Pun Salad

Our Amazon Product/Eye Candy du Jour was brought to my attention by GeekPress, who seemed unsure whether the marketing was "brilliant or clueless"?

Reader, don't strain your eyes. The product is "St. Joan of Arc French Roast Catholic Coffee".

It's been nearly 600 years, and I'm thinking to myself: too soon? Or perhaps more appropriately: Trop tôt?

In other brilliant/clueless news, the AP reports on the latest savage cuts: Trump says he has directed US Treasury to stop minting new pennies, citing rising cost.

The AP story says it's iffy as to whether Trump's order is actually within his Constitutional power. "Currency specifications -- including the size and metal content of coins -- are dictated by Congress."

Sure. But here's the law, and note the wording: "The Secretary of the Treasury may mint and issue only the following coins:" (Emphasis mine.) Trump isn't (as near as I can tell) eliminating pennies; he's just saying the Mint should stop making them. I think the decision on how much currency of various types to mint or print is a decision made on the Treasury side. Which Trump runs.

I ranted on this topic a few days ago. Executive summary: the money saved by stopping penny production is trivial. Overall, the Mint turns a tidy profit on coin production, thanks to seigniorage. And the apparent demand for pennies exists; they aren't piling up at the Mint, after all.

We are forced by law to use government currency, and only government currency. It seems to me that they should provide that currency in the amounts and denominations we demand.

Also of note:

• Your tax dollars (not) at work. Christian Britschgi notes a small problem with USAID: USAID-Funded Pandemic Research Failed To Spot COVID or Ensure Chinese Transparency.

  President Donald Trump's effort to unilaterally wind down the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has sparked a heated debate about the agency's role in pandemic response.

  USAID's defenders cite its important role in researching viruses and responding to disease outbreaks. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk, on the other hand, accused it of "[funding] bioweapon research, including COVID-19, that killed millions of people."

  Christian carefully sorts through the history and credible evidence, which includes China's refusal to cooperate with investigations about what went on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. His bottom line:

  Musk can't say definitively that the U.S. was funding bioweapons research there. People should be circumspect about totally dismissing that possibility as well.

• Speaking of dismissing inconvenient possibilities… NHJournal reports on our state's see-no-evil senior senator: Shaheen Emerges As Top Defender of Troubled Foreign Aid Spending.

  The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has been fighting off allegations of wasteful spending funding a ‘woke’ agenda for years, a record so problematic Congress created an entire website to combat it.

  But despite spending tax dollars on DEI theater and LGBT comic books — not to mention its attempt to hide its funding of bat studies involving coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — USAID still has solid support from New Hampshire Democrats, most notably senior U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.

  Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the Trump administration’s decision to shut down USAID “an ill-advised and costly move that will only cause further chaos and leave Americans and American interests exposed.”

  Jeanne's current term runs out next year, and she hasn't said she's running. I kind of hope she does, because I'd like to vote against her one last time.

• A myth is as good as a mile, part II. The Josiah Bartlett Center continues the debate on compelled union membership: Right-to-work facts vs. myths. It's a detailed refutation of anti-RTW assertions. Bottom line:

  Right-to-work laws have been studied for decades. Research shows mixed results on some points, clear results on others. What’s become evident over the decades is that right-to-work laws are associated with statistically significant gains in employment, particularly manufacturing employment, job opportunities, population growth and economic growth. If New Hampshire adopts a right-to-work law, we would expect to see improvements in all of those areas, along with an improvement in state business tax revenues resulting from the additional business activity.

  As for freedom vs. coercion, workers have First Amendment rights not to associate with or fund membership organizations that they choose not to join. If workers want to join unions, they should be free to do so. Preferably, they would have the option of joining more than one union (something that current federal law makes difficult). Right-to-work laws create freedom, not freeloaders. And for that reason, they are extremely popular, which is why they have been adopted in a majority of U.S. states. New Hampshire’s economy, and its workers, would benefit if the Granite State becomes the 27th state to protect workers’ First Amendment rights by adopting a right-to-work law.

  I deftly avoided joining a union during my work years.

• Pass the (movie theater) popcorn. Jeffrey Blehar is rapidly becoming one of my favorite writers, and here's one of the reasons for that: The Greatest Hollywood Awards-Season Story Ever Told

  Emilia Pérez was nominated for 13 Oscars this season, falling one short of the all-time record set for a single film. (It would take too much space to list all the major categories; it was pretty much nominated for “Best Everything.”) This was heralded as a surprise by the Hollywood media when the nominations were announced on January 23, but since I am a conservative and not stupid, I recognize that it was in fact comically predictable given the political climate in Hollywood post-November.

  I’m sure I don’t need to explain why to you either, beyond the barest description of the movie: A Spanish-language, French-produced film about a Mexican drug lord who fakes his death to live his life quietly as a woman? And it’s a musical? With both Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez? Shut up and take my money. (I’m sure you all rushed out to see it when it first hit theaters, right after you took me up on my recommendation of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist as an antidote to last year’s campaign season.) Perez’s success in garnering nominations from outraged, mulish Hollywood elites after Trump’s victory was foreordained, and I almost have to tip my cap: It’s downright athletic how Emilia Pérez presses nearly every single woke button imaginable, almost suspiciously so, as if created in a lab to play to critically fashionable political ephemera.

  One of my NR gifted links for February! Click away!