Mr. Ramirez knows:
"Interstate 0". Heh!
With the understanding that the Republicans are awful in their own stupid way, let's look at the amusing rhetorical gymnastics of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who's attempting to downplay past idiocy. Charles C.W. Cooke wonders: Will AOC Own Up to the Lunacy of Woke?.
Seeking to dismiss the record of one of the many kooky political candidates with whom she is now reflexively associated, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez laughed aloud as if she had been told that she had a speck of mustard on her lip. “I have a local city councilman that has this saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy,’” she submitted. “And I think that what’s important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying now.”
Is it? Do we? Why? “Woke 1” was, indeed, “crazy.” But Ocasio-Cortez’s implication is that that “crazy” moment was something that happened to her and her ideological compatriots — like an earthquake or an invasion from the sea — rather than something that was contrived, dispersed, and enforced by her and her ideological compatriots. In this, Ocasio-Cortez seems confused once again by the appropriate pronouns. It wasn’t “crazy.” They were crazy. And that “they” includes her.
All told, there are only two possible explanations as to why a person might have fallen for “crazy” “Woke 1.” Those are (1) that they have poor judgment and are thus liable at any moment to fall prey to the most destructive ideas on offer, or (2) that they are cowards who understood that their behavior was destructive but proceeded anyway in the hope of being left alone. Both of these explanations ought to be disqualifying in a candidate for public office. Unlike Ocasio-Cortez and the aspirants whom she is defending, tens of millions of Americans did not fall for “Woke 1.” Better still, many of those people fought back against it, often at great personal and professional cost. When choosing our future leaders, we ought by rights to draw from them, not from those who screamed at them like disciples of the occult.
At Reason, Robby Soave has advice for us all: Don't let AOC retcon her starring role in 'Woke 1'.
Simply put, this attitude is far too blasé. While it's encouraging that so many progressives have backed away from some (though by no means all) of their really terrible ideas, no one should be so naive as to accept these conversions at face value. Moreover, it's quite deflective of them to act as if "Woke 1" was something bad that just sort of happened—like a hurricane or an earthquake—and they passively accepted it because what else could they do?
In fact, AOC and Ossé sound a bit like Anchorman's Ron Burgundy issuing his well-quoted lamentation about his team's outrageously violent, murder-fueled battle royale—"that escalated quickly"—while nonchalantly sipping a beer. Perhaps Woke 1 involved nothing quite so absurd as Steve Carell killing a guy with a trident, but it was still a fairly crazy time, and importantly, political figures such as AOC did absolutely nothing to try to stop it. She was more than complicit in it.
And at the NYPost, Karol Markowicz has a non-negotiable demand: Lefties like AOC need to answer some questions before we move on from 'Woke 1'.
What era of “woke” are we in now? 2? 5? Which parts in particular does the left regret?
Is it stuff like a New York Times columnist saying the cartoon character Pepé Le Pew “normalized rape culture” or when we finally solved racism by getting rid of Aunt Jemima on the pancake syrup?
Was it the 57 genders, the biological boys dominating in girls’ sports and the girls having to shut up about it, the astronomical number of teens who suddenly declared themselves “non-binary” and sometimes participated in life-altering and dangerous medical interventions in a futile attempt to change their gender?
Does no one want to get rid of police departments or prisons anymore?
We eagerly await those answers, anticipating more scrumptious servings of word salad.
Also of note:
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A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money. At Cato, Adam N. Michel has a related question: Who Will Pay for Democratic Socialism’s $200 Trillion Cost?
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) propose new spending that could more than triple federal outlays. They propose the government pay for health care, housing, higher education, and electricity. Jobs are government-guaranteed, retirement benefits are expanded, paid family leave is universal, fossil fuels are eliminated, and reparations are paid.
The DSA platform claims that the bill for all this will be sent to “the richest individuals and corporations.” Tally up that bill, and it ballparks between $71 trillion and $212 trillion in new spending over the next decade. Confiscating every dollar of high-end wealth and corporate profits would cover only a fraction of those costs. The DSA agenda necessitates high taxes on middle-class Americans.
Totaling up nine of the largest proposals in the DSA platform would mean new federal spending equivalent to between 18 percent and 53 percent of GDP.
Adam has a table that prices out the goodies on the DSA shopping list, citing sources for "low" and "high" cost estimates.
And we should not forget that that's money extracted from the private economy, which reflects what people actually want to buy and sell. That money instead goes to the government, which "gives" you what it thinks you should have. After skimming a hefty fraction off the top.
Fun fact: This item's headline is based on a thousand-fold expansion of Senator Everett Dirksen's famous adage, "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money". Only problem: he apparently never said that.
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Let's not even talk about "Grape Nuts". At the Daily Economy, Jacob Smith looks at truth in labeling. Maybe (for example) it shouldn't be called "Consumer Protection" When 'Consumer Protection' Protects Producers from Competition.
Since 2024, seven states have made it a crime to sell lab-grown meat. Florida went first, in May of that year. Texas became the seventh to do so, with fines that can reach $25,000 a day. The meat in question is grown from cells in a bioreactor tank, and most of these states banned it before a single package reached a store. Meanwhile, in Washington, a bill called the DAIRY PRIDE Act would strip the word “milk” from the almond and oat cartons in your grocery cooler. Each measure comes wrapped in the same promise: it is here to protect you from confusion. And in each case, the people who asked for it are the ranchers and dairy farmers who sell the older product.
This is the usual shape of a consumer-protection law. On the label it is a shield for you. In practice, though, it is a weapon for whoever already holds the market. I study how industries capture the rules meant to bind them, and the tell is almost always the same: the law does less to inform the buyer than to disarm a rival. It is also an old trick. A little over a century ago, a President of the United States had to sit down and rule on what the word “whiskey” means, because a fortune rode on the answer.
I'm not a whiskey drinker, but … I've wondered how many adjectives you can legally stick in front of "beer" on your 12-pack. I'm looking at you, Coors Pure, you "organic light beer", you.
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Great minds think alike. And so do Jonah Goldberg's and mine: Vote, Just Not for Kooks. Skipping down to his advice (probably paywalled):
Which brings me to my advice. I think that voters should be more interested in rewarding good behavior and good character than in ideological or partisan purity tests. That doesn’t mean ideology and partisanship are irrelevant. I think these things can be balanced.
Take the Senate race in Texas. Democrat James Talarico is ideologically not my cup of tea, and he is quite far to the left for Texas. But his Republican opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, is in my view a corrupt gargoyle simply unfit for any office. I’m not here to debate that opinion, because the people seeking my advice generally share it.
So, if you’re a conservative who thinks Talarico is too left-wing and Paxton is bat-winged, don’t vote for either of them.
But you should still vote.
You can leave the Senate line blank while voting for other Republicans on the ballot (you can also select Libertarian candidate Ted Brown). Sending the message that your problem is Paxton, not Republicans, is one that Republicans and conservatives need to hear.
As I (tediously) have pointed out: In 2024, given the choice between Trump, Kamala, Chad Oliver, and Jill Stein, I … blanked.
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