Pun Salad

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.)