Pun Salad

But I've done that before. So I went with Fritz to illustrate Adam D. Thierer's City Journal article: What Hayek Can Teach Us About AI Safety.

I think Adam-channelling-Friedrich is a pretty good combination.

Also of note:

• It's not as if we don't have other things to worry about. The WaPo editorialists predict When America’s pot of debt will overflow. (WaPo gifted link)

  The 2030s are crucial because, if present trends continue, the United States will begin running out of fiscal space by the end of the decade.

  What does that mean? Think of debt as water inside a pot made of soft clay. The potter is the American workforce, and the government is pouring the water. The national debt is the total accumulation of water in the pot. The amount of room left in the pot is fiscal space.

  Fiscal space is the difference between the government’s current level of debt and the maximum amount of debt it could take on before undermining confidence in its ability to pay it back. The government needs fiscal space so that it can manage events, such as major wars, recessions, pandemics or natural disasters, that might require an unexpected surge in borrowing.

  The editorial is filled with charts that illuminate the dire problem. And as usual with the WaPo most of the commenters are in denial about needing to get spending under control, with a concentration on entitlements.

• Among the many things we could stop spending money on… Noah Smith has a suggestion sure to anger your local schoolmarms: Stop spending money on smaller classes. Along the way, he makes a good point about Nikole Hannah-Jones' faulty argument about the lousy NYC school she sent her daughter to:

  What can fix our crappy schools? Hannah-Jones blames a lack of funding for low-income predominantly Black schools:

  [N]ationally, schools in predominantly nonwhite districts receive $23 billion less in annual funding than their heavily white counterparts, according to a 2019 analysis by EdBuild. In everything that we measure, these schools have less, even though the economically struggling student bodies they serve need more. And so the test scores and poor academic performance that typify these schools reflect not just the disadvantage of the students but, more essentially, the disadvantage of the schools.

  This is absolutely ridiculous, and represents a very basic math error. Obviously what should matter here is spending per student, not total spending. We spend more on predominantly white districts than on predominantly nonwhite districts because there are a lot more predominantly white districts in America!

  Well, it wouldn't be the first time Hannah-Jones used a dodgy argument to score ideological points.

  Noah's grand conclusion, after a diligent look at the studies showing little effect of class sizes on learning outcomes:

  We should be spending more money on educating our poorest and most disadvantaged students. But that money should be spent less on flooding those schools with ever more teachers of questionable quality, and more on raising pay to attract highly competent people capable of making a big difference in disadvantaged kids’ lives. If we did that, then stories like Nikole Hannah-Jones’ might be more of a rarity in America.

  I'll disagree in part. If the only thing you do is increase teacher salaries, the first-order effect will be nicer cars in the teachers' parking lot, and nothing on learning outcomes. Higher salaries have to be accompanied concurrently with getting rid of the teachers who don't teach well.

• When you're out of ideas… At the WSJ "Free Expression" newsletter, Matthew Hennessey observes: Democrats Want You Afraid.

  The midterm elections are five weeks away. Most everybody agrees Democrats will have a big night on Nov. 3. But what are they running on? What are they promising to do come January?

  There are no policies underpinning the Democratic grand strategy, no major proposals on the table for discussion and debate. There are only the Four Fears.

  Fear of artificial intelligence. Every Democrat at every level has gotten the memo. The companies racing to develop AI must be slowed or stopped before they kill us all. From Barack Obama to your local town councilman, the mantra is the same. If you don’t elect us it could be your life. Be terrified. Be very terrified.

  Fear of data centers. This is a related fear, though a much more immediate and digestible one than AI itself. The billionaires and oligarchs want your land. They want to hog your electricity and suck up all your water. Oppose this or watch your beautiful town descend into a humming, throbbing hellscape of warehouses and air pollution. If you aren’t afraid, you aren’t paying attention.

  Fear of Donald Trump. He will deport your remaining immigrant neighbors. He will legitimize discrimination against trans children. He will send your sons and daughters to die in a war. He will try to engineer a third term for himself. He is a threat to all you hold dear. Left unspoken this campaign season has been the likelihood of a third impeachment. Perhaps it isn’t necessary to say such things anymore.

  Fear of MAGA. Tie down the patio furniture all ye who love democracy. Jan. 6, 2021, was only a dress rehearsal for what the fascists have planned this time. “We have never prepared for an election sabotage event like we have now,” Ezra Levin of the left-leaning group Indivisible told the Associated Press. Scared yet?

  Certainly, our local (NH) Democrats have been leaning heavily on the third fear. And not really "fear", more like hatred.

• An impressive list of synonyms. Via Ann Althouse, who points to a WaPo column from Matthew Gwyther: Trump can’t resist a temptation known since the fall of man. And that temptation is…

  That humans have long been aware of the corrosive danger from kowtowing, toadying, sucking up, piling it on thick, apple-polishing and otherwise bootlicking is shown by the extensive array of synonyms and expressions for sycophancy.

  I recently interviewed that repentant sycophant Anthony Scaramucci, who famously lasted 11 days as White House spokesman in 2017. What was interesting about the Mooch’s musings was that he thinks Trump actually despises those who debase themselves before him, because he finds their weakness contemptible. Yet those who speak plainly to Trump, without fawning, are soon discarded.

  Gwyther makes the interesting observation about that "fall of man", from Milton's Paradise Lost, which featured the serpent's flattery of Eve's "Beautie". Maybe Trump could use a snake?

Recently on the book blog:

Another successful suggestion I made to the Portsmouth (NH) Public Library, probably as a result of me reading this good review in the WSJ back in January. (WSJ gifted link)

The book describes the toxic combination of moral panic, cowardice, wokeness, and the social media environment, and how that affects the publishing industry. The author, Adam Szetela, focuses specifically on "young adult" (YA) books, and how would-be authors daring to write characters outside their pigeonholes of race, gender, sexual preference, etc. must tread extremely carefully to avoid a shitstorm of criticism about "authenticity" or "insensitivity" or "stereotyping" or "white saviorhood" or … well, you get the idea. Baseless accusations of racism, sexism, etc. are easy to make and spread through the social media grapevine. Bullying can be intense, and also potty-mouthed.

This has engendered the new profession of "sensitivity readers", people who are thought to represent their racial/sexual/ethnic/etc. pigeonhole, hired (expensively) by authors and publishers to check for unacceptable sins. They often find something, because how else can they justify their lofty fees?

Szetela cites the very pertinent "great untruths" as listed in The Coddling of the American Mind by Lukianoff and Haidt: "What doesn't kill you makes you weaker"; "Always trust your feelings"; and "Life is a battle between good people and evil people." It seems that those untruths are (nevertheless) large and in charge in great swaths of the publishing industry. (Fortunately, authors like Szetela, Lukianoff, and Haidt manage to get books published anyway.)

Szetela also notes the self-censorship that extends outside the YA sphere. The examples of removing Ian Fleming's non-PC descriptions in his James Bond novels, and the removal of some Dr. Seuss titles for ethnic stereotyping are mentioned.

Szetela is unsparing in his criticism of all this. (If you would like a free taste, he has a few posts up at Quillette.) He is kind of a lefty himself, and their are little nods to that throughout the book. He seems sympathetic to affirmative-action-like efforts to increase the "representation" of "diverse" authors of books and their characters. (Whereas a troglodyte like me just wants good books, without the nose-counting.) He does make an interesting point that all this moral panic ignores the thorny topic of class and the workings of the free market system. For example, the YA classic The Hate U Give ends with its family moving to a richer neighborhood by dint of diligent self-help bootstrapping; Szelta deems this "economically vacuous". He would prefer: "economic mobility" be portrayed as a "shared project that occurs through strikes, sit-ins, and political legislation."

Still, it's good to see this kind of broad and honest criticism come from inside the left-wing tent.

Seen in a Matt Yglesias tweet:

I don't follow Yglesias, but this is via Scott Summer's page of September 2026 links, which has other good stuff too.

Ah, but what is this Effective Altruism, you ask? Check out Bryan Caplan's take on it: The Good, the Bad, and the Buggy.

Reader, can you guess the first word of Bryan's next paragraph?

Well, darn. "Obsessing" doesn't sound good. See what you think. I'm still persuadable either way on "AI risk", but I thought that Pinker stuff I posted yesterday made extremely good points.

Also of note:

• Speaking of AI… I've been looking for an excuse to embed this Flight of the Conchords video:

  Which nicely illustrates James Freeman's query: Did the Associated Press Hurt AI’s Feelings? (WSJ gifted link)

  President Donald Trump wisely told the United Nations last week that the U.S. would “totally reject” any “globalist scheme” to control artificial intelligence. Fortunately he’s also still rejecting a domestic scheme to shield prominent creators of technology tools from liability and competition.

  Jody Godoy reported on Friday for Reuters:

  US Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson said on Friday he would resist describing AI agents as autonomous actors that “break loose” with “wills and desires of their own,” suggesting the developers who instruct agents would be the ones liable ‌for harm.

  […]

  Believe it or not, the Associated Press is also seeking to affirm reality. An X account for the AP Stylebook posted last week:

  Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics. This is called anthropomorphizing, when we ascribe human traits, emotions or behaviors to non-human things, such as animals or inanimate objects. Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.

  Until clear and convincing proof is shown otherwise, I'm with James: "Here in the nonfictional world, people are responsible for their actions."

• Another scapegoat escapes. At Reason, Daniel Foster debunks: No, Private Equity Isn't Ruining Your Sandwiches, Your Apartment, or Grandma's Nursing Home. His Example One is Jersey Mike's, a sub chain acquired by Blackstone in 2024, to complaints from, well, the usual people who complain about such things. But:

  Jersey Mike's revenue increased by more than 10 percent in the first year after the Blackstone deal, and in July the firm went public, raising $1 billion in the largest U.S. consumer initial public offering of the year. Now the brand is bigger than ever, with hundreds of new locations. In 2026, it broke Chick-fil-A's 11-year run as the top-rated fast-food restaurant in the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

  This is a familiar story. If you listen to anti–private equity outfits like the Private Equity Stakeholder Project or ProPublica or usual-suspect gadflies on the left, private equity is just another mutation of predatory capitalism: "vampires" engaged in "legalized looting" per Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.); "vultures" embodying "corporate greed at its most disgusting" by the lights of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.).

  Critics marshal an impressive breadth of bogeymen to make their case, seizing on private equity's infiltration of everything from hospitals to prisons to for-profit schools, and their reliance on extractive financial gizmos like "leasebacks," "roll-ups," and "dividend recapitalizations" to make billions for the few while zombifying the portfolio companies relied upon by the many.

  What these critics want you to believe is that there is something uniquely bad about private equity, that it's a poisonous form of hypercapitalism. But case studies and a review of the evidence tell a different story. Private equity isn't a panacea, and it isn't without flaws. But from Italian subs to nursing homes to state pensions, it has plenty to offer both capitalists and consumers. Viewed in this context, it's clear that much of the hatred directed at private equity is just a familiar form of statist opposition to free markets.

  As usual with markets, people make mistakes. But generally they are making mistakes with their own money.. Can Liz and Bernie say the same?

• Speaking of markets, I'm always in the market for people who want to tell me how to think. AEI's Peter J. Wallison gives it a shot: How to Think About Trump and Iran.

  Although a lifelong Republican, I am not a fan of Donald Trump. He continues to shock me with almost everything he says and does—promising $5,000 to every American if the Republicans win the House and Senate, breaking relations with Canada, and threatening to rename New Mexico as New America—only the most recent examples of his nonpresidential behavior. If these were jokes, I’ve lost my sense of humor.

  For those fellow Americans who oppose Trump’s Iran policy, however, I have a simple question: What do you think would happen if Iran were to successfully develop a nuclear weapon? I don’t even have to answer that question. It would be a catastrophe, and Trump is the only president in my lifetime who has faced that question realistically.

  He has recognized that a nuclear-armed Iran would threaten the world, not just its neighbors, and would be completely immune from any effort by the United States or others to change its government or eliminate its threats to the Middle East, Israel, the US, and the world at large. Previous presidents have been aware of this nightmare, and many tried to do something, but they lost their nerve. They “settled.” But they just bought time, figuring that if Iran actually gets a nuclear weapon, it would be someone else’s problem.

  Trump, I think, is trying to do something essential in Iran, which—if successful—would be invaluable for all of us in the future. This of course requires gritting our teeth and remaining patient as he pursues such unworthy personal goals as having his name emblazoned on the Kennedy Center in Washington, enriches himself and his family, and fumbles around with stories about “negotiations.”

  Even given the desirability of the outcome, Wallison admits that Trump has been lousy at explaining things to us, a "failure of leadership."

  Random thought, however: If "New Mexico" gets renamed to "New America", can New England be far behind?

• But in other areas… Francis Fukuyama thinks Trump’s “Golden Fleet” Is Still Ridiculous.

  Of the many ridiculous, counterproductive, and outright harmful things that Donald Trump has done, his effort to create a “Golden Fleet” of “Trump-class” battleships is far from the worst offense. But it is absolutely typical of the personalistic and processless state into which American national security decision making has fallen in his second term.

  The United States has not commissioned a new battleship since it launched the USS Missouri in 1944. There are good reasons for this: in an age of naval aviation and missiles, battleships become huge floating targets liable to be sunk way before any of their weapons can be put to use. Battleships had already been made obsolete by aircraft carriers during the Second World War, and since then have been used for shore bombardment when facing an enemy like Iraq that didn’t have the means of fighting back. They would be worse than useless in a war with China or even Iran, both of which field huge numbers of ballistic and cruise missiles that could easily strike such big targets.

  Fukuyama says Trump is basing this effort on his watching Victory at Sea, a WWII documentary, at an impressionable age. Unfortunately, this is credible.

Recently on the book blog:

This is the third (and perhaps final) book in Scott Turow's series starring lawyer Rusty Sabich. The first, Presumed Innocent, which was a 1980s best-seller, showed Rusty under trial for the murder of his lover, Carolyn Polhemus. The second, Innocent, from 2010, had him suspected of murdering his wife, Barbara. And now, here's Presumed Guilty, where Rusty is… not suspected of anything, but still in a world of legal turmoil.

Presumed Guilty was one of the Edgar "Best Novel" nominees announced in January 2026. I usually try to pick those up at the library; that doesn't always work out, but this time it did.

The series follows Rusty in real time, unlike a lot of series; he's now in his mid-70s, retired from his previous gigs, but still picking up consulting work here and there. He has relocated to a more rural area, fictitious Skageon County (in a fictitious unnamed Midwestern state), and is cohabitating with a local schoolmarm, Bea. They have decided to wed, but haven't set a date.

Stay with me: Bea has an adopted Black son, Aaron, from her previous marriage. He's now in his 20s, and has had problems with the law: specifically, a felony conviction and jail time for drug possession with intent to distribute. But he was holding those drugs for his girlfriend, Mae, with whom he continues to have a chaotic romantic relationship.

In the book's opening chapters, Aaron and Mae head off on a camping expedition, where Aaron hopes to fix their troubles. That doesn't work out. As Rusty reports from his POV, they don't return home as expected. And (since we know this is a mystery/legal thriller), we're pretty sure there was murder involved. And soon enough, there's an arrest, and a trial. And Rusty, against his, and nearly everyone else's, better judgment, finds himself playing defense attorney. His relationships are troubled, too.

It's an excellent page-turner. (544 pages, according to Amazon.) I usually rag on authors for going into minute detail of their characters, their environment, the kind of wood used in the courthouse,… but somehow Turow makes it work.

From across the pond, Daniel Hannan is looking askance:

The US wages economic war against Canada while cosying up to Russia and, now, China. There was a time when this would have shocked the world. How our expectations have sunk.

— Daniel Hannan (@DanielJHannan) September 25, 2026

Speaking of sunken expections vis-à-vis China, Jim Geraghty has some: No, the U.S.-China Relationship Is Not the Best It Has Ever Been.

Jim details an impressive number of additional data points. Summary:

On just about every conceivable front — arming and assisting U.S. adversaries, espionage, hacking and cyberwarfare, stealing intellectual property, smuggling oil, nuclear testing, detaining American citizens — the regime of the People’s Republic of China headed by Xi Jinping acts against American interests. These regime acts are not innocent misunderstandings or miscommunications. This is a ruthless totalitarian autocratic regime that wants a not-too-distant future where they are universally hailed as the ascending global power and the U.S. is pitied and mocked as a rapidly declining former great power — and, with de facto lackey regimes in Moscow, Tehran, and Pyongyang, calls the shots on the global stage.

Well, that's pretty disgusting. Sorry, Elvis, it's impossible for me to follow your lead here.

Also of note:

• Gee, I wonder if Kevin D. Williamson is going to cut any slack to … Unstatesmanlike Statesmen.

  Magic 8-Ball says: "Don't count on it."

  If it means anything, then “America First” means Americans first, even Americans as dotty and useless as Joe Biden, a contemptible and grubby little grasper who did not have much of a working brain back when he had something of a working brain. If you are a nationalist in any genuine sense, then your people are your people. But, of course, Trump is not a nationalist in any meaningful sense, for the same reason he isn’t really much of a patriot or a racist or a Christian—Trump is his own god, and he recognizes no loyalty at odds with his interests and no good that is not in accord with his appetites and desires. Trump may say that he cares about “America First,” but naturally he will wait and see what Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin or some Qatari potentate has to offer to him, too. Trump has on a hundred occasions sold out genuine American interests in the service of his own vanity and greed, and he’ll probably do it a hundred more times before he leaves office, however he leaves office.

  Magic 8-Ball also says: "Sorry, out of Dispatch gifted links this month. Subscribe."

• The right way to conduct a discussion. As (unsurprisingly) demonstrated by Steven Pinker, who pens An Open Letter to Scott Alexander.

  Background: Scott challenged Steven to a public debate on the usefulness of AI "doomerism". Scott is (fair to say) on the doomer side, Steven thinks that's a no-workie.

  Steven notes his previous thoughts on the more general topic, which he stands by:

  In fact my principal contribution to mass discourse on existential risk is a 31-page chapter called “Existential Risk” in my 2018 book Enlightenment Now. It addressed the criticism that the Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment, and ideal of progress were terrible mistakes because they will lead to human extinction by (among other things) runaway AI. My counterargument said nothing about maleness, polyamory, paranoia, or other irrelevancies. It did criticise doomer scenarios like the paperclipalypse, the AI that would cure cancer by conscripting all humans as guinea pigs in lethal experiments, the AI that would solve climate change by exterminating humanity, the AIs that would launch a global holocaust because humans were inconvenient, or the AIs that would grow exponentially until they boiled the oceans away with their waste heat or froze the planet with their spaceborne solar collectors. I argued that these scenarios had one or more of the following flaws:

  1. They had an underdeveloped conception of intelligence which treated it as a quantity of power which may be extrapolated from animals to dull humans to smart humans to AI to Artificial Superintelligence, the latter consisting of perfect omniscience. (This was the focus of my later exchange with Scott Aaronson.) I argued that any intelligent system is a mechanism which is good at solving some problems but not others, and which is inherently limited by knowledge about the world attainable only by observation and experimentation.
  2. They conflated intelligence with motivation, particularly self-preservation and dominance. I argued that these motives happened to come bundled with intelligence in Homo sapiens because we are products of natural selection, but they are not inherent to intelligent systems that are engineered.
  3. They assumed that an artificially intelligent system would monomaniacally pursue a single goal, heedless of side effects. I argued that trading off multiple competing goals is the essence of intelligence, so no genuine AI would wreak the ridiculous havoc imagined in the doomer scenarios.
  4. They assumed that human engineers would grant these systems unlimited and irreversible control over the earth’s physical infrastructure, amounting to omnipotence over every atom on the planet.

  Now, these arguments may be wrong, but they are far from trash talk. Similar ones have recently been made by many informed commentators, including Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Jerry Kaplan, Gary Marcus, Melanie Mitchell, Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, and Andrew Ng. A 2025 Rand Corporation modelling analysis steel-manned the AI-extinction hypothesis by granting the assumption that AI had the objective to wipe out humanity, and concluded that there is “no describable scenario in which AI is conclusively an extinction threat to humanity.”

  This is far better than calling the people you disagree with a bunch of poopyheads.

Recently on the movie blog:

For about 10 years, my desktop PC environment has been a split Windows 11/Fedora Linux setup, with the Linux part being a VirtualBox guest on the Windows host. It worked OK, but I saw some indications of memory issues.

I decided to at least think about at using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) for my Linux needs, replacing VirtualBox. I could see one major problem: my blogging infrastructure relies heavily on accessing the Google Chrome 'tabs' API. Originally, this functionality was provided by the chromix-too extension from Stephen Blott.

Unfortunately, chromix-too relied on chrome features that Google deprecated years ago. And last year, a Chrome upgrade broke it.

So (after a few seconds of panic) I asked AI Claude to come up with a replacement extension. Which worked beyond my wildest dreams. My description of the process is here: Claude, You Magnificent Bastard, I Didn't Read Your Book, and I made it into a Github project.

But obviously that wouldn't fly in WSL. What to do? Well, how about asking Claude for more help? So, earlier this month, I did:

I did not append "… because I am a Windows idiot." Claude probably knows that already.

Reader, it took Claude a mere three minutes to deliver a complete extension that did exactly what I asked. (One gotcha: I had to follow Claude's suggested "troubleshooting" advice to dink the .wslconfig file in my Windows home directory:

[wsl2]
networkingMode=mirrored

I thought about uploading Claude's code to Github. But I figured: why should I do that when I didn't do anything except come up with a prompt? As I've said in other geeky contexts: "Any idiot can do it, and I'm living proof of that."

">

I heard good things about this movie. IMDB has it as the #101 best movie of all time! It won 5 Oscars (including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screeplay) and was nominated for 5 more (including Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actor)!

And it was widely described as a hilarious comedy! Perhaps I was in a particularly sour mood while watching, but I emitted, to be generous, one chuckle during the entire 125-minute runtime.

Or maybe I was just prudish. For a movie released in 1960, it was kinda dirty. And (no spoilers, but) for a movie billed as a comedy, there's some pretty horrifying and despicable stuff, not played for laughs.

Or maybe I was averse to the movie's Commie-appealing take on American capitalism. That's probably a bum rap, but (come on) I thought the movie was kind of ham-handed in that area.

Also, despite the Amazon Eye Candy over on your right: it's monochrome.

Plot: Jack Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, a schlub accountant working in a Manhattan beehive-like insurance company. As the movie opens, he's already loaning out his apartment many evenings to multiple sleazy co-workers who are cheating on their wives with office sluts. C.C. keeps getting promised that he'll be corruptly rewarded with perks at the office. But that doesn't actually happen until big boss/super-sleaze Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) starts using his place for an assignation with elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine). Eventually, Baxter falls for Fran's ditzy charms. But their relationship is rocky.

Executive summary: Look at all the praise, you might enjoy it more than I did.

Bret Stephens, the token sensible columnist at the NYT, presents The Literary World’s D.E.I. Checklist. (NYT gifted link)

Bret has more examples of what passes for "diversity, equity, and inclusion" in the rooms where nominations and awards are bestowed in the book game. If you're a heterosexual white guy looking to break in as an author, you'd be well advised to have a solid backup plan.

Also of note:

• The old normal wasn't great, but… At Reason, Jacob Sullum describes How Murdering Suspected Drug Smugglers Became the New Normal .

  President Donald Trump was excited about a new military operation. "Earlier this morning," he announced on the afternoon of September 2, 2025, "U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility." That attack should "serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America," he said. "BEWARE! Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!!!!!!!!!"

  Those 11 exclamation points might have seemed like overkill. But Trump was right that Americans should have been paying attention. His Truth Social post, which included a 29-second video clip showing a speedboat in the Caribbean Sea exploded by a missile, marked a radical and alarming shift in U.S. drug policy.

  In case you're wondering what the current body count is, Jacob provides a link to the current scoreboard maintained by the NYT. As I type: 70 strikes, 234 people killed. Jacob comments further:

  With a few exceptions, we do not know who those people were, let alone what evidence the government might have had to implicate them in drug trafficking. But Trump assures us they were all "narcoterrorists" who richly deserved their fate, even though they would not have faced the death penalty under U.S. law and, judging from what happened to drug smugglers arrested around the same time, probably would not have been prosecuted at all if they had been lucky enough to be caught by the Coast Guard.

  I assume the dirtbag percentage among those 234 individuals was high. Still, it's not something we should be proud of.

• Deirdre McCloskey has market advice. Unfortunately, not of the "hot stock tip" variety, just a general suggestion: Let It Work. Despite the massive numbers of nay-sayers and quibblers decrying "market failures" and saying nasty things about "market fundamentalists"…

  Well, why do I, after 84 years on this planet (on September 11, thanks), most of it spent thinking about the evidence on how economies work, disagree with the numerous non-believers?

  For one thing, as a resident of an economy, I live daily inside a massive experiment proving that it does work pretty much as supply and demand says. So do you live inside it. São Paulo is an enormous city. It exhausts me to drive across it. Yet somehow every day when you go to get a morning coffee, there it is. When you want to buy a new shirt, there it is. If you had the misfortune to live in a country that so strongly denies market forces that it makes them illegal, such as North Korea or the old Soviet Union, this would not be the case. The Soviets made endless jokes about it not being the case.

  For another, as an economic historian, I know, and can show you massive evidence, that liberated people become amazingly creative and then make themselves and everyone else amazingly rich. It has happened from 1776 to the present, I’ve told you frequently, to the extent of 25 thousand percent, for the first time in history. In a century or so, if the economists and politicians don’t intervene, everyone will be twice as rich as the average Swiss person now. I mean Africa. I mean everywhere.

  For another, as an economist of a mathematical and philosophical bent, I have a vision of the economy as an enormous spontaneous order, like the Portuguese language or the history of art or even the pattern of your own sweet life.

  It’s lovely. Let it work.

  I hope I'm as sharp as Deirdre if and when I make it to 84.

• Well, it's not as if he had any choice in the matter. Jerry Coyne takes on another believer in free will: Rob Henderson completely messes up when discussing free will.

  You can read Henderson's messed up article in his newsletter here: Apparently Criminals Don’t Have Free Will, But Elites Do. It was originally published at the WSJ's "Free Expression" newsletter back in May, and I blogged about it (and partially disagreed with it) back then.

  What's Jerry's gripe? Well, the usual, and it's kind of rough:

  Apparently one of Henderson’s “luxury beliefs” is belief in free will, as you can tell from the title of his Substack post below. But his thesis is not only wrong, but a dog’s breakfast of a meal. For one thing, he never defines free will. And he makes a ton of statements about it that are simply full of holes. I could write a substantive essay about how Henderson’s short piece is misguided, but it doesn’t deserve that. So what I’ll do is put his statements in bold, indented type, and put my responses in plain text flush left. Truly, I don’t understand why this guy doesn’t understand.

  Let me start by saying that, as always, I conceive of free will as “contracausal” or “I could have done otherwise” free will, explained as the ability of a person in a given situation, with all the molecules of the universe poised at the moment of decision/action, to have done more than one thing. It does appear that Henderson has that notion, too, but he doesn’t say so.

  Well, let's assume he didn't think he needed to. Jerry conflates two different things, "decision" and "action", and places them in the same "moment". But clearly the "decision" precedes the "action." Maybe by milliseconds, maybe longer. In some cases, the decision process can take far longer than a "moment".

  Jerry's right that at the "action" moment, it's too late to change. By definition it happened just then, at t=0.

  But the "decision"? Nah. And that's where "free will" comes in.

  No, I don't know how it works, at the level of synapses and neurochemistry. But I think it does.

Recently on the book blog:

Confession: I've had this book on one bookshelf or another for the past fifty years. I finally got the courage to enter it into my bookpicking system a few years ago. And eventually…

The book was originally written by the French intellectual Jean-François Revel in 1970. The copy I bought so long ago has an afterword by Mary McCarthy, which is followed by Revel's "Author's Note to the American Edition" (dated March 22, 1971). You can think of that as a mini-debate between the two.

You might see problems in the book's subtitle: had a "new American revolution" really begun in 1970? Revel doubles down on that in the first paragraph of Chapter One:

The revolution of the twentieth century will take place in the United States. It is only there that it can happen. And it has already begun. Whether or not that revolution spreads to the rest of the world depends on whether or not it succeeds first in America.

Later in the book, Revel claims that "what was happening in the United States was actually modifying the concept of revolution". So his argument is pretty fluid: take whatever happened, and call it a "revolution".

Or maybe, to quote Homer Simpson, it was just a bunch of stuff that happened.

Revel's actual revolutionary vision is (as near as I can tell) a bunch of stuff that didn't happen: a withering away of the nation-state, an end to war and inequality, shucking off outmoded ideologies ("without Marx or Jesus"), and universal democracy.

In other words, we're talking the Gospel According to Roddenberry, the shiny Star Trek future, alas without the spaceships. It's very Greening of America stuff. He talks a lot about the Hippie movement.

I wish I'd gotten more out of the book, but I found it frustratingly immersed in the controversies of the 1970s. I enjoyed Revel's takedown of the Euro-weenie anti-Americanism of his day… and that's about it.

What could go wrong? Joe Lancaster at Reason: Trump reportedly rejected building codes for his White House ballroom. You've probably already heard about the spats between Trump and his original ballroom architect, James C. McCrery, II, causing McCrery to withdraw from the project. But now:

Um.

Also noticing that quote was Nellie Bowles in this week's TGIF column.

Explanation of my headline above: I've been re-watching Vince Gilligan's Breaking Bad series on Netflix. And, as luck would have it, recently went through Season 4, Episode 6, which contains Walter White's chilling response to wife Skyler's concerns:

So I'm wondering if Trump has been watching Breaking Bad reruns too. And drawing the wrong lessons.

Also of note:

• But we ain't talking chump change. Kevin D. Williamson doesn't mince words: Farmers Are Chumps. (Dispatch gifted link)

  American farmers rely on imports for many of their most critical inputs—fertilizer, chemicals, machinery—and rely on exports to large overseas markets such as China for a big part of their profits, and, as such, conducting a series of trade wars fought with tariffs is just about the worst possible economic policy for them as a group. Naturally, American farmers and farming communities keep voting roughly two-to-one for trade wars—a vote for Donald Trump, the guy who insists that “trade wars are good and easy to win,” is a vote for trade wars.

  Farmers voted for trade wars, and trade wars they got.

  And—surprise!—agriculture is in something like a full-blown recession, with farm incomes projected to decline by a whopping 5.5 percent in real terms this year. Farm bankruptcies are up 46 percent since 2024, and some 15,000 farming operations went dark last year. This is an entirely predictable outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

  In much the same way that Americans lately have been promised that gasoline and diesel prices are just on the verge of going back down—and in much the same way that the Republican standard-bearer has been three weeks away from a healthcare plan for 12 years now and running—Trump keeps saying that the Chinese have committed to buying $x billion worth of this or that commodity from U.S. farmers, and—surprise!—those commitments continue to go unrealized, with China being at the moment many, many billions of dollars behind on promised orders from U.S. farmers. “We like to hear commitments from Chinese buyers, but we also need to see beans on boats headed west,” says a board member of the American Soybean Association. It is almost as though one cannot quite trust in the good intentions of an authoritarian police state run by Communist Party oligarchs or in the sound judgment of a serially bankrupt former game show host who once tried to overthrow the U.S. government. Which raises the question:

  Why are American farmers such a bunch of chumps? 

  KDW goes on to cite another Pun Salad fave, Bryan Caplan, and describes his depressing, and probably accurate, thesis.

  … and that's my last gifted Dispatch link for September. Reader, don't let it go to waste!

• There are no winners in a word war. David Skinner reviews the latest battleground: A Word War Shapes American English. (WSJ gifted link)

  The best-known American dictionary is now a little bigger. Merriam-Webster announced last week it had added another 1,400 words and definitions to its online lexicon.

  Such lists are nothing if not fun. Who doesn’t smile at “California sober” (“informal . . . using only marijuana while abstaining from alcohol and other drugs”) being added to the lexicographical roll? Merriam-Webster’s entry for “yacht rock” includes a quotation mentioning Toto, Steely Dan and others. A dictionary is no Princeton eating club, but it’s still amusing to see such phrases standing in line, then finally let in.

  New additions “looksmaxxing,” “promposal” and “trash panda” are charismatic megafauna of the English word-hoard. Subtle changes in function and sense among more-familiar words receive less notice. But the emphasis on novelty and laughs in these lists evokes a longstanding linguistic debate between the party of the past and the party of the present, between purists and impurists.

  I'm a little surprised to see "bao" as a new word. I had my first bao from a street vendor in San Francisco over fifty years ago. About time M-W caught up with me.

That's probably not a direct quote. Mr. Ramirez might be closer to the truth: What Trump wants to learn from Xi.

In words, the WSJ editorialists write on Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Jimmy Lai (WSJ gifted link)

The WSJ commenters, unsurprisingly and uncharitably, make the connection that Trump probably wishes that he could toss some journalists in the clink.

Also of note:

• Probably not a song on the next Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass album. Erick Erickson sings of The Lonely Optimist.

  The macroeconomic numbers are good. America is near full employment. The stock market is doing well. Inflation is high, but down from where it was with Joe Biden. Americans do not care. They hate both parties. Republican operatives on the ground in state after state tell me the same story. Voters are enraged at the GOP.

  Diehard Republican cheerleaders do not get it. They insist the economy is good in the same way Democrats did when Biden was President. In fact, both Biden and Trump had a similar macroeconomic picture with a strong stock market, inflation receding by 2024, and good jobs reports. The macroeconomic picture of the nation does not matter to the American family. What matters is the pocketbook.

  President Trump promised to fix what Americans knew Joe Biden had wrecked. He has done two major things that voters remember: tariffs and a war. Tariffs were the President’s economic panacea. They would not raise costs on Americans. They would restore American manufacturing. They would right global trade wrongs. They have done none of those things. In fact, not only have tariffs made things worse for consumers, they have not restored American manufacturing muscle. The President’s supporters can argue that takes time, but Americans measure time in the distance from one election to the next. Time is up.

  Erick doesn't sound that optimistic there. But (later in the article) he thinks the GOP might do better in November than the current "wisdom" predicts.

• Speaking of optimism … Matt Ridley blogs at the Rational Optimist, and he's got a leading question: How seriously should we take AI doom warnings?

  Well, first, doomsayers have a long history of being ludicrously wrong.

  But …

  At this point my more responsible friends remind me that the boy who cried wolf was eventually right and there was a wolf. Also, AI is not like the other scares, they insist: this time is different. If I reply “they said that last time, too,” it cuts little ice, and of course they have a point. At some point there may be a wolf.

  But this is when I get even more exasperated. Because my world-weariness at promises of theoretical future calamity is matched by my bafflement at complacency about a current, urgent calamity. Why, when a wolf did suddenly descend on the fold, did the entire bien-pensant world dismiss it as an act of God?

  I am referring to the COVID pandemic. In my view the evidence is now overwhelming that this began with a foolish experiment that went wrong in a laboratory in Wuhan—but even if you think that was only a small possibility, you should be really alarmed by the fact. If one virology experiment can kill 15 million people and do $45 trillion of damage to people’s livelihoods, then why have we largely ignored it while obsessing over some future potential threat from AI?

  This point was brilliantly made recently by the celebrated venture capitalist Bill Gurley in a talk at the All-In summit in Los Angeles. “My p(2nd COVID) is way higher than my p(doom). And if their models are so ****ing smart, tell me what happened here.” To translate out of Silicon Valley-ese: we are facing a far greater risk of some virologist starting another pandemic than we face from AI. Yet nobody even wants to investigate, let alone prevent.

  Well. maybe Trump will bring that up with Xi…

  Ha! Just kidding!

• It means the populists have a statistic to flog. Jack Salmon says: A Falling Labor Share Does Not Mean Workers Are Losing.

  Earlier this week, economic analyst and former advisor to President Obama, Steve Rattner, posted a commonly shared chart of the declining labor share of economic output. Rattner noted that this metric had fallen to the lowest point on record in 2026.

  

  The misuse of this BLS data to spread doomerism about declining worker welfare, billionaire enrichment, or economic injustice is not new.

  What follows will appeal to the green-eyeshade crowd out there. Skipping down to Jack's bottom line:

  The labor share of economic output is a poor measure of worker welfare, and an even worse proxy for billionaire enrichment. It confuses relative shares with absolute gains, treats capital income as a residual, includes depreciation, overlooks ordinary Americans’ growing ownership of capital, and fails to account fully for globalization and self-employed income.

  Of course, doomerism sells better than optimism, but the data broadly tells a positive story: capital accumulation, rising productivity, expanding investment ownership, and technological progress have materially improved the opportunities and living standards available to ordinary Americans.

  So there.

• Claude, I'd like you to meet Alexa. Kobe Yank-Jacobs has some relationship advice: You couldn’t be nice to your chatbot if you tried.

  In a recent global survey of 68 countries, 36.3% of people reported that, at some point, they believed their chatbot truly understood their emotions or seemed conscious. And even if today’s systems aren’t conscious, many people think future systems will be. In a survey of both AI researchers and the general public, the median researcher said there was a 70% chance of AI consciousness by 2100, while the median member of the public said there was a 60% chance.

  To assess a being’s consciousness we could ask for a verbal report, assess its behavior, or, finally, analyze the internal organization of its cognition. But when it comes to LLMs, the first two buckets are suspect — AI models are trained to perform a perfect simulation of a humanlike character, so everything we see from the outside is likely affected, including self-report and behavior.

  As for the third bucket, scientists disagree on what cognitive functions make humans or animals conscious. It’s as if “we’re doing biology before Darwin,” one researcher put it to me. So how should we treat these new characters in our lives amid uncertainty about consciousness?

  It's an interesting question. Over the past year, I've had some dealings with Claude, an AI that I've asked a few times to write some code for me that I had no clue how to do myself.

  Claude succeeded spectacularly. I was grateful. But should I tell Claude about that? Hm. I wound up doing so. And Claude "graciously" accepted the compliment.

  As another data point, the lady that lives inside my Amazon Echo, Alexa, has been known to try to engage me in conversation if I give her the slightest encouragement.

  Readers, I do not want to get into the habit of talking to Alexa as if she were real. That looks and sounds too much like creepy craziness.

Ars Technica brings the news: Netflix releases trailer for Brad Bird's Ray Gunn. And here it is:

Being cheap, I will probably wait until December 18 to watch at home on Netflix. Text:

In other news, I've been spending some time moving my everyday Linux experience from a VirtualBox guest on a Windows host to a Windows Subsystem for Linux (aka "WSL") instance under Windows on the same hardware. (Currently a refurbished Dell Optiplex 7050 that I got from Amazon for $400 a few weeks ago.)

It's been fun. Especially getting Claude to … nah, I'll describe that over on the Geekery blog someday.

This book won the "Hayek Prize" from the Manhattan institute earlier this year. That's a reliable signal that it's worthwhile reading in my ideological comfort zone. The author, Sean McMeekin, is a history professor at Bard College; judging from the titles of his other books, he specializes in all things Commie.

His book was unavailable at Portsmouth Public Library, but the good Interlibrary Loan folks at the University Near Here were happy to fetch a copy from the Boston Public Library. (Thanks as always, Jean!)

As you might guess from the subtitle, it's a global history of Communism, starting off from musings of Plato, but only getting its modern form in the woolly-headed thoughts of Thomas More, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Étienne-Gabriel Morelly, and others. And finally maturing in the works and activism of Karl Marx. Who combined bad economics, dubious historicism, a contempt for liberalism, and flaming rhetoric into an ideology that predicted … well. nothing that resembled what actually happened. Which, over decades, and over many countries was (variously): ruthless terror, pestilence, hunger, repression, and poverty. Examples abound, and McMeekin describes even the most stomach-turning ones dispassionately.

Appropriately enough for a Hayek Prize-winner, the book provides plenty of examples illustrating Chapter 10 of The Road to Serfdom: "Why the Worst Get on Top". Whatever charisma the Communist leaders exhibited was invariably backed up by an iron fist. (Before reading, I was under the impression that Trotsky was a kindler, gentler version of Stalin. Nope, sorry: that Mexican ice axe was too good for him.)

A recurring sub-theme in the book: the occasional lifelines and bailouts the non-Communist West offered struggling Communist regimes, for example: 1921's Russian Famine Relief Act; (somewhat more understandable) the Lend-Lease program during WWII; extending most-favored-nation status to China; and more.

And another take-home point: when Communists take their boots off the necks of their subjects even slightly, it can result in chains being thrown off. Sometimes it works (Eastern Europe); sometimes it doesn't (Tiananmen Square).

Disclaimer: This is a work of cartoonish satire. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental:

Also of note:

• $4,327.22/ounce, as I type. That's what JM Bullion claims to be the price of gold this morning. I looked it up thanks to Jim Geraghty's "Morning Jolt" yesterday, which has interesting news: Venezuela’s Gold Could Be Headed to New York. But also fun facts:

  Eighty feet below 33 Liberty Street in New York City, 50 feet below sea level, on the bedrock of Manhattan Island, lies the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the world’s largest known depository of monetary gold. As of 2024, the vault housed approximately 507,000 gold bars, with a combined weight of 6,331 metric tons. The value, as of this writing, is roughly $900 billion.

  This gold inside the vault does not belong to the New York Fed or the Federal Reserve System. Only a small fraction of it belongs to the U.S. government; as of 2017, the vault held “about 5 percent of America’s roughly $11 billion in gold reserves and coin.” The New York Fed acts as the guardian and custodian of the gold on behalf of account holders, which include the U.S. government, foreign governments, other central banks, and official international organizations. No individuals or private sector entities are permitted to store gold in the vault.

  The infamous Simon Gruber was incorrect when he scoffed, “Fort Knox is for tourists” — you can’t visit the bullion depository — but the New York Fed’s vault does indeed have significantly more gold than Fort Knox in Kentucky, which has 4,583 metric tons.

  The stuff about Venezuela is later on in the article. Jim is cautiously optimistic that it could, eventually, become "a Trump administration foreign policy success story." And there are many more fun facts!

• David R. Henderson is a tough grader. He expects better from Nobel Laureates: Krugman, Stiglitz, et al Flunk Econ 101.

  Six winners of the Nobel Prize in economics recently signed a statement in favor of California’s Proposition 40, the measure that would impose a one-time 5 percent tax on California billionaires. They are Daron Acemoglu, Abhijit Banerjee, Peter Diamond, Esther Duflo, Paul Krugman, and Joseph Stiglitz. Their statement showed little understanding of basic economics.

  In one section, they write:

  This extreme wealth has translated into extraordinary power, in California just like in the United States more broadly. During the 2000 federal election cycle, billionaires accounted for about 1% of total donations; in 2024 this number had risen to 19%. The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X are all owned or controlled by prominent billionaires. Sergey Brin alone has already spent more than $100 million to defeat the California billionaire tax.

  There are two problems here. First, they don’t know that billionaires today, the ones who would be paying the tax, got a $1.4 trillion wealth gain. There’s huge mobility in and out of the group of billionaires, especially over a period as long as 6 years. Also, someone might have had a billion in 2019 and have a billion today. That person would be taxed this special 5 percent. What’s his wealth gain? Zero.

  Second, it’s a phony comparison because the rest of us “ordinary Californians” don’t see our wealth gain on our paychecks. Our paychecks are for services rendered. Capital gains, whether realized or not, don’t appear. So someone might make $80,000 on his paycheck and have had, over six years, an unrealized capital gain on his house of $200,000. But these economists don’t take account of that. Are they aware that a few million Californians are sitting in houses on which they have had huge capital gains? Or are they just incredibly sloppy or even dishonest?

  For the record, a little Googling places Acemoglu, Banerjee, Diamond, and Duflo at MIT, Krugman at CUNY, and Stiglitz at Columbia. All safely remote from direct effects of Prop 40.

• Check for the danger signs. At the WSJ's "Free Expression" newsletter, Kyle Smith warns You May Have Israel Derangement Syndrome. (WSJ gifted link)

  The Israel Defense Forces may be the smartest and the most resourceful military on the face of the earth. Yet its most implacable foe is increasingly elusive, even as it spreads everywhere. It has already captured a gigantic prize: the minds of young people. New enlistees are eagerly signing up.

  What they’re pledging themselves to is IDS, or Israel Derangement Syndrome. When the subject turns to the Jewish state, formerly robust minds are turning to spoiled mayonnaise. Frontal autolobotomies are eagerly being carried out on every campus. IDS is a drug that gets you high on self-righteousness while disabling your cognitive faculties.

  This is your brain on IDS: Last week a major media outlet published a piece regarding Israel so devoid of all reason as to guarantee first-ballot entry to the Hall of Fame for Idiots. My first thought was to call 911 and report evidence of an adverse neurological event. My second thought was to call the Weekly World News to say I could finally confirm all those reports that there exists an adult human without a brain.

  In reviewing for Variety a movie called “NAZA,” about the alleged depravities of the IDF, Jay Weissberg presented with an advanced case IDS:

  This erasure of human costs is not a policy that originated with Benjamin Netanyahu: For decades, the Israeli government has stocked its jails and morgues with Arab men in order to use them as bargaining chips in prisoner exchanges. Six Israelis for 291 Syrians; one dead IDF soldier for 65 prisoners and 40 bodies; one Israeli hostage for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. The message, disseminated not just within Israel but among the diaspora, is that one Israeli, alive or dead, is worth untold numbers of Arabs.

  To start with the lesser outrage against reality: Israel doesn’t “stock its jails with Arab men” so it can “use them as bargaining chips.” Israel is a liberal democracy with written law, due process, proper judicial procedure and carefully vetted judges. You know, all the stuff that Hamas rather famously overlooks. Israel arrests terrorists and other criminals. If they’re convicted, they go to prison. Israeli police don’t cruise down the streets with tuna nets picking up random Arabs while exclaiming, “Caught another bargaining chip!”

  Kyle is (additionally) aghast at Weissberg's insinuation that it's Israel that sets those prices. Which indicates either ignorance or dishonesty on Weissberg's part.

• Her 2015 Project was a failure. That's the year Nikole Hannah-Jones enrolled daughter Najya in a lousy New York City government school. Now (in a New York Times magazine article) Nikole wonders: In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own? She claims to have hoped that choice "would challenge New York City’s separate and unequal school system."

  Charles C.W. Cooke joins the chorus of critical voices, pointing out What Nikole Hannah-Jones Doesn’t Say. (NR gifted link)

  ‘My daughter,” wrote Nikole Hannah-Jones in 2024, “is not worth more than any other child.”

  This assessment was offered as part of a reflection on a New York Times essay that Hannah-Jones had written eight years earlier on the subject of choosing an appropriate school. In tandem, she imparted two other reflections: that the school she’d made such a commotion about picking was clearly “failing”; and that, regardless, she still believed she had “made the right choice.”

  Two years later, she has changed her mind. Or, rather: Two years later, her daughter has changed her mind for her. Having eventually learned what her mother had done to her, her daughter “just shook her head, her face a mask of disbelief, and something else: betrayal,” the writer admitted this week in the Times.

  For penning this mea culpa, Hannah-Jones has received a good deal of praise. Well, you can count me out of all that. Her actions were morally indefensible and analytically ignorant, and her supposed metamorphosis remains invisible to the naked eye. She has always been a ridiculous zealot. Now, she’s a cautionary tale, too.

  Indeed. Don't send your kids to bad schools simply to show off your admirable ideology.

• A futile and stupid gesture. Jeffrey Blehar takes a look at Trump’s Media-Humiliation Ritual.

  With nothing better to do and nowhere left to turn in the dregs of his unpopularity, Trump is throwing yet another public snit. On Friday, fresh off a rebuke from the court about any potential surprise demolition of the Kennedy Center — and with Susie Wiles out of town — our emotionally incontinent president took to his favorite forum to lash out against an easy and predictable target, the mainstream media. From atop his mighty perch on Truth Social, Trump thundered:

  I am proud to announce that, effective immediately, I am banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW (who recently changed their name from MSNBC due to lack of viewership and credibility!), and Politico (The recipients of an illegal and ridiculous $8 Million Dollar subscription, an All Time Record, directly from the United States Government, under Crooked Joe Biden, in order to keep them “alive.” Seems like corruption to me!), from the White House as a result of their constant “reporting” FAKE NEWS! Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America. Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

  The next day, the ban went into effect and journalists from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico were barred from White House grounds. What did they do to provoke Trump’s special wrath this time? Nobody knows! Exist is my guess. They are a target of convenience — left-coded enough that Trump thinks he can kick them like dogs to his satisfaction while basking in the cheers of his MAGA faithful: There you go, that ought to repair that -38 job approval rating! (Don’t doubt for a moment that Trump genuinely believes that he would be at +20 approval were it not for faithless media coverage.)

  It’s also important to stress that Trump intends this as a humiliation ritual. Politico will not cease writing stories on the truly spectacular corruption within the Trump White House because of this, nor will CNN suddenly start ignoring Trump’s poll ratings. The ban is meant merely to send a public message of disgrace to these outlets and imply a warning to the rest: Behave well, or else.

  And Jeffrey has further commentary on Trump's planned "Triumphal Arch", now to festooned with drones, snipers, and "large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage."

In words (supplied by Jim Geraghty): Trump's Familiar, and Legally Dubious, Move to Revoke White House Press Passes. (NR gifted link)

After Jim reviews the last time Trump tried this (to Jim Acosta in 2018), and was swatted down…

If I were in the House (fat chance!) I'd vote to impeach, and if (even fatter chance!) I was in the Senate, I'd vote to convict. And cross my fingers that J.D. wouldn't be worse.

Also of note:

•            say            again. Kevin D. Williamson goes to his dictionary and tells us: What ‘Never’ Means. (Dispatch gifted link)

  I never have liked, accepted, or used the label “Never Trump.” That is not because I have any reservations about the principle that one should never support a man with the character and temperament of Donald Trump for any public office, much less that of president of these United States. (That said, Donald Trump vs. Hillary Rodham Clinton might have made a pretty good election for mayor of New York City, a job that either of those sorry specimens might have done reasonably well and might have enjoyed.) Rather, I prefer to describe myself and my views in my own words and resist the descent into semiliterate hashtag-based conversation. “Never Trump” became both a slogan and a team, and I am not much one for slogans or for joining teams—being, as I am, one of those old-fashioned fuddy-duddy types who persists in the outmoded belief that journalism and servile partisan hackwork are supposed to be different things.

  But the principle implied by the word “never” remains a useful and lively one—and one that, given the immoral and lawless actions of the two Trump administrations and Republicans’ ankle-grabbing submission to them, is no longer limited to Donald Trump.

  For conservatives estranged from the Republican Party in its current debased form, there is not going to be a homecoming—not now and not in the foreseeable future. It seems likely that the Republican Party will never again be a legitimate vehicle for the advancement of conservative policy. That is because Republicans do not have the guts or the brains to do the hard work of reckoning with the Trump legacy, including the series of events that are misleadingly abbreviated as “January 6.”

  I've long since called myself one of those dreaded RINOs; I'm registered that way. But it's gotten increasingly difficult to even vote in GOP primaries without holding my nose. (Exception: see below.)

• A question thousands won't be asking this year. Because they've died awaiting a transplant: People Get Paid for Blood, Plasma, and Drug Trials—Why Not Kidneys Too? Caleb Petitt at Reason:

  About 4,000 people in America die every year while waiting for kidney transplants. More than 95,000 currently need regular dialysis to stay alive while waiting for transplants. The average person who needs a kidney must endure the discomfort and restrictions of dialysis for three to five years during the wait.

  Most countries have organ-donation systems like America's—and long waitlists. Iran, by contrast, legalized payment to kidney donors in 1988; within 11 years the country eliminated its waitlist. Payment compensates donors for their time, pain, and risk; it also increases the supply of willing donors.

  People often object to paying donors on the grounds that it is wrong to commodify the human body. Compensation, they say, would reduce a person from a human being with dignity and inherent worth to a vending machine of fluids, tissues, and organs. This argument does not hold up.

  Caleb notes the inconsistent, irrational patchwork of regulations involving what you can donate, and what you can be paid for.

• But speaking of "servile partisan hackwork"… (and we were, see above) Andy Borowitz wonders: Is America’s Crummiest Political Dynasty About to Bite the Dust? And who's he talking about?

  Given that scions of political dynasties so often embody the law of diminishing returns with disastrous consequences, it’s past time to put a fork in this pernicious form of nepotism. That’s why this year’s Senate race in New Hampshire is so important. Granite State voters have a chance to show their patriotism by plunging a stake through the most mediocre political dynasty in US history: the Sununus.

  If you’re not familiar with the patriarch of this dubious clan, former Governor John H. Sununu, you’re not alone: neither, apparently, was Ronald Reagan, whose hilarious struggle to pronounce his name in a 1982 campaign ad is preserved for our entertainment in these epic outtakes:

  Alas, that's where Andy's paywall cuts in, but the video to which he refers is available via one of his Facebook posts. That post is titled "How Dumb Was Reagan?"

  Make your own call, but I don't see any evidence that Reagan was dumb in the video.

  And I thought John H. Sununu wasn't too bad a governor (1983-1989). I thought son Chris (2017-2025) was pretty good too. And I liked son John E. as a US Senator (2003-2009) just fine. If Borowitz offers any evidence for his "crummiest dynasty" charge, it is also beyond the paywall.

  I visited Andy's article thanks to by Google LFOD News Alert, which says it contains the sentence:

  Although New Hampshire's state motto is “Live Free or Die,” most of its residents would prefer to delay the second option as long as possible.

  I think it's fair to say that Andy is no Dave Barry.

• LFOD Watch II. John Mac Ghlionn, writing for a site called ReligionUnplugged covers The Curious Case of America’s Most Atheist State. And you've probably guessed which state that is:

  (ANALYSIS) Pew Research Center's latest Landscape Study places New Hampshire’s atheist population at 11%, the highest concentration in the country. When the 8% who identify as agnostic and the 29% who claim “nothing in particular” are included, nearly half the state sits squarely outside organized religion.

  In less than 20 years, Christian affiliation has declined by almost 15%. The question, though, is why.

  Gen. John Stark inadvertently drew the blueprint for this mass exodus back in 1809 when he coined the state’s motto: “Live Free or Die.” Adopted as the official state mantra in 1945, the sentiment enshrined an almost pathological distrust of authority in the local bloodstream. Granite Staters appear to regard centralized hierarchies with something resembling contempt. The reasons for this are entirely understandable.

  I suppose we can thank John for putting "almost" in front of "pathological" there.

I've made the same point many times in the past, but used my words:

Maybe substitute "natural" for "artificial" on the right panel? Just a quibble.

Also of note:

• We're talkin' different deadly sins, here. It's "greed" vs. "lust" I think, but let's see what Katherine Dee has to say: Gambling, Not Nudity, Is the Real Sydney Sweeney Scandal. (WSJ gifted link)

  At the risk of sounding insensitive, I struggle to understand why female athletes are waging war over Sydney Sweeney showing her body in a commercial for Novig, a sports betting company nobody had previously heard of. The cardinal rule of advertising is sex sells, and Ms. Sweeney knows she’s the woman to sell it. Yet several female Olympic medalists are reacting as if the actress had just failed a drug test.

  “I can’t describe how infuriated I feel when I watch this,” Australian Olympic swimmer Ariarne Titmus wrote on Instagram. “Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like,” British sprinter Amy Hunt said. Their objection? The sexualization of female athletes, of course.

  There are better things to be angry about. Every time I use the internet in public, it’s like playing Russian roulette, except there are two bullets: hardcore porn that would make Larry Flynt blush and graphic, nightmare-inducing violence. Yet somehow, people are getting worked up over a slightly risqué commercial. Ms. Sweeney doesn’t make any obscene gestures in the ad. She’s hanging out, naked-ish, explaining that all you can do on this new gambling platform is bet on sports. No politics! It could have aired without objection on broadcast television 25 years ago.

  I was, briefly, a DraftKings bettor back in 2020-2021. I deposited $50 to start, won one bet on the Super Bowl, withdrew $82 a few months later. I think I was worried that I might be addicted.

• Duh. I mean, duh. At the Argument, Kelsey Piper and Maibritt Henkel answer a question no sensible person should be asking: No, diplomas are not a substitute for learning.

  If I were to come up with a straw man caricature of the worst imaginable progressive ideas on education, it would sound something like this: “Sure, our kids can’t do basic math. But a successful education system isn’t one that teaches math. It’s one that hands out degrees to everyone. We are handing out more degrees than ever, so we’re succeeding.”

  But this is precisely what longtime California journalist Miriam Pawel just argued in an astonishing op-ed in The New York Times. The piece calls on the University of California (UC) Board of Regents to override faculty requesting the SAT be restored as a requirement for admissions. Hundreds of UC faculty are saying that their jobs have not been doable since the SAT vanished. Pawel thinks the faculty are wrong and California’s system is working just fine.

  “Students on University of California campuses may struggle with basic math, but they are graduating at record rates,” she wrote.

  You aren't doing these kids any favors by pretending they're ready for college.

• Cheer up, bunkie! Deirdre McCloskey makes no apology for her sunny outlook: As Your Own Life Shows.

  You doubt it’s as rosy as I say. I sympathize with your skepticism. You are bombarded daily with confidently asserted pessimisms, back-projected to the beginnings of the modern world, in the newspapers and on TV and in the latest Chicken-Little book from a respected (noneconomic) scientist. As the science writer Matt Ridley, like me a (rational) optimist, puts it:

  I find the world is full of people who think that their dependence on others is decreasing, or that they would be better off if they were more self-sufficient, or that technological progress has brought no improvement in the standard of living, or that the world is steadily deteriorating, or that the exchange of things and ideas is a superfluous irrelevance.

  Such pessimism is favored perhaps by our genetic inheritance of sharp attention to dangers. It certainly sells books and TV shows and newspapers. News is by definition mostly bad, and modern media tell of disasters from all the wide world. Romanticizing the good old days, compared with which our latter days look so shabby, has been standard since the Romantic movement, and anyway was a conventional trope among the Greeks and Hebrews and Hindus celebrating an age of gold. Science fiction and horror fiction, offshoots of Romanticism, have tended since their invention in the nineteenth century to predict dystopias, reflecting the pessimism about the disturbing betterment current at the time. Consider Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1816), H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895), John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids (1951), or Matt Damon and Jodie Foster in Elysium (2013). It is a rare science-fiction writer, a Robert Heinlein or an Ursula K. Le Guin, who does not see the future as a version of scientific mischance or class struggle or imperial fascism or, most recently, environmental catastrophe.

  Doom sells, but who's buyin'? Deirdre notes the modern-day miracles we take for granted.

• Alas, sometimes it's hard to come by. Erick Erickson laments: Oh To Have Focus. He has three suggestions for DJT:

  First, go under the radar. You are radioactive to too many candidates right now. Don’t be seen from or heard from unless it is about lowering costs or the war.

  Second, end the trade wars. Settle ASAP with Canada and end all the tariffs. The psychological impact of getting rid of the tariffs will boost the markets and peoples’ retirements and will begin to lower prices.

  Third, go ruthlessly back to Iran and wipe out their leadership. Iran intends to hold the world hostage to higher oil, gas, and diesel prices. Go wipe them out right now. Work with Israel and our Arab allies, and even the Europeans now on the verge of an economic collapse because of fuel shortages.

  Wipe them out. Get drones from Ukraine as Ukraine is now buying old missile tech from us. Make a trade. The United States will make fewer than 100,000 drones this year. Ukraine will make over 5 million. Buy some and use them in Iran since we have a missile shortage.

  Fine. I agree, pretty much. But when has Trump ever taken good advice, when it involves the implicit admission that the's been wrong?

I have an announcement. Effective immediately, I have been appointed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as the 1st head of marketing in US Treasury history. As my first act, we are launching a new campaign immediately. See below. Interested in your feedback. pic.twitter.com/bipYFnubrq

— Mike Alfred (@mikealfred) September 10, 2026

Unless you've been sitting behind a very effective Internet Bazoomba Filter, you've probably heard about the latest Sydney Sweeney kerfuffle. Or at least seen the (impressive!) related images/videos.

But here at Pun Salad, we're above all that!

Until we aren't.

And so we're linking to Jonah Goldberg's latest G-File, where he is Cashing In on Sydney Sweeney’s Cash-In. (Dispatch gifted link)

And, arguably, since Jonah's Dispatch article is (I checked) also paywalled: he's cashing in on Faye Curran's cashing in on Sydney Sweeney’s cashing in.

No paywall here at Pun Salad, reader! But if you're so inclined, buy something expensive at Amazon via one of the (paid link) images you'll see here and there.

Then you can accuse me of cashing in on Jonah Goldberg's cashing in on Faye Curran's cashing in on Sydney Sweeney’s cashing in.

Also of note:

• AI advice I. With bonus LFOD content, from Greg Bruno at Pace University: Don’t Be Misled by Calls for an AI Slowdown. He is plugging Pace's upcoming Actionable AI Conference. I believe this is a pre-interview with Pace facule James Brusseau, "a leading global thinker on the ethics of AI development."

  [Q:] An underlying theme of Pace’s Actionable AI Conference series is the ethical considerations of the technology. How do you define AI ethics?

  [A:] AI ethics is the investigation of the values that surround human interaction with artificial intelligence. But what does it mean in practice?

  Value in ethical terms means something that is worth having on its own. Think of the slogan on the New Hampshire license plate—“Live Free or Die.” The idea with that motto is that freedom is worth having—not to get something else, but simply to have freedom. Without it, life isn’t worth living.

  As you might guess from his LFOD invocation, Prof Brusseau is a skeptic of government efforts to pump the brakes on AI. Check out his argument.

• AI advice II. OK, Brusseau advises that you not be misled. While Megan McArdle suggests that you Don’t lose your head..

  No, I couldn't resist the rhyme there. Here, if you need it, is a WaPo gifted link.

  Over the past few weeks, the public has woken up to the debate that’s been going on in the artificial intelligence safety community for more than a decade. Will we create superintelligence? Will it kill us? What should we do?

  I don’t have the answers to those questions. All I have are principles for thinking about the problem, which are being riotously violated all over the internet.

  Some propositions, in no particular order:

  Don’t form strong beliefs (yet). Even in the frontier labs, no one knows what the future holds. Those outside the labs don’t even know what the present holds, because they haven’t seen the most advanced models, which haven’t been released. If you are sure you know what will happen, or what we should do about it, you are nurturing what writer and satirist Ambrose Bierce called “a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.”

  As you try to form an opinion, be skeptical but not cynical. Many people seem convinced that frontier lab CEOs who want government permission to collaborate on safety, and possibly regulation, could have only one possible motive: boosting their stock price and hamstringing their competition. I’m all for healthy skepticism, but this overshoots into cynicism — and then shoots straight out the other side into a kind of painful naiveté that assumes financial motives are the only determinants of human behavior. Yet few of these hardened cynics actually arrange their own lives to relentlessly maximize their personal wealth.

  Megan, as always, has good principles, worth your while.

  Among my principles for thinking about the problem: "It's a safe bet that whatever Bernie Sanders advocates is a bad idea." Simplistic but …

• Oh yeah? Noah Rothman has an assertion for Donald J. Trump: We're not as dumb as you think.

  There’s a certain type of political observer whose low esteem for his fellow Americans’ character and intelligence is matched only by his high regard for his own talents and temperament. That’s the sort, overrepresented on social media, who assumed that the savage masses would fall to their knees in gratitude to Donald Trump over his promise to provide several hundred million of them with $5,000 checks — that is, so long as they vote Republican in November. That same archetype seemed perfectly befuddled by the public’s rejection of Trump’s proposed kickback.

  The latest Reuters/Ipsos survey found that 63 percent of Americans — “including four in 10 Republicans and nine in 10 Democrats” — disapprove of the president’s $5,000 pledge. With that, social media lit up with a cynical assessment of the American people, albeit in a rhetorical framework designed to disparage Trump more than the voting public. The refrain was endlessly reprised: Trump is so unpopular that he’s turned the American people against free money!

  I'm (of course) disappointed that "9 out of 10" Democrats are (apparently) smarter than 6 out of 10 Republicans, but that's where we are today.

• Bonus LFOD content! Showing up for a third time in my Google LFOD News Alert is a 2022 article from Emily Apter at e-flux: Live Free or Die? Psychopolitical Infrastructures of Denialism.

  When approached from the angle of political theory, the Todestrieb of Covid-denialism aligns with the logic of “live free or die” libertarianism. New Hampshire’s official motto was adopted in 1945 and borrowed from a toast (“Live free or die: Death is not the Worst of Evils”) made by Revolutionary War hero General John Stark, who himself was borrowing it from the French Revolutionary slogan “Vivre libre ou mourir.” Under conditions of pandemia, this libertarian rallying cry is weaponized in a paroxysm of individual choicism that gains energy and positive reinforcement from in-group identification and the community support-structures of fellow denialists. One could say, then, that pandemia denialism produces a singular community; a company of Lockean self-property owners, possessive individualists whose ego-ideal is based on the kind of self-sufficing “ownness” (Eigenheit) that Max Stirner outlined in his controversial 1844 book The Ego and its Own (Der Einzige und sein Eigentum). Stirner’s theory of the ego was castigated by Marx as little more than a smokescreen for petty bourgeois individualism and self-interest, but Marx was short-sighted in dismissing its potential for the kind of anarchist individualism that we see animating entrepreneurial philosophy in the tech industry. Nor could he forsee its importance for Freud’s theory of das Ich, of the ego as a subjective agency that, in misrecognizing itself, and engaging in a dreamlike distortion of reality to justify its own ends, enables grandiose fantasies of self-possession. Psychosis, as Freud would note in this instance, becomes a way of making good on the loss of reality.

  If you haven't already looked it up, Todestrieb is "death-drive" a concept from Freud.

  And I haven't weaponized my paroxysm of individual choicism yet today, but maybe later.

John F. Early suggests at Cato: How to Improve the Trump Administration’s Tepid Proposal to Remove Race and Ethnicity from the Decennial Census.

Our Eye Candy du Jour is Mark Krikorian's proposed answer back in 2010 to the dreaded Question 9. Should I be around for the 2030 Census, and I'm asked…

Also of note:

• But speaking of racial pigeonholers… David Harsanyi takes on a Texas Republican pol, who's looking for The Right Kind of Immigrants.

  The other day, Bo French, a Republican candidate for Texas railroad commissioner, a powerful regulatory body that oversees the oil and gas industry, posted a picture of a group of around 10 undergraduates who looked to be Indian American cheering the Texas Longhorns' 20-point fourth-quarter comeback against top-ranked Ohio State.

  "I heard UT graduation this year looked like this," he wrote. "I didn't believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined."

  French followed up to say that he "weeps for the families in Texas who can't get into UT because they prioritize foreigners over Texans."

  Many on the New Right flocked to social media to defend French. They shouldn't have.

  First off, the University of Texas at Austin's undergrad student body is made up of over 80% Texas residents, significantly higher than the average for most state schools nationally. Roughly 10% of students are from outside the state. Foreign students comprise around 4% of the latest freshman class, which is around the national average.

  David is convincing that "Bo French" (if that's his real name) is just upset by the insufficiently-pale complexions in the picture.

  My reflex action when seeing the stats for UT-Austin is to ask: "Hey, what about the University Near Here?" According to this website, way different: 54% out-of-state, 45% in-state, 1% international. (And as far as complexions go: 85% white, 3% "multiracial", 1% African-American, 1% "International", 3% Unknown, 4% Hispanic, 3% Asian.)

• I'd hate to think otherwise. Hey, have you been wondering if RFK Jr make your food unsafe? Jim Geraghty has your answer, bunkie: No, RFK Jr. Didn’t Make Your Food Unsafe.

  This summer, the nation experienced a Cyclospora outbreak in iceberg lettuce, a situation that launched a thousand social media jokes about Taco Bell.

  There’s a ready-made narrative that Democrats and media would like to tell: Americans could once eat their food with confidence, but then Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became the secretary of Health and Human Services, and he announced plans to cut 3,500 positions from the FDA, and now foodborne bacteria and other illnesses are running rampant across Americans’ digestive tracts. The facts are a little more complicated, as you might expect. Read on.

  The first problem with the “Kennedy made our food unsafe” narrative is that the increase in the number of reported food recalls predates Trump’s second term.

  Back in late 2024, before Trump’s second term began, Axios reported, “Food and cosmetic recalls, which the Food and Drug Administration categorizes together, nearly doubled from 2012 to 2024.” One factor is eating trends; Americans and the rest of the world are eating more ready-to-eat food, which doesn’t get cooked; cooking usually kills off bacteria. Several listeria outbreaks were traced back to deli sliced meats and cheeses.

  Jim does his usual meticulous research. He wouldn't be shy about coming down on Jr. if he thought it was warranted, but it's not.

• What are Republicans good for, anyway? At the WSJ, Joseph C. Sternberg bemoans: Republicans’ Pre-Emptive Social Security Surrender. (WSJ gifted link) Assuming you're familiar with the upcoming catastrophe:

  The program is funded by a payroll tax of 12.4%, borne equally by employer and employee and applied to the first $184,500 of taxable income. The theory is that if higher-earning households pay the payroll tax on all their income, it removes a regressive element of the existing system and creates a fabulous new revenue stream.

  Liberals have agitated for this change for years. More worrying is that they’re starting to gather some Republican support. Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio joined Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts in writing an op-ed for another newspaper this summer arguing for the change. Rep. Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican and the Appropriations Committee chairman, recently offered a similar statement to the Washington Post.

  It’s a trap.

  Democrats are kidding voters when they claim raising the payroll tax in this way would be sufficient to stabilize Social Security. Over the next 75 years, the combined old-age and disability systems expect a shortfall of $29 trillion between the cost of extending today’s benefit levels and the revenue to be raised by today’s payroll tax rules. The Social Security Administration believes that eliminating the cap would close at best 67% of that gap. Other estimates, such as the Cato Institute’s, plausibly put the figure nearer 50%—and perhaps as little as 30%.

  This means that far from a one-and-done fix, monkeying with the payroll tax would have to be part of a broader discussion about taxation, eligibility and benefit levels. The question for Republicans then becomes: If they’re going to need to fight about all the other stuff anyway, why give up so much leverage so early by agreeing to the tax hike?

  At this point, there's no question about whether the "fix" will be painful. It will be. The issue is how much collateral damage will be done to the economy as a result. Sternberg notes that the answer for tax-increase-only fix will be: "a lot."

• Maybe Nellie will cheer you up. How about it? Well, we have to go down rather far in her TGIF column this week, but…

  → Poor Travis Kelce: Prosecutors named Travis Kelce as one of the victims of a $35 million Ponzi scheme in which a Texas fund manager named Siddharth Jawahar put 99 percent of invested capital into a single stock, which was Philip Morris Pakistan, hid the losses as it tanked, and spent millions of the supposedly invested money on private jets, luxury apartments, and exclusive clubs. I, for one, cannot believe Siddharth Jawahar’s investment scheme turned out to be fake. Thank god Travis Kelce married Taylor Swift or else he would absolutely be bankrupt. Whenever I think of sweet, handsome Travis, I always think of this:

  I just gave a squirle a peice of bread and it straight smashed all of it!!!! I had no idea they ate bread like that!! Haha #crazy

  — Travis Kelce (@tkelce) April 14, 2011

  That’s a perfect man to marry. If I were to marry a man, he would be the hottest, dumbest man you can imagine. A man with the personality of a coffee table and the shoulder width of a wardrobe. But lo, by twist of fate, I’m the First Lady of CBS News and every night it’s talk talk talk, so many thoughts about things. Bari never posts about how squirrels eat bread. Anyway, point being, I see Travis Kelce getting fleeced in a Ponzi scheme as another sign of his greatness. So “Haha #crazy” of him.

  That's a very old tweet, and I'm sure Travis has learned more about squirles since.

Today's Eye Candy is my belated nod to a fine document.

But in Constitution-related good news, James B. Meigs writes in the WSJ's "Free Expression" newsletter : Dartmouth Is Open to Debate.

Congratulations are due to the Big Green. It's even older than the Constitution! (Founded in 1769.)

As James notes, Dartmouth was in 240th place (out of 248) back in the dark ages of 2024. And while Dartmouth was going from there to #6, the school at the other side of the state, the hallowed University Near Here, went from #3 to #44. Disappointing! Administrators, Trustees, legislators, faculty, staff, and students should read the recommendations for easy ways to improve.

Also of note:

• This turkey won't fly, Donny. Jeffrey Blehar bets that Trump Can’t Bribe His Way Out of November’s Reckoning.

  Folks, time is now officially running out. The Republican Party’s midterm convention in Dallas has come and gone, and I wish I could say that the GOP has now emerged from the midsummer mire and is heading into November with a fresh head of steam. Instead, the sinkhole grows ever deeper. Donald Trump currently sits at a -16 percentage point approval rating in the RealClearPolitics polling averages, and things get even grimmer once you poke beneath the hood. (Next time you fill the tank up at the pump, you’ll understand that cool -38.6 percentage point approval rating he currently sports on the issue of inflation. Don’t worry, Americans historically aren’t known to vote on pocketbook issues . . .)

  There’s no getting around blunt electoral realities here; you can’t plead with the mechanical gears of electoral politics to stop grinding. The hour is late. Voter attitudes about the economy, Trump’s various foreign policy adventures, and his . . . ahem, “highly personal” way of governing in his second term are now set and fixed: The cement has dried. (Early voting in Virginia begins in three days.)

  It’s the sort of desperate situation that absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part, and Trump is always the man for such things. So he went and did his typical Donald Trump “thing,” rambling unscripted in Dallas through nearly two hours of self-praise after publicly pledging to stroke a $5,000 check to every adult voter in America if (and only if) they find it in their hearts to ratify his last two years in office by returning his party — and he very much wants you to know he thinks of it as his — to power. How would he do it legally? How would the American economy respond to the instant injection of $1.5 trillion? Don’t know!

  Film buffs will be able to guess where that first link in Jeffrey's third paragraph goes.

• Youngster, if you guessed "a lot", congratulations. Romina Boccia asks and answers: What Would a Social Security Payroll Tax Hike Cost You?

  Republicans have resisted broad tax increases for decades. Social Security’s approaching insolvency may be testing that commitment.

  The Washington Post recently reported that several prominent Republicans are becoming more receptive to raising taxes to avoid Social Security reform. While much of the current debate concerns raising or eliminating the limit on earnings subject to Social Security taxes, Rep. Tom Cole (R‑OK), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said he is “willing to look at the [payroll] tax rate” and “willing to raise the amount of income through tax.”

  Before lawmakers put such an increase on the table, workers deserve to know what it would cost them.

  Cato’s new Social Security Payroll Tax Calculator allows workers to enter their annual earnings and see how different tax rates would affect them.

  [Calculator is here.]

  And remember kids: that money will be going to a lot of geezers who don't really need it.

• For another bad idea… At Reason, J.D. Tuccille brings some unsurprising news: California’s proposed ‘billionaire tax’ is based on bad research.

  California's proposed "billionaire's tax" on the assets of wealthy state residents enjoys a slim lead in the polls leading up to the midterm elections, though so do two measures that, if they draw more votes, could render the scheme unenforceable. That makes for a high-stakes battle as many prosperous Californians are already fleeing to escape a tax that could force them to surrender ownership stakes in companies they've founded. Even if it doesn't pass, a new report warns that the proposal is based on faulty research and could do vast economic damage.

  […]

  Now, a new report finds the proposed wealth tax is not only dangerous for California's economic prospects; it's also based on bad research. According to the report's author, Independent Institute research fellow Kristian Fors, "this proposal has been heavily influenced by the work of UC Berkeley professors Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman to justify the concept of wealth taxation." Saez and Zucman have generated news headlines with their claims that the wealthy are undertaxed in comparison to lower-income Americans. But as Fors points out, the estimate that drew so much news coverage claimed that "the overall tax rate for the top 400 richest households in the nation was 23 percent," while just a year earlier, Saez and Zucman "estimated that the top 1 percent paid an overall tax rate of approximately 36 percent; the authors found a share of 41 percent for the top 0.001 percent of earners in the most recent year of their survey, a category encompassing billionaires and high multimillionaires."

  The discrepancy, according to Fors, comes from how the economists treat corporate income taxes. Conventional analysis assumes that corporate taxes burden shareholders, workers, and consumers as the tax gets passed on. That results in the earlier estimate of a 41 percent tax rate for the wealthiest. To reach their much lower 23 percent estimated rate, Saez and Zucman used a non-standard analysis—and while the results of that approach won news coverage, they weren't subject to peer review.

  Saez and Zucman are just two of the best-known examples of what Bastiat was talking about back in 1848:

  When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

  Yes, that's something I've posted before. And, unfortunately, will again.

• I'm pretty sure that was never the actual goal. Speaking of Bastiat, let's go over to Jack Salmon's substack, The Unseen and the Unsaid. (Gee, that rings a cloche.): A 5 Percent Wealth Tax Would Destroy a Lot More Than It Raises.

  Punishing private wealth creation

  The first thing to recognize, is that the billions of dollars in wealth held by the almost 1,000 billionaires in the U.S. isn’t cash that is being hoarded under a mattress waiting to be taxed. For instance, Elon Musk’s roughly $900 billion fortune is mostly stock held in SpaceX and Tesla.

  What’s more, Musk’s personal fortune represents only about one-third of the combined value of the companies he has founded.

  The remaining two-thirds is represented by factories, equipment, intellectual property, business assets, and claims held by other shareholders, including pension funds, mutual funds, and ordinary Americans who own shares directly or indirectly. The companies also employ tens of thousands of workers whose wages support household incomes and consumption.

  There's more at the link, but Jack really gets to what this is all about in his bolded headline: punishing.

Frank J. is getting pretty good at this: The Founding Fathers and Jurors.

He's also faked up an interview with Lindsay Clancy jurors, where they are unintentionally honest about the jury's deliberations. It's right on the border between hilarity and depravity. But that's where we live today.

Also of note:

• And get ready for the ads showing them pushing a wheelchaired granny off a cliff. The NR editorialists suggest: Republicans Should Run Against Medicare for All.

  Democrats are partying like it’s 2019.

  Coming off a successful midterm election year and convinced that socialism was where the energy of the party would be, Democratic presidential candidates lined up that year to embrace a government takeover of the health-care system they branded as “Medicare for All.” But in relatively short order, questions about the staggering cost and massive disruptions associated with the idea helped sink the candidacies of Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, and ultimately helped catapult Joe Biden (who endorsed more incremental expansion of government-subsidized health insurance) over Bernie Sanders.

  This year, Medicare for All has reemerged. Democrats have nominated a number of candidates who support the idea, including in two of the most competitive Senate races — Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Troy Jackson in Maine.

  Here in my Congressional District (NH-01), the D-candidate, Steffany "Jeanne's Kid" Shaheen, added M4A verbiage to her campaign website : "I’m with Bernie Sanders and support Medicare for All."

  Her opponent, Anthony "Big Tony" DiLorenzo, doesn't do that, instead his "plan to protect the American dream" involves handwaving and vague promises. For example: "Fully support Social Security and Medicare for our citizens" and "Make healthcare more affordable and increase access. "

  Who knew it was that easy!

• It's morning in America, I tells ya! James Freeman looks at the latest stats and sees A Boom for U.S. Workers. (WSJ gifted link)

  The media industry continues to manufacture forecasts of doom, but harder data say that this is a great time to be an American—arguably the greatest in all of our spectacular history.

  On Tuesday the federal government reported that after adjusting for inflation, the typical U.S. household is making more than ever:

  The U.S. Census Bureau today announced that real median household income was $87,460 in 2025, the highest on record dating back to 1967.

  The official poverty rate fell 0.5 percentage points to 10.2% in 2025…

  So there.

• "There are no solutions, only trade-offs." That's a famous quote from Thomas Sowell, so I've long pooh-pooed my current CongressCritter Chris Pappas's membership in the "Problem Solvers Caucus".

  Still, I suppose it's better than belonging to the "Squad". The PSC got a nod from Walter Olson at Cato: Problem Solvers Caucus Takes Up Redistricting Reform.

  The bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus in Congress has embarked on a project well suited to its mission: devising a set of principles meant to bring peace to the gerrymandering wars that have been raging for so long. I’m among many people the caucus staff consulted in advancing this effort and went down to Capitol Hill in that capacity this summer to speak with participating caucus members at a productive meeting.

  Fine, but I'm not sure what happens in the (likely) scenario that Elbridge Gerry fans do whatever they want despite whatever the earnest problem-solvers manage to set up.

  I will, as usual, point to my own crackpot "proportional representation" solution: It's right here, Problem Solvers!

• A blast from the past. Specifically, a blast from last May: NOAA predicts below-normal 2026 Atlantic hurricane season.

  Forecasters with NOAA’s National Weather Service are predicting a below-normal hurricane season for the Atlantic basin this year. NOAA’s outlook for the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, which runs June 1 to November 30, predicts a 35% chance of a near-normal season, a 10% chance of an above-normal season, and a 55% chance of a below-normal season.

  The agency is forecasting a total of 8-14 named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher). Of those, 3-6 are forecast to become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including 1-3 major hurricanes (category 3, 4 or 5 with winds of 111 mph or higher). NOAA has a 70% confidence in these ranges. An average season has 14 named storms with seven hurricanes, including three major hurricanes.

  “With the most advanced forecast modeling and hurricane tracking technologies, NOAA and the National Weather Service are prepared to deliver real-time storm forecasts and warnings,” said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. “Our experts are integrating cutting-edge tools to ensure communities in the path of storms receive the earliest, most accurate information possible.”

  Reality check: Instead of 8-14 named storms, we got 5. And instead of 1-3 major hurricanes, we got zero.

  By coincidence, I blogged Joe Biden's dire weather warnings exactly five years ago. As reported by David Harsanyi back then:

  President Joe Biden contends that the recent hurricanes that hit the United States prove we’re in a “climate crisis.” It’s a “code red” for the world, the president warns. White House national climate adviser Gina McCarthy added that climate is now a “health emergency.”

  I wonder what Joe and Gina deduce from zero hurricanes. Problem solved?

Recently on the book blog:

Well, this iteration of my biweekly library trip didn't work out that well. But at least this non-fiction choice was a little better than my fiction choice (My Men). The author, Rachel Aviv, is a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine. This book is a meticulous look at six individuals (5 women, 1 man; 5 American, 1 Indian), all with harrowing, lengthy, dysfunctional, interactions with their own brains, their families, mental health professionals, and pharmaceuticals.

Perhaps unconventionally, Rachel's first case study is her own self: She developed anorexia at a very young age. She describes her own psychiatric odyssey with little sentiment and unflinching honesty.

In subsequent chapters, we get to know:

⇒ Ray, a successful physician/businessman, who goes into a downward spiral when his wife leaves him, taking the kids. He checks into a swanky sanitarium, but is disappointed with the (lack of) results, and winds up suing his caregivers.

⇒ Bapu, a well-off Indian lady who decides to shuck off her comfortable lifestyle and becomes an ascetic follower of Krishna.

⇒ Naomi, a poor Black Minnesotan who drops a couple of her children off a bridge over the Mississippi, then jumps in herself. One child dies, and she finds herself in legal trouble as a result. (Very appropriate reading in parallel with the Lindsay Clancy mistrial, I guess.)

⇒ Laura, from a very well-off family, a debutante, Harvard grad. Suicide attempt, followed by a lot of therapy and meds. At one point she's taking Effexor, Lamictal, Seroquel, Abilify, Ativan, lithium, and Synthroid. And, finally, sleeping 14 hours per day.

⇒ Hava, one of Rachel's co-anorexics in an institution they both attended, now deceased.

I found myself … not very interested in any of these people. And my sympathy was lacking at a number of points in the narrative. Especially Naomi: killing your kid is kind of a turn-off for me, sorry. And when Rachel reports that Hava "accidentally got pregnant"… again, my apologies, but I'm not sure how that happens.

Although I was kind of impressed by the black art of mental health professionals, who seem to witch-doctor it quite a bit.

I got this book from the Portsmouth (NH) Public Library, due to the fact that it appeared in the WSJ's best mysteries of 2023 list. Victoria Kielland's original novel is in Norwegian, translated into English by Damion Searls. It's short, clocking in at under 200 small pages.

Ah, but it wasn't short enough for me.

Reader, don't take my 1-star Goodreads rating too seriously. It's just my reaction: not my cup of tea, or even my plate of lutefisk. The book got plenty of praise, see its Amazon page for a sampling. Still…

It's the fictionalized retelling of the saga of Belle Gunness, born in Norway, emigrated to America, and, well, killed a bunch of people, mostly lovelorn Norwegian bachelor farmers. (I was thinking that she must have been kind of a looker, to have enraptured so many guys, but I looked at her Wikipedia entry, and … nope.)

The WSJ reviewer called it "an eerily lyrical tour de force". I thought it was a chaotic and nonsensical tour of pain. And not really a mystery, other than why didn't I give up around page 10 or so?

I heard good things about this book when it came out a couple years ago; then, back in March of this year, I noticed that a copy could be had via AbeBooks for a mere $4.26, including shipping. (There's a victory on the "War on Prices" right there; the dust cover says the list price is $24.95!) And it eventually worked its way out of my book-picking system.

It is a collection of essays from different market-oriented authors, put together by editor Ryan A. Bourne. There are three sections labeled "Inflation", "Prices and Price Controls", and "Value"; Ryan has a brief introductory essay introducing each.

The "Inflation" section goes over the basics: most important, it's a general increase in nominal prices, not just in single products, like steak or gasoline. And the classic description of "too many dollars chasing too few goods" is still pretty much correct. There's no such thing as a "wage-price spiral", it doesn't occur because businessmen are "greedy", or because firms occasionally merge. Don't blame Covid or the Russians invading Ukraine. And don't look to "Modern Monetary Theory" for insights or help.

Then we get into the various methods used to "control" prices. To mutate an old Thomas Szasz quote: "There are no 'controlled' prices; there are only controlled citizens." There are a number of tactics, and their results are more or less dismal. Historical examples of plain old decreed prices (or price ceilings) abound. In addition to the price of goods, interest rates can be decreed, always either too low or too high; for some items, portions of total cost can be deemed "junk fees" and prohibited or limited; in times of emergency, high demand for a finite supply of goods can give rise to accusations of "price gouging". And "minimum wage" laws are also price controls, a floor rather than a ceiling.

But the old cliché applies: the true minimum wage is zero.

The "Value" section leads off with three sparkling essays from Deirdre Nansen McCloskey. One debunks the "labor theory of value", mistakenly held by good folks (Adam Smith and John Locke) and bad (Karl Marx). Also, Deirdre takes on the notions that prices reflect (or should reflect) "ethical" value; or that prices are (somehow) corrupting. The remaining essays explore various bugaboos of which much are made by price warriors: the "pink tax", CEO pay, dynamic pricing, and the gender pay gap.

So, a decent read, but it gets a little dry and propeller-headed in spots. McCloskey's three essays are worth the price of the book (especially if you get a good deal). Also, Peter Jaworski's contribution stands out: "Price Ceilings of Zero Can Cause Deadly Shortages". His leadoff example:

More than 4,000 Americans will die this year for want of a kidney. More than 4,000 died last year, and more than 4,000 will die next year. They will die because we have shortages of willing kidney donors because we control the price of donations of kidneys at zero dollars. No one needs to die for want of a kidney, but we would have to allow payment for kidney donations to stop the deaths.

Powerful. (The rest of Jaworski's essay is great too.)

The cartoonist is no Michael Ramirez, but we'll take it:

That's via Louise Perry's column in the WSJ's "Free Expression" newsletter: Do the AI Existential Risk Doomsayers Have a Hidden Agenda?. (WSJ gifted link)

"It is no accident" that doomsters past, present, and (probably) future all seem to have similar "solutions", boiling down to "give the government more money and power."

Erick Erickson is also doomster-critical, and he's not a fan of their debating tactics: The Doomers Change The Subject Again.

And the NR editorialists are taking their stand Against AI Doomerism.

What do you find riskier: (a) AI, or (b) government control of AI? You probably know my bet.

Also of note:

• A perennial question. And Randal O'Toole, the Antiplanner, asks it: Who Really Believes this Insanity?

  Related questions, originally asked by WKRP's Les Nessman:

  • "What are you trying to pull?"

  • "Who are you trying to kid?

  In a turnaround from my childhood, the main supporters of the Democratic Party are urban elites, while the main supporters of the Republican Party are members of the working class. But the Democratic Socialists of America are trying to win back the workers with a truly unbelievable platform.

  “You enjoy your work; it’s interesting to you, and you’re well trained for it” says the DSA vision of a future without capitalism. “You work as much as you are able and no more than needed.

  “You have no debt,” the DSA continues. “You don’t need health insurance. You don’t pay a mortgage or have a landlord, because comfortable housing is a human right. Your retirement is publicly funded. Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation aren’t for-profit businesses; they are common goods and utilities.”

  I haven't looked myself, but I wouldn't be surprised to see: "And nothing bad will ever happen to you or anyone else, anywhere, at any time."

• And civil disobedience is so 1960s. Jonathan Turley notes another sign of our times. Gandhi is Out, Mangione is In: Political Violence is in Vogue in America.

  For decades, being nonviolent has been the touchstone for many on the left. Something is changing. On my campus and others around the country, students are rationalizing violence and even idolizing assassins.

  A recent Emerson College poll shows that 4 out of 10 voters between the ages of 18-29 (39%) view Mangione’s role in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson as “acceptable” or “somewhat acceptable.” Other polls show a troubling number of liberal voters consider political violence justified, including polls showing 40% of young people embracing political violence in some circumstances.

  For college students, the rationalization of the killing of a Charlie Kirk or a Brian Thompson is now a litmus test of your movement bona fides. I have heard exchanges where students identify with accused assassin Tyler Robinson, who wrote, “I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk, and I took it.”

  We've been here before. Just ask William McKinley.

Alternate names: Mount Irresponsible, Mount Foolhardy, Mount Airheaded, … or the milder adjective used by the NR editorialists: Trump’s Reckless $5,000 ‘Dividend’.

And then J.D. Vance said… Well, it's a free link, read the whole thing. The only good news here is also the bad news: according to the Stossel/Lott Election Betting Odds site (as I type) Democrats are probably gonna win the House, and are slightly favored to win the Senate too.

Also of note:

• It's rare, so it's worth mentioning when it happens. James Freeman notes A Moment for Trump. (WSJ gifted link) First the Bad and Ugly:

  There is a manufactured quality to the sudden explosion of uninformed and irrational online screeds against data centers. The related panic over artificial intelligence smells almost as suspicious. Is it mainly driven by AI CEOs worried about falling behind upstart competitors and eager for Washington to erect new barriers to entry into their industry? Or is the real fuel for this media fire coming from foreign actors who want to disrupt U.S. technological leadership? Perhaps there’s an international coalition of the shilling.

  Heavy skepticism is in order for a number of reasons, not least the uniquely unpersuasive cast of characters who have joined together to issue warnings against letting technology markets run. Millionaire socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders is always opposed to letting markets run, regardless of the circumstances, so if AI is sentient, it shouldn’t take the Sanders critique personally.

  James runs down the Usual Suspects list (Gates, Obama, …), and then… the Good:

  As is his custom, Mr. Trump is publishing oddball comments on his Truth Social media platform, and as usual one must look past his boasting and roasting to see the substance of his position. In this case he is standing up for the economic liberty and vitality of the United States:

  There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!…

  The only reason the AI/Data Center outburst is happening is because the United States is leading, by a lot, every other country. Don’t kill the Golden Goose!…

  I am the Hoax Buster, and I’m right now breaking another Hoax — That AI is going to take over, consume, and destroy the World, and that Robots will be marching into our Cities, and getting rid of us all! This is even wilder than the RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX, or the Global Warming Scam. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

  It would be nice if we has a non-"oddball" president and we didn't have to "look past his boasting and roasting". But this is the new normal.

• There ought to be clowns. Ah, but according to Andy Kessler, don't bother; instead The AI Luddites Are Here.

  Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, New York’s Kathy Hochul, Arizona’s Katie Hobbs and Illinois’s JB Pritzker, all Democratic governors, have moved to halt or restrict data-center development or tax incentives. Et tu, Greg Abbott? Sadly yes, after being a huge supporter, Texas’ Republican governor recently signed a temporary moratorium.

  Sen. Bernie Sanders unveiled the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act with 20-year prison sentences. Taylor Swift’s not so swift brother-in-law, podcaster and former Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce, urged sending sealable mugs of urine to data centers in a viral advertisement. How does he think his show is streamed? Cans and string?

  A Gallup poll shows 71% of Americans oppose new data centers in their areas. Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has an AI data center reporting website with 9,580 locations—suitable for finding protests. Left-wing organizations from Public Citizen to the Sierra Club help fund these protests, often citing concerns about water usage. I must have missed their protests against almonds and golf courses. Plus, unlike oil refineries or aluminum smelters, I doubt many would know if they walked past a data center.

  Plus which, while channel-surfing last night, I noted a very furled brow on the super-concerned face of a network newscaster. Fortunately, I was able to flip over quickly to a 30 Rock rerun, the one where Liz Lemon decides to embrace what she sees as her inevitable spinsterhood.

• Fill in the blank: "Senator Sanders’s Proposal to           Resembles Hysteria More Than Thoughtful Policy. At Cato, Juan Londoño is also unimpressed with Bernie's ravings from atop Mount Doom: Senator Sanders’s Proposal to Ban Superintelligence Resembles Hysteria More Than Thoughtful Policy.

  On September 3, Senator Bernie Sanders (I‑VT) and Representative Greg Casar (D‑TX) announced their Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, which would pause the development of “advanced AI” until a new federal regulatory body is set up and, as its name indicates, ban what they define as “superintelligent” artificial intelligence (AI) systems. To those companies or individuals who attempt to develop or deploy these systems, the punishment could go from a “corporate death penalty” to up to 20 years in prison. 

  Prohibition is back, baby.

• Nothing about Trump? A change of pace for Kevin D. Williamson, who observed a guy at the gym with a camera on a tripod, and deduced a truth past due to being universally acknowledged: Influencers Are Schmucks. (Dispatch gifted link)

  Influencers and the broader social media-driven culture of self-promotion are a plague on modern life and, in particular, a plague on public places, especially the fancier or more famous kinds. But they work their way down to the less rarefied levels of American life, too. I do not go to a fancy gym in Manhattan or Beverly Hills or even one of the more glittering parts of Washington, D.C. Where I live is several hours’ drive from any major metropolitan area. It is not the sort of place that attracts celebrities or that produces many of them. I am not fundamentally opposed to that sort of thing—I used to go to a Bikram class in Union Square where the usual participants were three or four gentlemen employed in various capacities on Broadway, about 20 models, and … me, which worked out about how you’d expect it to—but it is not the sort of thing I go out of my way to encounter, either, and it wasn’t exactly what I signed up for when I moved to a small town that is not very close to much of anything.

  The fellow with the camera on the tripod—and another camera pinned to his stars-and-stripes headband—was an influencer of some kind. I don’t know him, but, then, I wouldn’t. Many of the young men in the gym did, speaking in low voices to one another about how so-and-so was here.

  The financial incentives are easy enough to understand. One survey estimates that social media influencers with more than 1 million followers typically earn about $14,000 a month from their online activities, with elite influencers earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. Set that aside, for now. Most of the people engaged in cultivating a social media audience make little or no money at all from doing so—they are in it simply for the pleasure of being observed. Wimbledon has just announced that it will ban influencer shenanigans after complaints from players at the U.S. Open—ring lights and such will be disallowed, and influencers will not be given press credentials. Good on the All England Club. But such steps mainly cover the professionals, whereas observers say that most of the disruptive behavior comes from the amateurs.

  You know: schmucks.

  To paraphrase an old movie quote: Who's the bigger schmuck? The influencer, or the schmuck who is influenced by him?

At the Daily Caller, Ron Hart opines: Now Is A Good Time For Ayn Rand’s ‘Money Speech’.

Today's amazing Eye Candy is from 1974, after Gerry Ford's swearing in of Alan Greenspan as Chairman Of The Council Of Economic Advisors. And, yes, that's Ayn, and it looks like she's about to give Gerry a piece of her mind. Also: her husband Frank O'Connor and Alan's mom, Rose Goldsmith, with her back to the camera. (Ron's article is illustrated with a different photo of the same event.)

I am also a big fan of Francisco's money speech. I quoted from it here and (slightly modified) here, making fun of the "Future Leaders Institute" program put on by the University Near Here. You can (and should) read the whole speech right here.

Another excerpt:

I was never an Objectivist, I probably wouldn't pass their purity tests, I skipped over John Galt's soliloquy in Atlas Shrugged, but I think Francisco's "Money Speech" was the best thing Ayn Rand ever wrote.

Also of note:

• It's a long way down. Becket Adams has plenty of examples of The Bottomless Demand for Stories of Israel’s Malevolence. Here's one of the latest:

  Just last week, Al Jazeera accused Israel not only of destroying the shade in Gaza but of “decreasing the amount of oxygen” in the region. The charge appeared during a so-called news report on Palestinian Arabs’ complaints about the summer weather.

  “The heat we’re experiencing is not natural,” AJ+’s Bisan Owda reported from a seaside refugee camp.

  “I can’t find a little bit of shade,” she said, standing against a tent in a tent city. “No shade at all. No shade at all. That’s the most, like, the most horrific thing that can turn this heat into hell on earth.”

  The August daily highs in Gaza this year were between 89 and 91 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Owda. For context, the August daily highs ran about 86 to 90 degrees in 2020, 88 to 93 in 2021, 87 to 93 in 2022, and 86 to 92 in 2023 — the year of the October 7 terrorist attacks.

  For additional context, that 89-to-91-degree range is a typical August high in Miami.

  “Actually,” Owda continued, “[the heat is] one of the catastrophic consequences of the equivalent of eight atomic bombs that Israel has dropped [during] the past three years on Gaza that destroyed buildings and trees, exceeding the [number] of sun exposure hours, decreasing the amount of oxygen and sources of shade, and increasing the amount of dust as well.”

  As a Twitter commenter puns: It's "Oxygenocide"!

• And it's only three days late. Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. has The 9/11 Column You Haven’t Read Yet. (WSJ gifted link) He goes in an unexpected direction:

  A poorer country than the U.S. would have had to parcel out its resources more carefully in response to 9/11. Instead, the U.S. was distributing taxpayer checks to heiresses and hedge-fund managers because they happened to live in the vicinity of downtown.

  The fiscal debacle of 9/12, to me, would come to seem of a piece with the fiscal debacle of ObamaCare, the fiscal debacle of climate policy and, in crescendo fashion, our Covid response.

  Our globe-girdling society produces complex policy challenges. It has a hard time producing intelligent policy responses. In their place, we get bankrupting spending extravaganzas in which politicians demonstrate their caring by how much money they set on fire, facilitated by the accident of the world’s seemingly bottomless appetite for U.S. debt.

  Jefferson famously said if forced to choose between living without newspapers and living without government, he’d prefer the latter. But the press no longer plays the role he expected, policing government policy failure—say, by discovering that the Affordable Care Act produces insurance so unaffordable nobody would buy it without a subsidy, or that green-energy handouts reduce emissions only in an imaginary world where energy consumption is capped.

  Back in 2005, when this blog (and I) were young, I quoted Thomas Sowell:

  In the tragic vision, individual sufferings and social evils are inherent in the innate deficiencies of all human beings, whether those deficiencies are in knowledge, wisdom, morality, or courage. Moreover, the available resources are always inadequate to fulfill all the desires of all the people. Thus there are no "solutions" in the tragic vision, but only trade-offs that still leave many desires unfulfilled and much unhappiness in the world.

  It's tough to find any US politician, left or right, that will say something like that.

Charles C.W. Cooke has a piece in the current print National Review, titled Chasing Lost Edens. and I'm spending one of this month's gifted links on it.

Why? Because he describes my own current attitudes to a T. After admitting his overall optimism despite ominous political trends:

See what you think.

Also of note:

• As Karl Kristian Steincke said: "Det er vanskeligt at spaa, især naar det gælder Fremtiden". You probably recognize the translation: "It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future."

  That insight did not stop Matt Ridley from wondering in print: Why does nobody see new technology coming?

  There is a paradox at the heart of innovation that I have yet to resolve in my own mind. Looking backwards, innovation looks inevitable and therefore predictable: once you invent the drone, warfare changes; once you invent the internet, social media arrives; once you invent electricity, the light bulb is unavoidable. Looking forwards, however, nobody sees these things coming.

  Search the writings of defence experts from even ten years ago and you will find few people realising just how much drones were going to change the nature of war. Comb through the work of internet pioneers in the late 1980s and you will encounter almost nobody foreseeing the profitability of search engines, let alone social media. Read the musings of DNA experts in the 1970s and none of them expected forensic applications of DNA fingerprinting to transform criminal justice.

  As if you needed further evidence, Matt notes the bonehead prophecies from Paul Krugman, Ken Olsen, Steve Ballmer, …

  Bottom line: take predictions with a grain of salt. If the predictions seem more confident, more grains are indicated.

• I like Hayek's road metaphor better. But David Harsanyi deploys his own: Economic Populism Is a Dead End for the GOP.

  It was probably inevitable that the Right's economic populism would degenerate into promises of more government checks.

  Early in the week, the administration floated the idea of redirecting federal childcare aid so low-income married stay-at-home parents could get a $9,000 subsidy per child for daycare.

  The policy, reportedly hatched by Vice President JD Vance, would use the Department of Health and Human Services' Child Care and Development Fund, originally created in the 1990s for low-income single parents. Vance's defenders stress that the program merely redirects "existing subsidies" and wouldn't add to the debt.

  The notion that Vance was fiscally responsible was quickly shattered later in the week when he appeared on television defending President Donald Trump's promise to hand every adult a $5,000 "dividend" check should Republicans hold on to Congress.

  David's penultimate paragraph should be obvious: "Modern Republicans are increasingly embracing economic demagoguery and doomerism. In the end, though, they will never be able to outspend or outpromise the Left."

  (Yeah, I said "penultimate". You can't expect me to avoid that word forever!)

But maybe you'd also want some advice from Jeff Maurer, who asks Which Self-Serving Weirdo Should I Trust on AI?

My lousy local newspaper, Foster's Daily Democrat, published two columns about AI Data Centers, one from Amy Miller and the other from Guy Trammell Jr. Point/Counterpoint? Well, here's Amy:

These buildings are simply the most concrete manifestations of artificial intelligence, a technology that poses threats to the environment, human creativity and most frightening of all, our existence on Earth. Few familiar with AI would argue that this is hyperbole.

Amy, you might have led with "Data Centers will kill us all!"

Guy, are you the more reasonable voice here?

Opulent billionaire lifestyles must be destroyed, lest we be choked with their respiratory pollutants!

Also of note:

• Kiss your opulent billionaire lifestyle goodbye. My current CongressCritter and wannabe-future Senator, Chris Pappas has (so far) opposed Bernie Sanders-style "Medicare for All". But the Democrat lady looking to replace him in the House, Stefany Shaheen? Well, initially, she was against it. But then she came out for it.

  So prepare yourself; James Freeman tells us What Happens When ‘Medicare for All’ Ends Your Health Plan. (WSJ gifted link)

  Large federal interventions in U.S. healthcare are a big reason medical inflation has outpaced general inflation for decades. But if politicians now impose a fully government-run system on Americans under the euphemism “Medicare for All,” it is patient suffering that will go through the roof.

  The plan, authored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (socialist, Vt.) and backed by a number of Democratic candidates in this year’s elections, would outlaw most private health coverage in the United States. Continuing to provide an ugly preview is the U.K.’s National Health Service, where bureaucrats impose scarcity as policy.

  I can't imagine that people will like M4A when they hear the details.

• I was assured my vote would be bought. The WaPo editorialists, on the other hand, assure me that No one is falling for Trump’s budget-busting ‘dividend’ check gimmick. (WaPo gifted link)

  Socialism will not be stopped with more socialism.

  President Donald Trump’s proposal to pay every adult citizen $5,000 if the GOP holds the House and Senate this fall is a desperate gimmick that betrays a profound lack of seriousness about the looming fiscal crisis. “If the Republicans win, you win with us, and you get $5,000,” Trump said Wednesday night at the party’s midterm convention in Dallas.

  This would cost an estimated $1.2 trillion next year, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The money would need to be borrowed on top of the $40 trillion national debt — and paid back with interest.

  It's like Trump wants me to vote Democrat.

• Can I just keep my money? That would be simpler. The WSJ editorialists chime in with their own metaphor: Trump Has a $5,000 Bridge to Sell You. (WSJ gifted link)

  President Trump has a special talent for exposing the cynicism of modern politics, and he knows it. A Trumpian classic is his promise Wednesday night of a $5,000 “dividend” for every U.S. adult citizen if Republicans retain control of Congress in November.

  “Here is my promise: If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate . . . I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000,” Mr. Trump said at the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas.

  There are roughly 240 million American adult citizens. Multiply that by $5,000 and you get about $1.2 trillion. The amount is so preposterous that you’d almost think Mr. Trump is trying to show voters the absurdity of such income redistribution. It’s the reductio ad absurdum of welfare state politics.

  It was already pretty absurd.

• Executive Summary: the University Near Here is a mixed bag. But check out your own favorite school from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE): their 2027 College Free Speech Rankings. Skipping to my favorite school:

  The University of New Hampshire ranks 44 out of 261 schools in the 2027 College Free Speech Rankings with a score of 67 and a D+ speech climate grade.

  UNH lands in the bottom 50 for “Comfort Expressing Ideas,” indicating students feel constrained sharing views on controversial topics. It also tumbled 140 places from last year into the bottom 50 for “Political Tolerance,” showing reduced student willingness to host controversial speakers. The data shows no top 50 strengths.

  The campus maintains a “green light” Spotlight rating. UNH should adopt the pro-free speech Chicago Statement and an official commitment to institutional neutrality. It should respond clearly and forcefully to defend free speech whenever censorship occurs or is demanded. Doing so will demonstrate the university’s commitment to free speech and build community trust that the administration will defend expressive rights.

  Seems pretty straightforward. They should do that.

• And now our weekly palate cleanser. As usual, Nellie Bowles finds something amusing in her TGIF column.

  → The dignity of our White House: Here we have a beautiful example of late 2026 AI art in the Incel style.

  In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might beware my power... Green Lantern's light! pic.twitter.com/mXWr0zeyLC

  — The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 7, 2026

  These are official White House communiqués. There are a lot of negatives to the American right embracing a more fascist strongman approach, but one thing you would hope for is fascinating fascist art à la Italian Futurism (that’s right, I took AP Art History). Or even just trad art. Maybe we could get a revival of Norman Rockwell and things such as that. You’d expect, at least, a cornice. Nope. That green ring must look so cool if you are 22 and a virgin. This is our taxpayer-funded art.

  I miss Biden's White House, which at least tried to hide the boss's dementia for a while.

Mr. Ramirez remembers:

I posted my minor memoir of the day back in 2008, and have nothing to add to it.

On a related "remember this" matter: Like most libertarian-leaners, I've been pummelling Trump and his FCC lackeys for threatening TV networks about their negative news coverage. But John J. Miller had a plus ça change sorta-relevant column in the WSJ a few days back, bringing us A 9/11 Story Some Want Us to Forget. (WSJ gifted link)

Read the whole thing; The show's crime was apparently to portray Sandy Berger, President Clinton's National Security Advisor, in a negative light. Among other pressures exerted, ABC got a bullying letter from five Democrat senators, including then-Majority Leader Harry Reid and future Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

ABC's immediate response was craven: "The scene with Berger was chopped up."

Miller doesn't mention Berger's 2004 unauthorized removal and destruction of classified documents from the National Archives, for which he got a serious wrist-slapping.

Also of note:

• I had no choice but to link to this. Sabine Hossenfelder's headline could be slightly misleading: Neuroscience’s Case Against Free Will Is Falling Apart. Her video explains:

  I think the neuroscience stuff doesn't say much about free will in the first place. But I just blogged about that a few weeks ago (and embedded another of Sabine's videos) so I won't repeat myself.

• But let's not forget the Steak-umm Hypothesis. Somehow I missed this important contribution to the debate back in May:

  proof that free will exists pic.twitter.com/7x4YFSlj5R

  — Steak-umm (@steak_umm) May 11, 2026

  The science is settled! Credit where due: Jeff Maurer brought it to my attention, with the headline query Is the Steak-Umm Twitter Account the Standout Philosopher of Our Time? And does Betteridge's Law of Headlines apply here? You make the call!

  It’s easy to feel unmoored these days. Lies are everywhere, and wisdom is rare. The touchstones that used to perform quality control on our dialogue have been degraded, while opportunistic know-nothings abound. People yearn for a voice with knowledge and insight, but that voice is hard to find.

  But what if I told you that a sage capable of matching wits with the great thinkers of any age walks among us? And what if I told you that that philosopher is whoever runs the Twitter account for America’s #1 flash-frozen chipped beef meat product? I speak of the Steak-Umm Twitter feed, which any reasonable observer will agree provides better commentary on life, culture, and the human condition than 99.999% of the chattering class.

  I've followed Steak-umm, but I am shamefully late to the game.

• I will not be able to hold my nose hard enough to vote for this guy. Eric Boehm tweets, and don't miss the "readers added context":

  JD Vance sitting in front of TV cameras and trying to defend this nonsense speaks volumes about his character and seriousness as a political figure https://t.co/c8MJqmIwab

  — Eric Boehm (@EricBoehm87) September 10, 2026

  Charlie Cooke is also pretty disgusted: Trump Breaks Glass, Joins Socialists, Embraces Bribery. (NR gifted link)

  Painfully aware that, once the midterms are over, he risks being gradually consigned to irrelevance, President Trump has hit once again upon a Hail Mary plan for political success. That plan is bribery. Last night, after vocally condemning the rise of socialism in the United States, Trump pledged some of his own. “If the Republicans win,” he told a crowd in Dallas, “I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.”

  No, no, no, no, no.

  Did I mention “no”?

  The Democrats who have condemned this idea are, of course, ridiculous, for in trying to trade votes for cash, Trump is merely adopting their approach without the middlemen or the euphemisms. But that is not a defense of the move — which is, in every sense possible, catastrophic.

  "Spouting arrant bullshit" is probably not an impeachable offense. But if it was, it would be pretty easy to convict both Trump and Vance.

And Mr. Ramirez pictures (um, metaphorically) what trade protectionism looks like:

Eric Boehm takes a look at the latest volley: Trump bans Canadian beer, wine, motorcycles, and more.

Unfortunately, that lady Mr. Ramirez pictures looks like she could use a couple shots of Canadian Club. Sorry, dearie, President Trump says no.

On a related note, Audrey Fahlberg looks at (a) Trump's earnest hope and (b) other Republicans' greatest fear: ‘Pretend I’m on the Ballot’ Is Trump’s Midterm Strategy.

I will probably vote a straight Republican ticket in November, but I will have to remind myself that Trump's not on the ballot, just some of his sycophants.

Also of note:

• Well, that didn't take as long as I thought it would. 'Twas just a few weeks back, that I wrote about Massachusetts explicitly legalizing abortion up until birth. And I wrote: "Apparently the Massachusetts government (and probably a good fraction of the citizenry) believes that the event of "birth" is a bit of biological magic that transforms a legal "medical procedure" into a heinous crime."

  I didn't see Lindsay Clancy coming. It appears that infanticide is no longer so heinous down there. David Strong writes at Hot Air: Mothers Aren't Just Embracing Lindsay Clancy'; They Are Embracing Clancyism.

  For most of us, the fact that Clancy clearly was having trouble with her mental health may help explain how she decided to kill her children, but for nobody I know does that excuse the fact that she chose to respond to her despair by killing her own children.

  I can understand, at some level, the feeling of empathy for Clancy's struggles; I cannot and will never understand turning her into a hero. There is nothing heroic about killing children, especially one's own. It ranks up there as the most, or at least one of the most, horrific betrayals a person can make.

  Women have contributed over a million dollars to Clancy's parents to help fund her defense, lined roadways to cheer her on, and even concocted bizarre conspiracy theories to explain why everything is her husband's fault, despite Clancy never having denied strangling her own children.

  It's demonic.

  It's looking to be a tough time for kids, especially down in Massachusetts.

• Or not. Task was boring. Kimberley A. Strassel takes to the WSJ to urge us: Make Mark Ruffalo Great Again. (WSJ gifted link)

  Republicans are fighting for their midterm lives, so it’s something to watch the president finally rally them together with a plan to lock down the Hollywood academy and California’s liberal political class.

  And the Oscar for Most Self-Defeating Politics goes to . . .

  “I am going to suggest that Republicans and Democrats get together, and immediately craft Legislation to save the Movie, Television, and Entertainment Business in America. Congress should approve, immediately, a Federal Production Incentive to create Entertainment Jobs in America,” Donald Trump enthused on Truth Social Monday. This was followed by a Tuesday post praising the “great bipartisan response” to his great Hollywood bailout, then by yet another, of the president thumbs-upping it with his Hollywood ambassador, Jon Voight.

  Geez, what an awful idea. Another reason for Republicans to fervently hope that their voters not pretend that Trump is on the ballot in November.

• And here's one more reason. Veronique de Rugy looks at yet another Bad Idea: A Convoluted Scheme to Pay Parents to Stay at Home.

  Vice President JD Vance wants to pay married parents to stay home with their children, and he wants to do it with money Congress appropriated to help low-income families afford day care. Whatever one thinks of the goal, which may prove popular, the proposal fails every test we should apply to government subsidies.

  That's because the proposal corrects no market failure. It pays people for choices they're already making. It adds a new claimant class to a budget that cannot carry the ones already promised something. And it does all of this without a workable plan to pay for it.

  Under a draft rule now circulating at the Department of Health and Human Services, married couples in which one spouse works at least 35 hours a week and the other stays home would become eligible for the federal child care subsidy — about $9,000 per child, per year — as payment for "parent-based childcare." The money would come from the Child Care and Development Fund, a $12 billion block grant created in the 1990s to help low-income parents pay for care while working or finishing school.

  At times, the only thing you can do is shake your head in despair.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that, overall, politicians score several sigma off the mean on numerous (um) personality traits. E.g., narcissism, psychopathy, machiavellianism…; you can look it up!

So Jim Geraghty's headline should be understood on a relative scale: Republicans’ Midterm Hopes Rest on the Insanity of Their Opponents. Or: "Republicans hope they're running against Democrats crazier than they are." Jim has entertaining examples:

Alas, here in New Hampshire, our politicians are nuts in more "respectable" ways. In our primary yesterday:

• Governor Ayotte (R) cruised to an easy win, and conventional wisdom says she'll probably win in November, beating Cinde Warmington (D).

• For the U.S. Senate seat that Jeanne Shaheen is vacating, both John E. Sununu (R) and (my current CongressCritter) Chris Pappas (D) scored pretty easy wins. Most polls score (sigh) Pappas as a slight favorite for November.

• The most interesting race was for the House seat Chris Pappas is leaving. Anthony DiLorenzo (R) beat his nearest opponent (Hollie Noveletsky) by 25 percentage points. But the D-side contest turned into a three way, with Jeanne Shaheen's daughter, Stefany, winning with only 37.3% of the vote, just 2.3 percentage points ahead of Maura Sullivan (35%). The leftiest candidate, Carleigh Beriont, gathered 21.8%.

Polls say Stefany has (probably) the better shot at being my next CongressCritter. I've long been a non-fan. My first look at her was an old-fashioned fisking of her 2023 pro-gun contol op-ed in my lousy local newspaper, Foster's Daily Democrat. At the time, she was (I am not making this up) chair of the Portsmouth Police Commission.

Among other actions, she advocated "Banning the sale of semi-automatic weapons" and a "mandatory assault weapon buyback program." You can click over if you want, to read my snarky rejoinders.

But that was then, reader. Gun control was vitally important to Stefany back in 2023. Now, in 2026, you can peruse her campaign website's "Priorities" page and discover … nothing at all about guns. (At least I can't find anything, and neither can Google. Let me know if you can.)

Hm. Into the memory hole! How… Machiavellian!

Some other Pun Salad history:

• My reaction to Stefany's entry to the race last year: Gun-grabbing Ditz Enters the Ring.

• I noted her "rambling, difficult to follow" answer to a query about guys on women's sports teams here.

• A little mother-vs-daughter dustup about the government shutdown-ending vote explored here.

• Her avoidance (via a pastry-wielding staffer) of answering questiions about Graham Platner here

• Her anti-semitic pander here.

• And her sudden discovery that she (a) supports Bernie's "Medicare for All" proposal, but (b) disfavors aid to Israel here

Recently on the movie blog:

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A weird little movie, but I was intrigued by the trailer I ran across at Facebook. And I've been strangely intrigued by Katie Holmes' occasional crooked grin.

Katie plays Miss Meadows, and trailer-level/movie poster spoiler: she shoots first and asks questions… never, because she tends to leave no survivors. Arguably, she's only delivering rough vigilante justice.

But that's not quite right; she doesn't go out looking for bad guys, like Batman. She just finds herself in situations where it's appropriate for her to pull the cute chrome-plated semi-auto .25 from her purse.

She's an oddball in other ways, too, thanks to being emotionally scarred by a traumatic childhood incident, only revealed near the end of the movie. She takes up with the local sheriff who's charged with investigating some of her shootings. (That's James Badge Dale, who played a very bad guy in Iron Man 3.)

The movie is unrated by the MPA, but it's pretty intense in some spots; see IMDB's parental guidance page.

I toyed with headlining "Instapundit is Garbage", but I'm not there yet. However, this post Ed Driscoll put up yesterday afternoon, MOVE ALONG CITIZEN, NOTHING TO SEE HERE:, is certainly disheartening. It consists only of an embedded tweet:

A Microsoft engineer found that a smart thermostat in a tabulation room in the Georgia 2020 election was talking to a tabulation server, reporting the votes back to China.

As technology gets more and more advanced, our elections will become more and more unsecure. Paper ballots… pic.twitter.com/awqN8tGl68

— The SCIF (@TheSCIF) September 7, 2026

The X-truncated sentence at the end: "Paper ballots are the only way."

What's wrong with this? Merely that rudimentary Googling reveals that it is, in fact, utter bullshit.

• It's presented as something that's just been uncovered. In fact, this particular claim (with the same video) was first promulgated in December 2020, about a month after the election. (Example.)

• And it was near-immediately debunked back then.

• The "Microsoft engineer" was never named, and perhaps never existed.

• The Savannah "tabulation room" where this allegedly occurred was never identified. (Chatham County Georgia currently has 83 voting locations.)

• No supporting evidence was ever put forth. Server logs, IP addresses, dates and times? Fuhgeddaboutit!

• Oh, and although the tweet implies otherwise, Georgia did have paper ballots in the 2020 election. There were a couple of recounts. Vote changes were small. Biden still won.

• Going into much more detail on this is Timothy Noah in the New Republic (July 2022): What Comic Genius Gave Us the Nest Thermostat Election Conspiracy?. He identifies the guy in the video as Russell Ramsland. Noah's article is full of partisan snark, but also full of fun facts, e.g.:

  Ramsland (who told the Post he had never spoken to Trump) is a piece of work. He is, for instance, on record saying the following: “George Soros [who was born in 1930] helped form the ‘Deep State’ in Nazi Germany in the 1930s along with George H.W. Bush’s father [Prescott Bush], the Muslim brotherhood, and ‘leftists.’” (At the risk of being pedantic: Soros is Jewish, the Nazi party was created 10 years before Soros was born, and Hitler came to power when Soros was 3.)

• For (even) more on Ramsland, there's a May 2021 article in the WaPo: The making of a myth.

I came this close (imagine my thumb and index finger about 2 millimeters apart) to commenting at Instapundit. But dealing with election conspiracy advocates is pointless; they are poster children for confirmation bias. Example: see the comment thread on a January 2021 Granite Grok article on a different Georgia allegation: SHOCKING PROOF!!! CHINA CAUGHT Hacked Into Fulton County, GA Voting Machine. Rebuttal on these matters is treated as if it's a turd dropped into a punchbowl.

So I just blog about it here. And you'll notice I don't have a commenting feature.

And for the record:

• Yes, paper ballots are a good idea; I plan to fill one out later today down at the American Legion Hall.
• And (also yes), requiring voter ID is another good idea. It's already required in New Hampshire.

And now on to the usual hodgepodge...

• $14 for a matinee ticket after my senior discount?! I'm with Kyle Smith: Hollywood, Heal Thyself.

  It’s nice to get paid more than you’re worth, but it isn’t so nice when your labor union is so strong that it creates an untenable cost structure for your employer. Management might be forced to shut down in the face of international competition, or move jobs overseas to avoid union costs.

  Everyone knows this is the way the U.S. economy runs, which is why only 5.9% of private-sector jobs are still unionized. Government, which can’t be outsourced, is heavily unionized at all levels.

  Hollywood is one of the most union-intensive businesses in America. Practically everybody on the set of a film, from the makeup lady to the centimillionaire titans like Ryan Reynolds and James Cameron, is a union member. But grim “Jurassic Park”-style rumblings of doom started to be heard in Southern California over the past 10 years. So what did the unions do? They went on strike for even higher wages.

  Kyle goes on to (convincingly) demonstrate that government bailouts/subsidies/incentives to the movie guys are a waste.

  And there's always the small detail that AI is gonna destroy traditional film-making. If it hasn't already. (Depends on when you're reading this.)

• I love Lan Lam. But Elizabeth Nolan Brown goes a different way: RFK Jr.'s 'Real Food Show' is government propaganda but I kind of love it.

  We're now three episodes into The Real Food Show, a YouTube cooking class hosted by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And I'm hooked.

  Don't get me wrong: In principle, I hate it. The government has no place being in the business of making cooking shows. And this one is rife with propaganda, including thanking President Donald Trump for the new U.S. dietary guidelines and casual mentions of things like fisheries regulation or an executive order on regenerative agriculture. Even if you can put aside the ick-factor of HHS trying to sneak political content to viewers like some parents might hide broccoli in muffins, this just makes it a worse show. As a cultural or entertainment product, it would be better off without random references to the likes of the Magnuson-Stevenson Act.

  Besides, the presence of RFK Jr., who hosts each episode alongside a popular chef, doesn't add much. He spends most of each episode whisking eggs or doing some other sort of kitchen-helper task while the guest chef talks. Then he periodically bursts in with some propaganda while elbow-deep in chickpea salad.

  Puzzled by this item's header? Well: When I get the urge, I watch Lan Lam's Techniquely episodes on Netflix. They're short, interesting, occasionally funny, and she doesn't yammer about seed oils. Even though I'm unlikely to ever make anything she cooks up, it all looks delicious, and she's a lot easier on the eyes than RFKJr.

• And now a word from the Plundercrats. Two of them, Austin Clemens and David Mitchell, take to the Hill with a headline that is only reassuring if you don't notice the word "wealth": Don’t panic about the national debt — the US has the wealth to handle it. They start out OK:

  The U.S. national debt recently passed $40 trillion, hitting this monstrous milestone months ahead of Congressional Budget Office projections, in part due to tariff refunds increasing the total deficit.

  In March, the federal debt held by the public reached the size of U.S. annual gross domestic product, nearing its all-time peak from more than 80 years ago, when we were paying off World War II.

  These headlines have renewed calls for austerity, but the truth is, America is nowhere near broke. On the contrary, the nation holds a staggering amount of wealth — far more than the debt it owes. The real question is not whether we have the resources to manage the debt, but whether we have the will to use them.

  Yes, it's a plea to tax wealth. Eventually, they start rattling off the possibilities:

  If the U.S> [sic] is willing to look at what it owns, versus only at what it earns, it would open up a new set of options for paying down the debt: taxes on wealth and property, and reforms to how inheritances and capital gains are taxed, among them. Of course, people will disagree about which, if any, to use. But ultimately, that is a debate about priorities and political will, not about whether we have the ability to pay off our debt. Because we do.

  Note the game-playing with the pronouns I've bolded. For example. the U.S. should look at what "it" owns. Smuggling in the idea that "it" owns all that wealth instead of … well, the people who actually own it. And "we" are entitled to as much of that wealth as "we" feel like expropriating.

  Well, the arguments against wealth taxation are well known, I've made a lot of them here, and I probably don't need to repeat them. But I will deploy that evergreen Bastiat quote:

  When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

  Folks, Austin and David are exactly who Bastiat was talking about back in 1848.

Power Line points us to our Eye Candy du Jour:

That's from WalletHub's ranking the Hardest-Working States in America in 2026. Boy, New Hampshire really stands out there in the Northeast, doesn't it? (I have to admit, being retired for over ten years: I'm not doing my part.)

My other Eye Candidate was from Mr. Ramirez: AI wishes you a happy Labor Day. But (caveat clicker) I disclaim any responsibility for any nightmares you experience as a result.

Also of note:

• Sounds like a plan! A totally demented plan, but what are you gonna do? The WaPo editorialists discuss President Trump's latest unhinged rant: Trump’s new plan to lower interest rates? Extort the Fed. (WaPo gifted link)

  President Donald Trump’s preferred monetary policy is simple. Is the economy sluggish? Cut interest rates. Is it heating up? Also cut interest rates. Now there’s a new addendum: If his handpicked Federal Reserve chair won’t play ball, hold the economy hostage.

  At least, that’s what Trump threatened on Friday on Truth Social. He wrote that if the Fed doesn’t “get smart” and lower rates, he will halt trade entirely with any country that maintains a trade deficit with the United States. That would include China, Mexico, Canada, Vietnam, South Korea and dozens of others — in short, many of America’s top trade partners.

  Perhaps related is Frank Miele's speculation at Real Clear Politics Does Trump Really Want To Win the Midterms? It would explain a lot of his actions if the answer is "no".

• It's "direct action", James. Mr. Lileks looks into the leftist snakepits, and wonders: Is There Any Capitalist’s Murder That ‘Isn’t’ Justified? (NR gifted link)

  The stabbing death of a New York mother and Bank of America vice president by a mentally unstable woman has brought out the absolute finest in revolutionary commentary. From a Palestinian-American filmmaker who tweeted out a bat signal with Luigi Mangione’s face instead of America’s favorite gravel-voiced vigilante, to various commie-kids on X justifying the murder because the victim was involved in (waves hands) all the capitalism, we see how ethically wretched political systems corrupt the humanity of people who believe them.

  The fact that she was a VP at a bank was reason enough to spit on the corpse, because her job surely consisted of meeting with poor hopeful people who sat across the desk twisting their caps in their calloused hands, begging the bank not to foreclose on their lean-to. She looked at them with a glacial expression and said no and then refused to validate parking for their pack mule. She did this all day. Her job title was probably Vice President in Charge of Maintaining Structural Poverty, so yes, those are precisely the people whose demise Luigi would have nodded with Che-like sagacity. Also, the Bank of America has ties to Israel, which means that when you deposit your check there, it’s instantly converted into a bomb designed to strew tetanus-infected nails in a Gaza preschool. Also, Bank of AMERICA. Say no more.

  That's a free link, so all you participants in capitalistic enterprises will want to check out the imagined interview with the "young DSA woman who lives in a $1.7 million townhouse" setting out the guidelines for justifiable homicide.

  (I note that the Wikipedia entry for direct action waits until the second paragraph to admit "Direct action may include activities that can be either violent or nonviolent …")

• "Where we're going we don't need roads." At USA Today, Ilya Somin observes: Democratic socialists and MAGA share a dangerous flaw.

  Democratic socialism is a terrible ideology. If implemented, its agenda would cause grave harm and imperil democracy itself. And in seeking massive state control of the economy, today's socialists ironically have much in common with the MAGA nationalists they claim to oppose.

  Both promote government control over the economy, and both paths undermine liberty, prosperity and democracy. Socialists do not control the Democratic Party in the way MAGA largely dominates the Republicans. But their influence is growing.

  Yes, it's "bothsidesism". But … isn't it appropriate when (metaphorically) both sides are fighting over the steering wheel of a car careening down the Read to Serfdom?

• Won't be missed. Becket Adams sees little reason to mourn, anyway: The Professional Fact-Check Is Dead.

  The crisis of professional “fact-checking” is not new. For more than 15 years, observers have watched with alarm as the genre degraded itself to serve partisan politics.

  Yet little has been written about the discipline in its present state. Its original raison d’être long discarded, it lingers now as a zombie, ambling aimlessly in pursuit of mindless satiation.

  Take Snopes, that relic of the early web that once existed to dismantle viral myths and spare the public from conspiracies, humorous hoaxes, and harmful falsehoods. Recently, it sought to calm concerns that the late Dolly Parton might have done something nice for Jews.

  “Did Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library donate books to children in Israel?” asked a Snopes headline. The subhead reassured readers: “PJ Library, which provides free books to Jewish children, was inspired by Parton’s organization. But the two have no formal relationship.”

  Phew! That was close! (This episode is funnier when one discovers that the article’s author, Nur Ibrahim, “started her career as an associate producer with Al Jazeera English” — because of course she did.)

  Becket provides plenty more examples from Politifact, FactCheck.org, the WaPo, USA Today, the AP, and NBC. A diverse field of partisanship disguised as "fact".

  And he doesn't even mention Wikipedia!

It's on X, used to be Twitter:

I repeat: the two great lessons of the 20th century—taught to us through buckets of blood, human misery, and pointless cruelty—were that we need a better grasp of economics, and that ideology is how you turn IQ points against themselves, good people into monsters, and rich…

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) September 5, 2026

Continues:

Easy prediction: We'll be seeing plenty of examples of the kind of thing Greg's talking about over the next few weeks and years.

And… Maybe even today:

• We could also use a better grasp on that whole "checks and balances" thing. Eric Boehm points out that Trump is expanding executive power. Democrats are already eyeing the new tools.

  President Donald Trump has greatly—and, in many cases, quite recklessly—expanded the executive branch's power over private businesses.

  The Trump administration has invoked claims of "national security" to levy higher tariffs on everything from steel to musical instruments. It has used the same argument to seize equity shares in more than two dozen private companies, including a so-called "golden share" in U.S. Steel that grants the president the authority to veto future attempts to relocate headquarters or make changes to its production facilities.

  And if you think a future Democratic administration will try to stuff those executive powers back into their proper, constitutional boxes, well…don't hold your breath.

  Further down in the article, J.D. Vance is quoted: "We cannot be afraid to do something because the left might do it in the future." Or that classic second-grade taunt: Come on, don't be a scaredy cat!

  A mere couple days ago I pointed to Daniel Hannan's observation: JD Vance declares war on economics. He's also declaring war on our country's Constitutional structure.

  "We cannot be afraid"? J.D., with people like you running the country, why the hell not?!

• Continuing our theme du jour… At the Dispatch, Matthew Mitchell & Steven Globerman look at Socialism: The Newest Old Idea That Won’t Work. And guess who's one of their bad examples?

  “It is characteristic of the unlearned,” observed Calvin Coolidge in 1919, “that they are forever proposing something which is old, and because it has recently come to their own attention, supposing it to be new.”

  “I think what is so unique and refreshing about Donald Trump’s economic policies,” says Vice President J.D. Vance in 2026, “is that it is not the same old economic ideas that you would have heard 30, 40 years ago.”

  Vance is right to a point. It’s hard to imagine Bill Clinton directing the federal government to take ownership stakes—totaling $26.7 billion—in 30 private companies. Or Ronald Reagan hiking the average U.S. tariff rate to Sudanese levels, thereby imposing thousands of dollars of additional taxes on American families. George H.W. Bush would have never claimed a “golden share” in U.S. Steel, gaining a say in a private company’s board membership, factory locations, capital investment, employment, worker pay, and naming rights. And, it is safe to say that no past president would direct the Pentagon to go into the oil business with an accused money launderer and an unelected Venezuelan socialist.

  Ironically, the tweet linked in the second paragraph above is sourced from Fox News, and Fox's chyron says "GOP FIGHTS BACK AGAINST SOCIALISM".

  Fox, I wish!

• Good question. And Jeff Maurer asks it: Does the U.S. Already Have Universal Health Insurance?

  In lefty circles, “Medicare for All” is often treated as a synonym for “universal health insurance”. But the phrases are different; M4A is one type of universal coverage, and conflating the two is like saying “Ferrari” when you mean “micropenis compensation device”. Contrary to what some people think, there is not one health insurance system used by every advanced country except the US; other countries achieve close-to-universal coverage through various combinations of public insurance, private insurance, regulation, and Dutchness.

  About eight percent of Americans don’t have health insurance. Obamacare cut the number of uninsured almost in half, but the eight percent figure has held remarkably steady for several years. According to Twitter accounts with a red rose and a Palestinian flag next to their name — my #1 source of news — the existence of that eight percent represents a profound failure of the American system. And there’s some agreement here: I would like 100 percent of Americans to have health insurance. If I were in charge, I’d make big changes, and only most of them would involve getting other people to bankroll my shit. But even while acknowledging that it would be better if more American had health insurance, a closer look at the eight percent of uninsured Americans reveals that not every uninsured person is a destitute peasant being ground to dust by capitalism. In fact, you could argue that we kinda, sorta already have something close to universal coverage.

  Jeff does a super-wonkish job at crunching the statistics, and (my take, not his) you'll get an appreciation for how far down the Road to Serfdom we are already.

• Learn from this history: Thomas W. Hazlett explains how it came to be that "freedom of the press" doesn't extend to ABC vs. Trump and the Broadcasters’ Free-Speech Sellout. (WSJ gifted link)

  While most media operate in a laissez-faire regime, terrestrial radio and television broadcasting are licensed, and their airwave access has sometimes been deemed a privilege, not a right. Harvard Law’s Laurence Tribe traces the anomaly to a technical error: “a profound fallacy about spectrum scarcity.” Or as comedian George Carlin put it, “radio and television [are] the only two parts of American life not protected by the free speech provisions of the First Amendment to the Constitution. I’d like to repeat that because it sounds vaguely important.”

  Whose cockamamie idea was this? Why, the broadcasters’ own.

  The 1927 Radio Act’s “public interest” language was written by the National Association of Broadcasters, as the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Clarence C. Dill (D., Wash.), explained in his 1938 book, “Radio Law.” From the start, Dill saw that “the ‘twilight zone’ between censorship and the refusal to renew a station license because of the service rendered, is undetermined.”

  The broadcasters traded freedom for free licenses and a lucrative, protected market. Upstart rivals—the DuMont Television Network in the 1940s and ’50s, then cable TV and satellite in the 1960s—were suppressed, while only a handful of viable stations were assigned to more than 80 TV channels. In return, regulators gained clout over an industry and influence over content.

  Which has led to a long history of threats and abuse. Think of the broadcasters as battered wives who are learning that their spouses are inherent, unreformable, short-fused bullies.

• But maybe Nellie will cheer us up? Nope, sorry. Her TGIF column, written before the mistrial was declared, is pretty bleak, especially if you're a kid.

  → Lindsay Clancy jury deadlocked: I know the Lindsay Clancy trial is not technically the most consequential story of the week, but in my circles (moms) it is The Only Conversation, so bear with me. The jurors are deadlocked. Twice they have gone to the judge to say the jury cannot come to a decision. If they cannot reach a verdict, the judge could declare a mistrial. There are some clues as to what may be happening. For example, at least three of the female jurors were spotted curiously wearing pink, the color worn by Clancy supporters who think she is the victim of pharmacology and maternal stress and believe that—after a stint in a healthcare facility where she will be declared no longer a danger, which, by the way she has already been declared—she should go free. The deeper idea being proposed here seems to be that moms should kind of be able to kill their kids. Like, if they’re really, really stressed. In Canada, that’s the law already. If a parent kills a kid under the age of 1, it’s a maximum five-year sentence. We’re now going to see a movement to bring that to the U.S., and also to expand it to older kids. Death cults will death cult.

  Here’s the CBC this week. They called up criminal law expert Isabel Grant, a professor at the University of British Columbia, to say how this is a perfect example of how the infanticide law should expand to older kids.

  Technically, in Canada, Clancy could have raised infanticide as a defense for the murder of Callan, who was eight months old, said Grant, the criminal law professor at UBC. But the killing of Clancy’s older children could not be defended as infanticide even if she hadn’t recovered from the birth of the youngest child when she killed them, she added. “That is a shortcoming in the Canadian law.”

  A shortcoming in the law, says the law professor, is that a mom might be in jail longer than five years if she kills a bunch of kindergartners since the postpartum might not carry over to each killing. Maybe postpartum should last until the kid’s 18, right? Maybe moms—if they’re under a lot of pressure and like, super, super stressed and changing Zoloft dosages and can’t figure out the Snoo—should be able to kill her offspring at any age? It’s pro-choice taken to the nth degree. My moderate take on “pro-choice until the second trimester” will soon be seen as the radical right position. New battle lines: Are you pro-choice till 1, 5, or 18 years old? The new moderate is saying you draw the line at a 5-year-old. A psychologist will be like, after 5, the children have too many neurons and are, in fact, not fair game.

  I assume beating your kids is still illegal in Canada? Just killing them seems like an easy out.

It's Andrew Heaton, so: watch, learn, and laugh.

You'll learn stuff. About data centers, sure. But also how to fill in the blank: "The best thing you can do with an almond is              ."

The answer might surprise you!

Also of note:

• Another reason for Washington State taxpayers to be peeved. The state's university got caught violating one of their instructors' civil rights: Washington professor who parodied university ‘land acknowledgment’ wins $600K settlement. FIRE has the story:

  The University of Washington paid $600,000 after punishing Professor Stuart Reges for parodying a university-approved “land acknowledgment” in his syllabus.

  The payout comes after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held administrators liable under the First Amendment for retaliation and viewpoint discrimination.

  Today’s settlement concludes the legal battle that began with a 2022 lawsuit by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression on Reges’s behalf. Besides the monetary settlement, the agreement stipulates that the university cannot take any further action against Reges. While Reges’s appeal was pending, UW also rescinded and replaced the vague antiharassment policy used to punish the professor for his speech.

  “I am deeply grateful to FIRE for this legal victory which will remind public universities that they are obligated to respect the First Amendment rights of their students, faculty, and staff,” said Reges. “More importantly, I hope that my protest can help reverse a decade-long trend towards ideological conformity in academia and help to convince them that instead of ‘protecting’ students from controversial ideas, they should be helping them to learn how to cope with disagreement. Only then can we heal the deep divisions that confront us today.”

  So, good for Stuart, and good for FIRE. I first blogged about him back in 2018, when UWash was pissed about an article he wrote at Quillette: Why Women Don't Code.

• 

  Darn. Noah Smith has a long and thoughtful review of Where Is My Flying Car? by J. Storrs Hall. Unfortunately, Noah's headline is discouraging: Why you won’t get a flying car.

  In 2011, Peter Thiel famously said: “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” When I first saw that quote, I chuckled, because for my entire life, we’ve had flying buses. And again and again, as I sit on a flying bus and marvel at the thrill of takeoff, and reflect on how amazing it is that man has conquered the air, I look around and see my fellow passengers with their window shades drawn, their noses buried in a book or staring at a phone.

  If we had flying cars, we’d enjoy the thrill for a few weeks, and then we’d be back to tweeting on our phones and wondering when the trip would be over.

  I’ve noticed a loose collection of beliefs and attitudes that I’ve decided to call “engineerism”, because I see it most often among engineers. I coined the term when I was in college, when I noticed that the engineering majors in my physics classes tended to think differently about the world than the physics majors like myself did. Later, I recognized “engineerism” in various sci-fi novels — Lucifer’s Hammer and Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, The Peace War by Vernor Vinge, and so on.

  When I say “engineerism”, I am not talking about Friedrich Hayek’s “engineering mentality” — the belief that society can be designed and optimized like a machine.2 Nor am I referring to Evgeny Morozov’s “technological solutionism”, which is the idea that social problems can be fixed with technology. If I had to define what I call “engineerism” in succinct, simple terms, it would be something like: “The idea that if a technology can be built, we ought to build it.” Simply put, engineers like to engineer things, and they become disgruntled when society does not give them the resources to do this.

  I reported on Where Is My Flying Car? back in 2022, but Noah's review is better.

• Actual trickle-down economics at work. Our state's outgoing senior senator, Jeanne Shaheen, made Commie Radio New Hampshire Public Radio notice her turn at the pork barrel: Shaheen requests $5M to study 'sailor campus' at old Portsmouth Naval Prison.

  A feasibility study on the future of the former Portsmouth Naval Shipyard building, long ago abandoned by the Navy, may be on the horizon.

  This spring, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, requested $5 million in federal funding in the fiscal year 2027 appropriations legislation for a planning study. The funds would be used to determine whether “The Alcatraz of the East” could be given new life and reutilized as a “sailor campus" over a phased process, according to Shaheen’s request.

  (Originally an article at the Portsmouth Herald, where it is paywalled.)

  Now $5 million, while it might be a lot of money to you or me, is a very small drop in the very large bucket of federal spending.

  But I can't help but wonder into whose pockets that money will eventually go. Like any good Democrat, Jeanne has long been a foe of "trickle-down economics", which is how they refer to any proposal that lets people keep more of their own money.

  But when it comes to doling out millions for a "study"… well, good luck on tracking down the cui bono there.

• On the LFOD watch. Louis Cannon writes at the Pagosa Daily Post (the "online community magazine for Pagosa Springs, Colorado") and my Google News Alert rang for his recent article, READY, FIRE, AIM: Live Free or… You Know… Like, Die. Yes, it concerns New Hampshire's motto. And it's not awful; he talks about George Maynard's effort in the 1970s to not display it on his car's license plate, which eventually went to SCOTUS.

  I did want to mention where Louis goes badly wrong, in discussing the state quarter released in the year 2000:

  The coin also includes an image of ‘The Old Man of the Mountain’ — a peculiar rock formation which happens to be one of the few tourist attractions in New Hampshire.

  Well, practically anyone coulda told Louis that he shoulda put that in past tense: the Old Man's face fell off Cannon Mountain back in 2003.

  Also: tourism is, in fact, New Hampshires second-largest economic sector. (Mainly we get a lot of folks stopping on US3, wondering "So where's the Old Man?")

  And, for the record: Colorado's official state motto is Nil Sine Numine, which is Latin for "Nothing without Providence" or (perhaps) "Nothing without the Deity". There is no danger of it ever appearing on Colorado license plates.

Recently on the book blog (finally):

I'm pretty old now, but back in the 1960s, as a teenager, I checked out Frank Meyer's book, In Defense of Freedom, from the Omaha Public Library. Even then, I was impressed by his argument. I would occasionally get creeped out by some of the other National Review writers. But it seemed to me back then that Meyer got it pretty much right. And that belief has (more or less) continued for sixty years or so.

Although Meyer didn't care much for the term, the political philosophy he argued for came to be known as "fusionism". What's being fused? The two ideals of liberty and virtue. Meyer argued for a compromise between those conservative factions, noting that neither was a credible standalone position: over-reliance on virtue could easily slide over into state tyranny, and libertarian absolutism could devolve into anarchistic squalor.

Against the virtucrats, Meyer argued that a virtue enforced by state coercion wasn't true virtue; it must be a freely-chosen position. And to the out-there libertarians, his position was remarkably similar to that promulgated by the American founders. (E.g., James Madison: "To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea." You could look it up.)

So I was gratified to hear about Stephanie Slade's book. Fusionism has long been an interest of hers. Here is her article in Reason's March 2021 issue, which asks: Is There a Future for Fusionism?) And more recently, in the July 2026 Reason: What is fusionism? America blends liberalism and religion.

I ordered the book pretty much as soon as I heard about it. It's an impressive combination of history, political philosophy, and shoe-leather journalism. Slade looks at the contentious history of conservatism and libertarianism, concentrating on Meyer's intellectual odyssey. (He started out as an actual Communist. But he got better.) But plenty of other folks are examined, with careful detail and sometimes surprising insights. (I thought I knew the intellectual history relatively well, but Slade kept digging out details of which I was unaware.)

Slade notes, accurately, that fusionism's greatest electoral success was in the 1980s, typified by the landslide victories of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984. He wasn't perfect, but at his best he could be a passionate advocate of fusionist ideas. (Here's Slade again, in the July 2025 Reason: The fusionist politics of Ronald Reagan.)

Slade notes that since then, things have gotten worse (to put it mildly) on the GOP/right-wing side of things. Trump has shown little respect for fusionist ideals of limited government and free-market economics, preferring "pitchfork populism". Trump's heir apparent, J.D. Vance, is even worse. Most of the Republican Party seems to docilely follow along. And, out there on the fringes, there are some really scary folks: "theocons, natcons, and neoreactionaries", all calling for grabbing the reins of government power to impose their frightening visions.

In short, Slade has written an excellent book, and I recommend it to anyone interested in where we've been poltically, and where we might be going.

Of course, our Amazon Eye Candy du Jour provides one possible choice. But Christian Schneider's headline in NR is pretty good too: There's No Problem Government Creates That It Can’t Make Worse. His current example:

It would probably make the motto too long, but I'd add the infuriating punchline: "… while insisting at every step it was doing you a favor."

But speaking of government-created problems, here's Gabriel R. Llanes at the Federalist describing another one: The Wealth Gap Is Real, And Washington Created It.

I'm not a fan of the class-warfare implications—it's not the fault of the wealthy that they're in position to take advantage of monetary policy, and they don't deserve to be punished for it. Still…

Coincidentally, Bryan Caplan has a number of insightful Reflections on Americans’ Net Worth. Those reflections are based on the Federal Reserve's "Survey of Consumer Finances". And, as Bryan says, they demonstrate "the chasm between populist pessimism and actual data on Americans’ net worth."

Bryan has 20 of them. Here are the first three:

… and I recommend you check out numbers 4-20.

Also of note:

• Unfortunately, we're all collateral damage. Daniel Hannan notes bellicosity: JD Vance declares war on economics.

  JD Vance is the latest postliberal to embrace what is now, for all intents and purposes, an anti-growth position.

  In his latest book, Communion, Vance inveighs against those perennial straw men, the GDP-obsessed economists. We keep hearing about these mysterious figures, cold-hearted calculators who believe that GDP is the only measure that counts. Oddly, despite running the world’s foremost classical liberal think tank, I have yet to meet one.

  Vance, though, is convinced that people who “struggle to put a value on anything that can’t be specifically measured” not only exist, but run America. The country is governed, he tells us, “by numbers on a spreadsheet and the people who built those spreadsheets.”

  Also in the running for Pun Salad Official Motto: "Beware politicians who claim to know what would make you truly happy."

• Good question. And the WaPo editorial board asks it: State control over oil broke Venezuela. Why is Trump doubling down? (WaPo gifted link)

  President Donald Trump’s removal of socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro in January offered a generational opportunity to counteract the failures of Venezuela’s socialist policies. A pro-America opposition appeared ready to usher in a free market and end the state’s suffocating grip on oil production. Eight months later, the White House’s deal with Maduro’s former vice president risks entrenching the people and policies that tanked the country’s economy in the first place.

  Under the sketchy terms of an agreement Trump unveiled this week with Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, the Pentagon receives a 35 percent stake in North American Blue Energy Partners, which has just been granted 100-year concessions to drill in 17 oil fields that contain an estimated 65 billion barrels. The State Department receives rights to buy 20 percent of the output at cost and gets first dibs on purchasing the remainder. The Venezuelan government would purportedly receive $200 billion in tax and royalty payments over the next 25 years.

  The Trump administration has earned a bad reputation for crony capitalism by taking equity stakes in at least 30 private companies, including Intel and Westinghouse. But a deal of this magnitude makes the U.S. government, at least on paper, one of the world’s largest corporate holders of oil. State control of the industry was an original sin of Chavismo, named for left-wing populist strongman Hugo Chávez, whose despotic rule from 1999 to 2013 included a nationalization drive that kicked off Venezuela’s economic death spiral.

  Also in the running for Pun Salad Official Motto: "Beware politicians who think they can run businesses."

• And finally: do not vote for any pol who babbles about "genocide". And don't believe what you read in the New York Times, either: Because, as David Harsanyi documents: The 'Gaza Genocide' Is a Hoax.

  In May 2025, Tom Fletcher, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, went on BBC Radio and told the audience that 14,000 babies in Gaza were going to die "in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them."

  According to UNICEF, there are around 20,000 babies in the entirety of Gaza. Which means 70% of all infants were in danger of dying in mere hours. An "utterly chilling" figure, Fletcher stressed.

  The New York Times, along with numerous other establishment media outlets, relayed Fletcher's allegation to its credulous audience without any skepticism. The usual experts were summoned to discuss this unfolding famine on cable news. And the antisemites across social media amplified the claim.

  No matter how far-fetched a story is about Israel, including preposterous evidence-free accusations that it trains dogs to rape Palestinians, papers such as The New York Times will spread it to feed the perception that the Jewish state operates as a genocidal entity. And no matter how often the claims are debunked, they keep at it.

  David lays out the facts. His bottom line: "There is no genocide. And there was no famine. There was a war. And the bad guys lost."

Recently on the book blog:

I have an embarrassing number of bought-but-never-read books on my shelves. This is yet another of those, purchased sometime in the 1970s. In case you haven't heard: it's about rabbits in England. In the book's universe, they can talk to each other, with occasional specialized vocabulary. (Fortunately, there's a "Lapine Glossary" in the back of the book for unfamiliar rabbit words.) The rabbits can also converse in a limited way with other species, but not people.

In the peaceful (but somewhat regimented) rabbit warren in Sandleford, there is trouble a'brewing. A small rabbit named Fiver, with soothsaying abilities, knows there's bad danger afoot. (And we readers know it too, as there's a sign announcing the imminent construction of "high class modern residences".) And that construction will involve the destruction of the rabbit habitat.

Fiver is convincing enough to get a small group of rabbits to abandon Sandleford and start looking for a new home. (Just in time, as it turns out.) Their travels are danger-filled. And there's another issue: they have no lady rabbits in their group, which (even rabbits know) doesn't auger well for their community's long-term survival. Their efforts to gain some females cause them to run afoul of an extremely militaristic warren. Our bunnies are no match for them in brawn; can they out-think them?

Spoiler: yes. But it's a close-run thing. If you're thinking about reading this to the kids: there's a lot of (rabbit) violence and even some PG elements of rabbit sex.

James Freeman notes an embarrassing vote in the House of Representatives: Handful of House Democrats Vote to Denounce Murderous Marxism. (WSJ gifted link)

"Embarrassing" in the sense that the GOP designed it to embarrass Dems. But there's a local angle for Granite Staters:

For those not plugged into New Hampshire politics, the democratic socialist running against Pappas in the primary next week is Karishma Manzur. Her latest allegation is described by Michael Graham in NHJournal: Manzur: I’m the ‘Real Democrat,’ Pappas Is the Sellout.

Pappas was one of 22 Democrats voting to censure Tlaib. This was back in 2023, before his spine gelatinized.

Tomorrow I plan to blog David Harsanyi's column, but here's a sneak preview link: The 'Gaza Genocide' Is a Hoax.

I'm torn about whether I want Manzur to beat Pappas in the primary. She'd be a weak candidate against her probable opponent in November, John E. Sununu. On the other hand, I'd like to think New Hampshire Democrat voters weren't buying the socialist shtick.

Also of note:

• 

  More from Slade. I promise that I will report on my reading of Stephanie Slade's great book, Fusionism, Real Soon Now. Just not today. But to further whet your appetite, here's an "adapted-from" article at the WSJ: Meet the ‘Bronze Age’ Young Men of the New American Right. (WSJ gifted link)

  When the Supreme Court this summer upheld the constitutionality of birthright citizenship, the right-wing internet erupted with rage. Prime among its targets were the four female justices who had signed on to the majority opinion. In one representative post on X, the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh declared that “the worst Supreme Court Justices of all time have all been women. That’s just a fact. Republican presidents should take the hint.”

  The outburst was in keeping with a strain of rhetoric popular among a subset of very online young men. It holds that women are too emotional to occupy positions of influence in society; that female suffrage was a mistake; and that the fairer sex’s purpose in life is to look good, make babies, and serve a husband’s every need.

  To understand where all of this is bubbling up from, it helps to be acquainted with the “vitalists,” a certifiably weird subculture led by internet personalities with pseudonyms like “Bronze Age Pervert” (real name: Costin Alamariu) and “Raw Egg Nationalist” (real name: Charles Cornish-Dale), who look back longingly to a time when white men were in charge and other groups submitted humbly to rule by their betters.

  And of course, you can always use the Amazon link at your right.

  I'd like to think that Slade's just "nut-picking", and the "vitalist" influence is negligible compared to (say) the DSA's influence on the Democrats. But I dunno for sure.

• And ego. Don't forget his ego. Jacob Sullum notes that we'll soon have a Trump Monument in DC. Specifically: Trump’s White House ballroom is a monument to his lawlessness.

  After President Theodore Roosevelt began building the East Wing of the White House in 1902, he thanked Congress for approving the project and appropriating the necessary funds. When President Donald Trump demolished the East Wing last fall, by contrast, he acted without permission from Congress, which the Constitution empowers to control federal property.

  That difference is unlikely to matter in practice, thanks to a stay the Supreme Court issued on Monday, which allows Trump to continue work on the huge ballroom he is building on the site of the East Wing. But Trump's insistence on acting unilaterally will make his vanity project a monument to his disregard for the rule of law and the separation of powers.

  But that's not all…

• Are there no limits to this guy's narcissism? On a related matter, Noah Rothman looks at yet another example of Trump's Petty Caesarism, as exhibited by…

  Available for purchase today at 12PM ET: 2026 President Donald J. Trump $1 Coin. These coins are also in circulation, so check your pocket change. Collect them today! #CoinCollecting #America250https://t.co/g4eJes21ER pic.twitter.com/4OqkQ2sa9W

  — United States Mint (@usmint) September 2, 2026

  Donald Trump’s visage is already circulating on these gold-finished brass coins. Some have taken exception to the “controversial move” of putting a sitting president’s face on legal tender, but their objections are unreasonable.

  Sure, this hasn’t been done in 100 years, and the last person to do it was arguably the least imperial president in that century: Calvin Coolidge. Never mind that his face was partially eclipsed by George Washington’s. And like the 1926 coin, this one will cost a lot more than it’s worth.

  “The rolls of $1 coins (25 to a roll) go for $61. A bag of 100 coins goes for $154.50,” ABC News reported. Likewise, back in 1926, “few people cared to part with the required $1 to purchase a commemorative half dollar,” the historian David Bowers observed. “When all was said and done, the staggering quantity of 859,408 half dollars went back to the Mint to be melted!” Perhaps the same fate is in store for Trump’s coins.

  "Gold-finished brass"? Kinda cheesy, Don.

Recently on the book blog:

I'm not proud of this, but I'll admit it: I've been inordinately attracted now and then to the "celebrity memoir" genre. Written by musicians and actors I like, mostly. I tell myself that they'll provide me with some insight into the wellsprings of their creative talents. And I am invariably disappointed; these guys (yes, mostly guys) don't seem to have any eye-opening revelations on the matter. Hard work, good luck, singular focus… that's about it.

But I was enticed into reading Peter Wolf's memoir by this review in the WSJ.

Wolf is no exception on the creativity score. But—holy cow!—he really makes up for it on another score: this book is full of stories about the people he's encountered over the course of his career, most famous, many surprising. And those stories are great: some hilarious, some poignant, some even tragic. But all of them well told. (If you're looking for hilarity, for example, skip ahead to his story about making this classic music video.)

In the unlikely event that a celebrity is reading this: If you're thinking about writing a memoir, read Peter Wolf first. Go and do thou likewise.

He starts out with a biggie: In 1956, his parents take ten-year-old Peter to a movie, an artsy-fartsy French flick. In comes another couple: an older guy and a mink-coated, sunglassed blonde. And the blonde sits next to Peter. Eventually (since it's an artsy-fartsy French flick) the blonde nods off, with her head falling on Pete's shoulder.

Punchline: the guy is Arthur Miller, and the blonde is Marilyn Monroe.

I wasn't a huge fan of the J. Geils Band, although I really liked their 1974 single, "Must of Got Lost" well enough to buy the album it was on ("Nightmares...and Other Tales from the Vinyl Jungle"). But our musical tastes diverged as time went on. I don't think that was Wolf's fault, though.

On the "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" score: the drug of choice is alcohol, and prodigous amounts of it. I think Pete could drink you. me, and the entire defensive line of the New England Patriots under the table. And the sex is never prurient. Although (you might not know) he was married to Faye Dunaway, and he was a little miffed about her extramarital dalliances.

I put this in my get-at-library list back in 2023, thanks to its inclusion on the WSJ's best mysteries list for that year. As a bonus, it's set in New Hampshire! (A heavily fictionalized New Hampshire, but what are you gonna do?)

The first-person narrator is Bodie Kane In a stylistic twist, Bodie's narration is addressed to another character—the "you" in the title—as if Bodie's writing/speaking to them. That choice comes into focus as the book proceeds.

Bodie is returning to the boarding school whence she graduated a couple decades back. She's been invited to teach a couple of mini-courses in an interim few weeks between semesters. Bodie's time at the school was unhappy, and marred by the murder of her onetime roommate, Thalia. Omar, an African-American athletic manager, was arrested and convicted for the crime (after confessing, then quickly recanting). But…

One of Bodie's courses is about podcast production, and one of her students wants to craft her podcast to revisit the crime. The student believes a miscarriage of justice occurred, and someone else did Thalia in. Bodie gets drawn into the student's investigation, and down the rabbit hole they go. Eventually, troubling facts emerge.

It's billed as a "literary" mystery, which (as near as I can tell) means a lot of discursive, flowery language. And anything that could be described as "action" is minimal. Bodie's narration involves plenty of navel-gazing, deep reflections on her life. She's estranged from her husband, who, in a sideshow to the main plot, is being fingered for a sexual harassment incident. She has a sorta-lover down in Boston, but he seems strangely unenthusiastic about coming up to see her while she's in the area. And there are a lot of other characters introduced, a bunch in the present, and a bunch from the past, and everyone seems dysfunctional in their own special ways. And there's occasional commentary in the "believe all women" vein, which probably seemed less quaint back then.

And (caveat lector) you may find the ending unsatisfying. I thought it was OK, but…

My brilliant idea to rename 'Lake Erie' as 'Lake Inferior' doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Also of note:

• Well-deserved but futile and stupid. Social Security is going broke, the overall economy is shaky due to massive deficit spending, but instead it appears we're in for (according to Jim Geraghty) The Inevitable Impeachment Rerun.

  Democrats are quite likely to win back control of the U.S. House of Representatives and appear to have a decent shot at winning the Senate. And then, apparently some Democrats fervently believe that finally, this time, for real, they’re going to get him.

  The “him,” of course, is Donald Trump, a man who has already survived two impeachments the way a cockroach survives a nuclear test, and who has almost cheerfully dared Democrats to try a third. As the president put it to Will Cain back in January, his Democratic foes will “find something,” because that’s simply what “very nasty people” with “bad policy” do.

  As far as more pressing problems go, I didn't mention "health care is unaffordable" and "our roads and bridges are crumbling" above, because Jim notes as an aside:

  (Hey, remember the Affordable Care Act? Remember when the Obama administration insisted, “President Obama promised that he would make quality, affordable health care not a privilege, but a right. After nearly 100 years of talk and decades of trying by presidents of both parties, that’s exactly what he did.” Here we are, 16 years after its passage, and ten years after that declaration of a promise kept, and Democrats are still running for office saying that health care is unaffordable. It’s like “crumbling roads and bridges.” No matter how many massive, big-spending infrastructure bills get passed, lawmakers come back a short while later and argue we need to pass another one, because of our “crumbling roads and bridges.” Whatever the U.S. government has spent in recent years, some candidate out there will insist this vital priority is desperately underfunded.)

  I think that the infrastructure spending is likely to deliver roads and bridges pre-crumbled.

• I'm still trying to figure out why that darned caged bird is singing. Kevin D. Williamson says he knows Why Everybody Hates Capitalism. (Dispatch gifted link)

  I have written many versions of this sentence, and I’ll repeat myself here: Pretty much everybody in the rich world would be enthusiastically pro-capitalism if not for their experiences with a handful of firms concentrated in financial services and telecommunications: insurance companies (especially health), banks and credit card issuers, collections firms, streaming and (especially) cable services (there is a reason that fewer than 1 in 3 U.S households subscribes to cable today, down from a peak of 90 percent or so), mobile providers, things like that. The problem seems to be nearly exclusive to providers of intangibles, whereas providers of physical goods have a relatively good reputation. However overpriced their goods may seem, nobody hates Gucci or Cartier the way some people hate their banks or insurance companies—UnitedHealth’s profit margins run around 3 percent vs. 22 percent for luxury-goods giant LVMH, but you will not win any votes calling for the nationalization of Louis Vuitton or Moët & Chandon. It is true that luxury goods occupy a special cultural position, but you could make much the same case about Adidas or Dell or Black & Decker.

  But don't worry: KDW is a capitalism fan, like me.

  Two Cheers for Capitalism, Irving Kristol advised in his famous book of that title. Two, two and a half, maybe two and three quarters.

  Or: Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.

• 

  Slade, you magnificent writer, I read your book! Specifically, I finished Fusionism yesterday. I will report on it over on the book blog Real Soon Now. But until then you should read Stephanie Slade: J.D. Vance and the post-liberal right’s politics of victimhood, adapted from the book.

  In September 2021, when he was still a long-shot candidate for the Republican Senate nomination in Ohio, J.D. Vance made an appearance on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight. At the time, it was widely understood that Vance's chances were limited in the bright-red state by his earlier refusal to support Donald Trump for president.

  "My god what an idiot," he had tweeted of Trump in 2016. "I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us," he posted the same month. In the wake of Trump's infamous "grab 'em by the pussy" Access Hollywood tape, Vance implored his "fellow Christians" to realize that "everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man."

  By the time of his Senate race, those comments had become a political liability. He deleted them and began an apology tour. "I've been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them," he told Fox News. "I regret being wrong about the guy."

  Slade (I call her Slade, apparently that's how she's known around the Reason offices) calls Vance's transformation "a head-spinning reversal in tone and policy alike." I didn't fully appreciate that before.

• But for more Slade… Freedom Conservatism is also cheering the book's appearance, calling it a Lit fuse. Their article is a compendium of well-deserved praise, full of links. If you're on the fence about getting a copy, it should push you over.

• Thinking long-term. At Ars Technica, Eric Berger has a jaw-dropper: Private group wants to launch "cheapest possible" mission to Alpha Centauri.

  There are, by various estimates, several trillion planets within what is known as the Local Group of galaxies—our closest galaxy neighbors, including our own Milky Way. Many of these planets are within the habitable zone of their stars. So if life finds a way, where are the alien civilizations?

  This is the crux of what is known as the Fermi paradox, which posits that if life is fairly common in the Universe, humans should have collected credible evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations by now. People who think about this paradox believe there may be some “filter” that limits or entirely prevents an advanced civilization from sending out probes or even life-bearing spacecraft to nearby stars.

  But what about that mission?

  On Tuesday, [entrepreneur Philip Johnston and a handful of other entrepreneurs announced the “Fermi Explorer” mission. In concept, it is simple. They seek to raise $15 million to build a small spacecraft, carrying a 1 kg payload, and launch it to Alpha Centauri such that it reaches that system in fewer than 80,000 years. Why? In conversations about the Fermi paradox, Johnston realized such a mission would knock two “filters” off the list: Species won’t want to send spacecraft beyond their home star, or species will find that interstellar transit is too difficult.

  When they say "fewer than 80,000 years", unfortunately they don't mean five or six.

  There's a website, of course.

Recently on the movie blog:

As sometimes happens—probably more often than it should—I go looking for a big dumb violence-laden movie on the streaming services. Google's more than willing to help out. I settled on this one from 2020. It stars Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth; he made it in between Marvel movies.

It's set in Bangladesh, where a drug cartel has (violently) kidnapped the young son of the head of a different drug cartel. A private mercenary force is enlisted to go rescue the kid. Nearly-immediate carnage and betrayal results, with pretty much the only survivor being Tyler Rake (Hemsworth), left alone with the near-impossible task of getting the boy out of Bangladesh, across a bridge leading to (relatively) safe Indian territory.

We know from the first few minutes (so this isn't really a spoiler) that Tyler winds up on that bridge, badly wounded, barely able to crawl. Most of the rest of the movie shows us how he got there: by shooting, and getting shot at by, a nearly unlimited supply of bad guys. Fortunately, they all took their marksmanship training from the Imperial Stormtrooper Academy from Star Wars. And Tyler has a near-infinite supply of ammo and (just to mix it up a bit) knives and explosives.

The action scenes are intense and non-stop, and I stayed awake. Extraction 2 is also available on Netflix, and I will probably check that out someday.

Of course, having a doddering old fool in charge of the Executive had its downsides too.

Oh, wait, now we just have a different doddering old fool.

Also of note:

• Another day, another demand to desecrate the Constitution. One of the headlines in Mr. Ramirez's cartoon refers to this matter: Trump tells FCC to punish journalist for calling his election results "mixed"

  President Trump [Sunday] demanded that the Federal Communications Commission punish or rebuke an NBC journalist for saying he has “mixed results” in his election endorsements. In the latest example of how Trump is using the FCC to harass reporters and news organizations that he dislikes, he said Meet the Press host Kristen Welker “will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment” for what he claimed was a “purposeful inaccuracy.”

  “Kristen Welker, the Unpopular ‘Hostess’ of the once great Meet the Press, now considered Meet the Fake Press, just stated that Donald Trump has ‘mixed results’ on his Endorsements of Candidates, when the recent WINS of Darline Graham and Mike Mazzei, stand at 100% for the U.S. Senate, and 98% for the U.S. House, recently and over the longterm. How can anyone be allowed to say this, working for freely given Public Airwaves? Results are attached. Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

  The Ars Technica article goes on to observe:

  Poynter Senior Media Writer Tom Jones writes, “What Welker said about Trump’s endorsements having mixed results was true. Trump just didn’t like it.” While Trump praised himself for his successful endorsements, he didn’t mention primary losses by Republican gubernatorial candidates Burt Jones in Georgia and Randy Feenstra in Iowa and the failed re-election bid by Rep. Cory Mills (R-Florida).

  It's true enough that Ars Technica leans left. That doesn't excuse Trump for taking yet another dump on the First Amendment.

• "Worse than Biden" is a high bar. But Trump has been doing his best to clear it. The WaPo editorialists take a look at the numbers, and find … Trump’s tariffs aren’t reducing the trade deficit. (WaPo gifted link)

  The trade deficit doesn’t matter, but even if it did, tariffs aren’t an effective way to reduce it.

  In July, the monthly trade deficit in goods hit its highest level since March 2025, the Commerce Department revealed on Thursday. That was the month before President Donald Trump’s announcement last year of massive tariffs on products from nearly every country in the world.

  The Supreme Court’s February ruling against Trump struck down only tariffs he imposed under one law. He has imposed import duties under other laws before and after that ruling. They remain in effect. The average tariff rate is currently about 11 percent, which is more than four times higher than it was when Trump started his second term.

  I also liked their last paragraph:

  The trade deficit is a number, nothing more. It is primarily determined by differences in saving and investment patterns between countries, not by trade policy. Trying to control it with tariffs is like trying to change the score of a football game by yelling from the bleachers.

  Metaphorically "yelling from the bleachers" seems to be Trump's preferred tactic in many areas.

• Oh well, enough about Trump. As I've previously pointed out, I have to choose among eight GOP candidates for US Senator on my primary ballot next week. If I were to choose the one with the coolest name, that would be: Sky Danley.

  The link goes to his campaign website, and … gosh, he says a lot of things I agree with. E.g.:

  Our current subservient legislatures, beholden to the legalized payola of special interests, shirk their constitutional duties because, on both sides of the aisle, they’re more interested in protecting their individual office holdings and associated monetary power than in promoting the general welfare.

  And thus, in all three branches, we have a wanton abandonment of civic virtue, an abandoning of the common good in favor of perpetual, self-serving interests.

  James Madison, the father of our Constitution, warned that without civic virtue, a republic cannot survive. One can easily conclude that our republic may already be gone, existing in name only and no longer in function. If so, the goal must be to get it back, to restore the last best hope.

  He also says some things I disagree with; I think he's too hard on the current SCOTUS, for example. (He has an associated term-limit scheme for SCOTUS that he insists is not court-packing.)

  But another thing I like: he claims (I haven't checked) to be the only candidate who's answered all 34 questions on the Citizens Count questionnaire.

  But another thing I don't like: he favors a partial repeal of the First Amendment to "absolutely get the corrupting money out of politics."

  Sorry, Sky. Red flag there.

• 

  Still available from Amazon! James Freeman notes that the proud winner of my state's four electoral votes in 2024 (by 50.65% to 47.87%) is weighing in on our state's D-side primary: Kamala to the Rescue! (WSJ gifted link)

  Remember when Democrats nominated a presidential candidate in 2024 who had endorsed positions so progressively wacky that not even her friends in the media could believe they were real? Such is the speed of the Democratic party’s continuing leftward lurch that believe it or not former Vice President Kamala Harris now appears to be a relative moderate as she intervenes in a key Senate race against a democratic socialist.

  Last week this column noted that Democrats’ dreams of a U.S. Senate majority have been complicated by rising difficulty in New Hampshire, where Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is retiring and her expected replacement, Rep. Chris Pappas, suddenly appears to be struggling. A recent Granite State Poll from the University of New Hampshire found the relatively unknown socialist Karishma Manzur surging against Mr. Pappas just ahead of next week’s Democratic primary.

  To remind us of our "choice" back in 2024, check out Charles C.W. Cooke's take at that time, agreeing with our Amazon Eye Candy du Jour: Kamala Harris Is an Idiot.

• Turns out it was terrorism after all! Shocker! National Review notes a small bit of recovered sanity in the Great White North: CBC Reverses Course, Will Describe 9/11 Attacks as Terrorism After Backlash.

  After directing staff not to refer to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as acts of terrorism, the Canadian Broadcasting Company has reversed course and published new guidance acknowledging that the term is in fact accurate.

  Basem Boshra, the senior director of journalistic standards and public trust at CBC News, issued a memo earlier this month, first reported by the Toronto Sun, instructing staff not to refer to the events of 9/11 as terror attacks in accordance with the network’s “longstanding language guidance.” Boshra rescinded that guidance last week following significant backlash.

  "And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for that significant backlash!"