Pun Salad

Another book down on my "reread Crais" project. My report from my previous read about 9.5 years ago is here.

Don't have much more to add to it except: If anything, I liked this book even more the second time around. I think I missed some subtle Craisian flourishes back in 2015.

Ah, yes, back when I was a kiddo, I read Chester Gould's Dick Tracy comic strip in the Omaha World-Herald. Great yarns, disturbing villains, very violent. But even I noticed that it got a little weird in the 1960s when inventor/mogul Diet Smith introduced the "Space Coupe", a vehicle allowing easy travel to the moon, pictured at your right.

And one of the strip's tag lines was our Headline du Jour: "The Nation That Controls Magnetism Will Control the Universe". Sorry, Chester, that was a little too bizarre even for a credulous teen fan.

But it stuck in my head, and resurfaced six decades later when I read the WSJ article: Dyspro-What? Why an Obscure Element Has the EV Industry in a Panic (gifted link).

So Chester Gould is somewhat vindicated, even in his weirdest fantasies. He warned us!

Also of note:

• Strong as its weakest link. Jim Geraghty issues a warning from his WaPo gig: Beware, consumers, tariffs are already damaging the supply chain (gifted link).

  Most of the time, what’s said at the meetings of the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners probably doesn’t have much impact on your life. But the assessment of Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka at their Thursday meeting should make every American consumer sit up and take notice. The most spectacular self-inflicted economic wound of all time is already here.

  “We are beginning to see the flow of cargo to the port of Los Angeles slow,” Seroka said. “It’s my prediction that in two weeks’ time, arrivals will drop by 35 percent, as essentially all shipments out of China from major retailers and manufacturers has ceased and cargo coming out of Southeast Asia locations is much softer than normal with the tariffs now in place.”

  That’s just the bad news for U.S. consumers who are seeking to purchase goods made in China and other Southeast Asian nations; the outlook for Americans whose livelihoods depend on exporting goods to other countries is even darker.

  Who would have thought that the weakest link in the supply chain would be … us?

• "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son." Charles C.W. Cooke sorta regrets that Democrats Are Squandering the Chance to Make the Sober Case Against Trump. And there's a local angle, Granite Staters:

  President Donald J. Trump possesses no talent more useful than his ability to inspire self-immolation in his critics. All things being equal, it ought not to be too difficult for the Democrats to offer up a sober case against this administration. They could point to Trump’s capricious trade war, which represents an unpopular unforced error that has sowed uncertainty in the markets and which has undermined what was previously considered to be the president’s core political competency. They could lambast the White House’s flirtation with defying the federal judiciary, which is not merely an outrage on its own terms but has put a dent in Trump’s hitherto impressive approval ratings on the border. Or they could take aim at his equivocation on the matter of Ukraine — with particular attention paid to his grotesque refusal to state clearly that the invasion, and the war that it engendered, are squarely Vladimir Putin’s fault.

  Instead, they have chosen to return to the hyperbole, self-indulgence, catastrophizing, and fan-servicing that cost them the election last year.

  In New Hampshire this weekend, Governor J. B. Pritzker told a crowd of cheering fans that “Republicans cannot know a moment of peace,” before suggesting that Donald Trump is a “madman,” that he is presiding over a “shameful episode of American history,” and that, soon, all portraits of the president and his party will be placed in “museum halls reserved for tyrants and traitors.” Reporting on the address, the press invariably noted that Pritzker sounded as if he were running for president. But, in fact, this is only half true. Rather, Pritzker sounded as if he were running to be nominated for president. And, as recent history has confirmed, those two things are decidedly not the same. Without doubt, the suggestion that anyone involved with the opposition party ought to be denied even “a moment of peace” will prove popular among the peculiar partisan monomaniacs who voluntarily attend political dinners in New Hampshire three years before the next season. Among the broader public, by contrast, it may sound rather silly. If the polls are to be believed, voters do not much like Donald Trump’s eschatological side. One suspects that they won’t like Pritzker’s, either.

  Fun facts:

  • Donald Trump's weight is pretty easy to find via Googling "trump weight": 224 pounds.
  • The equivalent query for JB Pritzker's weight gives … his net worth. And a reference to a Fox News report based on an Elon tweet:

    Nothing is more dangerous than getting between JB Pritzker and the buffet table! https://t.co/7uRYAfqrh2

    — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 29, 2025

  I didn't look very hard, but I did not successfully find JB's poundage.

• "Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... Mass Hysteria!" A fact-filled FAQ, in case you were planning on flying anywhere on or after May 7. REAL-ID FAQ: What will happen at US airports on May 7, 2025?

  Short answer: we are unsure. Long answer:

  We can’t predict with certainty what the TSA will do on May 7th, because:

  1. The TSA has been violating the law for years with its ID procedures at airports, including through illegal demands for ID, illegal demands for information, and illegal use of an unapproved ID verification form.
  2. No laws or regulations prescribe the TSA’s checkpoint procedures, including ID checks. The law says only that airline passengers must “submit” to “screening”, without defining either of those terms. Courts have defined “screening” as “search”, with not indication that this includes questioning about, or evidence of, identity.
  3. The TSA has claimed that its internal “Standard Operating Procedures” (SOPs) for ID checks, before or after May 7, 2025, aren’t binding on the TSA, create no legal rights for airline passengers, and can be secretly changed at any time.
  4. The SOPs purport to grant discretion to TSA staff at each airport to decide who to allow, and who not to allow, to exercise their right to airline travel by common carrier, for any or no reason, regardless of what if any ID travelers show.
  5. The TSA has purported to grant itself the authority to change even its published “rules” at any time, without notice, merely by posting new non-rules on its website. It hasn’t done so yet, nor has it published any of the other notices in the Federal Register that would be required by the Privacy Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act to establish a “graduated enforcement” scheme. The New York Times reported on April 9th that “a T.S.A. spokesperson said on Friday that the agency had decided that the phased approach was not necessary and that full enforcement would begin on May 7”, but that decision could be reversed at any time, before or after May 7th.
  6. The Trump 2.0 Administration in general and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in particular have been changing and sometimes reversing their directives in many other areas, without warning and with little or no basis in law or overall policy, and could do the same with directives to the TSA.

  Perhaps hitchhiking will make a comeback. Or Elon will invent the Space Coupe. We can't be sure.