Pun Salad

That skit (with Steve Martin, Kevin Nealon, Nora Dunn, Dana Carvey, and Victoria Jackson) was from season 13 of Saturday Night Live, airing October 17, 1987. A little over 38 years ago.

Something to keep in mind when you hear people complaining about how dumb kids are these days.

But if you watch to the end, you'll be able to complete the headline quote above.

Also of note:

• And then he said that the beatings would continue until morale improves. Liz Wolfe's "Reason Roundup" dials up the sarcasm: Trump tells voters to buy less while his tariffs raise prices.

  Trump's affordability tour: "You know, you can give up certain products. You can give up pencils," said President Donald Trump at a speech in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, that was supposed to help alleviate people's worries about affordability and help Republicans figure out salient messaging ahead of the midterms.

  What a fascinating tack to take.

  "You always need steel. You don't need 37 dolls for your daughter," he continued. "Two or three is nice, but you don't need 37 dolls. So, we're doing things right. We're running this country right well."

  "I can't say affordability is a hoax because I agree the prices were too high. So I can't go to call it a hoax because they'll misconstrue that," said Trump. "But they use the word affordability. And that's the only word they say. Affordability. And that's their only word. They say, 'Affordability.' And everyone says, 'Oh, that must mean Trump has high prices.' No. Our prices are coming down tremendously from the highest prices in the history of our country."

  Liz goes on to note that Trump A"displays approximately zero self-awareness and shares no admissions of guilt."

  But when was the last time any US President admitted guilt? According to Google's AI: Bill Clinton "who admitted to lying under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky during a deposition." (Although the AI does point out that Trump was convicted of 34 felonies connected to Stormy Daniels' hush money payments, he refused to admit guilt there either.)

• Good news, I guess. James Freeman looks at recent polling from the Economist/YouGov: Socialism Still Not That Popular. (WSJ gifted link)

  When asked whether capitalism or socialism is the better economic system, 46% of registered voters say capitalism, 22% say socialism, and 32% say they’re not sure, according to the Economist/YouGov.

  After all the misery that socialism has caused over the last century, it’s amazing that it commands any popularity at all. On the other hand, given that socialist Zohran Mamdani is weeks away from taking office as mayor of the country’s largest city—the traditional world headquarters of capitalism—perhaps it’s nice to be reassured that the New York City electorate remains a weird outlier in the American political scene.

  This may also explain in part why Mr. Mamdani had a surprisingly friendly visit to the White House recently—one can only hope he’s begun to understand how bad his ideas are.

  It looks like 2026 is going to be an (um) interesting year. If, that is, you're interested by politicians and pundits trying to scare the crap out of you pointing out how awful the other side is.

  And worse, they will mostly be correct about that.

• Speaking of trying to scare the crap out of people… Andrew C. McCarthy is not a fan of a recent neologism: ‘Narco-Terrorism’ Is a Legally Meaningless Term. (archive.today link)

  Andrew quotes a dizzying array of administration apologists using the term. Only problem being:

  For the umpty-umpth time, “narco-terrorism” is just political rhetoric. It has no standing as a legal term — no significance in the extensive bodies of federal law defining narcotics trafficking and terrorism. Transparently, the incantations of narco-terrorism by the president’s amen corner are intended to benumb the public into assuming that his administration’s designation of drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations provides a tenable legal basis for lethally striking vessels suspected of transporting narcotics. It doesn’t. On the other hand, as with the president’s alien enemies invocation, and his claims of “rebellion” as a predicate for deploying National Guard troops in American cities, there could be litigation over the extent to which the courts may review the executive branch’s determination that drug trafficking activity warrants a terrorism designation.

  Our law has processes for designating foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) and global terrorists. There is no designation of narco-terrorists. That is unsurprising, since narcotics trafficking, while a serious crime, is not terrorist activity as that term is extensively and exactingly defined in federal law. (In a previous post, I’ve outlined the conduct covered by that definition, in Section 1182(a)(3)(B)(iii) of federal immigration law.)

  It's fair to say that anyone using the intelligence-insulting term is trying to bamboozle you.

• A less legalistic analysis… is provided by Jonah Goldberg, who points out the facts on the ground: Cocaine Is Not Mustard Gas. (archive.today link)

  In my life I’ve seen many kinds of whores, figuratively speaking: media whores, attention whores, power whores, and so on. I even know, thanks to some poor decisions in my youth, that one can be a coke whore. But as for mustard gas whores, I declare I’ve never encountered one.

  I bring this up because a line of argument on social media caught my attention recently. “Imagine Venezuela was releasing Mustard Gas in cities across the United States and had killed about half a million people in the last 10 years who breathed it in,” writes one X user. “Would ANYONE be against stopping boats bringing Mustard Gas into the US? Now do drug boats.”

  There are more examples of this from some more prominent folks, including a tendentious challenge from MAGA-aligned lawyer Kurt Schlichter, who asks “If you agree that we can destroy boats carrying barrels of mustard gas headed to our country, can you tell me the difference between the drugs and the mustard gas?” Schlichter adds: “I submit that the only meaningful difference is that drugs have killed nearly 100,000 Americans in the last year, and mustard gas has killed zero Americans.”

  Read the whole thing, but if I may summarize: you would have to be a "MAGA-aligned lawyer" to make an analogy so stupid.