Pun Salad

Proverbs 29:27 might be construed as hate speech in these sensitive times:

The righteous detest the dishonest; the wicked detest the upright.

… and those in the vast middle ground just hope to be left alone.

• Kevin D. Williamson has had Enough with the ‘Presidential’.

  “Presidential” is an essentially reflexive adjective, i.e., that which is “presidential” is related to the presidency. If “presidential” is meant to describe a way of comporting oneself in public, then we surely must consider that there is not really all that much that our presidents have in common that they do not have in common with other reasonably responsible human beings. They know when to joke and when to be serious, what occasions call for what degree of formality, etc.

  KDW (1) reminds us of the, uh, colorfully diverse personalities of past chief executives; (2) likes Ike; (3) would prefer that "presidential" not come to mean "omnipresent, purporting to be omnipotent or near to it, hysterical, histrionic, messianic"—i.e., like the current guy, or the one immediately past.

• Veronique de Rugy, a name I probably enjoy typing too much, has a good idea for Trump: Trump Should Expand Audits of Programs That Waste Taxpayers' Funds.

  Cutting regulations is great, but it's just one small part of the battle. The large number of improper payments by government agencies is another area that could use the president's attention, with the worst culprit being the Medicare fee-for-service system. As I have written in the past, the Government Accountability Office estimates that the government makes roughly $137 billion in improper payments per year, a third of which is related to Medicare alone.

  The people at the other end of the $137 billion firehose are obviously interested in keeping the flow going, and they've had some success in that. But this is one area where "waste, fraud, and abuse" could actually be trimmed with some effort by the Executive. Even better, that's the sort of thing the Constitution actually empowers the Executive Branch to do. So, Donald?

• I think the Sessions-is-a-Russian-spy thing is, objectively, a nothingburger. But it's interesting how the MSM shapes and, as necessary, reshapes its narrative to fit their goals. For example, Patterico discovers DEVASTATING PROOF OF MEDIA BIAS: New York Times Airbrushes Away Democrat’s Embarrassing False Claim Without a Trace. That Democrat would be Senator Claire McCaskill, who claimed (in a 7:06am tweet yesterday) that she had "No call or meeting w/Russian ambassador. Ever."

  … Which claim was dutifully reported in a subsequent NYT story.

  … Which claim also was quickly debunked by numerous sources. Of course, she had met with the Russian ambassador.

  … And around 5:18pm, the NYT quietly memory-holed the whole embarrassing thing from its story.

  Comments Patterico:

  I’m going to say that again, because it’s important. If the New York Times were interested in simply reporting newsworthy material, they would have left in McCaskill’s claim, and reported that she was wrong.
  
  But, you see, they’re not interested in simply reporting newsworthy material. They have an agenda. This didn’t fit their agenda. So they disappeared it. Without a trace. Without a hint that it had ever been there.

  As Mr. Marvin Gaye observed: "Believe half of what you see, Son, and none of what you read in the New York Times."

• I remember back in the day when people touted the benefits of race-based college admissions, usually euphemized as "diversity". The students will be "exposed to different viewpoints". Yay!

  Little did they suspect that the differently-viewpointed students might not exactly welcome the effort involved in said exposure. For example at Scripps College: White Students Should Pay Minorities for ‘Emotional Labor’

  Scripps College, a prestigious women’s school outside Los Angeles, is promoting the idea that non-white students must be given monetary compensation for the “emotional labor” of having to deal with so-called microaggressions.
  
  Campus resident assistants at the school are hanging up two sets of posters titled “Emotional Labor 101”: one for whites, and another for minorities, whom the posters dub as “victims of emotional labor.”

  The poster images are at the link, and they are kind of a hoot. Unless you start musing on the educational quality at Scripps (tuition $50,766.00/year), in which case you might get a tad depressed. And I bet you won't be compensated for that emotional labor.