Pun Salad

The Reason geniuses have three more for you:

Also of note:

• Other than that, though, it's fine. Speaking of unintended consequences, Jared Dillian has a bone to pick with the Trump Administration: its New Income Tax Proposal Is Progressive and Unworkable.

  Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick recently announced on CBS News that the Trump administration wants to eliminate income taxes for those making $150,000 a year or less. Were that to happen, only seven percent of U.S. citizens would be left paying income taxes. This would put the entire income tax burden on a tiny minority of people.

  This is already the case, to a certain extent. The top one percent of taxpayers currently pay about 40 percent of all income taxes. The income tax code is progressive—tax rates increase as income increases. This new proposal would make the tax code even more progressive, shouldering the tax liability of a small number of affluent citizens.

  It should be pointed out that the tax revenue collected from the bottom 93 percent of taxpayers amounts to 24 percent of all income tax revenue, or a little more than $500 billion per year. President Donald Trump has goals to lower taxes and balance the budget. With the budget deficit at a little less than two trillion dollars, balancing the budget while eliminating income taxes for the bottom 93 percent of taxpayers will be virtually impossible unless there are radical changes to Social Security or Medicare, which Trump has (thus far) ruled out. Of course, Trump could plan to raise income tax rates on higher tax brackets—which is not out of the realm of possibility. Trump is a populist, after all.

  And, yes, Jared's bottom line is:

  This has never been attempted in any developed country—ever—and there will be unintended consequences galore.

  See, I told you.

• Hey, where's my large cash seettlement? I haven't watched TV news for a long time. Dave Barry, unfortunately, has. And (double unfortunately) he's been subjected to advertisements from TV Attorneys.

  But now virtually all the commercials are the same. They feature a testimonial from a regular person, a person who is just like me, except that, in every single case, he or she has received a large cash settlement from an insurance company.

  It's not always clear why. Sometimes the person makes a vague reference to some kind of mishap — a car accident, a slip-and-fall, psoriasis — but often he or she just says something like: "The insurance company didn't want to pay me. So I called Harmon Stangle, and he got me four million dollars. And I didn't have to do a thing! They delivered a duffel bag full of fifties and hundreds right to my Barca-Lounger. Thanks, Harmon Stangle!"

  Harmon Stangle (not his real name) is of course an attorney. He's a fighter. You have to have a fighter fighting for you, because otherwise the insurance companies will — How is this even legal? — deliberately try to not give you a large cash settlement. But Harmon Stangle will fight them for you. He will fight them in the courtroom, and if they try to flee he will chase them outside and fight them in the parking lot. He will pummel them with his briefcase until blood spurts from their ears and they have no choice but to give you a large cash settlement. That is how personally Harmon Stangle will take your case, assuming you have a case, which let's not kid ourselves you definitely do.

  Dave has even AI'd an image of Harmon in the process of fighting them for you. You don't want to miss that.

• Good question. And (somewhat surprisingly) Slashdot asks it: Why Are the Most Expensive Netflix Movies Also the Worst? (Excerpt from a Guardian article.)

  Despite spending hundreds of millions on blockbuster films, Netflix continues to churn out critically panned big-budget fare with its latest $300 million flop, "The Electric State," starring Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown. While the streaming giant has produced acclaimed films by giving talented directors creative freedom -- resulting in successes like "The Irishman," "Marriage Story" and "The Power of the Dog" -- it has repeatedly failed to create genuinely compelling blockbusters despite attracting major talent and pouring massive resources into productions like "Red Notice," "The Gray Man" and now "The Electric State."

  These expensive Netflix "mockbusters" lack the overwhelming sensations that theatrical blockbusters deliver, instead feeling like glorified content designed primarily for home viewing. The Russo brothers' "Electric State," with its drab visuals and lifeless performances, exemplifies how Netflix's biggest productions feel infused with the knowledge they're merely "content first."

  I tried to watch The Electric State the other night. I fell asleep about 20 minutes in. I woke back up after a good chunk of time had passed, sighed, and turned off the TV for the evening. I will try again at some point. In addition to Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown, it's got Stanley Tucci, Ke Huy Quan (aka Short Round), Giancarlo Esposito, Jason Alexander, … and other people I've heard of.

  The Guardian found the visuals "drab". Yeah, maybe, but I thought they were, at least, imaginative. Before I fell asleep.

• I thought about James Damore recently. Specifically, when I saw news stories headlined: Google Kills Diversity Hiring Target.

  I speculate that something similar happened at the Free Press, with Bari Weiss saying "Hey, let's find out what James Damore thinks about this." And so we have the musical question: What Happened to Silicon Valley’s Most Infamous Thought Criminal?

  You might be as surprised as I was by the opening of Johanna Berkman's article:

  It’s a bitterly cold day in the Low Country of Luxembourg. So when James Damore opens the door to a seventeenth-century cathedral, offering it up as a kind of refuge, I fall in line behind his gangly footsteps and follow him inside.

  “I like noncommercial spaces,” he whispers softly, as we shuffle through the soaring Notre-Dame de Luxembourg. The cathedral is dark, lit mostly by stained glass windows and dozens of candles at the altar. He likes walking through here, he tells me, to appreciate the beauty, the stillness, and “a project meant to serve a higher purpose.” But it is also a suitably analog setting for a man who, ever since he became persona non grata in Silicon Valley back in 2017, has been living like a Luddite.

  Damore has blocked digital ad networks from using his personal information to serve him customized ads. He’s switched his Android phone’s colors to gray scale so that it will not visually appeal to him. He uses neither its ringer nor vibrations to alert him to incoming calls (only his wife’s calls can break through). And—perhaps most remarkably—he told me he doesn’t even read the news. “If something is important,” he says, “then other people will tell me.”

  If you need your memory refreshed about Damore, Johanna's article does that. The Google done him wrong.

• I'm on board. Specifically, I concur with Charles C.W. Cooke's recommendation: Blow the Houthis Out of the Water.

  Has there ever been a case for American military action as strong as the case for our hitting the Houthis? Pick an ideology or worldview at random, and you’ll find that the cap fits. The internationalists ought to be happy that the federal government is protecting trade. The nationalists ought to be happy that the federal government is retaliating against attacks on U.S. Navy assets. If consumer inflation is your preoccupation, this helps. If respect for the United States is your concern, this works out. If you want an interventionist government, you’ll like it by default. If you want a government that acts only in extremis, this counts. It is a self-evident, slam-dunk, literally-what-the-government-is-for sort of move. This is the bare minimum, the sine qua non, the foundation atop which all else is built. We have robust arguments in this country about what Washington, D.C., ought to do, but there is no useful conception of a national ministry that does not involve the protection of American ships. The federal government has engaged in this activity since the first Jefferson administration. There is no reason for it to let up now.

  Those of us who just like seeing our military blowing up bad guys are liking it too.