Pun Salad

I turned to ChatGPT once again:

draw a Dr, Seuss parody book cover titled "If I Ran the Fed" showing Donald Trump as the author

And (once again), ChatGPT told me, nicely, sorry Paul I can't do that.

But it did suggest a compromise, and I think its result wasn't too bad.

I was inspired (of course) by dim memories of Dr. Seuss's If I Ran the Zoo. The relevant Wikipedia article notes that it's one of his books that were withdrawn from publication by "Dr. Seuss Enterprises" for unacceptable "racial stereotypes and caricatures". But this is an example of where John Perry Barlow was right: "The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it." You can read the book here.

That Wikipedia article says the Seuss book was written in "anapestic tetrameter". I have no idea whether my parody obeys that scheme, but here you go:

"The Fed's in a slump,"
Said President Trump,
"And the guy who's in charge
Is kind of a chump."

"But if I ran the Fed,"
Said President Trump,
"I'd make a few changes.
Make the stock market jump!"

"Their 'rates' and their 'targets' and that kind of stuff
They have no idea that they're not good enough.
They're disloyal to MAGA and probably Blue.
They're awfully old-fashioned. I want something new!"

"So I'd fire them all, tell them to leave.
Put them out on the street, I'd not even grieve.
Replace them with flunkies I think I could find
Who would to my every whim be aligned!"

And I could go on, but probably shouldn't. I was "inspired" (if that's the right word) by the WSJ editorialists yesterday, who wondered: What if Trump Runs the Federal Reserve? (WSJ gifted link) Skipping to their bottom line:

And I found out that "afflatus" doesn't mean what I thought it meant. So I won't keep using that word.

Also of note:

• Lisa, listen to me. James Freeman writes on the Fed Governor in the midst of the current afflatus kerfuffle: The Markets and Lisa Cook. (one more WSJ gifted link)

  In 2022 a Journal editorial called Ms. Cook unfit for the Fed job after she was nominated by President Joe Biden or whoever was running the U.S. government at the time. The Journal editorial noted:

  Republicans have… raised valid concerns about Ms. Cook’s lack of monetary policy expertise. Her academic scholarship has focused almost entirely on race, and she seems to think systemic racism is the root of all economic ills. No doubt she would fit in well at university faculty lounges with similar views.

  University of Chicago economics professor Harald Uhlig recently detailed in these pages how Ms. Cook called for his removal as editor of the Journal of Political Economy after he criticized the defund police movement.

  Even if one believes that the Fed should be independent despite its manifest failure to provide price stability, one can also believe that Ms. Cook should be replaced.

  I wouldn't be sorry to see her go. I might be sorry to see her replacement.

• Maybe not for lack of trying, but… Veronique de Rugy claims Trump Is Not the Biggest Threat to the Fed's Independence.

  Concerns about the Federal Reserve's independence have grown following repeated attacks by President Donald Trump, including this week's decision to fire Fed Gov. Lisa Cook based on questionable allegations. But this debate is too narrowly focused on the president's political pressure, ignoring a growing danger in our system.

  It is true that since the Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord of 1951, the Fed has had operational independence — the ability to set interest rates day-to-day — without any obligation to make government borrowing cheap. But it never had true economic independence because the bank's monetary policy cannot be insulated from the effect of fiscal policy, and vice versa.

  As public debt grows, the link becomes more visible and fiscal dominance — which occurs when a central bank like the Fed becomes subordinate to the government's fiscal policy — looms larger.

  Vero notes, soberly: "Fed independence, in a narrow political sense, becomes irrelevant when the arithmetic of debt service dictates outcomes."

• They're baaack! The University Near Here is a pretty idyllic place over the summer. But otherwise, as George Will notes, we got way Too many college students.

  Autumn, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness (Keats), is also when too many young Americans head to college, where too many of them will study too little under the undemanding supervision of faculty who teach too little. Colleges illustrate the seepage of rigor from American life.

  Since 1990, college enrollment has increased by 6 million students (29 percent). Reasons for this include government tuition subsidies and “college for everyone” rhetoric. And “degree inflation”: irrational requirements for job applicants.

  Preston Cooper, then of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, reported in 2023 that applicants for a $35,600-per-year job driving an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile (a 27-foot-long motorized hot dog) had to have a bachelor’s degree. In 2000, only 16 percent of prime-age workers earning $35,000 (in today’s dollars) had such degrees; by 2022, 24 percent did. In 1990, 9 percent of secretaries and administrative professionals had bachelor’s degrees; today, 33 percent do, and a higher proportion of job listings require applicants to have one. This “paper ceiling” is especially egregious in state and local governments, where 63 percent of those earning between $40,000 and $60,000 have bachelor’s degrees or higher. Only 28 percent of such earners in the private sector do.

  A recent report from the Burning Glass Institute and the Strada Education Foundation says 52 percent of recent college graduates are underemployed: in jobs not using their college learning. Meanwhile there are 750,000 industrial jobs unfilled.

  Keats was no Dr. Seuss, but …

Sabine Hossenfelder takes a GOP CongressCritter, Anna Paulina Luna, as seriously as possible:

I watched the seemingly very successful Starship test flight last night, from liftoff to Indian Ocean splashdown. Cool stuff, but why aren't we just grabbing the interdimensional tech from the aliens?

Also of note:

• In case you hadn't noticed. Back in the 1970s, there was a common saying: "A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality". Dare we hope that could be happening today? Kevin D. Williamson looks at the prospects of The Emerging Liberal Minority. Excerpt:

  Conservatives alienated from the Republican Party (as conservatives must be) may make their peace with the Democratic Party, as some have, but many (I suppose most) cannot muster much more than an “Ugh!” for a party whose moderate wing is characterized by Joe Biden and whose radical camp is rallying behind Zohran Mamdani, the professing socialist who aims to be not only the next mayor of New York City but also the new mascot of the left wing of the party of the left. But while there probably are not many estranged liberals who feel about the Democratic Party precisely the way conservatives are obliged to feel about the current Republican Party—in part because the Democrats are not at this moment led by a man who attempted a coup d’état the last time he lost an election—they are frustrated and disappointed and, at times, full of very reasonable contempt for their ancestral party. Liberals acknowledging painful truths of an uncomfortable ideological origin—whether those be Hayekian or neoconservative in character—have something in common with conservatives reckoning (as we must) with the fact that unsavory constituents such as racism, millenarian religious fanaticism, xenophobia, nihilistic antirationalism, and old-fashioned bumptiousness play a much more prominent role on the right than we had supposed. 

  I'm a little surprised that my Linux spellcheck didn't flag "bumptiousness". I guess it's a word.

• Cognitive dissonance isn't a pretty sight. Is it on the upswing? Jim Geraghty: When Mamdani says it, it’s socialism. When Trump does it, it’s genius.

  Remember, Republicans: It’s important that we stop Zohran Mamdani from becoming the next mayor of New York. The man is a socialist!

  Mamdani talked about “the end goal of seizing the means of production” during a live-streamed conference of the Young Democratic Socialists of America in February 2021, and declared that “we have to continue to elect more socialists, and we have to ensure that we are unapologetic about our socialism.” (As much as one might be tempted to attribute that to youthful naiveté, Mamdani was 29 years old at that time, and he’s 33 now.) Mamdani wants the New York government to open and run its own grocery stores.

  It’s a good thing we have President Donald Trump and his administration to stop the spread of Mamdani’s socialist agenda. Instead of having the government take greater control of private companies the way Mamdani wants, the administration is having the government take greater control of private companies the way Trump wants.

  The AI summary of the 491 (as I type) comments on Jim's article mentions that "Some comments suggest that Trump's actions align more with state capitalism or even fascism rather than socialism."

  Uh, fine. We have a better all-inclusive label. Let me drag out, once again, the Hayekian cartoon I had ChatGPT draw last week:

  

• Need some cheering up? Good news, bunkie, Noah Rothman finds it: At Least You’re Not Ken Martin. (Noah assumes Ken Martin, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, isn't reading National Review.)

  “Democrats, make no mistake, a storm is coming,” Martin said at the outset of the Democratic National Committee’s Minnesota summit on Monday. “In fact, it’s already here.” What we have today is “fascism dressed in a red tie.”

  “Rising inequality, attacks on democracy, voter suppression and a fascist regime that doesn’t play by the rules,” he continued. Today, the Republican Party is “led by the dictator in chief” who has cast American “values into the dustbin of history.” The Democrats, therefore, need to fight fire with fire. “I’m sick and tired of this Democratic Party bringing a pencil to a knife fight,” Martin declared. “We cannot be the only party that plays by the rules anymore. We’ve got to stand up and fight.”

  The DNC chair isn’t the first Democrat to pose as the fighting fighter who fights. The consultant class can read the polling of anxious Democrats as well as anyone, although the Democratic lawmakers who are being asked by constituents to take a bullet for the cause shouldn’t need a public opinion survey to understand their voters’ restlessness. Those Democrats, too, are offering their voters thin gruel: gratuitous profanity, all-caps social-media posts, and anguished self-pity masquerading as sorrow for the state of the country.

  I got a chuckle out of the "fighting fighter who fights" phrase. My CongressCritter, Chris Pappas, seems to work that into a lot of tweets, for example:

  New Hampshire is my home. It’s where I grew up, went to public school, and where I’ve chosen to build my life.
  
  The challenges Granite Staters face aren’t distant to me because I’ve lived them. That’s why I’ve spent my career fighting for the people of this state — and why I’m… pic.twitter.com/BpfqKyOPuB

  — Chris Pappas (@ChrisPappasNH) August 26, 2025

  Nothing says "fighter" than a cheek-to-cheek selfie with a supporter!

• And this is simply wonderful. The WSJ has a front-page "A-Hed" daily column, and it's fun, but I really liked this one from yesterday: Baseball Organists Keep Bringing the Heat, Thanks to Their 78-Year-Old Muse. (WSJ gifted link)

  The Kane County Cougars were trying to rally against the Quad City River Bandits when bees started pouring from behind the visitors’ dugout.

  Umpires halted the game. Players sprinted for the outfield. Ushers hurried to shepherd panicky fans. Perched above the fray in a suite, Nancy Faust sprang into action.

  Placing her fingers on the keys of the ballpark’s organ, she launched into “Flight of the Bumblebee,” the frenetically paced number by Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. From there she segued into Jewel Akens’ “The Birds and the Bees,” Jimmie Rodgers’ “Honeycomb,” the Beatles’ “Let It Be.”

  She's a genius. The story goes on to note that when she was playing the organ at old Comiskey Park for the White Sox, she learned that visiting KC Royal, George Brett, had had recent hemorrhoid surgery. So:

  When he came up to bat, she played the Dovells’ 'You Can’t Sit Down.”

"… and how about decreeing new crimes, like flag burning?"

For more on that:

• This should be off the table. Robby Soave points out an inconvenient truth: Trump's executive order prohibiting flag burning is unconstitutional.

  President Donald Trump issued an executive order prohibiting the burning of the American flag on Monday. There's a big problem with the order, though—one that Trump even acknowledged in his press conference touting the E.O. Flag burning is clearly protected by the First Amendment, and the Supreme Court has twice affirmed that this is so.

  Moreover, any administration that purports to care about freedom of speech should easily reach the conclusion that criminalizing provocative yet nonviolent acts of political expression is a violation of this principle, even if the constitutional issue was not so cut and dry.

• Will the EO cause any prosecutions, or is Trump just baiting his adversaries? Noah Rothman is Betting on the Bait.

  Those who have taken the time to peruse Donald Trump’s executive order on “Prosecuting Burning of the American Flag” know that it does not, in fact, recommend the federal prosecution of those who burn or are otherwise “desecrating” the flag. Instead, it notes that the Justice Department will take actions “consistent with the First Amendment,” which has been found by the Supreme Court to protect activities like flag burning. Indeed, only if acts of flag desecration amount to incitement to violence (which would be a high hurdle to clear in a courtroom) or if the flag-burner is engaged in other criminal behaviors are offenders likely to be prosecuted.

  There is just a lot less to this initiative than the heavy breathing that it has inspired among the executive orders critics and supporters alike would lead observers to believe. Indeed, the reaction to this order seems so divorced from its black-and-white text that we can probably conclude that inspiring impassioned reactions was the whole point of the exercise.

  So there's almost certainly not much going on here other than another display of Trump's deeply flawed character.

• 

  But it gives me a chance to quote SCOTUS Justice Nino. I recently read The Essential Scalia (Amazon link at your right, my report is here), there was a super-relevant quote within and (fortunately) Jonathan Turley dug it out so I don't have to: Running it up the Flagpole: Why the Trump Order on Flag Burning is Unconstitutional. In his SCOTUS votes, Scalia was a consistent libertarian on the issue:

  Scalia continued to defend his votes in public comments. He stressed that “if it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag. But I am not king.”

  He later added:

  Yes, if I were king, I would not allow people to go about burning the American flag. However, we have a First Amendment, which says that the right of free speech shall not be abridged. And it is addressed, in particular, to speech critical of the government. I mean, that was the main kind of speech that tyrants would seek to suppress.

  Burning the flag is a form of expression. Speech doesn’t just mean written words or oral words. It could be semaphore. And burning a flag is a symbol that expresses an idea – “I hate the government,” “the government is unjust,” whatever.

  If I were king, I would demand that you check out our Eye Candy du Jour from Mr. Ramirez one more time.

• It's not as hard as you might think! Kevin D. Williamson describes How to Murder an Economy With Happy Talk.

  We should have eaten our spinach.

  Nearly 20 years ago, I started writing a column for National Review called “Exchequer,” with a focus on fiscal policy, debt, and deficits. A point I frequently returned to—and frequently return to still—is that dealing with our national debt problem and getting the U.S. government’s finances back onto stable footing is something that will be easier to do the sooner we start and more painful to do the longer we wait, especially if we put off reform until we are in a fiscal crisis of some kind, which is what Washington seems dead set on doing.

  I was—and am—what my friend Larry Kudlow calls an “eat-your-spinach guy.” Kudlow and other sunny optimists, such as Arthur Laffer, are not big on eating spinach. They are big on ordering dessert first, counting on tax cuts and other incentives to goose the economy to such an extent that GDP growth does the hard work for us—what I have referred to at times as “naïve supply-side” economics. When it comes to diet, eating dessert first will indeed tend to make you grow (like it or not), but economic growth is, alas, a little more difficult to goose.

  KDW's spinach recipe seems to (roughly) involve getting Uncle Stupid's revenue and expenditures to where they were at the end of the Clinton era: about 20% of GDP. (FY 2024 revenue: about 17% of GDP; spending: about 23% of GDP.)

  I wouldn't be happy with taxes that high, but it's better than fiscal armageddon.

• But speaking of "happy talk"… Bryan Caplan has a question for you: If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy?

  Economists have long scoffed at know-it-all business and financial gurus with the rhetorical question, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” And sometimes the gurus use the same question to scoff at know-it-all economists.

  The standard answer, which I’ve occasionally used myself is: “I’m claiming that society is dysfunctional, not that there’s a viable get-rich-quick scheme lying on the sidewalk.” Open borders, for example, holds immense economic promise, but to activate it, you have to persuade a country — or at least a government — that open borders is a good idea. And both persuasive efforts are, alas, exercises in futility.

  On further thought, however, there are also plenty of unilaterally feasible ways to get rich that most of us leave lying on the sidewalk nonetheless. Such as? Work much longer hours. Work on weekends. Take second (and third) jobs. Take the highest-paid job, regardless of your quality of life. Easiest of all: Live way below your means — and invest the money you save. Seriously, have you ever considered how little money you actually need to keep earning money?

  The obvious response to these tactics, of course, is: “It’s not too smart to live in toil and poverty in order to maximize net worth.” A fine objection, but it highlights a much-neglected opportunity to scoff at know-it-alls. Rather than ask, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?,” we should be asking, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy?”

  So there.

We're seeing competing charges of Calvinball flung back and forth! Here's Jonathan Turley with one I find credible: The Judicial Calvinball of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

In the interests of equal time—I might as well do that every so often— TechDirt's Mike Masnick was more inspired than aghast: Justice Jackson Correctly Defines The John Roberts Supreme Court As The Calvinball Court

For a more balanced take, see SCOTUSblog.

I admit that I'm averse to the notion that a single District judge in Massachusetts can direct that hundreds of millions in taxpayer money must keep flowing to NIH's DEI grantees.

But I am not a lawyer, and, barring supernatural methods, we have no answer to the question: "What would Antonin Scalia do?" Other than emit a chuckle at the Calvinball reference.

And (holy moley) it's coming up on thirty years since Bill Watterson closed up his comic strip. And it's still a cultural icon.

Also of note:

• Imagine me standing in the rain, yelling "Stella!" Stella Artois, that is. Eric Boehm is upset (and so am I) that Trump's new trade 'deal' with the E.U. leaves out beer, wine, booze.

  Americans who enjoy German lagers, Belgian saisons, and Czech pilsners will get no relief from the higher tariffs that President Donald Trump has poured on their favorite brews.

  The framework of a much-anticipated trade deal between the United States and the European Union was made public on Thursday. The deal locks in the 15 percent tariffs that Trump has imposed on most European goods imported into the U.S., but it also serves as a promise from the Trump administration not to target European goods with product-specific tariffs that could be announced in the coming weeks or months—including potentially huge new tariffs on pharmaceuticals, something the White House has been teasing for months. The deal also creates a pathway for the United States to reduce its tariffs on European cars to the 15 percent threshold, once the E.U. reduces some of its own tariffs on American industrial goods.

  The written agreement seems to solidify the handshake deal struck in late July, though it is still "not a legally enforceable pact," but rather a step towards one, as The New York Times noted.

  But for alcohol-related businesses and booze-loving consumers on both sides of the Atlantic, the "deal" seems more like a buzzkill.

  Seriously, I pretty much stick to Sam Adams these days, as American as beer comes.

• Like an iceberg, there's a lot of it you don't see. But it's still dangerous, as Dominic Pino points out: The Hidden Damage from Tariffs.

  Tariffs are a particularly destructive form of taxation that distorts market efficiency, raises prices, and reduces output. As you’ve no doubt heard many times by this point in Donald “Tariff Man” Trump’s presidency, economic theory demonstrates each of these effects clearly.

  But maybe you think economists don’t know what they’re talking about and all those supply-and-demand graphs are witchcraft. What nonmarket reasons are there to oppose tariffs?

  For one, they feed the swamp. Tariffs are a full-employment program for Washington attorneys and lobbyists. Analysis of lobbying disclosure forms by Advancing American Freedom (AAF) found that spending on tariff lobbying surged from $1.3 million in the second quarter of last year to $8.8 million in the second quarter of this year. That’s on top of $4.9 million in spending on tariff lobbying in the first quarter of this year, suggesting that more people are realizing that lobbying can pay off.

  There's more, I hope you can read it, but I'm out of NR gifted links for the month.

• I have at least one big one. Jeff Jacoby says The convictions that count are the ones that sometimes sting.

  JONAH GOLDBERG, the columnist and conservative intellectual, recently published an essay about America's complicated relationship with freedom. Writing in The Dispatch, he argued that most Americans are libertarian only when it comes to freedoms they personally prize and are often content to let government regulate or prohibit freedoms they don't value — or don't want others to have. This selective consistency feeds today's partisan hypocrisy, with both left and right defending liberty or state intrusion depending on who's in power.

  From there he built to a larger point — that beneath the rivalry between red and blue, America's real exceptionalism lies in its culture: a deeply ingrained instinct for individual rights, autonomy, and resistance to government meddling. That common instinct, which Goldberg calls "American groundwater," runs deeper than our politics, and those politics would be healthier if more of us could train ourselves to see fellow Americans — even those with opposing views — as part of the same liberty-valuing culture.

  I bring up Goldberg's essay not only to recommend it but also because I was struck by the question with which he introduced it: "What principle do you hold," he challenged his readers, "that is against your self-interest or political desires?"

  OK, here's mine: We need to get Federal spending in line with revenue. This will require decreases in entitlement spending, mostly Social Security and Medicare. And that, realistically, will involve some means-tested haircuts to the well-off.

  And that would be me.

  How about you, reader? Any response to Jonah's challenge?

• Squandering their credibility. Allysia Finley takes on The Doctors Who Cry ‘Science’. (WSJ gifted link)

  Third Way, an organization that describes itself as championing “moderate” ideas on the “center left,” posted a memo Friday titled “Was It Something I Said?” It advised Democrats to avoid such terms as “housing insecurity,” “triggering,” “pregnant people” and “minoritized communities.” Such language makes Democrats sound “superior, haughty and arrogant.”

  Perhaps because they are. In Third Way’s view, Democrats’ problem isn’t that they think they’re more enlightened than ordinary Americans and want to force their ideology on those who disagree. It’s that they’re too obvious about it. Such condescension isn’t confined to cultural issues. It’s pervasive in the scientific realm.

  Liberals and medical advocacy organization often use such imperious terms as “pro-science,” “science says” or “consensus shows” when the science is murky or conflicted at best. What they are really saying is: We believe this, and therefore it is so.

  Allysia goes on to cite examples of the American Medical Association pushing left-wing ideology under the aegis of, yes, "science".

  That Third Way memo is here. I performed an experiment: asking Google for occurrences of "minoritized communities" at the University Near Here. Seven results! Example, from the heady days of 2022:

  I am in the beginning stages of a research project that will examine inclusion and belonging in public sector workplaces for marginalized and minoritized communities (specifically for black and brown people, LGBTQIA, women, elderly, immigrants, refugees, and lower socio-economic groups). The research seeks to identify and discuss ways to move beyond implicit and explicit conflicts and resistance to foster inclusion and a sense of belonging.

  I really like that "specifically", immediately followed by a totally non-specific laundry list.

Recently on the book blog:

Liz Wolfe has a balanced take when Trump instructs lawyers to look into Smithsonian museums.

It's easy to imagine that Trump will go about this in his usual hamfisted, overreaching way. "Omigod, is that a baby in the bathwater? Nooo, don't throw… argh, too late!"

You don't have to look hard to find the usual Trump cheerleaders breaking out their pompoms. Example: (which makes some valid criticisms of Smithsonian content) at the Federalist.

And the usual suspects have been, predictably, losing their shit. MSNBC had a Princeton prof opine that Trump is seeking a history "that’s rooted in a white nationalist project."

Liz, for her part, suggests a "starve the beast" solution:

The Smithsonian, per The Washington Post, "receives about 60 percent of its funding from congressional appropriations and federal grants and contracts, according to fiscal 2023 numbers, but those funds cover operations, infrastructure and maintaining collections. Generally, exhibitions are funded by private donations." Though this isn't really within the purview of the executive, the Trump administration could exert pressure on Congress to stop funding the Smithsonian and make clear that the museums need to shift to being entirely privately funded. Then Bill Ackman and Alex Soros and whoever can duke it out and decide which types of stories about America get told, and taxpayers in Wisconsin who never get to avail themselves of"The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture" can save a buck.

Certainly a goal to look forward to.

Also of note:

• A shameful admission. My CongressCritter, Chris Pappas (D-NH01), is looking to step into the US Senate seat being vacated by Jeanne Shaheen. Which means there's a scramble for Pappas's position. So I should find NHJournal's story, headlined "Elizabeth Girard Creates Campaign Committee for NH-01 GOP Primary" to be interesting, right?

  Elizabeth Girard, whose time as head of the New Hampshire Federation of Women (NHFRW) was plagued by controversy, has filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to become a candidate in the 1st Congressional District primary.

  Gee, it doesn't sound as if NHJournal likes her.

  But my shameful admission: I'm pretty sure I've never heard of Elizabeth Girard.

  It gets worse. NHJournal goes on to name three other candidates:

  • Bedford GOP Committee vice chair Melissa Bailey
  • Businessman and veteran Chris Bright
  • Manchester Rep. Brian Cole

  Nope. I'm going 0 for 4: never heard of Melissa, Chris, or Brian either. But, if you're interested:

  • A WMUR story about Melissa Bailey;
  • Chris Bright's campaign website;
  • Brian Cole's campaign website;
  • Elizabeth Girard's Twitter (which has a link to, I assume, her campaign website, which doesn't work as I type).

  Those middle two ask for your info upfront. Suggestion: don't give them any.

• Not politics. Dave Barry on Pets. Opening with sad news:

  Our household is currently dogless. It's been that way since the passing, back in January, at age 17, of Lucy, who it goes without saying was the Best Dog Ever, as well as the Dog Whose Face Whitened The Most Over Time.

  The loss of Lucy means that, petwise, we're down to tropical fish. We have five of them. We've had them for what feels like decades. They are survivors. They are the Keith Richardses of tropical fish.

  But the thing about tropical fish is, not dying is pretty much all they do. They don't provide a lot of companionship. They never rush to the front door, tails wagging, to greet us, the way Lucy used to. Of course the fish also never attacked our Christmas tree, which Lucy did once; our living room looked like it had been hit by a Yule-seeking missile. But we weren't home when that happened, so we'll never know the whole story. Possibly the tree started it.

  Dave rambles, and eventually talks about the latest fad in China: pet yeast. No, not an affliction for your dog, it's yeast, that's a pet.

  Not that you should care, but I am also recently dogless. (Picture of happier days here.) I am down to one cat, petwise. Dave scorns cats, but I'm pretty sure they don't care.

• Advice to writers. No, not from me, from Neal Stephenson: Say it, don't show it.

  I’m generally not very interested in meta-writing, which is to say, writing about how to write. But for the last few years I’ve had a single sentence from Dickens hanging around on my desktop in a tiny text file, which I open up and re-read from time to time. It’s a moment from The Pickwick Papers. The titular character is attempting to board a stagecoach. It’s crowded and so he has to get on the roof, which is a bit of a challenge because he is old and portly. A passing stranger, seeing his predicament, offers to give him a hand. What happens next is described as follows:

  ‘Up with you,’ said the stranger, assisting Mr. Pickwick on to the roof with so much precipitation as to impair the gravity of that gentleman’s deportment very materially.

  If you’re a fluent reader of the Dickensian style of English, these few words will conjure up a whole short film inside of your head. You might actually have to stop reading for a few moments to let that film develop and play out. And while you’re doing that you might savor the arch and clearly self-aware phrasing that Dickens is using here, which unto itself is a way of poking fun at Mr. Pickwick and his social circle.

  It's kind of neat that Neal enjoys "the Dickensian style".

Andrew Heaton suggests a new lyric query: Why do so many jobs require a license? Trust me, it's funny:

And the Headline reference is pretty obscure, but interesting! (I am ashamed to admit my first guess was Dusty Springfield.)

Also of note:

• V is for… The WSJ editorialists are righteously disgusted by Trump’s Vendetta Campaign Targets John Bolton. (WSJ gifted link)

  I assume you've heard the news today (oh boy). So we'll jump down to the bottom line:

  Mr. Bolton has continued to speak candidly about Mr. Trump’s second-term decisions, pro and con, including in these pages this week [gifted link added] . The President may also hope the FBI raid will cause Mr. Bolton to shut up, though knowing him we can’t imagine that working.

  The real offender here is a President who seems to think he can use the powers of his office to run vendettas. We said this was one of the risks of a second Trump term, and it’s turning out to be worse than we imagined.

  Indeed it is.

• Does he, though? Kevin D. Williamson thinks Ted Cruz Knows Better, and he lives in Texas, so I'll defer to his take:

  Competition for the top spot is fierce, but the very worst of Donald Trump’s enablers and sycophants aren’t the rage-addled, rustic, resentment junkies but such polished epitomes of servility as Sen. Ted Cruz, who insists that his highest political calling is the defense and fortification of the Constitution, and who—being one of those anti-elitist sons of the Texas caliche who learned his ABCs at Princeton and Harvard Law—knows full well that the president’s contempt for the Constitution is exceeded only by his ignorance of it. 

  Here is Trump on social media, serving up the baloney pretext for his next attempt to nullify an election: 

  Remember, the States are merely an “agent” for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.

  This is, in the familiar Trump style, a motley bolus of stupidity and dishonesty. The Constitution says, in fact, precisely the opposite: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” Where there is a federal role, it belongs to the lawmaking branch, not to the president: “[B]ut the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.” I do like that anachronistic “chusing”—more than I like many of the laws and regulations that Congress has written over the years with regard to voting. 

  Yes, "bolus". He went there.

  KDW eventually gets to his point about Ted Cruz, Harvard law graduate.

• Somewhat resembling the classic definition of "chutzpah". George Will notes an academic version: In a classic cartel move, college sports beg for federal help. (WaPo gifted link)

  Athletic competitions mesmerize because, being unscripted, their outcomes are unpredictable. But as college football season lumbers forward, there is occurring a predictable but nonetheless entertaining event associated with college athletics: Government and large, mostly state-run universities are collaborating to reestablish the cartel that for decades enabled the schools to reap billions from the negligibly compensated labor of “student-athletes.”

  That phrase, which has become risible regarding the best revenue-generating athletes (principally male football and basketball players) central to today’s drama, is clung to by the cartel that coined it. It puts a pretty patina on a business model that until 2021 suppressed what all cartels everywhere exist to minimize: costly competition. The cartels are the NCAA’s Power Four conferences, which generate the lion’s share of college sports’ billions.

  I'm reminded of the guy who observed that Harvard is like Pfizer with a football team.

Recently on the book blog:

I'll discuss that cartoon below, but right now it's an illustration of Daniel J. Smith's WSJ column: Trump, Intel and the Road to Serfdom. (WSJ gifted link)

Well, that got my fist pumping. Also weighing in, the NR editorialists with a milder criticism: The Government Shouldn’t Get into the Chip Business.

Yes. True dat.

But about the cartoon above: that's my effort at using ChatGPT for image generation, which puts me about three years behind everyone else, AI-usagewise.

My first prompt:

draw an interstate highway with a car labeled "Intel" heading toward a destination labeled "Serfdom"

I got a good result. But after thinking a bit, I decided I could be a little more ambitious and explicit:

Make the car a convertible and show President Trump driving it.

And ChatGPT responded:

Sorry, I can’t help with that.

Sigh. I think I get it: ChatGPT doesn't want to get involved in politics. So, I pared back my request:

make the car a convertible

And you know what? It did that, the result is what you see above, and darned if it didn't slyly make Trump the driver anyway! Funny old world.

Also of note:

• And can they be as bad as we all imagine they are? James Freeman is curious: Will CBS Release its Biden Tapes? (WSJ gifted link)

  The main question about the Biden administration remains unanswered: Who was running the U.S. Government prior to Jan. 20, 2025? There are related questions about who knew what and when regarding Mr. Biden’s cognitive challenges. Now the former controlling shareholder of the parent company of CBS News suggests that in 2023 staff at the network got a damning look at a struggling Mr. Biden that they never shared with viewers.

  James discusses the possibility, raised in an interview with Shari Redstone, that 60 Minutes' Scott Pelley interviewed Joe Biden back in 2023, during which he seemed "drowsy and had to be prodded to answer."

  So, to repeat James' headline: will CBS release its Biden tapes? My guess is that doing so would demonstrate both (1) Biden's cognitive decline; (2) CBS's general reluctance to display Democrat incoherent babbling. Neither would be a surprising revelation.

• Speaking of incoherent babbling… Trump's been doing some of that too, as Andrew C. McCarthy demonstrates his recent constitutional ignorance: Trump Has No Power to Tell States How to Conduct Elections.

  As is reliably the case with President Trump, one can agree with his policy preferences while recoiling at his disregard for the constitutional processes and principles attendant to making such policy. I happen to agree with him that we would be better off without mail-in voting (and related innovations, such as ballot harvesting and drop boxes). But Trump’s notion that he can direct such an outcome, or that the state legislatures should care what he thinks, is not just ill-conceived but alarming coming from a president who has already once abused his powers to try to retain the office.

• An amusing turnabout. As revealed by John R. Puri: Wait, the ‘Washington Post’ No Longer Thinks Elections Should Be Federally Run?

  He compares the WaPo's recent reaction to Trump's screed:

  Everyone loses when the federal government runs elections

  … with their opinion back in 2021 about the "For the People Act":

  Republicans’ rhetoric on H.R. 1 is apocalyptic. Are they that afraid of democracy?

  To the WaPo's (slight) credit, the 2021 was from Congressional Democrats, not a Presidential Decree, so arguably more constitutional.

Recently on the book blog:

“I have nothing against diversity, equity, and inclusion. But as Voltaire said about the Holy Roman Empire: it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.” pic.twitter.com/BDq5zp7fts

— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) August 20, 2025

Smart guy. I've pre-ordered his upcoming book (paid link).

Also of note:

• Here they come, to save the day! James Freeman notes the Mighty Mice swooping in from above: Rich Liberals to the Rescue! (WSJ gifted link)

  Better late than never, wealthy institutional donors seem poised to take a larger role in funding TV and radio shows they like, rather than letting average taxpayers get stuck with the bill. The taxpayer savings will not be enormous given the gargantuan scale of federal spending. Yet it certainly counts as progress to see the un-American phenomenon of state-backed media give way to a healthier model of voluntary support and independent broadcasting.

  James quotes a WaPo story headlined "Foundations step in to offer $37 million lifeline to public media". (WaPo gifted link).

  Freeman does the math, and so can you. Congress cut CPB two-year funding by $1.1 billion, and $37 million is … a lot less than that. (Although the WaPo reports that the "Public Media Company" organization "aims" to raise $100 million over the next couple years.

  And he notes the donors lined up so far are a "dream team of the tax-exempt."

• I don't get the joke, but… I will take Veronique de Rugy's characterization to be correct. Tariffs as the New Tax Base: A Laughable Idea.

  After more deadlines and deals, another round of President Donald Trump's tariffs has arrived. With higher prices again needing to be justified — and on the heels of the "Big Beautiful Bill," which didn't exactly balance the budget — protectionists are positioned to once again play the revenue hawk's card. There are multiple problems with this story.

  The idea is that tariffs — which some believe function like the consumption taxes that economists generally view favorably — can raise money more efficiently than income taxes.

  First, how can tariffs both protect American producers and reliably raise tax revenue? Think about it: Any tariff high enough to keep out lots of foreign products will not be levied on very many. Conversely, any tariff low enough to generate steady revenue would need to let trade continue by skimming off just a small portion in duties, offering only token protectionism.

  I'll just offer my self-interested whine about consumption taxes: while I understand the economic argument in favor, it's a real kick in the teeth for retirees living off their investments. I recall the arguments when I set up my IRA long ago: "You'll have to pay income tax on your withdrawals in retirement, but you'll be in a lower tax bracket then!" A consumption tax would "fix" that.

• But I find this kind of amusing. Andrew C. McCarthy takes a look at The Trump DOJ’s Embarrassing Letter in the Tariff Case.

  I’ve tried to take a break from news coverage over the past few weeks, so I was fortunate to miss (until reading Jason Willick’s always valuable Washington Post column) one of the more embarrassing submissions the Department of Justice has ever made to a federal court. But there it is: an August 11 letter to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. That is the tribunal now considering the Trump administration’s appeal of a compelling decision by the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) that invalidated one of the largest ever tax increases on the American people, President Trump’s unilaterally decreed tariffs.

  The letter was signed off on by Trump DOJ Civil Division Chief Brett Shumate, who is handling the case, in conjunction with Solicitor General D. John Sauer. Both are good lawyers, making their letter all the more indecorous. (Sadly, this is not Sauer’s first episode of masquerading Trump political blather as legal argument — see my discussion of his amicus brief in the TikTok case, which the Supreme Court unsurprisingly ignored . . . after which the president ignored the Court’s ruling and the governing statute.)

  I'm out of NR gifted links for this month, sorry. We looked at that ludicrous letter last week.

• Six days on the road and I'm a-gonna make it home tonight. Jeff Maurer is dismayed: Teamsters Fight Back Against the Horrible Specter of Fewer Traffic Deaths.

  A self-driving car company takes initial steps to introduce its vehicles to a city. Residents — led by the Teamsters Union — push back, arguing that self-driving cars are unsafe. This happens even though the most comprehensive, peer-reviewed study on the impact of that company’s impact found that their cars dramatically reduced all types of crashes, sometimes as much as 96 percent. Despite data suggesting that driverless cars could reduce injuries and fatalities, city council members appear to side with the Teamsters, using the bizarre argument that the safer cars threaten safety.

  Now: What wrinkle could make this already-ridiculous scenario the most absurd, counterfactual bullshit you’ve heard in a good long while? That’s right: This all happened in Boston, a city where the streets are already a Hobbesian hell fight where the maladjusted battle the insane. The statistical and anecdotal evidence suggest that driving in Boston is less safe than slathering yourself with elk’s blood and jumping into the tiger pen at the zoo. Driving in Boston is like Mario Kart, except instead of turtle shells, drivers throw empty Dunkin cups and bespoke Northeastern ethnic slurs. That is the status quo that the Boston City Council seems poised to protect.

  If you're lucky, the Dunkin cups will be empty.

  Headline reference is to a great old song.

Recently on the book blog:

The WSJ editorialists ask if we're really going there: The Nationalization of Intel?. (WSJ gifted link)

They mention air-traffic control, but there are so many things they could have mentioned. Amtrak, the USPS, the Federal Reserve, Fannie and Freddie, the Export-Import Bank, …

Eric Boehm waves what should be the reddest of red flags: Trump's Intel proposal takes a page from Bernie Sanders' playbook.

Jack Salmon is equally aghast, charting the path From Subsidies to Shareholding: America’s Dangerous Turn Toward Industrial Policy.

But I guess there's a chance increased government meddling will turn Intel's fortunes around!

Disclaimer: Fidelity tells me I own (as I type) $537.83 worth of Intel stock. I assume as a tax-loss harvesting strategy.

Also of note:

• Hey, let's push around some nuns! The NR editorialists are rightfully upset about The Persecution of the Little Sisters of the Poor. (And, even though I'm not Catholic, I've been describing myself as Catholic-adjacent for decades.)

  There are times when it is perfectly acceptable to judge a book by its cover, and, in the case of the Democratic Party’s relentless persecution of the Little Sisters of the Poor, observers would be well within their rights to indulge the urge. For twelve years now, the Catholic order of nuns — whose sole purpose is to provide care to destitute elderly people — has been dragged through America’s courts by a series of monomaniacal ideologues. The nuns’ crime? Objecting to a provision in Obamacare that required nonprofits to provide contraceptives — directly or indirectly — as part of their federally approved health insurance plans. The position of the nuns was that any participation in the distribution of contraception represented a grave violation of their religious beliefs and that, under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, the federal government was obliged to find another means of achieving the same end. The position of the Obama administration was that it had “compelling health and gender equity goals” to achieve, and that it didn’t care who was cast aside in that pursuit. In a country founded by dissenters, this position was jarring in the extreme.

  Ultimately, the Obama administration lost its case — although it took until the end of Donald Trump’s first term for the Little Sisters to prevail. By that point, litigation on the matter had been ongoing since 2013 and, at various points, had been addressed by the Supreme Court — which punted it back down to the lower courts; by the Third and Ninth Circuits — both of which, astonishingly, prevented the Trump administration from providing an exemption; and by a host of states — some of which, disgracefully, chose to channel President Obama’s illiberalism and continue to press the issue. Happily, in July 2020, the Supreme Court finally permitted the Trump administration’s accommodation to take force. The case, Little Sisters v. Pennsylvania, was decided 7–2.

  By rights, this should have been the end of the affair. And yet neither of the states that had lost at the Supreme Court — Pennsylvania and New Jersey — was willing to let it go. Worse still, they were joined in the endeavor by California, New York, Massachusetts, and others. Clinging to a tendentious argument that the Supreme Court did not address on the merits, those states insisted that the Trump administration’s modifications had been “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act. This month, a district judge in Pennsylvania concurred and struck down the rule. (Because nationwide injunctions are countenanced by the APA, this decision was not foreclosed by the Court’s Casa opinion earlier this year.) Once again — twelve years after their case was opened — the Little Sisters of the Poor were informed that they must choose between their consciences and the law.

  I have to admit that I do not understand the mental processes at work in the Democrat brains here.

• This Democrat ploy is pretty understandable though. They want to make the District of Columbia a state. Jonathan Turley proposes a solution they will find unacceptable: Want to Restore Voting Rights for D.C. Residents? The Solution is Waiting Just Over the Maryland Border.

  Over the years, I have testified five times in the House and Senate to argue for the restoration of full representation for residents in Washington, D.C. Residents could have a governor, two real U.S. senators, a voting representative in the House, a state legislature, and every other trapping of statehood. It needs only to go back whence it came.

  D.C. needs to return to Maryland through “retrocession.”

  In academic writings, I have advocated for what I called “modified retrocession” where Maryland would take back the land given initially to create what was called “the federal city.”

  It's a pretty good solution to an uncomfortable problem: DC residents really are victims of taxation without representation. (On the other hand, nobody is making them live there.) But what Democrats really want is two more Democrat senators, so retrocession is off the table for them.

• But speaking of taxation without representation… The default D.C. license plate bitches about it in uppercase: "END TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION". This came up in a recent City Journal podcast and there was a brief discussion of the best license plate motto from Ilya Shapiro.

  he other thing is, know, D.C.’s slogan, right, taxation without representation, which is on the license plates. Although I tested this, right, because of that New Hampshire “Live Free Or Die Case” from the 70s, you don’t have to accept any slogan. So when I moved to D.C. in 2004, as I mentioned, I said, I don’t want that slogan on my license plate. And so the clerk at the DMV was like, fine, I got to go into the back room. I’m like, okay, I’ll wait. And he comes back and I got a license plate. In fact, I’ll be right back with it. I can show it. I have it hanging here.

  Ilya has a vanity plate, shouting out to that classic Federalist Paper: "FED 51".

  But he slightly misstates the "LFOD case": Wooley v. Maynard said that New Hampshire couldn't compel car owners to display the motto, but removing or obscuring it was left as a DIY thing.

• Our very own socialist. At Granite Grok, Steve MacDonald notes a Democrat running against Chris Pappas for the US Senate seat being vacated by Jeanne Shaheen: Progressive Karisham Manzur Challenges Pappas for US Senate.

  New Hampshire’s Democrats, the ones who show up for primaries at least, have a thing for far-left nutjobs. They belong in Vermont, truth be told, where they have political “parties” to the left of the already far-left Democrats. They belong there, because some of them came here from there.

  And when Vermont sends one here to campaign, Bernie Sanders, for example, they love that. And maybe that’s the chance Karishma Manzur is hoping for. Despite the Dems’ dislike for primaries, she is challenging milquetoast Pajama Boy Chris “Norovirus” Pappas for the opportunity to warm the retiring Granny Shaheen’s US Senate seat.

  Karisham apparently wants to start at the top; I don't see any indication that she's been elected, or even been a candidate for, any public office, anywhere. She claims to be a "science writer", but can you find any of her science publications? I can't. (New Hampshire Bulletin has a couple tedious opinion articles she wrote back in 2024.) She has a substack, but the latest post there is from March.

  (I also found references to research papers on which she's listed as an author or co-author, apparently from her academic days going for her Ph.D.)

  But she has a slick campaign website, where you can read her horrible, utterly predictable, positions on the issues.

  Someone should tell her that "Defend First Amendment freedoms" is a very uncomfotable fit with "Overturn Citizens United." Yes, both positions appear on her site.

We have a raft of spicy reactions to recent developments. First up is Kevin D. Williamson who brings us the recipe for Tacos Kiev.

KDW regrettably confuses his culinary cultures by dragging in the Corleones, but I can imagine Putin telling his flunkies to "Leave the gun, take the cannoli. Also, the tacos."

George Will holds out some hope for an alternate path, and … hey, is that a fish TACO? Now it is the Old World’s turn to rescue the United States. (WaPo gifted link)

GFW holds out some hope:

Now it is the Old World’s turn to rescue the United States. It needs to be liberated from the chimera that it has no substantial stake in the outcome of high-intensity, state-on-state violence inflicted by a nuclear power obedient to a man who has actual beliefs: crackpot, but real, and menacing.

Jim Geraghty's headline (Now Is the Time for Trump to Get Tough with Putin) seems to think there's still some hope for that. But what follows seems pessimistic, to put it mildly:

Jim avoids food metaphors until… he recommends that Trump "Use the stick as well as the carrot." I'm not hopeful, but we'll see.

Noah Rothman looks at what "peace" on Putin's terms would involve: Putin’s ‘Peace’ Proposal Would Be a Prelude to More War.

The only food metaphor I can find in Noah's article is a glum one: going along with Putin's demands "would almost invariably serve as a springboard into Ukraine in a future, third effort by the Kremlin to swallow up its neighbor."

Gulp.

Also of note:

• Imagine me reading this article while saying "So what?" Eric Berger at Ars Technica seems to really want to rekindle that old "space race" spirit, against a different competitor: After recent tests, China appears likely to beat the United States back to the Moon.

  In recent weeks, the secretive Chinese space program has reported some significant milestones in developing its program to land astronauts on the lunar surface by the year 2030.

  On August 6, the China Manned Space Agency successfully tested a high-fidelity mockup of its 26-ton "Lanyue" lunar lander. The test, conducted outside of Beijing, used giant tethers to simulate lunar gravity as the vehicle fired main engines and fine control thrusters to land on a cratered surface and take off from there.

  He interviews Dean Cheng, "one of the most respected analysts on China, space policy, and the geopolitical implications of the new space competition." A snippet

  Ars: What would the geopolitical impact be if China beats the United States back to the Moon?

  Cheng: The geopolitical impact of the Chinese beating the US to the Moon (where we are returning) would be enormous.

  Ars: How so?

  Cheng: It means the end of American exceptionalism. One of the hallmarks of the post-1969 era was that only the United States had been able to land someone on the Moon (or any other celestial body). This was bound to end, but the constant American refrain of "We've put a man on the Moon, we can do anything" will certainly no longer resonate.

  Cheng makes the point that US space policy has undergone mood swings over the past years, while China's policy has been steady and consistent. True enough.