strength" and "Joy" .
  Do you know who last time used the phrase "Strength Through Joy" ? pic.twitter.com/j2EYwQqJ6f

  — The Report (@TheReportX) August 18, 2024

• Attention must be paid. Thomas Sowell has advice: Republicans Better Get on the Ball.

  If the Republicans lose this year’s election—against an administration whose policies have been rejected by the public in poll after poll—they will deserve to lose.

  But do 330 million Americans deserve to see their lives ruined by another four years of the Democrats’ economic disasters and unchecked violence by both domestic and imported criminals?

  Does America deserve more tragic military fiascoes like that in Afghanistan? Or like allowing a spy balloon from China to photograph our military installations from coast to coast, before finally being shot down, after it was too late?

  And these are the people who are telling Israel how to fight a war.

  Sowell notes that it's getting pretty late in the game for Republicans to come up with an effective message.

• Equally pessimistic is… John Hinderaker at Power Line: Democrats’ Strategy Is Bizarre, But It May Work.

  That, really, is Harris’s campaign: she is the not-Donald-Trump. Complaints that her current persona is inauthentic, and she has no platform, miss the point. She is perfectly authentic as not-Donald-Trump, and that negation is her platform. Anything beyond that is window dressing.

  This approach wouldn’t normally work, of course. If the Republicans had nominated anyone except Trump, Harris’s record, her political views and her platform would be front and center. Against anyone but Trump Harris would be a pitifully weak candidate. She couldn’t run as not-Nikki-Haley, not-Ron-DeSantis, or whoever. It is only the Republicans’ nomination of Donald Trump that makes the Democrats’ strategy possible.

  Will the Democrats’ unprecedented strategy work? It may. A year and a half ago, when most anticipated a Biden-Trump rematch, I predicted that neither Biden nor Trump would be on the 2024 ballot. I said that the Democrats would be crazy to nominate Biden, and the Republicans would be crazy to nominate Trump. I was half right: the Democrats were smart enough to switch out Joe Biden. But the Republicans couldn’t resist going with Trump for the third time in a row.

  Nikki Haley would have… nah, I won't repeat myself.

Recently on the movie blog:

Don't want to make a big deal about this, but I was in the mood for some semi-violent mindless fun, and this popped up on Amazon Prime. And I've always enjoyed Awkwafina's movies. So…

Set in the near future, California has taken a desperate step to deal with the fiscal crisis they so richly deserve. Their "Grand Lottery" has a twist: if you murder the lottery winner, you get the jackpot. Guns are disallowed, but otherwise thumbs up. Bolt guns to the forehead seem to be the method of choice, but edged weaponry is also populaar.

Awkwafina plays Katie, who accidentally wins. And near-immediately, and cluelessly, finds herself in deep doo-doo. Literally hundreds of people are looking to do her in. Onto the scene pops Noel (John Cena), who offers her protection. But can she trust him?

Also showing up (eventually) is Simu Liu, who was great in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Uh, playing Shang-Chi. (It appears he also played a Ken in Barbie, which I have yet to see.) (And, oh, it appears that John Cena also played a Ken in Barbie.) (And Awkwafina was also in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.)

MPAA: "Rated R for pervasive language, violence, and sexual references". Also some smoking.

The WSJ editorialists note the dog that won't hunt: The Electric Vehicle Transition That Isn’t.

For the record, today's Getty Eye Candy is last year's news: A truckload of Tesla Model Ys caught fire in Turkey. (That article reassures: "Electric vehicles don’t catch on fire at a rate higher than gasoline-powered vehicles, but they do catch on fire for different reasons.")

Also of note:

• Join us at the picnic! You can eat your fill of all the food you bring yourself! Honest, I think I rewatched The Music Man last week instead of the Democrat's convention. But at City Journal, Fred Bauer describes how I could have gotten mixed up: The Music Man Convention.

  Watching the Democratic Convention, I was reminded not so much of Chicago 1968—a replay of which some feared—as River City 1912. In Meredith Willson’s The Music Man, the traveling salesman Harold Hill comes to the fictitious Iowa town to sell music instruments for a boys’ band that he has no intention of forming. He has to save them from the moral danger of the pool table, after all: “Trouble, with a capital ‘T’ and that rhymes with ‘P’ and that stands for “Pool.” The Music Man celebrates these twin American loves of small-town life and customer service. Hill is a master of delay and promising substance that is—don’t worry—just around the corner.

  This DNC could be seen as the Music Man convention. When the former players of his championship-winning high-school football team came out in their jerseys to introduce Walz, I almost expected to hear “Seventy-Six Trombones” play. Instead of the pool table, the great threat to America was Donald Trump: we’re not going back, with a capital “B” and that rhymes with “T” and that stands for “Trump.” Harris has avoided on-the-record interactions with the media, and even her policies get adjudicated mostly through spokesmen. As Nevada senator and Harris ally Catherine Cortez Masto told RealClearPolitics, “we need to continue to ensure that we are flexible when it comes to solving the problems of this country.” The Harris campaign has so far angled to keep her policy program in the same place as Harold Hill’s music lessons: the imagination.

  (This article's headline from Iowa Stubborn. A very strained metaphor, but your money back if unsatisfied.)

• I used to save campaign allegations of phoniness until Sunday. But they come too thick, fast, and obvious this year. Rich Lowry accuses: Democrats Mislead on Rhetoric of Freedom, Offer Fake Libertarianism.

  

  To listen to the speeches from the podium at the Democratic National Convention, you’d think Democrats were handing out Friedrich Hayek’s libertarian classic, The Road to Serfdom, on the floor.

  In recent weeks, Democrats have made a hard pivot to adopt the rhetoric of freedom, and the tack was particularly pronounced in Chicago.

  The anthem of the convention was the Beyoncé song “Freedom,” and the Harris campaign unveiled a new ad, “We Believe in Freedom.”

  [Examples elided]

  There are a couple of things to say about this rhetorical maneuver — one is that it might work in sheer political terms by associating Democrats with a deeply held traditional American value; the other is that it is utterly cynical and runs completely counter to the progressive mode of governance.

  It’s as if the pioneering English socialists Beatrice and Sidney Webb made their slogan, “Live free or die.” Or if the 20th-century socialist intellectual Michael Harrington began to insist he was a fan of the work of Milton Friedman. Or if Bernie Sanders displayed the revolutionary-era Appeal to Heaven flag once favored by Tea Party activists.

  Borrowing an old Republican chestnut, Oprah Winfrey said, “Freedom isn’t free.”

  I, for one, an not hoodwinked. And I will never miss a chance to link to Hayek's The Road to Serfdom at Amazon.

  One could ask Kamala (with respect to the first item above): "Will you give American consumers the freedom to buy the cars they want, and give manufacturers the freedom to make them?"

• Who's on first? Kevin D. Williamson thinks we should be Getting Past ‘First’. But first (heh):

  My favorite thing about Kamala Harris—and the list is not very long—is that she never held that silliest and most un-republican of all titles in American public life: first lady.

  Harris seems likely, at the moment, to become our first female president. We might have done worse—and almost did. 

  [Clinton stuff elided. Wonderful as it is.]

  Harris, as she will tell you—and tell you, and tell you—checks some other boxes. She wouldn’t be the first black president (she would be the second black president with no ancestral connection to the larger African American community composed of the descendants of slaves, which will be of interest to somebody somewhere, I am sure) but she would be the first president of Indian background and of Caribbean background. So she’d be putting points on the board for two increasingly important minority constituencies simultaneously. (Colin Powell, our first black secretary of state and the man who might have been our first black president, if he had desired to be, also was of Jamaican ancestry, a child of immigrants raised in the South Bronx.) This state of affairs seems to have confused Trump, possibly because he is a rage-addled ignoramus, but if you’re looking for a political class that—pardon the odious expression—“looks like America,” Kamala Harris and Tim Walz together cover a lot of ground. 

  But I wonder: Are her indelible characteristics still all that interesting? Kamala Harris does not seem to me a very interesting sort of person in general, but, if I were making a list of interesting things about her, her sex and her ethnic background—and the fact that she was the first person with such characteristics to hold certain offices—still wouldn’t be very high on the list. (Top of the list? Her pissy authoritarianism.)

  That last link goes to a near-forgotten pro-freedom 6-3 SCOTUS ruling. One that didn't go the way Kamala wanted.

• Beware the seed oils! You may have heard that RFKJr dropped his candidacy and endorsed Trump. But Christian Britschgi looks at the story under that headline: At Rally, RFK Jr. Says He'll Stop Forever Wars, Seed Oils From Trump's Cabinet. The very first sentence provides indications that he's delusional:

  "In an honest system, I believe I would have won the election," Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at a press conference in Phoenix today, where he announced he would be suspending his campaign in 10 battleground states. He urged his supporters in those states to vote instead for former President Donald Trump.

  Kennedy blamed media and government censorship for suppressing his campaign message and attacked the Democratic Party's legal efforts to keep him off the ballot.

  While the two men still had major disagreements, Kennedy said that Trump would be the superior candidate on his three major, "existential" issues of "free speech, the war in Ukraine, and the war on our children."

  In a long, wide-ranging speech, Kennedy reiterated many of the heterodox concerns that had motivated his campaign, including that processed foods, seed oils, and pharmaceuticals were causing an explosion of chronic disease in children, that the U.S. was "addicted" to forever wars, and that the government was weaponizing agencies to suppress free speech and independent messages like his.

  RFKJr tried and failed to get any traction with Democrats ("Harris, he said, had refused to speak with him.") and the Libertarian Party. So Trump was kind of his last resort. And:

  Kennedy said he had several meetings with Trump, in which the former president committed to giving him a role in his administration.

  Well, another sign that a second Trump Administration would be even crazier than the first.

Bryan Caplan has the germ of a good idea:

A modest proposal:

To be eligible for the presidency, you should have 5s on all of the following:

AP Microeconomics
AP Macroeconomics
AP Statistics
AP US History
AP European History
AP World History

— Bryan Caplan (@bryan_caplan) August 20, 2024

Dinking presidential requirements is hard, requiring a Constitutional amendment, I'm pretty sure. Too much work.

But an informal requirement would be fine: an expectation that candidates take those tests, and the results be publicized. Optional, of course—this isn't Russia, is it Danny?—but declining to do so should also be publicized. And not just the presidential candidates! Congressional, too! And state governors and legislators!

At least.

You demand basic competence in doctors, dentists, pilots, plumbers, electricians, etc. Usually the competence is implicit—they probably wouldn't be in the job without it—but why not make it explicit for pols?

Until then, I'm in agreement with Charles C.W. Cooke: Friends, I Hate Everyone.

Well, maybe not "hate". That's a strong word. "Despise", maybe.

That's my penultimate "gifted" link for August, so click away.

Also of note:

• Also hating both: Mike Masnick. He's what I think of as "the sane one" at Techdirt. And he points out: The Harris-Walz Tech Policy Platform… Is Still Bad.

  As we head into another Presidential election, one thing has been consistent from the last two such elections as well: the tech policies of both major parties are terrible.

  The Donald Trump Republican platform for 2025 is beyond crazy with all sorts of nonsense. The “tech” part of it is barely worth a mention, but just the fact that they see things like age verification laws as a first step to banning pornography should give you a sense of how batshit crazy (and against fundamental rights) it is.

  That said, the Democratic platform is not great. It’s not batshit crazy, like the GOP plan, but it’s still generally bad. It’s the kind of thing that is going to lead to a lot of wasted time and effort as moral panic know-nothing “we must do something” types push out bad idea after bad idea, while people who actually understand how this stuff works have to do our best to educate against the nonsense.

  Much of the tech policy part of the document appears to have been written for Biden on the assumption he was going to be the candidate, so there’s always a chance that Harris will somehow change it later on. But, on most tech policy issues, she’s been in line with Biden. In particular, both of them have hated on Section 230 for ages. Biden has insisted it should be repealed and has stumped for KOSA, despite the obvious harm it will do to kids (especially LGBTQ+ kids).

  "Not batshit crazy" is kind of a low bar. Still, I can see that, in combination with "Not Trump", it could be a winning combination.

• I small AI at work. Lloyd Billingsley at Power Line writes on Queer Nukes for Peace.

  The Biden-Harris administration, Fox News reports, has appointed Sneha Nair as a special assistant at the National Nuclear Security Administration. Prior to the appointment, Nair served as a research analyst with the Nuclear Security Program at the Stimson Center. The special assistant earned a masters in geography and international relations from the University of St. Andrews, but there’s more to her.

  Sneha Nair is co-author of “Queering nuclear weapons: How LGBTQ+ inclusion strengthens security and reshapes disarmament,” published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

  Her co-author Louis Reitmann, is a research associate at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation and a board member of the Emerging Voices Network, organized by the British American Security Information Council (BASIC). Reitman earned an MSc in international relations from the London School of Economics. In “Queering nuclear weapons”

  Reitmann and Nair contend:

  Equity and inclusion for queer people is not just a box-ticking exercise in ethics and social justice; it is also essential for creating effective nuclear policy. Studies in psychology and behavioral science show that diverse teams examine assumptions and evidence more carefully, make fewer errors, discuss issues more constructively, and better exchange new ideas and knowledge.

  I've only included one paragraph from the Nair/Reitmann article, but one that gives the flavor. It is every defense of DEI policies you've ever seen, with references to nuclear weapons policy shoehorned in where appropriate.

  Basically, this is something even a basic LLM AI could have done a few years ago. And I strongly suspect that's the case here.

• Michelle. ma belle. These ain't words that go together well. Philip Greenspun and Chadwick Moore respond to a bit of Michelle Obama's DNC speech:

  Adjusted for inflation (Zillow MVY house price index) since Biden took office, her house on Martha's Vineyard should be worth at least $20 million. I'm waiting for her to say, "Why do I have three mansions? Because I couldn't afford four."

  — Philip Greenspun (@PhilipGreenspun) August 22, 2024

  To be fair, Michelle was claiming that her parents "were suspicious of those who took more than they needed."

  As near as I can tell, she didn't speculate on what her parents would have to say about articles like this one at Apartment Therapy: All About the Obamas’ 3 Stunning Homes in the U.S.

Peter Suderman delivers the bad news for Hayek fans: Economic Liberty Now Has No Place In Either Political Party.

One possible response is inebriation, and Suderman works in a link to his relevant substack.

Veronique de Rugy is also on the party beat: How Similar Are Harris and Trump's Economic Policies? Let's Take a Look..

Also in common: "industrial policy", aka corporate welfare; continued fiscal profligacy; expensive subsidization of home ownership.

Also of note:

• Continuing on that theme… Deirdre McClosky has Reflections on the Libertarianism vs. Conservativism Debate.

  Part of the problem with a conservative versus liberal debate is that conventional politics has long depended on positing a left-right spectrum, from the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly in the early 19th century. It is supposed to characterize all political opinions. Admittedly, nowadays, the conventional spectrum is getting out of focus all over the place, in Britain and France and the United States, in favor of cultural warfare unpredictable from the old left-right ideologies. Yet most people still think that this spectrum is all you need to know about politics and keep forcing everyone to declare their place on it. For example, journalists of a certain age simply cannot think of Cato-style liberalism as anything but conservative. The conservative debaters know well that such a thought is false.

  Every position along the conventional spectrum supposes that it is a fine idea to have a large and coercive state, larger and larger, more and more coercive. See any book by Daron Acemoglu. The only dispute is what or whom the state should coerce. In the old left-right disputes, the right wanted liberty for the boardroom yet wanted state coercion for the bedroom; the left the other way around. The middle wandered in between.

  We true liberals at Cato live in a treehouse well above the spectrum, sending amiable messages down to our friends on the spectrum, saying that they might want to consider whether the state is too big, too coercive, or too careless of liberty. Consider again the authoritarianism of Anthony Fauci, which most people fell for—even, to my shame, me.

  Deirdre's bottom line: "Do what you want, but don’t scare the horses."

• Dropping the veil. Seth Mandel looks at the current set of Hamas cheerleaders: Why Israel’s Critics Stopped Pretending To Want a Ceasefire.

  The pro-Hamas protesters both outside and inside the Democratic National Convention may be poor folk singers and off-key banjoists, but at least they are honest.

  The banner briefly unfurled by activists inside the convention while President Biden was speaking said “STOP ARMING ISRAEL.” Outside, it was the usual band of explicitly genocidal Hamas fans singing the praises of the October 7 slaughter. Well-connected Pennsylvania Democratic activist and Kamala Harris delegate Morgan Overton, meanwhile, was quieter but no less honest about it. She backed a Pittsburgh BDS petition that would, as the Washington Free Beacon reported, “cripple the city’s Jewish organizations and punish its largest hospital system.” (The petition was shelved for this election cycle amid a dispute over signature requirements.)

  The specific demands made by Overton and her fellow signatories: that Israel end its campaign in Gaza and agree to a final settlement of the conflict that creates either a one-state solution (in which the Jewish state would be dissolved) or a two-state solution that Hamas opposes.

  What happened, you might ask, to the ceasefire? Isn’t that the cause animating the progressive throngs in the streets? Aren’t they motivated by a sincere desire to see peace?

  Well, no, obviously not. But why would they completely drop the CEASEFIRE NOW organizing principle they’ve been disingenuously running with since October 7? The answer is because Israel indirectly called their bluff. (I say “indirectly” because it’s not as though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is making decisions based on what tentifada pups claim to want.)

  Since it's become clear that Bibi's not the roadblock to a cease-fire agreement, the "tentifada pups" have needed to become more honest about their ultimate goal: the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.

• Shocker: Israelis are short-sighted. Jeff Jacoby makes the case that An Israeli hostage deal with Hamas only guarantees future atrocities. Unfortunately, such a deal is popular: "Nearly two-thirds of Israelis" favor one. But:

  Yet it is also all but certain that the result will be more innocent Israelis killed, wounded, and kidnapped in future atrocities — atrocities carried out by some of the very terrorists Israel releases. That has been the outcome of every such deal Israel has agreed to in the past.

  In 1985, for example, the Jewish state set 1,150 Palestinian security prisoners free in exchange for three Israeli captives. Dozens of those freed prisoners returned to terrorist activity. Among them was a Muslim Brotherhood activist named Ahmed Yassin, who founded Hamas a few months later, launching an unimaginable train of slaughter and savagery.

  In 2011, to liberate a kidnapped soldier named Gilad Shalit, Israel released 1,027 imprisoned terrorists. Among them were two prominent Palestinian murderers, Yahya Sinwar and Rawhi Mushtaha. Today Sinwar is Hamas's senior commander and Mushtaha (until he was killed last month) was among his closest confidants. The Oct. 7 nightmare, in other words, was planned by terrorists who were released in the Shalit deal. Israel was overjoyed when Shalit was freed, but the price of that freedom has been unspeakable: thousands of Israelis murdered, raped, and kidnapped, to say nothing of the tens of thousands of Palestinian lives lost in the current fighting.

  I don't want to tell Israel how to run its war but… what's wrong with demanding Hamas's unconditional surrender? As Jacoby points out, that's what ended the Civil War and WWII.

• Also demanted: the media's coverage of it. David Harsanyi thinks: There Is Something Really Demented About Tim Walz's Lying. Most recently revealed are his false claims that he and his wife used In-vitro fertilization (IVF) to start their family. That was not true.

  So how does the media frame this revelation?

  The New York Times contends that the Walz camp has “clarified” his statements. An Axios piece on the matter is headlined, “Gwen Walz sheds light on fertility journey, clarifies they did not use IVF.” CNN says, “Gwen Walz reveals she underwent a different treatment, not IVF, in new details about fertility struggles.”

  She revealed new details? What are they talking about? Tim Walz was caught lying about IVF and now his camp is compelled to admit it. They aren’t “shedding light” on their “fertility journey” or “clarifying” a story. This wasn’t hyperbole or “sloppy” rhetoric, just a lie.

  A weird, demented lie.

  Granted, he's no Trump. But definitely in the same ballpark.

• Time to homeschool the kids. Wokeness may be in retreat elsewhere, but Katherine Kersten notes its victory in the Minnesota government schools: Tim Walz Brings ‘Liberated’ Ethnic Studies to Minnesota.

  Tim Walz was a schoolteacher before entering politics, so what is his approach to teaching? The Minnesota Department of Education will soon release the initial version of a document that lays out how new “liberated” ethnic-studies requirements will be implemented in the state’s roughly 500 public-school districts and charter schools.

  Mr. Walz signed the law establishing this initiative in 2023. The department’s standards and benchmarks, approved in January, require first-graders to “identify examples of ethnicity, equality, liberation and systems of power” and “use those examples to construct meanings for those terms.”

  The real "systems of power" here are the systems that are able to impose this claptrap on first-graders.

• Not giving up on gun-grabbing. Jacob Sullum reads it so you don't have to: The Democratic Platform Completely Ignores the Second Amendment. And recalls the heady days of the 2020 campaign:

  Although Vice President Kamala Harris' current campaign website is short on specific policy positions, the platform confirms what we already knew: She does not see the Constitution as an obstacle to her gun control agenda. Back in 2019, when Harris was vying with Biden for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, she promised to impose new gun policies—including "universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, and the repeal of the NRA's corporate gun manufacturer and dealer immunity bill"—by executive fiat if Congress failed to approve such legislation during her first 100 days in office.

  That was too much even for Biden. "There's no constitutional authority to issue that executive order when they say 'I'm going to eliminate assault weapons,'" he said. "You can't do it by executive order any more than Trump can do things when he says he can do it by executive order." Asked about that comment during a Democratic presidential debate, Harris laughed and blithely replied: "Well, I mean, I would just say, hey, Joe, instead of saying 'no, we can't,' let's say 'yes, we can.'"

  Biden objected. "Let's be constitutional," he said. "We've got a Constitution." He also suggested that Harris should "check with constitutional scholars" about whether her plan was consistent with the separation of powers.

  While Biden aspired to "be constitutional," in other words, Harris replied, in essence: "Constitution, schmonstitution. Why should that get in the way of my agenda?"

• And I couldn't help but notice that gold prices seem to be close to an all-time high, $2,497.64/oz. Over the past year, gold is up over 30%.

  Past performance, etc. Still, wish I'd known this a year ago.

… but nah, it seems Kamala has cornered that market:

Reporter: How are you going to pay for your crazy proposals?

Harris: (Incoherent word salad)pic.twitter.com/DHFwZdVoiC

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) August 18, 2024

Well, gosh, she manages to use "return on investment" four times in that 1:08 clip. I assume it focus-grouped well, because it makes her sound like a smart, no-nonsense, green-eyeshade type of person.

And of course, the last four words in the clip are notable: "It pays for itself".

All based on the inherent assumption that Your Federal Government can spend additional trillions more wisely and productively than the private individuals and businesses they're taking it from.

Take it away, Milton:

Or if you would prefer a text rebuttal, here's Rich Lowry: Kamala Harris Is No Investor

Indeed. Kamala's new word salad is no improvement over the old and stale one.

Also of note:

• Just put this idea over there, in the junk pile with all the others. Megan McArdle explains Why Harris’s housing plan won’t work.

  Harris’s housing plan has three main planks. One of these is $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time home buyers, which she says will help more than 4 million home buyers over four years. Another is a plan to punish corporate landlords who buy up lots of single-family rental properties or use algorithmic software to set prices.

  The third plank is the 3 million new homes, which Harris promises to get built with a combination of initiatives: a $40 billion “innovation fund”; “a historic expansion of the existing tax incentive for businesses that build rental housing that is affordable”; a new tax credit for building starter homes; and a red-tape initiative that is meant to streamline permitting processes for builders.

  Without the millions of new houses, the two other initiatives risk making the housing situation worse. Restrictions on corporate landlords could shrink supply by undermining the build-to-rent market, which is currently one of the strongest sectors in new construction, according to developer Bobby Fijan. And that down payment assistance for first-time home buyers would likely end up in the pockets of existing homeowners, as newbies use it to bid up prices in a tight market.

  It’s not impossible to construct 750,000 extra homes a year — housing starts, which were about 1.2 million last year, hit 2.2 million at the peak of the housing bubble. But ramping up production to that level would take years, and might never happen, because the only real way to get there is via the one promise Harris will find hardest to keep — that is, to make it much easier for builders to build.

  I think Ms. McArdle has thought about this harder than (Democrat) Noah Smith (discussed here the day before yesterday).

• They are trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. Matt Welch has an acerbic take on the convention rhetoric: Democrats Just Can't Quit Saving Our Souls.

  Say what you will about the otherwise calorie-lite first fortnight of the Kamala Harris/Tim Walz campaign, at least it eased for a moment the shrill catastrophizing that has marked Democratic messaging against former President Donald Trump over these past nine years.

  "Gone are [President Joe] Biden's sober exhortations about the battle for the soul of the nation and a democracy under attack," The Washington Post observed earlier this month. "In its place are promises of 'freedom' and 'a brighter future' and, at times, audible giggles and laughter."

  Well, the darkness came back with a vengeance in Chicago during Monday's opening night of the Democratic National Convention. Staged as a somewhat awkward and late-running "Thank you Joe" celebration, Day One demonstrated that the party remains in thrall both to the millenarian temptation and its flip side of messianic zeal.

  "We're facing inflection point, one of those rare moments in history when the decisions we make now will determine the fate of our nation and the world for decades to come," Biden barked, familiarly. "That's not hyperbole. I mean it literally. We're in a battle for the very soul of America."

  Literally!

• How much for the big guy? Andrew C. McCarthy takes to the NY Post: Damning impeachment report shows why Dems were desperate to get rid of corrupt Biden. It's a dual indictment of the Biden family's corrution and the Justice Department's investigatory blindness and stonewalling. Excerpt, describing the Biden involvement with CEFC ("a CCP-dominated Chinese influence operation camouflaged as a regime-backed energy conglomerate").

  The CEFC deal eventually brought us the now-infamous “10 percent for the big guy” email — outlining Joe’s personal stake.

  It also gave us Hunter’s 2017 WhatsApp shakedown of a CEFC exec — explaining: “I am sitting here with my father” wondering why the “commitment” hasn’t been “fulfilled,” and “I will make certain between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”

  Within days, the floodgates opened with $5 million — on top of millions already paid — flowing into the Biden family coffers.

  McCarthy points out that Hunter's shenanigans could have been stopped by his father with a few minutes' stern lecture. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to notice that that dog did not bark.

One of my Facebook friends from high school reposted this:

Chipotle raised prices six times since 2021 and kept them high — even as costs have flattened.

The result?

Profits jumped 110%. It authorized $400M in stock buybacks. Its CEO was paid $22.4M in 2023...1,354 times the median Chipotle employee.

What's really driving inflation?

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) July 27, 2024

Since I want to retain her Facebook friendship, I made only a mild response.

But I couldn't help but note Robert Reich's dishonest language, seemingly outraged that Chipotle "kept [its prices] high — even as costs have flattened."

Sigh. Another way to say this: since inflation has eased, Chipotle has kept its prices in line with its costs.

I've read that the major costs incurred by restaurants are food and labor. So stories like this one (from April) were pretty easy to find: Chipotle Responds To California Wage Hike By Raising Prices.

And that hated CEO whose salary bugs Reich so much is Brian Niccol, who's also in the news: Starbucks CEO replaced by Brian Niccol, a fixer who revived Chipotle when the chain was in distress,

So now he's off to fix Starbucks. And, if he succeeds, keeping customers, employees, and investors happy, he'll be handsomely rewarded. Good for him.

(UPDATE: Actual economist Alex Tabarrok has a good article on this topic: Why Top CEOs Earn Big Paychecks, using Niccol as an example.)

We could quibble further about Reich's fantasies about the root causes of inflation. But let's leave it with Don Boudreaux's classic query, aimed at folks like Reich:

“If what you say is true, why don’t you start a company that charges more reasonable prices or offers larger portions? You’d make a fortune by attracting away from the price-gougers all the consumers who you assert are now suffering terribly. Rather than siccing the government on the alleged price-gougers, if you instead went into competition with them you’d enrich yourself and consumers! Can you explain to me why you don’t put your money where your mouth is?”

But (as I've said in the past): people like Reich have never run anything except their mouths.

Also of note:

• Is there smart demagoguery? To go along with Reich's dumb demagoguery, Kevin D. Williamson talks about Kamala Harris’ Dumb Demagoguery.

  If you think, as Kamala Harris thinks, or says she thinks—(“thinks”)—that inflation in grocery prices is the result of “price gouging,” then I don’t want to hear you ever complaining about conspiracy theories. Because that is a big, dumb conspiracy theory, the sort of thing that can be taken seriously only by asses of exceptional asininity. 

  Here’s a question: Why doesn’t a Big Mac cost $500? Why doesn’t a pack of socks at Walmart cost $500? “Well, nobody would pay that!” comes the usual answer. Au contraire mon frère! People will pay $500 for a hamburger—and some people will pay $5,000 for a hamburger. And $500 for a six-pack of socks? Pantherella does a brisk business in socks at that price point. “Oh, but those are super-high-end luxury goods!” you may retort. Of course—and in most of the world, for most of human history, paying somebody else to cook you a meal was a 1-percenter luxury good, too. But the luxury goods are interesting for the same reason the bargain-basement goods are interesting: because in a robust marketplace, you have lots of buyers and lots of sellers, and lots of products at lots of price points. So you can buy your tailored silk socks for $80 a pair or buy 300 on Amazon for 22 cents a pair. There are a lot of car buyers and car sellers in the United States, and a lot of good options at different price points.

  Probably paywalled. You should subscribe. If only to get to KDW's earnest query to the New York Times: "What does her being gay have to do with turkey hunting? If there is some special kind of lesbian turkey-hunting technique that the ladies have been keeping secret all these years, I want to know about it."

• The real trickle-down economics. The WSJ editorialists read it so you don't have to: The Democratic Party’s Project 2025. AKA their platform.

  The 92-page document is filled with political rhetoric and exaggerations that present Mr. Biden as a working-class hero and Donald Trump as a richy-rich villain. But the platform is also a peek into an economic worldview in which the government is the answer, almost no matter the question. While private businesses are always “gouging” or adding “junk fees,” or otherwise trying to rip somebody off, Washington’s wise men are capable of providing for the American people, if only they have the power to pass the laws and regulations.

  Here are only some of the promises:

  • “Health care should be a right in America, not a privilege,” the platform says. “We’ll never quit fighting to protect and expand the Affordable Care Act.”
  • “We support Medicaid expansion, encouraging states to provide health coverage to low-income Americans on the federal government’s tab.”
  • “We’ll look to expand traditional Medicare coverage to include dental, vision, and hearing services.”
  • “Democrats will provide free, universal preschool for four-year olds.”
  • They will “guarantee affordable, quality child care to millions of working families for less than $10-a-day per child.”
  • They’ll pass “America’s first, full, national paid family and medical leave program.”
  • “We’ll work to finally raise the federal minimum wage to at least $15-an-hour.”
  • “We’ll keep pushing to restore the expanded Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit.”
  • “We’ll work to pass the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, guaranteeing public sector bargaining rights.”
  • “We’ll double funding to repair and expand active transportation and public transit.”
  • “We’ll no longer permit companies to deduct the cost of paying executives more than $1 million a year.”

  And goodness knows how much any of that will cost. But never fear, all that spending will result in at least some people better off. A lot better off.

• It's a toddlin' town. Matt Welch will show you around: Democrats Unburdened by What They Have Done to Chicago. It's not a pretty picture, Emily:

  A few hours before touching down in Chicago Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris, in one of her few interactions with reporters since snatching the Democratic Party's presidential nomination from her boss, gave a meandering yet revealing answer to the simple question of how she would pay for her recently introduced economic proposals.

  "What we're doing in terms of the [first-time homebuyer] tax credits, we know that there's a great return on investment," Harris asserted in Moon Township, Pennsylvania. "When we increase home ownership in America, what that means in terms of increasing the tax base, not to mention property tax base, what that does to fund schools—again, return on investment. I think it's a mistake for any person who talks about public policy to not critically evaluate how you measure the return on investment. When you are strengthening neighborhoods, strengthening communities, and in particular the economies of those communities, and investing in a broad-based economy, everybody benefits, and it pays for itself in that way."

  Democrats begin their four-day national convention Monday in the city that perhaps best exemplifies the chasm between their party's dreamy policy rhetoric and grim real-world results. As a direct result of one-party misrule (there are zero Republicans on the 50-seat City Council), Chicago's tax base is decreasing, not increasing. The population has declined for nine consecutive years, is shrinking by an annual rate of 1 percent, and is at its lowest point in more than a century.

  He also saw a man who danced with his wife. (Reference, if you need it.)

• Amtrak delenda est (a continuing saga). The Antiplanner, Randal O'Toole, looks critically at the return on investment for a project that might have helped people escape Chicago a little quicker, but… 14 Years & $2 Billion to Increase Speeds by 5 mph.

  “A Slow Path to Higher Speeds” fills ten pages of the September issue of Trains magazine to tell why it took Illinois 14 years to speed up passenger trains on the Chicago-St. Louis route. Originally funded by the Obama administration in 2009, the project was supposed to increase top speeds from 79 to 110 miles per hour. But top speeds aren’t average speeds, which increased only 5 miles per hour from 50 to 55. The fastest train on the timetable ended up just shy of 60 mph, a 6-mph boost over the fastest train in 2009.

  When Illinois received $1.14 billion in high-speed rail funds from the Obama administration in 2009, it predicted that by 2015 it would shave an hour off of Chicago-St. Louis trip times and increase frequencies from five to eight trains per day, which in turn would stimulate a 130 percent increase in ridership. But speeds and frequencies remained unchanged through early 2023. Finally, after spending $1.95 billion, speeds increased on June 26, 2023, but average trip times declined by only about a half an hour, while the number of trains per day remained unchanged at five.

  Read on for the details on the over-promised, under-delivered project. (Where did that $2 billion trickle down to, exactly?)

  Google Maps helpfully compares various options for Chicago to St. Louis travel. They estimate a car trip will take 4 hours and 34 minutes. The fastest train: 4 hours and 36 minutes.

  Not that different! Except you have to get yourself to Union Station in Chicago, somehow. And at the other end, get where you really want to go from the St. Louis Gateway Station. (Although it looks like you could walk, if you dared, to the Enterprise Center which has hockey games and concerts.)

Recently on the movie blog:

They don't make 'em like this anymore. (Well, La La Land, which I liked a lot, but that was, sheesh, eight years ago.)

When I was in Iowa last week, my sister took me to see a small-stage production of The Music Man at the Okoboji Summer Theatre. It was a lot of fun, and I hadn't seen the movie in decades, but I remembered quite a few of my favorite bits: the mayor's daughter saying "Ye Gods!", the mayor's wife saying "Balzac"; Harold Hill's wonderful patter; and early on, the song sung by the townspeople (which turns out to have a name: "Iowa Stubborn"), with my favorite lyric:

Never fails to bring a smile to my face.

And there's something special about seeing The Music Man in Iowa, a mere 117 miles away from Mason City, Meredith Wilson's inspiration for River City. (Thank you, Google Maps.)

Anyway, that caused me to do a rare DVD checkout from the Portsmouth Public Library, so I could compare and contrast. Each had its special qualities.

The stage company did a great job, but they didn't even try to duplicate the movie's "76 Trombones" finale; that would have been daunting.

Happy surprise: Thomas Sowell's 2014 book, linked at your right, is the #1 best seller in Amazon's "Political Economy" genre. Might be a lot of people buying it for their favorite presidential candidates? Who knows?

Anyway, Harvard econ prof Greg Mankiw has a hiring suggestion for one candidate. (I assume he's realistic about asking her to … y'know … read a book.): Maybe Ms. Harris needs some economists.

Mankiw (who has admitted planning on voting for Kamala, because "she is not Donald Trump") has two hypotheses:

One is that the Harris campaign believes that the remaining persuadable swing voters are economically ignorant, so the campaign is offering them economically ignorant economic policies. Bryan Caplan's wonderful book The Myth of the Rational Voter documents a lot of mistaken beliefs among the general public, including an anti-market bias. Ms. Harris's political advisers may be steering her to pander to these mistaken beliefs,

A second hypothesis involves campaign personnel. The people I see mentioned as Harris economic advisers are Brian Deese, Gene Sperling, Mike Pyle, Deanne Millison, and Brian Nelson. All smart people, no doubt. But as far as I know, none of these people is trained as a PhD economist. They all seem to be lawyers. Maybe lawyers are more inclined to see a problem and think, "I know what new law will fix that." True economists are more respectful of the invisible hand and more worried about the unintended consequences of heavy-handed regulation.

Great minds think alike. It's only been a few days since I recommended Bryan Caplan's book, and I shall do so again.

But let's allow Kamala to speak for herself. Jeff Maurer has graciously allowed her to write a guest article for his substack, and it is worth your attention: In This Crucial Moment, America Needs a President Who Will Fiddle With the Price of Eggs a Bit.

Well, you get the idea. Checking prices at Hannaford… whoa, she's right! Oreos "Family Size" packs are $4.99. Even for "Thins", which is kind of a ripoff.

But she's also wrong. Bush's baked beans aren't that bad: Hannaford charges $2.15 for a 16 oz. can. And their store-brand can is only $1.19.

Anyway, click through for the remainder of Kamala's deep thoughts.

But for a sober analysis, there's J.D. Tuccille at Reason: Kamala Harris' Dishonest and Stupid Price Control Proposal. Tell it like it is, J.D.:

"I have a stupid idea that will fail to fix the problems caused by Biden's fiscal insanity." Doesn't quite have the message you want to see in a successful political campaign.

Also of note:

• Let's be charitable for a change. We previously noted that (Democrat) economist Noah Smith thinks Kamala's price control proposal is a "big mistake." But, in the other hand, he thinks Harris has the right idea on housing.

  Hm, really? Despite my skepticism, Smith makes a pretty good, if obvious, point here:

  Housing policy is incredibly tough in America — and in most other rich countries — because housing has to serve two functions at once. It’s both a consumption good and an investment asset. A house is a place to live, but it’s also something that’s supposed to make you wealthier over time, when its price goes up. These two objectives directly conflict — if owner-occupied housing becomes more affordable, that makes most Americans poorer.

  When I say “most Americans”, I’m not exaggerating. The homeownership rate is about two thirds, with only small fluctuations. And for middle-class Americans, most of their wealth is the value of their home:

  This fact sets up a direct and inevitable conflict between two large classes of American society: homebuyers versus homeowners. If you’re buying a house for the first time or looking to significantly upgrade, you want house prices to be as low as possible. But if you already own a home that you’re happy with, you want the price of that home to be as high as possible, so that you can make the homebuyers pay you a lot of money when you’re finally ready to sell. It’s basically a zero-sum game.

  Note: I speak as a homeowner myself.

  My default "solution" to perceived economic problems is: let the free market and property rights work.

  But, on the ground, land use regulations are one of the biggest impediments to market mechanisms. Your "property rights" extend only as far as the local zoners say they do. And (of course) they have the powers "democratically" assigned them by homeowners. Who vote, and are incredibly hostile to any construction they perceive might decrease their home values (or raise property taxes, a slightly different story).

  Smith thinks that the "right" combination of federal mandates, subsidies, incentives, regulation, taxes, etc. could be designed to break this logjam. I'm doubtful of this "fatal conceit", but at least he's honest about the problem.

• On the LFOD watch. The Valley News editorializes about New Hampshire, where the Second Amendment trumps rights to safety and security. No surprise, it's about guns!

  Among the most remarkable displays of legislative audacity performed this year in Concord was the enactment of House Bill 1336, signed into law last month by Gov. Chris Sununu. It requires that as of Jan. 1, 2025, any private or public employer that receives federal or state money must permit employees to keep firearms in their vehicles while on their employer’s premises, so long as the vehicle is locked and the firearms are out of sight. Nor may the employer require an employee to disclose whether she has a gun in her car.

  Remarkable, how? Let us count the ways, because there’s a lot to unpack here.

  New Hampshire boasts of being the business-friendly “Live Free or Die” state, to which enterprises allegedly flock to reap the benefits of “the New Hampshire (low-tax) advantage.” It’s pretty hard to square that reputation as a bastion of corporate freedom with the actions of a nanny-state government that desires to dictate to employers how they may regulate what takes place on their own property. (The only salve for bruised employers is that the bill exempts them from civil liability for any mayhem committed with firearms stolen from employees’ vehicles.)

  I gotta admire the chutzpah it takes to assert that the F in LFOD means "freedom for employers to forbid their employees from having certain items in their cars." Whatever happened to sticking up for the little guy against his robber-baron employer?

  I will point out that my former employer concentrated their fire on a truly despised minority: people that use one form or another of nicotine; their "Tobacco-, Smoke-, and Nicotine-Free Policy" (TSN) prohibits products

  including but not limited to: cigarettes (clove cigarettes, bidis, kreteks), electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS, vaping), cigars and cigarillos, hookah-smoked products or any lighted or heated tobacco and nicotine products, and non-combustible tobacco and nicotine products (dip, chew, oral nicotine pouches, tobacco substitutes)

  indoors or outdoors, specifically:

  including, but not limited to, parking lots, paths, fields, sports/recreational areas, and stadiums, as well as in all personal vehicles while on campus.

  And not just employees, but also students, and "other persons on campus, regardless of the purpose for their visit."

• Just a heads up. James Lileks has a substack, where he will provide a humorous column. It's $5/month or $50/year to subscribe, and I've done that to help keep his dog in Alpo.

This gets my goat: an envelope with vague, but official-sounding text (oooh, "documents"!) and no indication of the sender. A candidate for immediate shredding without opening!  

But I opened it, in the interest of reporting the to you, dear reader, and (slight surprise) it's not from a Republican candidate; it's from the Heritage Foundation, writing to express their concern about voter fraud. A blue sheet describes voter fraud cases in nine different states. The survey has the usual pushy questions ("Is it important to you for our nation's leaders to pass legislation that secures our elections against fraud? ☐ Yes ☐ No ☐ Not sure/No Opinion") and also the usual money plea at the end ("☐ $25 ☐ $35 ☐ $50 ☐ $100 ☐ $150 ☐ Other $      ")

You can peruse the Heritage Election Fraud Database here.

Okay, now it can go into the shredder. Bzzzzzt!

For the record, I have no problem with making it difficult to vote fraudulently. My big gripe in New Hampshire is that we allow dorm-living students at the University Near Here paying out-of-state tuition to vote locally.

But in other news, Daniel J. Mitchell is not a fan of the major party candidates: The Tweedledee and Tweedledum of Big Government?.

I'm in violent agreement with Mitchell here.

It's been a couple weeks since we looked at the betting odds, and things have swung toward Tweedledum:

A bad couple weeks for the Donald, as a significant fraction of people in swing states seem happy to vote for any major party candidate as long as they are not named "Trump" or "Biden".

Also of note:

• But not a marvelous universe. Kat Rosenfield claims that The 2024 Election Is a Marvel Universe. It's paywalled beyond a certain point, but here's a snippet:

  Donald Trump has a promise for Christian voters: if they vote for him, just this once, they’ll never have to vote again.

  “Just this time!” Trump squawked last month, as the crowd cheered. “You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you Christians. I’m a Christian. I love you.”

  Here, his voice grew wheezy; he had started to run out of air. “In four years you won’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”

  As Trump speeches go, this one was par for the course: meandering, nonsensical, grandiose. But it caught the attention of critics on the left, who interpreted it as a dog whistle betraying Trump’s true plan: to become a dictator.

  Over-the-top examples follow. And why is this like the Marvel Universe? Click on through.

  Of course, if Trump did plan to become a dictator, he would definitely reveal that to a bunch of Florida Christians.

• "Lazy, stupid, and childish" explains a lot here. Jonah Goldberg doesn't buy that Trump has an advisor problem: Trump’s Getting Good Advice. He Just Refuses to Take It.

  Never has the GOP been more unified, and Donald Trump deserves all the credit. The issue uniting pundits, editorial boards, virtually all Republican politicians, GOP consultants, MAGA warriors, and rallygoers: the need for Trump to lay aside personal gripes and grievances and to stick to the issues and attack Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz on their records.

  [… examples elided …]

  Obviously following this advice would be better than Trump’s current approach—race baiting, election denial, whining about Biden’s defenestration, attacking fellow Republicans, crowd size boasts, etc.—all of which is clearly ill-advised.

  But “ill-advised” is the wrong word, because pretty much everybody advising Trump is telling him to stop. In other words, the conventional wisdom is well-advised, it’s just that Trump can’t or won’t follow it. This is not a new phenomenon. Expecting Trump to “pivot” or “act presidential” has been a political pastime for almost a decade. It’s like betting Godot will be punctual or Lucy won’t yank the football from Charlie Brown.

  But what’s interesting to me is not the tiresome assumption that Trump can be anything other than who he is; rather it’s the assumption that if he ran the focused campaign his boosters favor, it would guarantee success. It would certainly improve his chances. But as a subscriber to the view that “vibes” have supplanted substantive issues and personal character as the decisive factors in elections, I’m not so sure.

  Me neither. I think Trump's best bet is for Kamala to do a photo op in a tank with a huge helmet. That's what worked in the past.

• Isn't it ironic, don't ya think? River Page at the Free Press thinks The J.D. Vance Couch Thing Was Funny, Until the Harris Campaign Co-Opted It.

  Democratic Party elites are approximately one month into their coordinated bullying campaign against J.D. Vance. In addition to calling him weird, Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), and the official Kamala HQ X account have all made joking reference to the idea that Trump’s VP is—and there’s no polite way to say this—a couch fucker.

  Allow me to explain. This all started last month when an X user alluded to fake passages in J.D. Vance’s best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy describing the Ohio senator humping a latex glove lodged between two couch cushions. Then, the Associated Press made matters worse by publishing a fact-check of the obviously satirical claim in an article called “No, JD Vance Did Not Have Sex With A Couch,” and then retracting that article the next day, claiming it hadn’t met their “editorial standards.”

  Is this funny? Kind of. But that’s beside the point. There’s something deeply ironic about the Democratic Party, which has spent years working itself into a frenzy over “disinformation,” pointing to an entirely made-up, sexually explicit joke about their opponent. Imagine if the roles were reversed, and Tim Walz was facing couch-fucker allegations. There would be hearings, MSNBC specials, and FBI special counsel inquiries: Is the person who made this up working in a Russian troll farm? No? American? Well, has he ever been to Russia? Has he ever met a Russian? Does he enjoy borscht? Sources in the intelligence community say the X poster was spotted with Lev Parnas at an El Paso McDonald’s. Representative Schiff, is that something you’re looking into?

  To quote an ancient philosopher: "That's different, because shut up."

• Strange but true. There's a local angle for Minnesota-based John Hinderaker here: Walz Busted By…CNN?

  In 1995, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, then a resident of Nebraska, was stopped while driving 96 mph in a 55 mph zone. He failed a sobriety test and was charged with speeding and drunk driving. Walz has been lying about the incident ever since, as CNN rather surprisingly admits:

  When Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz first ran for Congress in 2006, his campaign repeatedly made false statements about the details of his 1995 arrest for drunk and reckless driving.[…]

  There was nothing stopping the Minnesota media from pointing this out years ago. Hinderaker's reaction: "Walz is a notorious liar. It is interesting to see how his elevation to the role of vice presidential candidate has caused the national press to shine light on some of his misdeeds that the local press has long been happy to ignore."

• Don't forget, Jeff: also lazy and childish. Jeff Maurer considers Trump's meandering train of thought: Trump Probably Knows What “Asylum” Means and Is Just Broadly Stupid.

  Trump says a lot of insane things about immigrants (the sentence “Trump says a lot of insane things about _______” is a Mad Lib with no wrong answer). Recently, one of his favorite riffs has been about illegal immigrants coming from insane asylums. Here he is at a rally last fall:

  “They’ve allowed, I believe, 15 million people into the country from all of these different places like jails, mental institutions, and wait till you see what’s going to happen with all those people.”

  That’s an absolutely bonkers things to say. There aren’t even 15 million illegal immigrants in the country (best estimates are around 11 million), much less 15 million who entered under Biden, much less 15 million who entered under Biden and came from jails or mental institutions. But when Trump talks about illegal immigration, he often mentions insane asylums, which, by the way, is the best answer we’re ever going to get to the question: “Why in God’s name is Trump talking about Hannibal Lecter?” The connection seems to be: When Trump riffs about insane asylums, his brain says “you know something that’s kind of related to that,” so he proceeds to talk about The Silence of the Lambs for the next five minutes.

  I checked two online dictionaries, and they both claim that the use of "asylum" to refer to nuthouses is "dated". (So is saying "nuthouses", probably.) Couldn't prove it by Trump!

Recently on the book blog:

Mrs. Salad was a Deanna Raybourn fan, she liked her "Veronica Speedwell" series a lot. And Pun Daughter had read this and recommended it, so I picked up the Kindle version.

I don't think she got to read it, unfortunately. And I don't know if she would have liked it. I finally got around to reading it, though, and I thought it was a decent page turner.

It's about a team of profressional assassins. And the gimmick is that they are four ladies (see title) "of a certain age", and that age is well past middle. They work for a shadowy organization called the "Museum", originally formed to hunt down and kill escaped Nazi war criminals, since expanded to other villains the law, for whatever reason, can't touch.

But it is a cliché of the assassin genre—there's even a TV Tropes page about it—that the organization you work for will eventually put out a contract on you. The ladies (Billie, Mary Jane, Natalie, Helen) are sent on a retirement cruise; they are enjoying themselves, but by sheerest lucky coincidence discover that they've been targeted. And escape by the skin of their dentures, but they are (of course) concerned, and somewhat peeved, that they've been marked for death.

The book is a weird combination of its absurd premise, lighthearted wisecracks, and explicit, sometimes gory, violence.

But it's a definite chick book. And it wouldn't be a chick book without irrelevant commentary about home decor. Example: they break into their victim's home via a bathroom; Billie, the narrator, observes the "vanity was a modern slab of concrete studded with tiny fossils". And there's a "flokati rug" on the floor. She disapproves. But things get better as they approach their target, sleeping in his "wide, low California king" bed, in a room which has the original parquet flooing: "After the modern atrocity of the bathroom, I'd been afraid he had remodeled the heart out of the old house."

And a few seconds later, there's blood all over the California king and the parquet, so… oh, well.

Kevin D. Williamson notes Donald J. Trump's character flaws: He's Lazy, Stupid, Childish.

Fact check: she's not a lunatic. She's a nitwit and a demagogue.

And Nikki Haley would be leading her by ten points.

Also of note:

• It has wrought rot. George F. Will looks at the upcoming gathering: Democrats, welcome to Chicago. Behold what progressivism hath wrought.

  CHICAGO — Democrats convene here amid destruction more comprehensive, deadly and intractable than that of 1871. The Great Fire hardly interrupted the city’s ascent. Today, however, Chicago suffers from the “blue model” of urban politics: government of, by and for government employee unions. Chicago is the nation’s warning.

  The 28,000-member Chicago Teachers Union’s money and organization made Brandon Johnson, a former CTU organizer, mayor. The CTU’s political machine is as mighty as Mayor Richard J. Daley’s was, 1955-1976. The CTU, like the city council’s socialist caucus, has praised recent Venezuelan regimes, and echoed pro-Hamas supporters’ calls for an Israeli cease-fire. The CTU’s head, Stacy Davis Gates, sends her son to private school, as did 30.5 percent of Chicago’s public school teachers, 2018-2022.

  Spending on public schools (more than $24,000 per student, not counting debt service and capital expenditures) has increased 107 percent since 2012, but proficiency in reading and math in grades 3-8 plummeted 63 percent and 78 percent, respectively. Only 22 percent of 11th-graders can read at grade level, and only 19 percent do math at grade level. Black students’ percentages are 11 and 8. While school enrollment declined 9 percent in 2020-2022, spending increased 35.7 percent, with one unionized employee for every eight students.

  GFW gets to poverty, unemployment, taxation, and crime later in the column.

• An express lane on the road to serfdom. Jim Geraghty looks at Kamala Harris’s Statist Economic Plan. A component of that plan is goosing the housing market. (Attempting to solve problems caused by government in the first place, but never mind that right now.)

  The U.S. builds about 1.4 million to 1.6 million new “privately-owned housing units” each year. But the president can’t just order construction companies to build twice as many houses in the coming year. One part of Harris’s plan is to offer expanded tax credits to home builders:

  The campaign said Harris would propose a new tax incentive for companies that build homes for first-time buyers, but aides didn’t provide details on the plan, which would also require congressional approval. The plan echoes a proposal put forward by Mark Zandi and Jim Parrott, an economist and a housing finance analyst, respectively, who are advising the campaign on the issue.

  (Remember, a tax deduction is something you subtract from the amount of taxes you owe; a tax credit is something the government will give you, even if it exceeds the amount of taxes you owe.)

  On paper, this seems like good news, although note that an equally accurate headline would be, “Harris proposes cutting the taxes on home-building construction companies and real-estate developers by $90 billion over ten years in order to generate more starter homes.” Tax cuts for big companies are bad, unless those companies are doing something the Democrats want.

  Harris’s nascent plan also includes “a $25,000 subsidy for first-time homebuyers.” This is subsidizing demand, which is the opposite of what you want to do if you want prices to come down.

  Putting $25,000 of taxpayer money in the pocket of every first-time home buyer is like throwing more money at prospective college students, which just encourages the colleges to keep hiking tuition. If Harris’s proposal is enacted, you’re going to see housing prices go up, probably about $25,000 per home, because buyers have more money in their pocket.

  Well, maybe we'll get lucky and the "lazy, stupid, and childish" guy will win instead.

• Speaking of stupid, though… Jacob Sullum suggests there's plenty of blame to go around: Don't Blame Dealers for Fentanyl Deaths. Blame Drug Warriors.

  An April 1 federal indictment charged two men, Antonio Venti and Michael Kuilan, with supplying the drugs that killed transgender activist Cecilia Gentili in February. Among other things, Venti and Kuilan are accused of causing Gentili's death by distributing a mixture of heroin and fentanyl, a felony punishable by a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison and a maximum of life.

  Gentili "was tragically poisoned in her Brooklyn home [by] fentanyl-laced heroin," Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a press release. "Fentanyl is a public health crisis. Our Office will spare no effort in the pursuit of justice for the many New Yorkers who have lost loved ones due to this lethal drug." The indictment "delivers a strong message to anyone who profits from poisoning our communities with illicit drugs," New York City Police Commissioner Edward Caban added. "It is imperative that we continue to hold distributors accountable for their callous actions."

  That self-righteous stance obscures the role that drug warriors like Peace and Caban played in killing Gentili. If Venti and Kuilan were "callous," how should we describe public officials who are dedicated to enforcing laws that predictably cause tens of thousands of deaths like this one every year?

  Those laws create a black market in which the composition and potency of drugs is uncertain and highly variable. They also push traffickers toward highly potent drugs such as fentanyl, which are easier to conceal and smuggle. As a result, drug users like Gentili typically don't know exactly what they are consuming, which magnifies the risk of a fatal mistake. The "poisoning" that Peace and Caban decried therefore is a consequence of the policies they were proudly enforcing in this very case.

  Gentili lived a pretty sad life, although you have to read between the lines of the ultra-sympathetic Wikipedia article [links and references elided].

  When Gentili moved to New York City in 2003, she was both undocumented and a sex worker. In 2009, she was arrested on drug possession charges and imprisoned at Rikers. She was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement but released with an ankle bracelet after being assaulted in both the male and female sections of the detention facility.

  After her release, she participated in an addiction recovery program for 17 months. A counselor told her she needed to find something she enjoyed as much as heroin; according to Gentili, "that came to be community and working for my community.”

  Apparently, Gentili decided heroin was still pretty enjoyable, even with all the "activism".

  (Note: The Wikipedia article was changed while I was reading it, so.)

Our Eye Candy du Jour is a repeat from April 2022, the last time imposing price controls was considered. It's the Newsweek cover from November 1973, the last time price controls were imposed. And it reflects an outcome unsurprising to anyone who knows even a smattering of economics.

But price controls are Kamala's latest brainstorm. Reactions are not hard to find.

Noah Rothman weighs in: Kamala Harris's First Policy Proposal Is Economically Illiterate.

It's a "gifted" link, so peruse the item in its entirety.

Even (Democrat) Noah Smith thinks Harris makes a big mistake by embracing price controls.

As pointed out Wednesday, Tim Walz's "Mind your own damn business" slogan doesn't apply … to anything except abortion.

Harvard econ prof Greg Mankiw says: Kamala Harris...sigh.

You want to say, between gasps and sputters: "But Greg, 'Not Donald Trump' is a very low bar, and a piss-poor reason to vote for someone."

Nick Catoggio considers that choice as well: The Lesser of Two Weasels (Dispatch paywall).

Also of note:

• Reader, suppose you were an economic idiot. And suppose you were running for president. But I repeat myself. As Mankiw mentioned, it's not only price controls. Eric Boehm looks at a Trump proposal that Kamala has, um, adopted, but: Carving Out a Tax Cut Just for Tips Doesn't Make More Sense When Kamala Harris Does It.

  Vice President Kamala Harris has followed in former President Donald Trump's footsteps by promising to eliminate income taxes on tips if she's elected. Trump, meanwhile, is already complaining that she's stolen the idea from him—although isn't it supposed to be a triumph when you convince an opposing campaign to adopt your views?

  […]

  Unfortunately, this is a poorly thought-out idea no matter whose campaign is pushing it. As I wrote shortly after Trump floated this plan in June, exempting tips from income taxes would increase the deficit, create some weird economic incentives, and unfairly cut taxes for a small subset of workers while not doing much to help the majority of Americans or grow the economy.

  Those things are all still true, even when the silly idea comes out of a Democratic politician's mouth. Don't buy the argument being peddled by people such as Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik, who declared Harris' version of this plan "better" simply because she's also calling for a higher national minimum wage.

• Another bad idea embraced by both candidates… is apparently to do nothing about Social Security. At the Manhattan Institute, Chris Pope has a long article, with nice graphics, about The Overextended Retirement State. His "Executive Summary":

  The welfare state is supposed to redistribute funds from times of plenty to times of need, as well as from rich to poor. That is why the nation’s most generous publicly financed benefits are reserved for seniors, who have less capacity to earn money and who face higher health-care costs, while taxes are concentrated on working-age households.

  But working-age Americans, despite typically earning more income than seniors, also bear substantial child-rearing costs, have rarely paid off their mortgages, and must spend more to live near good jobs and schools. As a result, this group now has lower material standards of living than retirees: they have less living space, are more likely to go without meals or health care, are less able to pay utility bills, are more likely to live in pest-infested houses, and are more likely to live where they feel threatened by crime. This also means that families have less money to invest in their children.

  The U.S.’s increasingly costly entitlements for middle-class retirees result in substantial redistribution away from young workers. If this system is not reformed soon, major tax increases on workers at all income levels will be required, which will only exacerbate redistribution away from age groups who are worst off.

  You would think those present and future workers might be a little upset about that. Unfortunately, it works to neither party's partisan advantage to point it out, which means the "watchdog" media also finds it uninteresting.

• And, sadly, many liberals are too wimpy to defend themselves. Emily Chamlee-Wright takes a big-picture look at the ideological landscape, concentrating on The Bogus Post-Liberal Indictment of Liberalism. An interesting point:

  […] PLI [Post-liberal intelligentsia] critiques often deploy freeze-frame storytelling. These freeze-frame narratives point to something bad happening in the world, tie that bad thing to liberalism’s fondness for individual liberty, and then propose a top-down fix (if they propose a fix at all). Because liberalism is the supposed cause of the problem, the audience is expected to set aside any liberal squeamishness they may harbor, such as concerns about individual rights, constitutional restraint, or market-based reasoning, as the PLI elect impose their conception of the common good.

  Freeze-frame narratives are effective in the sense that they put any honest defender of the liberal project into a position of having to concede that (a) problems exist, and (b) solutions can be elusive. But where we agree that a problem does in fact exist, rather than responding apologetically or defensively, liberals ought to ask, “In which system will we have the best prospects of solving the problem?” Freeze-frame storytelling, intentionally or not, has the effect of foreclosing this line of questioning, and keeps us from understanding liberalism as a system that fosters learning.

  The liberal promise is not that bad stuff doesn’t happen. Liberalism doesn’t promise that there won’t be economic or social disruption. What it promises is that with liberal norms and institutions in place, free people tend to find solutions. But when we reject liberal principles, workable solutions are much less likely to be found.

  Which is a good excuse to look up this old song:

  If you're like me, the only lyrics you remember from that song are "Freeze-frame (freeze-frame) Freeze-frame (freeze-frame) Freeze-frame (freeze-frame) Freeze-frame, now freeze."

Prefer taxt? Here you go, from Jim Morhard at the Hill: The US space program is cratering, thanks to a leadership vacuum under Biden

Morhard goes there: as Veep, Kamala chairs the National Space Council, and has been "glaringly absent" in that role. A delay in any risky reentry beyond Election Day would be timed to "avoid a bad day for the Harris campaign."

I have no idea if that's fair, or even true.

Also of note:

• It's supposed to be the Live Free or Die state. Find New Hampshire in the latest rankings: State Occupational Licensing Index 2024.

  Occupational licensing affects more than 20% of workers in the United States. The extent of occupational licensing greatly differs across states. From both a research and public policy standpoint, it is important to have a comprehensive measure of occupational licensure across states and occupations.

  The table at the link ranks from highest licensing burden (#1, Texas) to lowest (#51, Kansas). NH is in a disappointingly high position, #17. In New England, we are bested by Vermont (#36), Rhode Island (#24) and Connecticut (#34). But we are slightly ahead of Maine (#10) and Massachusetts (#15).

• Woof. Dominic Pino does a fact check and discovers More Bark than Bite from the Trump Campaign’s ‘Policy Attack Dog’.

  If J. D. Vance is really going to be the Trump campaign’s “policy attack dog,” as Audrey Fahlberg and Brittany Bernstein report, he probably should get a handle on policy.

  Let’s start with trade. He has a line in his stump speech about Kamala Harris and NAFTA. As delivered today in Michigan:

  Remember, this is the woman who voted to preserve NAFTA, to extend NAFTA, the very trade deal that sent American auto jobs to Mexico by the tens of thousands and turned American dreams into nightmares.

  Kamala Harris has hardly moved a muscle in her political life without getting organized labor’s permission. The unions opposed NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the USMCA, the new version of NAFTA that the Trump administration negotiated. So Harris opposed all three. She obviously wasn’t in the Senate in 1993 when the NAFTA vote happened, but she said in 2019 that she would have voted against it if she had the chance.

  A Vance spokesman has said previously that Vance is criticizing Harris for having voted against the USMCA, which she did as a senator in 2020. But she did that because she doesn’t support NAFTA. Despite lots of bluster from Trump, the USMCA is largely identical to NAFTA, with some modernizations for digital goods and some minor tweaks on automobiles and a few other specific categories. Because Harris opposes NAFTA, it makes perfect sense that she voted against basically-the-same-thing-as-NAFTA.

  The candidates seem to be arguing about who's more against free trade. "I am!" "No, I am!"

• A missed opportunity. Noah Rothman details What Nikki Haley Gets Right about the Trump Campaign.

  Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley’s diagnosis of what ails the Trump campaign is simple: “Quit whining” about Kamala Harris. In a Tuesday night sit-down interview with Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier, the onetime governor of South Carolina catalogued the Trump campaign’s failures since Joe Biden left the race. Her verdict establishes what may soon become the conventional wisdom that explains how Donald Trump lost a presidential race that was his to lose.

  “I want this campaign to win, but the campaign is not going to win talking about crowd sizes,” Haley added. It won’t win by talking about “what race Kamala Harris is,” or “whether she’s dumb.” And it won’t be won if Trump, J. D. Vance, and his allies continue to double down on appeal to voters who make up the MAGA movement. “Republicans need to be fighting for suburban women, for college-educated [voters], for independents, for moderate Republicans, and for conservative Democrats,” Haley concluded. “The American people are smart. Treat them like they’re smart.”

  Never mind treating me like I'm smart; I'd be a sucker for any candidate who didn't actively insult my intelligence.

  But I'm dubious about Nikki's claim that the "American people are smart". We certainly don't vote that way.

Prospective veep nominee Tim Walz made a libertarian-sounding appeal last week in Eau Claire, WI:

Uh, fine. Unfortunately, given the context, it's pretty easy to translate that into what he really means: "Abortion should be legal up to nine months." Pretty much everything else is fair game for being government business.

Still, to honor the actual words, not their speaker, there is our Amazon Product du Jour for you. No political endorsement from Pun Salad implied.

But what I really want to talk about is this WSJ op-ed, with the libertarian headline: The FEC Has No Business Regulating AI.

Reader, the pleasant surprise is: the op-ed is written by Sean Cooksey, chairman of the Federal Election Commission.

A refreshing bit of honesty, and I hope the proposal goes down to ignominious defeat tomorrow.

(See, Governor Walz, that's what "minding your own damn business" really looks like.)

Also of note:

• Speaking of Walz. Robby Soave puts another pin in the Governor's libertarian balloon: Tim Walz Was Dead Wrong About Misinformation and Free Speech.

  Conservatives on social media did manage to dig up an old clip of Walz making an alarming and false claim: "There's no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy."

  Walz is wrong, of course: The First Amendment, which vigorously protects Americans' free speech rights, does not distinguish between good information and misinformation. Moreover, so-called hate speech—an arbitrary category, as different people find different sorts of speech to be hateful—is quite obviously protected.

  Of course, this means that Walz is ignorant about that bit of Constitutional law, inconvenient that he took an oath to support it.

  And, also of course, that means he doesn't think his "mind your own damn business" rule applies here.

• A convenient amnesia. Jim Geraghty points it out: The Media Have Forgotten Why They Exist.

  Between now and Election Day, count the number of “news” stories you read that have a subtext of: Isn’t Kamala Harris awesome? Isn’t Tim Walz awesome? And for that matter, if you go looking in the right-of-center press, you can find stories that amount to: Isn’t Donald Trump awesome? Isn’t J. D. Vance awesome?

  And if you really go looking in some of the deeper corners of the internet, you can find stories arguing that Robert F. Kennedy is awesome, and that that bear cub had it coming.

  […]

  Of course, the news media’s job isn’t, traditionally, to tell you how awesome a presidential candidate is. The campaigns are going to spend a lot of money telling you how awesome the candidate is. The news media is supposed to be giving you a full portrait, warts and all, of the options before you. You’re hiring this person for a four-year contract to run the executive branch and be commander in chief. That is a role with serious responsibilities.

  No, Kamala Harris is not your “Mom-ala,” Tim Walz is not your dad, and Donald Trump is not your daddy.

  Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of a political landscape that is a Hieronymus Bosch painting of human dysfunction is the number of Americans who have forsaken their actual relationships with their actual family members and chosen to project their personal psychodramas onto current events, casting political figures as the family they wish they had.

  Bosch? It's not a pretty picture, Emily.

• Could I suggest "enhanced interrogation"? Nah, probably inappropriate. But Jim Geraghty (yes, again) has some suggestions for The Questions the Media Should Be Asking Kamala Harris. The first set:

  We are told, through your campaign staff, that you no longer hold the positions you espoused when seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. Back then, you supported banning fracking, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, defunding the police, instituting mandatory buybacks of assault weapons, eliminating private health insurance, and guaranteeing federal jobs.

  In 2019, you said you were open to expanding the size of the Supreme Court. Now, a spokesman says you no longer hold that position.

  You spent much of your time in the U.S. Senate and presidential campaign arguing, “We are not going to treat people who are undocumented and cross the border as criminals,” and “an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.” Now, according to your staff, your position is that “unauthorized border crossings are illegal.” What caused you to change your mind on these issues? Did you learn more that convinced you that your old positions were wrong, unfeasible, or ill-informed? Or is it that those were the positions that you felt were most popular in a Democratic presidential primary, and now you’re running in a general election? What guarantee does any voter have that your new positions won’t be as quickly and quietly abandoned as the old ones once you’re elected?

  I'd suggest something shorter and simpler: "Would you significantly change any current Biden Administration policies, or would a Harris Administration just continue all of them?"

Recently on the book blog:

This book was on the WSJ's list of the best mysteries of 2022; took me awhile, but now I've read 'em all. This one… could have been better.

That is, by the way, similar to what I thought about the other Joël Dicker novel I read ten years ago, The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair. I said that one had a good, twisty plot, but it was accompanied by "cardboard characters, plastic dialog, and leaden prose."

Same here. Although the plot is super twisty, the characters less plastic. And (let's be charitable) the dialog and prose woes could be due to a lackluster translation from the original French.

It's set mostly in Switzerland. A discovered corpse in Room 622 is right on page one. Although we are not told the victim's identity until much further on, and the perpetrator isn't revealed until the very end. Otherwise, the story concentrates on three characters in a love triangle stretching back decades: Lev, son of a failed comedian and actor; Anastasia, whose mother wants her to marry rich; and Macaire, scion of a banking family, who's wangling to take over the bank presidency when his father kicks the bucket.

Ah, but it's an example of autofiction as well. To add another layer of plotting, parts of the book are narrated by an author named Joël Dicker, who's in mourning for his longtime mentor/publisher, and also moaning about a tough breakup with his girlfriend. He takes off to the Hôtel de Verbier, in the Alps, where he makes the acquaintance of Scarlett Leonas, also staying there. They notice an oddity on the resort's sixth floor: room 622 is missing! (Replaced by "621A".) It is soon revealed to them that the room was the site of that murder years back. What happened? Scarlett and Joël turn into amateur sleuths, determined to track down the truth behind the enigma. Might make a good book!

The book's plot, other than the mystery, is very soap-operatic. The characters mostly behave foolishly and dishonestly, engaging in absurd subterfuges that never seem to work out to their satisfaction. Betrayal, jealousy, envy, self-sabotage, irrational hatred, fatal misunderstandings, and many more: they are all here. I assume Dicker ties up all the loose ends that pop up throughout the book by the last page, but I couldn't swear to it.

Reader, here's something I noticed: If two characters arrange a future rendezvous and one says "I promise to be there", then it's a foregone conclusion that he or she won't show up, and the consequences will matter.

Disclaimer: this is one of those books where, in my case, the author, Coleman Hughes, is pushing on an open door. I found myself in violent agreement with just about everything he says here. I'm in no mood to be critical, and have nothing to be critical about.

One of my longtime puzzlements is how counterproductive the "progressive" attitudes toward racial issues in the US are. Their criticisms are unbalanced; their proposed "solutions" seem designed to worsen social ills rather than mend them, stirring up suspicion, resentment, and hostility on all sides.

(When I say "longtime": I recall the 1970s strife accompanying the judge-ordered busing of black and white kids in Boston. This accomplished less than nothing, education-wise.)

This book defends an honorable, and simple, principle: "we should treat people without regard to race, both in our public policy and in our private lives." This ideal has a long and noble history, but has been under attack from the people Hughes dubs "neoracists". He concentrates fire on Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi, who have probably made the most off their anti-colorblindness. But (as we know) the neoracist ideology really worked itself into schools and (even) public libraries, to the exclusion of opposing viewpoints. (I got this book from the UNH Library, but only via Interlibrary Loan from Brandeis.)

Hughes' criticism of neoracism is intense (and convincing). He shows that the neoracists reject the principles encouraged by MLKJr ("content of their character"); they favor racial discrimination, engage in invidious racial stereotyping; redefine the term "racism" to fit their ideology; are "committed to race superiority." All in all, not that different from the nastiest white supremecists.

Solutions? Hughes has worthwhile suggestions:

First, stop thinking of "diversity" as an end in itself, but as a tool to help achieve actually worthy goals. His example is policing, where folks of color would tend to see a lily-white police force as illegitimate. But in most cases, judging on colorblind merit is the way to go.

Second, "racist talk" should be stigmatized no matter its direction.

Third, racial discrimination against minorities should be stopped. For example, the anti-Asian bias in school admissions.

Fourth, the notion that statistical racial disparities are "proof" of racial discrimination needs to be debunked, and ineffective "affirmative action" plans should be junked. Hughes is hard on the term "affirmative action", noting that, taken by itself, it's a meaningless euphemism. ("If you didn't know what it meant, the words themselves would give you no hint.")

So: another sensible book that will be mostly ignored by the people styling themselves as "anti-racists". I wish it were in every library, shelved next to the Kendis and DiAngelos.

Almost done with my mini-project to reread Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels. Left is Poodle Springs, which Chandler did not finish before his death in 1959; Robert B. Parker completed it in 1989. But it still counts as Chandler in my book.

This one, Playback, is considered to be a lesser effort, based on Chandler's screenplay for a movie that never got made. I dug out my 1977 $1.50 paperback, and… I liked it fine! Probably the first time I've read it since 1977, so my memory of the plot was pretty hazy. Oh, heck, I'll admit it: it was nonexistent.

Marlowe is hired over the phone by a supercilious lawyer to track down and follow a lady on the lam, arriving by train in Los Angeles from the east. (On the "Super Chief"!) Details are provided in a visit from the lawyer's comely secretary. But the subject is easy to find ("as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket"). And Marlowe tails her down south to Esmeralda, a nice little seaside resort town.

Violating his client's explicit instructions, Marlowe makes himself known to the subject, and they eventually both find themselves in the usual hot water; Marlowe's not the only one interested in her; she's being blackmailed, and she's fleeing an unpleasant situation. Along the way, Marlowe encounters some very colorful characters.

Would have made a pretty decent movie, I think.

Remy would like to buy some, in our tuneful Eye Candy du Jour:

But we kind of discovered a theme in the articles selected for our Also of note category today. And Gerard Butler expresses it well in his headline at the WSJ:: Trump Is Looking Like a Loser Again.

Some manifestations of this general theme:

• He likes talking about the "false, obtuse, or lunatic" stuff more. Dave Seminara is plaintive: Has Trump Forgotten About School Choice?

  Choice and “reproductive freedom” are centerpieces of Kamala Harris’s campaign, and likely a key reason why she enjoys a strong polling advantage over Donald Trump with women. Republicans have a potent choice issue, too—school choice—though it’s one that they’ve inexplicably ignored of late. Trump somehow didn’t find time to mention it in his 92-minute, 12,353-word RNC speech. His only reference to education was a promise to “restore patriotism to our schools.” The word uttered most frequently at the convention was “Trump,” with more than 1,000 references. No education-related term ranked as one of the top 30 words spoken at the convention.

  Trump also failed to mention school choice at recent rallies in Detroit and Grand Rapids, Michigan, and in Virginia, Wisconsin, and Nevada. Nor did he mention school choice at a recent rally in my home state, Florida, where we have universal school choice, which is helping me put my sons through Catholic schools. In Pinellas County, where I live, parents (of any income) can get a voucher worth $8,203 per K-3 student, $7,574 for each grade 4-8 student, and $7,512 for each high school student. The money goes from state coffers straight to the school, and it couldn’t be easier. I have a friend with four kids who will soon be saving $30,000 per year. Imagine how many families across the country would love to have a universal school choice program like ours.

  It's a popular issue, Republicans are mostly on the right side, Democrats are in servitude to the teacher unions, … and Trump can't be bothered with it.

• But his very large brain is working on important stuff! And Granite Grok has the scoop: Trump Has Some Hilarious Nickname Options For Tim Walz.

  Sigh. No excerpt, it's just too depressing.

• Hey, maybe this giveaway will get people to vote for me! Veronique de Rugy takes aim at another Trumpian airball: The U.S. Can't Afford To Cut Taxes on Social Security Benefits.

  Social Security is facing enormous shortfalls. It is insolvent. Within the next 10 years, no one will be able to avoid this reality—despite decades of politically expedient denial. Yet as of today, both presidential candidates, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, have announced they won't touch the program. In fact, Trump wants to make it even more insolvent by lifting taxes seniors pay on benefits.

  Don't get me wrong, I love lower tax rates. I also believe the current tax structure on benefits creates a large incentive for seniors who may want to reenter the workforce to choose not to do so. And these types of work disincentives in the tax code are bad. While reducing Social Security taxes may encourage some seniors to go back to work, it will in turn cause more dramatic problems if not paired with reform to Social Security benefits, something neither Trump nor Harris cares to recognize.

  Social Security is in a big financial mess as it is. Current benefit taxes bring in about $87 billion in revenue each year, in addition to the payroll tax revenue. Even still, Social Security is insolvent. Currently, it is projected that the main Social Security trust fund will dry out by 2033. According to the Committee for a Responsible Budget, exempting Social Security benefits from taxation would move that date forward to 2032 (it will also dry up the Medicare trust fund six years sooner).

  Just how short is the average voter's time horizon, anyway?

• We should have expected weird. Kevin D. Williamson says we could have easily predicted it: Of Course They’re Weird.

  If you are so inclined—and I do not advise that you be so inclined—you can go to Google right now and read questions on various online fora from men who have been called weird by a woman and who are desperate for some advice about how to respond. Much of the old pickup-artist lingo is still in use, having become something of a literary tradition in certain unhappy corners of the digital world. That “alpha male” stuff is all over the place when it comes to Trump and Trumpism, from 2016-era exegeses to homoerotic Trumpist performance artist Nick Adams to this summer’s headlines, including this in U.S. News and World Report: “Trump Shooting Makes Him Stronger, Channeling Alpha Males Back to Teddy Roosevelt.” The Trump movement’s embrace of campy emblems of exaggerated masculinity—the cowboy hats, the biker gear, etc.—is straight out of 20th-century gay erotica. So are many of the depictions of Trump himself:

  There he is, the president of the United States, sitting astride a motorcycle in a leather jacket in front of the Capitol, a rifle in hand. There he is again, once more leather-clad, both of his middle fingers extended as he stands on the southern border.

  The words written on the T-shirts and denim vests alongside the imaginary biker version of Donald Trump exude similar vibes. “Finally someone with balls.”

  The fascination with Trump’s genitals is a genre convention. But that’s not all!

  The language is foul. The wardrobe is leather. Engines are loud, as is the music. Booze flows freely. Tents sell chaps and vests with gun pockets. You can smoke where you like for the most part. There are daily wet T-shirt contests. In the most raucous bar, men pay women in lingerie to spank their bare bottoms with a paddle.

  Weird?

  You bet your leather chaps it is.

  A long excerpt, but I assume it's paywalled.

(Still on hiatus, so one more Pun Salad rerun. Originally posted, appropriately enough, on Groundhog Day.)

Last month I mentioned that Amazon broke my image links that pointed to their servers. These were technically advertising links, although I've made negligible revenue from them. Sigh, fine. Their servers, their rules.

I haven't mentioned that Google did something similar. For a few years I had been saving images to my Google Drive account (they give you a lot of space for free) and doing image links pointing to the Google web servers. Google (apparently) stopped allowing such hotlinking. (No, I'm not crazy. Here's someone reporting the same issue.)

All in all, around 4500 Amazon image links were broken, and around 500 Google Drive links. Fortunately, I was able to automate much of the process. I think I've fixed all the Google Drive links and all but 240 of the Amazon links. Old ones, from 2005 and 2006. I'll get those over the next couple of days.

This blog is essentially a DIY hack project. So far, a 19 year DIY project. And it is a truth universally acknowledged that when you're fixing one DIY thing, you begin to notice other DIY things that could use some work.

So I've been doing some hacking. One is noticing images that I downloaded to Google Drive, but never got around to blogging. Here's an oldie image, downloaded from Reddit in September 2022.

Notes:

• Area residents will recognize this as approaching Lee Traffic Circle from the west.
• I'm sure we'll see Moe Dipshitz running again this year.

And here's a Michael Ramirez cartoon that I downloaded and forgot to post:

It's from 2019, but you know what? Still works. Unfortunately.

Our normal Sunday election post is suspended during our hiatus. But this is a timeless observation:

I promise you guys that all the candidates are shitty enough that you don't have to make up lies about them

— Shoshana Weissmann, Sloth Committee Chair 🦥 (@senatorshoshana) July 30, 2024

Sigh. I wish she was senator from our state.

(A short Pun Salad hiatus continues today. Enjoy this "timeless" post from earlier this year.)

Apologies for slightly altering a Mark Twain quote. But it was brought to mind by a Don Boudreaux post at Cafe Hayek, which begins: The Experience of an Economist....

Boudreaux made the fatal mistake of listening to NPR. I sympathize. I listened to the five-minute interview; the NPR Droid, Ayesha Rascoe, did not ask any skeptical questions of the senator. Like: "Isn't 'shrinkflation' just a symptom of inflation? And isn't inflation a pretty direct result of government policies?"

If you don't hit that NPR link above, you can check out Senator Casey's press release on his bill: Legislation to Crack Down on Big Corporations Shrinking Products Without Reducing Prices.

Yes, like Elizabeth Warren, Casey's a big fan of cracking down. On everything except runaway government spending.

Like "fair share", that phrase must focus-group well.

Back to Don Boudreaux, who penned a letter to NPR in response, observing: None of These People Put Their Money Where Their Mouths Are.... Proposing a real tough question for the down-crackers:

Well, Don, the obvious answer is that politicians like Casey and Warren have no discernible talent at business-running. In fact, no discernible talent for running anything except their mouths.

(The above is a mutated quote from Marion Barry, not quite as famous as his classic "Bitch set me up".)

Anyway: of course, some savvy businessperson with appropriate talent could do what Boudreaux describes, undercutting the "price gougers", and making big bucks. Or an existing candy company, one of these guys, could do it. Why doesn't that happen?

I'm pretty sure you can come up with a plausible explanation.

It is unsurprising for government-subsidized NPR to act as a cheerleader for increasing government "crack down" power. We previously looked at Cookie Monster doing his part on that front too. Jack Butler chimes in there as well: Cookie Monster: Biden Flack?.

As Butler notes, Casey's proposed legislation was promoted by the shameless-lying-demagogue-in-chief in the SOTU speech last week. The MSM fact-checkers were not diligent about his relevant remarks:

But, via Hot Air's Karen Townsend, it turns out Joe Biden is Lying About the Size of Your Snickers Bar. Quoting a tweet from someone who actually checked with the manufacturer:

As I suspected. The president is literally slandering a candy bar. Official statement given to me by the ⁦Mars/Snickers people. Will literally slander anything and anyone. Total hack. pic.twitter.com/6DiJ1Ld6EH

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) March 9, 2024

Well, shoot. Now I'm craving… you know what.

You can look at Senator Casey's proposed legislation here. Nine co-sponsors, none from New Hampshire. Too stupid even for Maggie and Jeanne?

(Pun Salad is on a brief hiatus; please enjoy this post made earlier this year)

The Google News Alert rang for a column by one Chuck Collins in an online "newspaper", the Brattleboro (VT) Reformer. Collins attempts to explain: Why some high-income Vermonters say 'raise my taxes'. Lets see how he does!

I hear you asking: did Ben and Jerry sign the letter? Reader, of course they did. Ben is the first signer, Jerry is a bit further down in position six.

Collins is billed as the "co-editor" of an eat-the-rich site, Inequality.org. He's a fan. The letter is hosted at a site called (wince) "Fair Share for Vermont". They also (quelle surprise) support a tax on unrealized capital gains.

And, as usual with these folks, "Fair Share" just means "More". With a subtext of "Never Enough".

Where does LFOD come in? Ah, here it is:

You can almost hear what Collins was muttering when he typed that last bit: "and I say good riddance to them!"

Some random observations:

• By any measure, Vermonters are currently heavily taxed. The Tax Foundation has a one-stop state tax data resource. Vermont has the fourth-highest state tax collections per capita, behind only California, Hawaii, and North Dakota. (In comparison, New Hampshire's in position #50, aka last place.)

• Vermont's top marginal income tax rate is 8.75%, and it kicks in at $229,550. They also hit their unlucky citizenry up for a 6% sales tax (7% in some locations, on some items). They also have a 16% inheritance tax—one of the highest rates—which kicks in at $5,000,000. Their "Property Taxes Paid as a Percentage of Owner-Occupied Housing Value" is the fifth-highest at 1.56%. (Only slightly less than New Hampshire's 1.61%)

• Overall, the Tax Foundation calculates Vermont's state and local tax burden to be 13.6%. The only states with higher burdens: New York, Connecticut, and Hawaii.

• I know, math is hard, but: Collins claims the income tax surcharge will raise $74 million/year. The Vermont governor's budget proposal for FY2025 is $8.6 billion, with no proposals for increased taxes or fees.

  Dividing the first number by the second gives 0.86%. I.e., it's a smidgen of what the state currently spends.

  Reader, if Vermont can't solve the "housing crisis" with $8.6 billion, do you think they're going to do it with $8.674 billion?

• For a contrary take, see the Tax Foundation's article, Vermont Lawmakers Consider Harmful Taxes on the Wealthy.

My answer to the headline, "Why some high-income Vermonters say 'raise my taxes'": because they are deluded fools.

All in all, despite Collins' assurances, I assume treating high-income and high-worth people as easy targets for legal plunder will cause some of them to wise up and move out. Some will hop the Connecticut River into New Hampshire. I welcome them with open arms and a free copy of the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again", which they will be required to listen to daily.

Just a brief post today about Amazon's woes, as reported in the WSJ a few days back: Alexa Is in Millions of Households—and Amazon Is Losing Billions.

(For fun, imagine either Bernie Sanders or Carl Sagan reading that headline.)

Article summary: Amazon sells Echo hardware cheap, in the (so far unfulfilled) hope that they will use them as a portal to buy Amazon stuff. Key quote:

Customers actually used Echo mostly for free apps such as setting alarms and checking the weather. “We worried we’ve hired 10,000 people and we’ve built a smart timer,” said a former senior employee.

Um. Setting alarms and checking the weather are exactly my everyday uses for my Echo.

Otherwise: last year, I bought some cheap "smart" plugs to turn the Christmas lights on and off. (Amazon link at your right, why not?) These worked fine, and impressed the kids.

Alexa also tells me when an Amazon delivery has been made. And occasionally nudges me to let me know when Amazon has a new book by an author I follow.

And (oh yeah): it's useful for playing songs: "Alexa, play 'Ode to Billie Joe' by Bobbie Gentry."

But all that extra stuff is also free. Well, other than my Amazon Prime subscription.

But overall, I feel sad about Amazon losing billions on Alexa. Maybe they should do this for real: Alexa Silver. I should be in the market Real Soon Now.

Jeff Maurer gets all sciencey to take down a bad scheme: Now That Everyone Hates Elon Musk, Can We Talk About How His Mars Colony is a Dumb Idea?.

Also, you (and Elon) might want to check out my report on a book I read back in April: A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. I like space stuff a lot, but at some point Elon should seriously consider the objections to his scheme.

Also of note:

• He's probably also behind my unreliable newspaper delivery. Kat Rosenfield asks the important questions, including: The Montauk Monster, the Great Clown Panic. . . What Else Is RFK Jr. Responsible For?

  For ten years, New Yorkers have been wondering what kind of weirdo would leave a mutilated bear corpse in Central Park; now, we know the answer is. . . well, pretty much exactly the kind of weirdo you’d think. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., third-party presidential candidate and black sheep of the Kennedy clan, released a video on X on Sunday revealing that he was responsible for the 2014 incident, dumping the bear and staging the scene (badly) to look like a bike accident. The account must be seen to be believed—although I should note, having grown up in the part of rural New York where much of the action allegedly took place, that I do believe it, and furthermore guarantee you that is not the first time a wealthy person LARPing as a redneck has gotten into trouble with a bear carcass.

  I was no fan of the original RFK, but even I observe the apple fell pretty far from the tree in this case.

• Of course he was. Robby Soave is quick on the opposition research: Tim Walz Was a COVID-19 Tyrant.

  Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz was a moderate Democrat when he served in the House of Representatives but veered left during his two terms as governor. He referred to socialism as synonymous with neighborliness, pursued an extremely progressive governing agenda, and earned an F from the Cato Institute on fiscal policy.

  Another notable thing about Walz is that he served as governor during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is thus possible to parse his approach to the virus—and that record is extremely disturbing. Indeed, Walz's coronavirus policies were extremely heavy-handed and restrictive; under his leadership, the state endured the pandemic in a fundamentally anti-libertarian fashion.

  When the coronavirus was first spreading, Walz was an enthusiastic promoter of social distancing rules. He described the crowds in public, outdoor spaces as "a little too big." He even defended Minnesota's ridiculous hotline for COVID-19 snitches. That's right: Walz's government maintained a method for people to report their neighbors for failing to abide by social distancing rules. Walz insisted in a recent interview that "one person's socialism is another person's neighborliness"; denouncing one's neighbors as insufficiently loyal to government policies is a fundamental aspect of socialism, however.

  When asked by Republicans to take down the hotline, Walz responded: "We're not going to take down a phone number that people can call to keep their families safe."

  Soave is unimpressed, but the bettors surveyed by the Lott/Stossel Election Betting Odds site seem to think the Walz pick improved Kamala's odds to a near-tie with Trump.

• Blast from the past. Twelve years ago, Katherine Mangu-Ward pointed out an obvious truth: Your Vote Doesn't Count.

  Wearing an "I Voted" sticker on Election Day announces that you are a proud participant in the grand tradition of representative democracy, the worst system except all the others. It says "I care," "I'm informed," and perhaps also "this shirt is machine washable."

  On that day (November 6! Mark your calendars! [but see below]), when Americans are resting from their quadrennial labors of locating a polling place, standing in line, and pushing buttons, pulling levers, filling bubbles, or poking a touch screen, there is a surefire way to start a fight in any bar, church, or bus in the country. Three little words: I don't vote.

  Voting is widely thought to be one of the most important things a person can do. But the reasons people give for why they vote (and why everyone else should too) are flawed, unconvincing, and sometimes even dangerous. The case for voting relies on factual errors, misunderstandings about the duties of citizenship, and overinflated perceptions of self-worth. There are some good reasons for some people to vote some of the time. But there are a lot more bad reasons to vote, and the bad ones are more popular.

  So check that out. And if you still care afterward, Election Day is November 5 this year.

A letter to the editor appearing in my local newspaper, Foster's Daily Democrat this morn is from another citizen of my fair town, Lorraine Hansen. In its entirety:

Well.

I'll let others speculate on who's got the fever dreams here, but interesting and relevant observations are made by Andy Smarick at the Dispatch, certainly not a hotbed of Trumpism: What Trump Opponents Don’t Get About Project 2025.

Also see Alex Demas, also at the Dispatch for a diligent analysis of what people are saying about P2025: Viral Claims About Project 2025 Are Mostly False.

But for another take on the coming dystopia, Belle Boggs writes a guest essay at the NYT: A Bat Flew Into My Bedroom and Reminded Me of All We Take for Granted. Or you could check out Matt Taibbi's digest instead: Bat Scares Egghead Couple: Trump Blamed.

Yes, if Trump gets (back) in, he and Project 2025 will ensure we will be left helpless against swarms of deadly bats.

For an even more acerbic take on Ms. Boggs' essay, Steven Hayward at Power Line on Chiroptophobic Liberalism. Which includes…

This is the image that the @nytimes put with the article. Ask yourself: does this image accurately depict a story about a bat that accidentally flies into a house (through an open door) and back out again without incident? Is everyone at the NY Times now just completely insane? pic.twitter.com/IWvMLhOUnO

— Toby Rogers (@uTobian) August 5, 2024

Insane? Probably not diagnosable. But they got a fever! And the only prescription is ‥ unnecessary rabies shots, and a bunch of unaccountable Federal bureaucrats.

Also of note:

• As seen last night on Twitter…

  🔥🚨SHOCKING: Anytime someone says you’re crazy for thinking the media is trying to manipulate us show them this. pic.twitter.com/kgizqy38vo

  — Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives (@dom_lucre) August 5, 2024

  Well, that's certainly amusing. A herd of independent minds! Certainly we've never seen such well-organized unanimity since … oh, since we were being told what a good man Biden was, sharp as ever, and certainly never appointed Kamala as border czar,…

  But: the video is from 2018. And all those newsies are working for Trump-friendly Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose upper management wrote their script.

Unexpected news from the Guardian: Komodo dragons have iron-coated teeth, scientists find.

Later on in the article:

Komodo dragons are the largest living lizards…

OK, I knew that, thanks to Bob and Ray:

For some reason, this sketch cracks me up every time I listen. "If we wanted to take the youngsters to see a Komodo dragon…"

Also of note:

• Good thing to add to your bullshit detector. Noah Rothman at NR on how to handle Everything before the ‘But’ . . .

  There’s a rule of thumb that loosely prescribes disregarding everything that precedes the “but” in a compound sentence. The introduction is a throat-clearing concession designed to soften the blow of what’s about to follow, and what follows invariably contradicts the introduction. If we observe that rule, Axios’s latest report on how the Biden White House is reacting to Israel’s targeted assassinations of the leaders of U.S.-designated terrorist groups is a doozy of a “but.”

  Reporter Barak Ravid revealed on Friday that Joe Biden insisted upon holding a “tough” call with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which the president conveyed how “deeply frustrated” the administration is by Israel’s actions.

  “U.S. officials don’t mourn the deaths of either Hezbollah’s top military commander Fuad Shukr, who was involved in killing 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut in 1983, or Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who celebrated the Oct. 7 massacre,” the report read. Here it comes . . .

  “But,” the subsequent paragraph began, “they feel that Netanyahu kept Biden in the dark over his plans to carry out the assassinations after leaving the impression last week that he was attentive to the president’s request to focus on getting a Gaza deal.”

  Emphasis added. Why, this is just malarkey!

Recently on the book blog:

I'm afraid I didn't get a lot out of this book.

The author, Robert Wright, attempts to marry up "Buddhism" with the latest research on evolutionary psychology. I put "Buddhism" in quotes, because (like just about all popular religions) Buddhism is a large candy store where you can pick and choose the items you like, leave other stuff on the shelf.

Wright doesn't buy into any hint of supernaturalism, so near the end of the book he mentions the candy he left at the store: no karma, no reincarnation, no praying to the Buddha, no bowing to his statue. He goes into great detail on his experiences with meditation, and argues that it makes ones mind work better, in some senses. His spiritual journey is not without interest, and I wish him well, but its general applicability is iffy.

Moreover, Wright admits that a great deal of what we call "Buddhism" is pretty divorced from the Buddha himself: "There's roughly no chance that all the sayings attributed to him in Buddhist texts were uttered by him." Admittedly, kind of like Jesus.

The evolutionary psychology stuff is also kind of a candy store, and Wright picks out the stuff he likes there too. To match up the Buddhist concept of "not-self", he picks out the research that emphasizes our proclivity for self-deception, gullibility, fallacy, bias, … . He argues Buddhism (sorta) indicates this by arguing that your "self" isn't really in charge of your actions.

Fine, but it sometimes is in charge. Since I "believe" in free will (which Wright doesn't go into), I think we have "the capacity for conscious, rational, control of our actions". Take that, Buddha.

Wright's reliance on what "studies show" is kind of a warning flag to me. For example, on page 160, he discourses on "priming". He doesn't mention that a number of studies on priming have failed to replicate.

A brief appendix contains "A List of Buddhist Truths". I wish this had been a chapter up at the front of the book.

But if you prefer text:

George Will checks out Two candidates, blithely campaigning on a treadmill to oblivion.

I've gotta say that "treadmill to nowhere" seems a "weird" metaphor: you're not going anywhere on a treadmill, let alone oblivion. But maybe Fred Allen made it work.

Eric Boehm writes in the same vein: Donald Trump and Kamala Harris Are Making It Up as They Go. For example:

And Boehm also notes Kamala memory-holing the deeply principled positions she thought would get her elected four years ago, adopting new ones that she hopes will work this time around.

That said, she's made up a lot of ground over the past week with the bettors. Our weekly look:

"Sharp Stick in the Eye" is looking better every day.

Also of note:

• "Kamala Harris is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life." If you see me saying that, you know The Kamala Harris Psyop worked, as described by Michael Brendan Dougherty:

  Kamala Harris dropped out of the 2020 Democratic primary before a single vote could be cast. She had pledged to sign the Green New Deal. She had talked up radical bail reform. She encouraged donations to a bail-reform group that released violent criminals, including sex offenders, back onto the streets. She entertained the idea of restoring voting rights even to confined terrorists. She refused to rule out packing the Supreme Court. She wanted to defund the police. She announced her pronouns.

  She was committed to every fashionable left-wing cause in a year of left-wing hysteria. And so she was a darling of the press, which sees itself as the superintendent of the latest political trends. Voters — particularly black voters — ended up picking Joe Biden in a near-explicit repudiation of progressive mob politics and of the craven leaders, such as Harris, who were auditioning by standing in front of the law-degree-holding Molotov-cocktail brigades that year.

  That she is being foisted on Democratic voters with just 100 days to go before the election should be seen as a form of ideological punishment and discipline meted out by elite Democrats to their voters. It doesn’t feel that way only because Biden was dying on the debate stage and in the polls. Free of the Biden burden, Democrats have cut their overwhelming feeling of relief with a few choice precursor media narratives to rebrand their mood change as a form of euphoria. We love “brat.” We love coconuts. Kamala Harris is funny. Kamala Harris is serious about governing. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

  Eh. Those (capital-D) Democratic voters don't seem to mind. They fell in line, Clementine.

• Not an Olympic floor gymnastics routine. The NR editors warn us: Here Come the Flip-Flops. After detailing those many reversals:

  There are two advantages Harris has that could help her pull off these extraordinary flip-flops. One is that she was able to essentially secure the Democratic nomination by acclamation, and so she will get a free pass from within her party. Had she been in a protracted primary fight, she would have to weigh the risk of blowback against any attempts to move to the center. The second issue is that the press has shown itself to be embarrassingly in the tank for Harris, and it is unlikely she will be subject to as much scrutiny for the reversals as a standard candidate.

  On the other hand, there are so many video clips of her stating her prior stances in such an unequivocal way (for instance, “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking”) that her prior positions will be easy to cut into ads and plaster all over the airwaves — as Donald Trump and Republicans are already doing. Furthermore, it will be harder for her to pose as moderate when she is still taking some of the extreme positions she staked out in 2019, such as her endorsement of Court-packing just this week (by way of imposing term limits that would disproportionately apply to conservative justices).

  Ultimately, Harris is the most radically Left major-party nominee in American history, and it is going to be incredibly difficult to hide that.

  But she's not Trump. Never has been, never will be. And for many voters, that's enough.

• She's not J.D. Vance either. Veronique de Rugy de-euphemizes it for you: J.D. Vance Wants To Control You With Taxes.

  Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance has been in the news for an old clip of him talking about how the tax code should punish adults without kids. While Vance's proposal probably aims to address demographic concerns, it represents a misguided approach that contradicts fundamental principles of economic freedom and fairness.

  And you know what? That's precisely what our tax code already does, in this case and many others.

  Using the tax code to "reward" parents and "punish" nonparents is at odds with the idea of a neutral, efficient tax system. In an ideal and fair world, the tax base would be broad but taxed at a low rate. People making the same income should be paying the same level of taxes no matter how they choose to live their lives.

  There's a long list of (ahem) behavior-modification efforts in our obscene tax codes. Just pay attention when you fire up Turbo Tax sometime next year, and see all the things you're not doing.

• "But they're our bigots." Kevin D. Williamson notes an inconvenient fact about a guy being considered for our next bucket of warm spit: Shapiro Exposes Democrats' Antisemitism Problem.

  Kamala Harris is not an antisemite. She is married to a Jewish man, one who earlier this summer presided over the groundbreaking for a memorial to the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre. Donald Trump’s efforts to smear her as someone who “doesn’t like Jewish people” are unlikely to stick. But that doesn’t necessarily solve Shapiro’s problem—which is whether the left wing of the Democratic party is going to think of him as one Jew too many, as the Jew who broke the camel’s back.

  We have our own local I'm-not-an-antisemite-but Hamas fangirl, UNH physics prof Chanda Prescod-Weinstean, who's waging a jihad against a Shapiro pick. Sample tweet:

  Time to show the world you mean business on protecting Gazans. Your VP choice is a chance to make clear your priorities.
  
  Josh Shapiro - through his demonization of peaceful protests, his support of private school vouchers, & his sexual harassment cover-up - is the wrong choice. https://t.co/VsQlsodv6V

  — Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (@IBJIYONGI) July 28, 2024

  Well, we'll see how that works out.

Recently on the book blog:

This book garnered an Edgar "Best Novel" nomination last year, and I've had pretty good luck with reading those. This was not my cup of tea, unfortunately. YMMV: the Amazon page will show you it got a slew of awards, and the back cover is loaded with advance praise.

The narrator is Lena Scott, and on page one she is informed (by the New York Daily News) that her estranged half sister is dead. (Headline: "FORMER REALITY STAR DESIREE PIERCE FOUND DEAD IN LINGERIE IN BRONX WITH COCAINE AND NO SHOES".) Lena lives in the Bronx; was Desiree on her way to see her? Desiree's death was due to a heroin overdose; was that an accident, suicide, or murder most foul? The cops follow the path of least resistance: accident. But Lena suspects foul play, and becomes an amateur detective, chasing down Desiree's acquaintances. Also getting reacquainted with her (also estranged) father, a wealthy hip-hop mogul, and his associates. A considerable amount of time and detail is spent on phones and social media, especially Instagram.

Eventually, the truth is revealed, but not without a climactic scene of dangerous New York driving.

Lena occasionally gets off some Chandlerisms: "Her pause was so pregnant it was two weeks overdue." But all too often she yammers on about details both irrelevant and uninteresting. Call me irredeemably sexist, but this is a common affliction with many (but not all) female detectives.

I've read and enjoyed a number of Mary Roach's books. Specifically, three: Gulp, Grunt, and Spook.

She is classified as a science writer, and that's sorta true, but her speciality seems to be the stuff more conventional science writers gloss over: the weird, gross, scammy, and scummy.

So I was expecting more of that here, especially with a title like My Planet. Wrong! This is a collection of her Reader's Digest columns, and those columns are a humorous look at her domestic life. Think Erma Bombeck, except still alive.

The very first essay references her first date with "the man I call Ed", who was to become her husband. Ed is very much a co-contributor; he and Mary trade observations and zingers as ably as any sitcom couple.

Ms. Roach is Dave Barry-level funny, a natural humorist. All the columns here made me smile, many drew amused snorts, and (yes) a number of guffaws. Sample, on Ed's accumulated collection of pocket change:

The Bank of Ed resides in empty sauerkraut jars and assorted broken crockery that has found a second career in finance. "Coins are heavy, but at least they're dry," the mug with no handle will say to the chipped cereal bowl.

So: not what I expected, but nevertheless a lot of fun. Recommend that the columns be read in small doses, because comedy fatigue is a real affliction.

Well, this is pretty great. Maybe, as this guy Lionel says, brilliant:

There's a word for this. Brilliant. pic.twitter.com/6oG0DuVmN0

— 🇺🇸Lionel🇺🇸 (@LionelMedia) August 2, 2024

If you're too young, or too old, or you just want to see it: here's the original video.

Also of note:

• Don't get fooled again. Virginia Postrel writes on The Technocratic Temptation. She's inspired by artists' depictions of LA's Chavez Ravine (pre-Dodger Stadium) and Bunker Hill (before its transformation into a "modern commercial and cultural center").

  As sympathetic as I am to the sentiment that “it’s time to build,” I worry that many of today’s would-be builders have either forgotten or never understood the mistakes of their 20th-century predecessors. Just because you’re smart and think something is a good idea doesn’t mean it is. The great thing about market prices is that they convey information about how much people actually value things. If Walter O’Malley had had to pay Chavez Ravine property owners high enough prices to get them to voluntarily sell, the Dodgers might still be in Brooklyn.

  Click through for Ms. Postrel's husband's comments on "Robert Moses envy, or Chinese Communist Party envy, or Woodrow Wilson envy, or FDR envy".

• Arguing against my interest. I've previously commented on the absurdity of Social Security cash flows over my life:

  1. First, Uncle Stupid takes money (invisibly and pain-free if you're not paying attention) out of my paycheck.
  2. Then, since my dad died early, sent me some "survivors" benefits for a while. While the paycheck thing still went on, of course.
  3. Eventually, I hit 70, and started taking "my" money back.
  4. Only to send some of that right back to the IRS each year, because I make too much other money.

  It's a real case study in arbitrariness.

  That said, Veronique de Rugy is correct in her analysis of Donald Trump's Terrible Social Security Idea.

  It’s one thing for Trump to claim that he doesn’t want to reform Social Security and Medicare, knowing that it will have to happen anyway. He’s simply, if irresponsibly, avoiding the political cost of telling the American people the truth about what is unavoidable. But it’s a whole other thing to multiply this irresponsibility with this new proposal.

  Exempting Social Security benefits from taxation will further increase the insolvency of Social Security. Since these tax receipts also help fund the Social Security and Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) trust funds, the Committee for Responsible Budget calculates that the move would “advance the insolvency date of Social Security’s retirement trust fund by over one year,” and “advance the insolvency date of the Medicare HI trust fund by six years.”

  Also see Charlie Cooke: Trump's 'Plan' to Abolish Taxes on Social Security Benefits is Good Politics and Horrible Budgeting

• 

  More on toasters, sorry. But it's another stupid idea from the bearded side of the Republican ticket, which deserves the scorn David Henderson unleashes upon it: Let's Make Toasters Less Affordable.

  In a speech in Henderson [no relation], Nevada on July 30, Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance stated, “We believe that a million cheap, knockoff toasters aren’t worth the price of a single American manufacturing job.”

  Let’s see. With a quick on-line search, I found that the cheapest toaster and, sure enough, it’s imported, is this one for $14.66 before tax. So one million toasters would fetch $14.6 million. This means that Vance thinks one manufacturing job per year is worth at least $14.6 million per year. The reason is that to save that job for a year would mean giving up one million toasters that year and so saving a job for, say, 10 years would mean giving one million toasters a year for 10 years.

  Henderson also points out this hurts people "in Watts or Modesto" who would be in the market for a cheap toaster because they are unrich.

  The toaster paid link at your right is Amazon's "Overall Pick" for "toaster". It's $15.99, from (aieee!) China.

• Pedestrian casualties on the Road to Serfdom. Stephen Moore and Phil Kerpen note: Biden-Harris wasted $8.5 billion in taxpayer money to lose 15,000 jobs at Intel.

  Intel was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Chips Act, receiving an $8.5 billion grant announced in March, a $25 billion sweetheart tax incentive and likely the lion’s share of an $11 billion federal loan program. That’s only the opening act.

  What did we get in exchange? Intel this week announced it was laying off 15% of its workforce — 15,000 positions.

  This was "Biden-Harris", but had "bipartisan" support in the Senate. (Somewhat less, admittedly, in the House.)

Strong evidence for that, noticed by Alex Tabaarrok:

Never trust someone who doesn’t believe in trade offs. https://t.co/migTmEzSHq

— Alex Tabarrok 🛡️ (@ATabarrok) July 31, 2024

And also by Nick Gillespie:

The protectionist mindset is stupid when left-wing or right-wing populists spout it. Factory jobs peaked as a pct of employment in the 1940s (!) and there is no reason to hold the economy hostage so JD Vance or any pol else can be happy. #creativedestruction https://t.co/L25v7tTxLl pic.twitter.com/fHxhqC4N2q

— Nick Gillespie (@nickgillespie) August 1, 2024

Trying to force the economy back to some imaginary Edenic era when America had the "right" number of jobs in some arbitrary category is … misguided.

Dominic Pino has more words on this topic: J. D. Vance’s Toaster-Making Dreams Would Burn American Manufacturers. After some amazingly thorough research:

It's all quite reminiscent of Soviet-era five-year plans, the notion that Biden/Trump-directed central planners can wisely direct the economy to … somewhere prosperous.

Also of note:

• We're getting the candidates we deserve, I guess. Jim Geraghty sums up the state of play at the beginning of August 2024: Harris Flips, Trump Fumbles in Hard-to-Watch Campaign Reset. After noting Kamala's dizzying retreats from positions she took just a few years ago (fracking, offshore drilling, mandatory gun buybacks, Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, …), he turns to the dumpster fire that is…

  The Republican nominee is too dumb, too old, too racially obsessed, too erratic and idiosyncratic in what interests and stirs him. The polls just evened up, and he’s on pace to fumble away a presidential race against a veep who ran a disastrous border — pardon me, “migration” — policy, who’s flip-flopping on every issue, who’s got to defend the highest inflation in 40 years and chaos overseas . . . and Trump thinks his best move before an African-American audience is to doubt whether she’s really black.

  We could have picked Nikki Haley. Just sayin'.

• The ghost of Walter Duranty is back at the New York Times. Robby Soave reads it so you don't have to: The New York Times Thinks 'Brutal Capitalism,' Not Socialism, Ruined Venezuela.

  Maduro's governing ideology is not a secret: He is a socialist. He is the successor to the leftist tyrant Hugo Chávez. He heads Venezuela's ruling Socialist Party. His policy prescriptions are in line with socialism: His government has instituted price controls, seized assets from private companies, and contributed to the country's hyperinflation problem. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and wrecks the economy with a mixture of centralized planning, repression, and pure theft—well, it's a socialist duck.

  So it came as something of a shock when a recent New York Times article that correctly described Venezuela's overall problems—and Maduro's perfidy in particular—nevertheless identified the government's economic policy as "brutal capitalism" rather than socialism. Here was The Times:

  If the election decision holds and Mr. Maduro remains in power, he will carry Chavismo, the country's socialist-inspired movement, into its third decade in Venezuela. Founded by former President Hugo Chávez, Mr. Maduro's mentor, the movement initially promised to lift millions out of poverty.

  For a time it did. But in recent years, the socialist model has given way to brutal capitalism, economists say, with a small state-connected minority controlling much of the nation's wealth.

  Economists say what now? These economists are not identified by The Times; the given hyperlink redirects to a Times article about improvements in the Venezuelan economy. These improvements were due to the introduction of some market reforms, according to economists with actual names.

  Soave predicts that apologists will go to the "that's not real socialism" argument. One they've been making for over a century.

• Hysteria works. Bjorn Lomborg takes to the WSJ to recount Polar Bears, Dead Coral and Other Climate Fictions.

  Whatever happened to polar bears? They used to be all climate campaigners could talk about, but now they’re essentially absent from headlines. Over the past 20 years, climate activists have elevated various stories of climate catastrophe, then quietly dropped them without apology when the opposing evidence becomes overwhelming. The only constant is the scare tactics.

  Protesters used to dress up as polar bears. Al Gore’s 2006 film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” depicted a sad cartoon polar bear floating away to its death. The Washington Post warned in 2004 that the species could face extinction, and the World Wildlife Fund’s chief scientist claimed some polar bear populations would be unable to reproduce by 2012.

  Then in the 2010s, campaigners stopped talking about them. After years of misrepresentation, it finally became impossible to ignore the mountain of evidence showing that the global polar-bear population has increased substantially. Whatever negative effect climate change had was swamped by the reduction in hunting of polar bears. The population has risen from around 12,000 in the 1960s to about 26,000.

  Similarly for other scares. Including, almost certainly, the ones making headlines now.

Recently on the book blog:

This is Bryan Caplan's fifth book in his series of repackaged blog essays, most if not all from EconLog, a group blog where he posted between 2005 and 2022. (Previous titles: Labor Econ Versus the World; How Evil Are Politicians?; Don't Be a Feminist; Voters as Mad Scientists) The general (and very loose) theme here: how to survive, and even thrive, in a world where your political, economic, and other views are considerably out of the mainstream, while remaining honest and true to yourself. A daunting task!

Given that theme, this is probably Caplan's most "personal" book: lots of biography and personal anecdotes.

I'm not a fan of the format. Shoehorning together disparate blog posts accumulated over the years makes a less than coherent whole. As noted in my previous reports, hyperlinks in the original blog posts have been auto-converted to footnotes in the book's text; this is (to put it mildly) less than convenient if you're interested in following them. I would have, at least, included the posts' URLs as well. You can get reasonable results by Googling the footnote text, if you're willing to take the trouble. (I got the paperback; I don't know if the Kindle versions are easier in this regard.)

But that's kind of a quibble, and I don't mind kicking a few bucks into the Caplan kids' scholarship fund.

I wanted to point out one essay, "Purges and Schisms", which bemoans the sectarian strife between various flavors of libertarians. You'd think that a relatively minuscule movement wouldn't have room for such discord; you'd be wrong.

But, reader, Caplan's EconLog post was from 2015. Nine years ago.

And there, he says it was originally written in 1993! Thirty-one years ago! ("Still seems correct to me, and unfortunately it’s as relevant as ever.")

And just to note its continuing relevance here's Liz Wolfe at Reason from June of this year: How the Libertarian Party Lost Its Way.

Well, that's just one question raised by this tweet's chart:

IRS has released new data on interstate migration. For households with income over $200,000, the best in-migration/out-migration ratio is Florida, and the worst ratio is Illinois. https://t.co/IWStbJSzIo pic.twitter.com/NtEu5Jl1Ny

— Chris Edwards (@CatoEdwards) July 30, 2024

Chris Edwards' tweet points to his blog post at Cato. Key point:

I imagine those rich people winding up in Maine and Vermont saying "I meant to go to New Hampshire, but I asked some geezer for directions, and he said 'You can't get theah from heah,' so…"

I also tried to imagine mutated dialog from Casablanca:

"What in heaven's name brought you to Maine?"

"My finances. I came to Maine for the low taxes."

"Low taxes? What low taxes? Maine has a top marginal income tax rate of 7.15%, a 5.5% sales tax, an estate tax, …"

"I was misinformed."

The blog post also looks at migration ratios for age 65+ households. New Hampshire's high there too, but so is Maine. Vermont is much lower on that chart.

Also of note:

• Why would he worry about that now? Madeleine Kearns, now working at Bari Weiss's Free Press, notes a minor problem: Biden’s Supreme Court Reforms Are Unconstitutional.

  On Monday, President Biden proposed two reforms to the Supreme Court—term limits for justices and a binding ethics code—along with a constitutional amendment to its recent presidential-immunity decision. Making his case in a Washington Post op-ed, the president claimed broad support and specifically thanked “the bipartisan Presidential Commission on the [SCOTUS] for its insightful analysis, which informed some of these proposals.”

  But there’s a problem with Biden trying to use the commission to give his proposals legitimacy. Adam White, who served as a member of that commission, tells The Free Press that “nothing in our report actually recommended anything” that the president is now proposing.

  Imposing term limits by statute would be unconstitutional, says White, a legal scholar for the American Enterprise Institute who was one of 34 experts who delivered a report on Supreme Court reforms to Biden in 2021.

  Biden also proposed "a binding ethics code", even more problematic, separation-of-powers-wise. I'll note that there's a perfectly Constitutional remedy for misbehaving judges: impeachment. All it takes is a simple majority House vote, and a ⅔ vote in the Senate, and he or she is outta there.

  This is much less onerous than amending the Constitution, which takes a ⅔ vote in both House and Senate, plus ¾ of the states ratifying.

  (This has been your civics lesson du jour.)

• Some bedtime reading? Maybe not, if you get upset by tales of unaccountable bureaucrats imposing costs on you. The Competitive Enterprise Institute's 2024 edition of Ten Thousand Commandments is out now.

  The federal government has a spending budget that the public can see. Every year Congress allocates a certain amount of money to each agency, and often for specific programs within each agency. All of this is published online, with data going back to the last century. By contrast, there is no centralized budget document for federal regulatory costs. Federal regulations cost an estimated $2.1 trillion per year, based largely on the data agencies bother to disclose. That’s more than $15,000 per year for the average household. Why so little accountability?

  That is why CEI’s Wayne Crews puts together the annual Ten Thousand Commandments report. He does what the government won’t. Right now, data on the number of regulations, how much they cost, and which rulemaking agencies are most active are scattered across dozens of sources.

  Just noting the perverse incentives for those bureaucrats: if they ain't producing more regulations, they ain't doin' their jobs!

• Can't wait for the movie. Jonah Goldberg writes on Trump, Vance, and the Greenland Effect.

  I belong to a small group of people who think America should peacefully acquire Greenland. It’s an old idea. The State Department pitched buying the vast arctic island in 1946, but the Danes didn’t want to sell their colony, alas. But given its strategic and economic value, it’s worth revisiting.

  When it was reported in 2019 that then-President Trump was interested in the scheme, it immediately became a punchline.

  Of course, buying Greenland was always going to be a heavy lift politically, but Trump’s embrace made it infinitely heavier.

  The Greenland effect doesn’t just apply to obscure and quirky good ideas, but also to good—or simply popular—ones. As president, when Trump embraced a policy, that policy became less popular. Despite his anti-immigration rhetoric, support for increased immigration reached an all-time high. He made free trade more popular than ever as well while he started a trade war with China.

  Jonah makes the sage observation that Trumpism only works (barely) for Trump. Candidates that try to imitate his loose-cannon reality-challenged style go on to lose elections. How this ties to the Greenland Effect… well, check it out if you can.

• I know you are, but what am I? Seriously, dude, what am I? Liz Wolfe's daily news roundup at Reason takes a look at The Schoolyard Taunt Election. Concentrating on the whole "weird" thing we examined yesterday:

  Does the "weird" line make any sense? Admittedly, it is a little weird for Vance and some of his fellow Republicans to express such blatant contempt for other people's life choices—particularly childless and single women, not their male counterparts who are surely also to blame (unless they're busy with the couches, in which case: ride on). But I wonder whether Democrats are taking a premature victory lap, claiming the schoolyard insult is effective, when they're not exactly the party of normal, well-adjusted people like Walz.

  It's the Democrats who can claim Sam Brinton, the crossdressing, gender-fluid, lipstick-wearing Biden administration Energy Department official who kept stealing suitcases (containing clothes and makeup) from luggage conveyor belts at airports. It's the Democrats who currently have gentle-parenting Instagram lady experts using kindergarten-teacher talk to condescend to people worried about big-government regulatory policy. It's the Democrats who have spent a LOT of the last decade holding drag queen story hours at public libraries and expecting everyone to stay really calm about it, and who have promoted an awful lot of gender-doesn't-exist/gender-isn't-binary talk. It's the Democrats, in the form of teachers unions, who held protests with coffins to combat school-reopening plans during COVID-19, implying that they would die if expected to go to work (while schools stayed open in much of Scandinavia, to great effect). Don't even get me started on the fixation with white-lady tears, or the literal Hamas headbands detected on some college campuses this spring.

  Ach, we got three more months of this?