Pun Salad

So this guy is running for the US Senate in my state:

That's an animated GIF, and the F-words preceding "FIGHTER" are "FATHER" and "FARMER". And apparently he's hitching his wagon to President Trump's star. At least until the primary next year, probably.

I suppose that could work, but I can't help but point out that Trump lost the state in 2016, 2020, and 2024. (It was close, though.)

Dan's campaign website is here. Interestingly, there's no mention that he's a professor (and onetime dean) at the University Near Here's business school. He's a FARMER! See the barn?

There's an "Issues" section on his site's page, but it's pretty anodyne. Looking for his ideas on how to handle the imminent Social Security shortfall? Good luck.

At least for now, Dan is running against Scott Brown for the GOP nomination. Scott's campaign website is here. He doesn't have an "Issues" section, not even an inoffensive one. But there's a video:

Another big Trump fan, there. Nothing about Social Security, though.

But is Scott a fighter, like Dan? You betcha:

This campaign is about fighting for working families, protecting American strength, and putting New Hampshire first. With this kind of support behind us, we are ready to win.

— Scott P. Brown (@SenScottBrown) August 6, 2025

So Dan and Scott will be fighting, and (probably) next November, one of them will be going up against my current CongressCritter, Chris Pappas. Whose campaign website is here, and (guess what) he's "Grounded in Granite – A Fighter for New Hampshire". Also no "Issues" section.

But so much fighting!

My opponents are fighting for Trump’s endorsement. I’m fighting for Granite Staters. pic.twitter.com/rVALUnZdVM

— Chris Pappas (@ChrisPappasNH) August 6, 2025

I guess it must work in the focus groups.

Also of note:

• I don't even know who Myrna is… Oh wait. That NR editorialists advise: Don’t Abandon mRNA.

  Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced this week that HHS is terminating about $500 million in investments in developing mRNA vaccines.

  The technology instructs the body to produce a protein that is part of a virus, triggering an immune response. Famously — or, notoriously, as far as RFK Jr. is concerned — mRNA was used to develop Covid vaccines on a rapid basis during the pandemic.

  The editors politely disagree with Junior's disinvestment. The Ars Technica folks are less polite in their headline summary: RFK Jr. defends $500M cut for mRNA vaccines with pseudoscience gobbledygook.

  Kennedy is generally opposed to vaccines, but he is particularly hostile to mRNA-based vaccines. Since the remarkably successful debut of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic—which were developed and mass-produced with unprecedented speed—Kennedy has continually disparaged and spread misinformation about them.

  In the video on Tuesday, Kennedy continued that trend, erroneously saying that, "as the pandemic showed us, mRNA vaccines don't perform well against viruses that infect the upper respiratory tract." In reality, COVID-19 vaccines are estimated to have saved more than 3 million lives in the US in just the first two years of the pandemic and additionally prevented more than 18 million hospitalizations in the US in that time. Nearly all COVID-19 vaccines used in the US are mRNA-based.

  The article goes on to use words like "nonsensical", "muddle", and "egregiously false".

• What part of "interstate commerce" is puzzling you? Damon Root describes How protectionist wine and liquor laws violate the Constitution.

  The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down protectionist state wine and liquor laws on the grounds that they illegally discriminated against out-of-state wineries and out-of-state alcohol retailers. Yet earlier this week, a federal appellate court upheld an Indiana law that forbids out-of-state retailers from shipping wine directly to Indiana consumers.

  What's going on?

  What indeed? Damon looks at the decision and finds it wanting.

• Who am I to disagree? Veronique de Rugy takes apart an apologist for US sugar policy: Sweet Deals, Bitter Costs.

  When sugar lobbyist Rob Johansson published a defense of U.S. sugar policy in the Wall Street Journal, he offered a masterclass in protectionist spin. He was responding to Cato Institute scholar Colin Grabow’s clear-eyed explanation of how government barriers inflate sugar prices for American consumers. Johansson invokes food security, labor standards, and patriotic platitudes to justify a policy that exists primarily to enrich a handful of politically connected producers while imposing higher costs on everyone else.

  Start with the claim that the U.S. sugar program ensures supply stability. What it actually ensures is artificially high prices, courtesy of government-imposed marketing allotments and tariff and import quotas. These policies deliberately restrict both domestic output and imports. This isn’t a market; it’s a cartel created and policed by the federal government.

  It's a mess. A sweet one, but still.

Recently on the book blog:

Believe it or don't, I saw that Michael Ramirez cartoon only a few minutes after I read this Ars Technica article: Coding error blamed after parts of Constitution disappear from US website.

And (sure enough) the "disappeared" bits included "part of" Article I, Section 8. Also "the section on habeas corpus".

But I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

Also of note:

• Vlad, when you've lost Trump… George Will notes that The epically blundering Putin is alienating even Trump. (WaPo gifted link)

  President Donald Trump has announced himself “disappointed.” He had such high hopes for Vladimir Putin.

  Putin’s response to Trump’s 50-day ultimatum — to agree to “a deal” by Sept. 3 or face severe economic consequences — was intensified attacks on Ukraine’s population centers. Trump’s subsequent 10-day ultimatum, expiring Friday, seems to have been equally unavailing. Putin aims to get not to negotiations but to Kyiv, because only extinguishing Ukraine’s nationhood can redeem his epochal blunder.

  Although Putin has been certified a “genius” (by Trump; Putin has not reciprocated), not since Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union 84 summers ago has a military undertaking been as comprehensively counterproductive for its initiator as Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

  As GFW notes, Trump's "deadline" expires tomorrow, and here's hoping it won't be another TACO Friday.

• A big dose of reality. Kevin D. Williamson is (as usual) out of patience with the folks trying to resuscitate a long-dead horse: Moving Beyond the Two-State Solution.

  About two years ago, I had a conversation with a gentleman who has served at the highest levels of the U.S. defense and intelligence apparatus. He spoke of the necessity of a continued U.S. commitment to the so-called two-state solution in Israel and the Palestinian territories—“so-called,” I write, because there are not two states, and because there are not going to be two states, and because it is not a solution. (Other than that … ) I asked him what seemed and seems to me to be the obvious question: How do we expect to have two states when the undeniable and repeatedly demonstrated fact of the matter is that Palestinian sovereignty and Israeli security are incompatible?

  “We can’t let that be the case,” he non-answered. “There is no alternative.”

  The two-state solution calls to mind many similar regional phantoms, the will-o’-the-wisps of Middle Eastern discourse, e.g., a nuclear deal that the Iranians will honor. Why have an Iranian nuclear deal? Because the alternative is not having an Iranian nuclear deal, which apparently is unthinkable. (Or was, until somebody thought of something better.) Why commit ourselves to a two-state solution for the Palestinians? Because we must, because TINA says so. You know TINA: “There Is No Alternative,” a declaration that seems to be invested with magical powers in the minds of people who cannot accept that some problems are practically irresolvable. 

  But there is an alternative, the one nobody likes but the one we are likely to have for a long time: the status quo.

  KDW's Dispatch article is a "counterpoint" to John Aziz's "point" article: Palestinian Statehood Is the Only Answer. I find (unsurprisingly) KDW to be more attached to reality, but (as I know I don't need to tell you) see what you think.

• "The answer may surprise you." Yes, that's the subhed on David R. Henderson's EconLog post: Who Got the Biggest Percentage Tax Cuts?

  In so much of the discussion of tax cuts, whether of the recent one or previous tax cuts, we hear that the highest-income people got the biggest tax cuts. Of course, they did. They pay a disproportionately high percent of overall federal taxes. So it shouldn’t be surprising that they get the biggest tax cuts in absolute terms.

  But that doesn’t mean that the highest-income people got the highest percentage tax cut. Reporters have generally not done a good job of making that point.

  For the answer, David turns to a recent WSJ article, which reveals (ta da!): ​Here Are the Winners From Trump’s Tax Law (WSJ gifted link)

  And in those percentage terms:

  The average change in federal taxes paid in 2026, due to the new tax law will be:

  -15.1% for the lowest quintile

  -14.9% for the second quintile

  -12.6% for the middle quintile

  -11.1% for the fourth quintile

  -9.2% for the 80-90 percentile

  -9.5% for the 90-95 percentile

  -11.2% for the 95-99 percentile

  -7.1% for the top 1%.

  Which causes me to embed this silly (but catchy) (and also relevant) SNL snippet:

NHJournal's Damien Fisher shows that some Nashua (NH) pols seem to lack LFOD understanding: Free Speech Advocates Push Back on Nashua Display Ban. I've swiped the photo illustration from his article, at your right. The caption is…

"Apparently". Misspelling aside, I think Damien could have safely omitted that word.

But Derek T (Thibeault) is not the sole asshat among the aldermen:

Damien quotes from a letter sent to Nashua's Personnel and Administrative Affairs Committee from the New England First Amendment Coalition, which you can read here; it also includes the text of the proposed, clearly unconstitutional, ordinance.

Laurie Ortolano, by the way, is an occasional contributor to Granite Grok, and her author page is here.

Also of note:

• Of course, balls don't "drop" in space. But Alexander William Salter uses that metaphor anyway: Trump’s first-term space policy was great, but the White House is dropping the ball.

  The first Trump administration was the best for space policy in decades. From the creation of the Space Force to pathbreaking international agreements such as the Artemis Accords to stronger protections for outer space property rights, America reasserted itself as the world’s premier space power. None of this would have been possible without a team of space policy experts and political leaders in key roles.

  But this time is different. Many important space policy and leadership positions remain vacant. Qualified personnel have been nominated, but the Senate has yet to act. Nor has President Trump chosen to force the issue.

  Reading between the lines, apparently at least some of the ball-dropping is fallout from the Trump-Musk split. Sad!

  One obvious problem is the continuing existence of Artemis/SLS.

• "Hey, BLS! Working hard, or hardly working?" Dominic Pino has an explainer about job-counting: Why Counting Jobs Is Really, Really Hard.

  On its face, it sounds like the Bureau of Labor Statistics has an easy task: Just count the jobs. A lot of people have jobs, some people don’t, they’re all out there, just count them up.

  Of course, it can’t literally go and count every person each month, so it uses statistical methods to survey employees and employers. But people have been doing surveys forever. Just send them out and run it through a computer and write the report. Easy.

  No. Not at all. Not even close.

  Click over for the gory details. But I found this detail telling:

  The original estimate for the number of jobs in the month of June was 159,724,000. Then, after the revision with better data, it was 159,466,000. That’s a 0.161 percent correction, based on higher-quality information that didn’t exist at the time of the original estimate.

  Don't worry, once Trump gets his new BLS commissioner, the numbers will be perfectly accurate, and will come festooned with rainbows, unicorns, and Hello Kitty stickers.

• Or not. Assuming the Trumpification of future BLS press releases, what to use instead? Jeff Maurer sketches out Five Economic Metrics to Track Now That BLS Data is Compromised. Let's go with… yeah, this one:

  3. Time spent behind unbelievably old ladies searching for exact change in small, floral change purses

  In a normal week, a typical American spends 4-6 hours in line behind feeble nonagenarians rummaging through tiny, flower-covered change purses as they attempt to pay for miniscule transactions with exact change. Economists sometimes count the number of people lined up behind these antediluvian crones and multiply that by the number of times in an hour that they hear someone mutter “Come the fuck on, Betty White” to compile a number they call “the granny grocery store metric”.

  When times are tough, Americans can spend 10, 12, even 15 hours a week as dust-covered biddies who look like they probably remember the Hapsburg Empire search for the precise amount of money to buy a book of matches, or a single Tic-Tac. This happens because senior citizens worry that they might not be able to make ends meet if they don’t bring an entire fucking Albertsons to a stand-still while they rummage for a ha’penny that Grover Cleveland tossed from a carriage in 1885. When the economy is hot, these four-foot-tall Wives Of Yoda might produce paper money, or even a bank card that they have no clue how to use. But there’s a well-proven inverse relationship between the time that World War I surplus grannies spend literally blocking commerce and overall economic health.

  God bless the old folks, but yeah: when you see the van from the local assisted living facility pulled up outside the supermarket, you might want to hit the self-checkout scanners.

James Freeman finds a pony in the BLS stats: Trump’s Best Jobs Number. (WSJ gifted link)

Of course, there's still a long way to go.

Also of note:

• I suppose actual seppuku would be too much. Jonathan Turley notes the lights going out next month at 401 9th Street, NW, Washington DC: After Years of Refusing Reforms, the CPB Accepts Death Over Political Dishonor. Skipping to the bottom line:

  Conversely, CPB is laying off its entire staff in a righteous, indignant huff. None of these people needed to lose their jobs if their leadership served their organization by listening to views beyond their own insular circle of enablers. The demise of the CPB now stands as the most impressive and unnecessary act of self-termination since the appearance of Judean People’s Front Crack Suicide Squad:

  "That showed 'em, huh?"

• It's not just something you do to a flat tire. Kevin D. Williamson asks: Remember Inflation? And brings his usual brutal honesty to bear:

  Trump has inflated many things over the years—his assets on bank statements, his romantic résumé, his book sales—and inflation is the sort of thing that must come naturally to such a gasbag. Prices are already creeping up, with firms such as Adidas, Procter & Gamble, and Stanley Black & Decker announcing tariff-driven price increases. Groceries aren’t getting any cheaper, and neither is housing, the main driver of the late-summer uptick. But prices are getting higher across the marketplace, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics runs the numbers, finding higher prices for “household furnishings and operations, medical care, recreation, apparel, and personal care.” The few bright spots include used cars and airfares, which may indicate that people are simply putting off car purchases and skipping summer vacations under economic pressure.

  Tariffs are a tax—let me emphasize here that Republicans’ key achievement in the Trump years has been the unconstitutional enactment of a national sales tax by the unilateral directive of president, without congressional authorization—and, as a tax, a big tariff should be anti-inflationary: The more money you pay in taxes, the less money you have to spend on cars and vacations and such.

  But tariffs are an especially dumb and destructive kind of tax in that they do not produce a great deal of revenue in proportion to the economic distortion they introduce. Given that the tariffs are being implemented in parallel with what Republicans insist is “the largest tax cut in American history”—the cut-by-not-raising measure in their poorly conceived and idiotically named tax-and-spending bill—whatever counter-inflationary effect the tariffs might have had is likely to be overwhelmed by the inflationary effects of large cuts to other taxes, even if the extension of the 2017 cuts was far from unexpected. And here it is probably worth pointing out that Republicans are cutting taxes while running a deficit that is projected to be the third largest in American history.

  I suppose it's time to liquidate my investments and buy … gold?

Recently on the book blog:

Commercial air travel is pretty safe. But Eric Boehm reminds us it could be safer: The Federal Aviation Administration should not run air traffic control.

If you prefer words, Jeff Jacoby has plenty: Canada fixed its air traffic control decades ago. Why can't America?

As I said, commercial air travel is pretty safe. But so was the Space Shuttle. Out of 135 launches, it managed to not kill its entire crew 133 times.

Also of note:

• The Presidency is just his side hustle. Matt Welch nails the Grifter-in-Chief: Trump is openly using the presidency to enrich the Trump brand.

  The president of the United States on Tuesday held a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Balmedie, Scotland, to mark the opening of the new Trump International Golf Links, owned by his family (at least until he exits the White House), and designed by his son Eric.

  In his cheery promotional remarks, Donald Trump thanked the media ("today they're not fake news, they're wonderful news"), gave a shout-out to his daughter-in-law ("Lara, I want to thank you, the head of the Republican Party"), and praised various dignitaries on hand.

  "I want to thank, by the way, the prime minister, who was here last night, and who was really very gracious; loves the place," he said, referencing the United Kingdom's Keir Starmer, who also joined Trump at another of his Scottish golf properties before hopping on Air Force One with the Trump clan for a sneak peek at Balmedie. "This will," the commander in chief predicted, "be a tremendously successful place."

  Yeah, I know: he's not Kamala. But that is beginning to wear a little thin.

• Spoiler: Betteridge's Law of Headlines applies. Allysia Finley in the WSJ: Trump Claims the Jobs Report Was Rigged. Was It? (WSJ gifted link) She goes for the cliché, unfortunately:

  Well, that was productive—not. President Trump on Friday fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after the July jobs report showed that hiring stalled this spring amid his tariff blitz and deportation crackdown. Shooting the messenger won’t help him or the economy.

  The BLS estimates a mere 73,000 jobs were added last month, almost all in healthcare and social assistance. It also revised down gains for May and June by a combined 258,000, to a total of 33,000 new jobs, one of the biggest downward revisions in years.

  Mr. Trump sniffs a deep-state conspiracy. “Today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,” the president huffed on Truth Social. Where’s the evidence? There is none.

  No evidence? Hey, Trump has all the evidence he needs:

  

  Yup, "Biden Appointee". Case closed!

  That's from Nate Silver whose headline may be too optimistic: Trump's jobs data denialism won't fool anyone. He gets into the statistical weeds, demonstrating there's nothing to see here "RIGGED"-wise.

  I’m not sure exactly where firing the BLS commissioner ranks on the list of Trump-related outrages. Even if Congress does its job and McEntarfer is replaced with another competent successor, this could have a chilling effect on BLS and other government agencies to operate independently.

  It’s also not surprising given Trump’s previous incursions on the independence of the Federal Reserve and other government agencies. This is the guy who sued a pollster for publishing results he didn’t like.

  Unlike in some other instances, though, I don’t see how there’s any real political gain for Trump in yet again undermining longstanding norms and institutions.

  NPR reminds us of the good old days: 'I Could ... Shoot Somebody, And I Wouldn't Lose Any Voters'

Our Eye Candy du Jour is from Sabine Hossenfelder, presenting The 10 Biggest Physics Paradoxes and Problems.

She's an actual physicist, so you can take her befuddlement to the bank.

[Headline reference? I'm pretty sure it's here.]

Also of note:

• Lesson unlearned? The WSJ editorialists warn us of the Return of the Housing Monsters. (WSJ gifted link)

  America in the 21st century sometimes seems destined to repeat all of the mistakes of the 20th. The latest is President Trump’s desire to release Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from government captivity—along with a government guarantee. Didn’t we learn this was a bad idea the first time?

  The President teased on social media recently that “I am working on TAKING THESE AMAZING COMPANIES PUBLIC,” referring to Fannie and Freddie. “I want to be clear, the U.S. Government will keep its implicit GUARANTEES, and I will stay strong in my position on overseeing them as President.” Their share prices surged.

  Investors are elated that Mr. Trump plans to re-privatize these firms—especially because he has now made their government backstop explicit. The President may think the feds can keep the housing monsters on a regulatory leash, but the political and financial incentives mean they will invariably revert to their reckless ways.

  Back in 2008, I quoted Iowahawk's take:

  It's useful to think of our current economic situation as a spirited game of nude Twister, with Fannie Mae as an extremely fat drunk chick.

  Reader, in the intervening 17 years, neither Fannie nor Freddie have gotten any younger, thinner, wiser, or less fond of cheap tequila.

• "Shooting the messenger" is probably overused. So I won't say that, and neither does Megan McArdle. She simply points out: Firing the statistician won’t change the job numbers. (WaPo gifted link)

  Here’s a life hack for readers who are trying to lose weight and are discouraged by the numbers on the scale: Take a hammer to the thing. If that seems too destructive, donate it to the Salvation Army and, if you must keep a scale in the house, buy a new model that tops out at 150 pounds.

  The secret behind this hack is psychology. It’s hard to eat less than your body wants, which is why people who try to lose weight often fail and feel miserable. But if no working scale is available, you can’t fail: Eat as much as you like; the numbers will never climb.

  Sound crazy? It is. But the president has just used a version of this trick to deal with a sagging American jobs market.

  Specifically: Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

  Maybe the next BLS commissioner will be Chico Marx: "Well, who you gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?" .

• 

  Mister, we could use a man like… Matthew Continetti remembers How P.J. O’Rourke Skewered the Swamp. Specifically, in his classic Parliament of Whores. (Amazon link at your right.)

  We need more of O’Rourke’s philosophy, too. In his final decade the “Republican Party Reptile” found himself, like a lot of people, politically homeless. Donald Trump, MAGA populism, and economic nationalism didn’t appeal to him. Bernie Sanders, socialism, and wokeism didn’t either.

  O’Rourke remained an advocate for freedom:

  Conservatism is, at least in its American form, a philosophy that relies upon personal responsibility and promotes private liberty. It is an ideology of individuals. Everyone with any sense and experience in life would rather take his fellows one by one than in a crowd. Crowds are noisy, unreasonable, and impatient. They can trample you easier than a single person can. And a crowd will never buy you lunch.

  This emphasis on dignity, freedom, and responsibility may seem archaic to the critics of so-called “Zombie Reaganism.” But it is fundamental to humane conservative politics. An American conservatism that has no place for freedom neither inspires nor connects to the wellsprings of the American political tradition: constitutional rule of law and a limited government that makes room for family, church, civil society, and individual choice.

  Matthew didn't mention Peej's probably most famous quote:

  Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

  Ain't it the truth?

If you prefer words, Don Boudreaux supplies them in a tsk-tsk LTE to the WSJ: Trump's Tariffs Are Paid Overwhelmingly By Americans.

If you need it, here's a gifted link to the editorial with the language Don proposes fixing.

Also of note:

• Oh, Happy Day. There's plenty of gloating among the libertarian/conservative sites, but let's not wallow, Ars Technica has the sads: RIP Corporation for Public Broadcasting: 1967–2026.

  Despite the protests of millions of Americans, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced it will be winding down its operations after the White House deemed NPR and PBS a "grift" and pushed for a Senate vote that eliminated its entire budget.

  The vote rescinded $1.1 billion that Congress had allocated to CPB to fund public broadcasting for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. In a press release, CPB explained that the cuts "excluded funding for CPB for the first time in more than five decades." CPB president and CEO Patricia Harrison said the corporation had no choice but to prepare to shut down.

  "Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations," Harrison said.

  Concerned Americans also rushed to donate to NPR and PBS stations to confront the funding cuts, The New York Times reported. But those donations, estimated at around $20 million, ultimately amounted to too little, too late to cover the funding that CPB lost.

  Translation of that last paragraph into reality: "Concerned Americans" turned out to be not Concerned enough.

• Not to worry, Uncle Stupid still knows how to waste money. Rand Simberg describes Why And How To End SLS Now.

  "SLS" is NASA's "Space Launch System". Rand shares three links:

  • His slick 56-page report for the Reason Foundation: Why commercial space should lead the U.S. return to the moon;
  • Robert Zimmerman's take: The word that best describes our present NASA lunar program is “delusional.”
  • A summary of Rand's report at the "New Space Economy" site.

  Zimmerman has the most withering commentary. Quoting from that:

  Increasingly it appears everyone in Congress, the White House, and NASA, as well as our bankrupt mainstream press, has become utterly divorced from reality in talking about NASA’s Artemis lunar program. The claims are always absurd and never deal with the hard facts on the ground. Instead, it is always “Americans are piorneers! We are great at building things! We are going to beat China to the Moon!”

  An interview of interim NASA administration (and Transportation secretary) Sean Duffy yesterday on the Sean Hannity Show made all these delusions very clear. First Hannity introduced Duffy by stating with bald-faced ignorance that “NASA has a brand-new program. It is called Artemis that aims to get astronauts back on the Moon in the next couple of years.”

  I emphasize “brand-new” because anyone who has done even two seconds of research on the web will know that Artemis has existed now for more than a decade. Hannity illustrates his incompetence right off the bat.

  I've been a space fan for a long time. I watched the Sputnik I upper stage fly over the Oakland, Iowa football field back in 1957. Didn't like the commies even back then, but… pretty cool!

  But it would be nice if US space exploration could be less "delusional".

• I resemble this remark. Jay Nordlinger may be picking up my psychic emanations: A President in Every Pot, &c.

  President Donald Trump is a busy beaver. There are many things a president must do, as a matter of course. But this one also wants the Cleveland Guardians to become the “Cleveland Indians” again. And the Washington Commanders to become the “Washington Redskins” again. And Coca-Cola to use cane sugar instead of whatever it is the company uses. Etc. Trump is very active on these fronts.

  I share his opinion, in some of these cases. (Not sure about “Redskins.”) But, you know? A president ought not to involve himself in every nook and cranny of American life. He is not a national boss or nanny. There should be a private sphere, an apolitical sphere, a non-governmental sphere.

  Conservatives taught me this long ago. They were right, I believe (as about virtually everything.) I cannot unlearn what I learned, and accepted, years ago. That is a big reason I’m out of step with the regnant Right today.

  Yeah, me too.

• Mixed metaphor in Aisle 2. At Reason, Tosin Akintola notes that our fair state is failing to live up to our LFOD motto: New Hampshire’s new booze law will hamstring the state's brewpubs.

  The rationale behind New Hampshire's new brewpub regulation is more headache-inducing than the beer.

  On Friday, New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) signed House Bill 242 into law. The bill, sponsored by state Rep. John Hunt (R–Rindge), will take effect in August and limits brewpubs in the state to self-distributing their beer to only one additional restaurant or business outside their premises. The bill is a follow-up to H.B. 1380, also sponsored by Hunt in 2024, which limited the amount of beer or cider a brewpub could sell to 2,500 barrels a year and permitted licensed brewpub owners to obtain licenses to sell their product on their premises in bars and at off-premise locations like grocery stores, so long as they didn't have a manufacturing license.

  If the law sounds like it will keep brewpubs small, that's because it's intended to do so. "This is what we call a very inside baseball bill," Hunt told the New Hampshire Bulletin.

  "Inside baseball" means (I think it's fair to say) that insiders wanted to make sure they wouldn't have to deal with upstart competition.

Over a couple weeks of blogging hiatus, I totally missed commenting on the irony of people who claim to be concerned about American "inequality", showering hatred on "the 1%", also getting steamed about CBS's decision to cancel Stephen Colbert's The Late Show.

Um. Colbert's net worth is reported to be around $75 million, with a yearly salary of $15 million.

According to Forbes, Colbert's net worth puts him solidly in the 1%. Ditto for his yearly salary, according to Investopedia.

So you might think the egalitarians would be cheering at this minor decrease in the Gini coefficient! But no.

And now, American outrage has apparently moved on from Colbert to Sydney Sweeney. Who's apparently gonna be starring in a remake of Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS or something.

But never mind that. What I'd really like to lead off with today is something that's been bugging me for years, and I may have alluded to it now and again, but not as eloquently as Jeff Jacoby did recently: The problem with 'Are you proud to be an American?'. After looking at (among other things) Gallup's polling on that very question:

What Jeff doesn't mention is the small problem alluded to by our Amazon Product du Jour, up there on your right: As someone who has been Catholic-adjacent for decades, I can tell you: pride is a sin. And not one of the minor ones: it's a deadly sin, right up there with Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, and Envy!

So if Gallup, or anyone, asks if you're proud to be an American, please feel free to explain this to them.

Also of note:

• Something I won't be doing. The latest print issue of Reason has an article by Bekah Congdon, who discusses her recent travels: Losing My Religion and Finding My Humanity on a Peruvian Ayahuasca Retreat. And it includes the following experience, after a couple doses of the "viscous substance" which is "dark brown and opaque and tastes like a tragic combination of Vegemite and prune juice, with an earthy aftertaste that lingers."

  Another 30 minutes later, our main facilitator, Rosie, checked on me. I reported feeling miserable but unable to vomit. Rosie said something I couldn't hear through the fog of my own discomfort. When I looked at her indignantly, she simply said, "Bekah: Focus."

  With this instruction, I picked up my bucket, placed it in front of me, and got on all fours. Staring into the bucket, I commanded myself: "Puke." Whether it was my instruction that did it or just the effect of jostling myself around, I did begin to vomit, immediately and a lot. It was intense, but it passed quickly enough. The nausea gave way not simply to the expected after-puking relief but to such a feeling of comfort and peace that I lay back down and reveled for a while in gratitude that I no longer felt ill.

  There's something I won't be putting on my bucket list: barfing into a bucket in Peru.

• 

  Not even Ketanji Brown Jackson thought it meant that. In a recent article in print-National Review, Bryan A. Garner shares some anecdotes about his friend and co-author Antonin Scalia: ‘Nobody Ever Thought It Meant That’. (NR gifted link)

  In my kitchen in January 2013, I suggested to [Scalia] that attacking something called the living Constitution was a mistake: “Find another name for it,” I said.

  “But everyone calls it the living Constitution.”

  “You’re losing the debate in the minds of the American people. They don’t want the opposite of a living Constitution.”

  “Are you saying I’ve made a mistake over the past 30 years by using the other side’s terminology?”

  “I think so. If you instead asked the American people whether they’d rather have a stable Constitution or a highly volatile one that morphs without amending it, what would they say?”

  “Stable, no doubt,” he said. “I can’t believe I’ve never thought of this before.”

  That evening, Scalia and I made a presentation to a large audience at Southern Methodist University. Midway through our talk, he said: “I used to say that the Constitution is not a living document. It’s dead, dead, dead. But I’ve gotten better. I no longer say that. The truth is that the Constitution is not one that morphs. It’s an enduring Constitution, not a changing Constitution.” I was keenly aware of his words, and I made a note of them the next morning.

  I encourage you to click through to find out how the Dallas Morning News misreported that speech.

  I was tempted to check out the book Scalia and Garner wrote from the Portsmouth (NH) Public Library, but alas, it was more of a reference work for lawyers. But… Amazon link at your right!

• I'd say: "Mom". Mom decides. But that's me. Ryne Weiss has an article that investigates how people can be led into free-speech enlightenment: ‘Who decides?’: The question that shatters the illusion of censorship as safety. And it leads off with this quote from Christopher Hitchens, who made it at University of Toronto’s Hart House Debating Club.

  Did you hear any speaker in opposition to this motion, eloquent as one of them was, to whom you would delegate the task of deciding for you what you could read? Do you know anyone? Hands up. Do you know anyone to whom you would give this job? Does anyone have a nominee? You mean there’s no one in Canada good enough to decide what I can read or hear? I had no idea.

  But in the US? Nina Jankowicz maybe?

• You could die of a misprint, or… Dave Barry brings the sad news of his demise: Death by AI.

  I found out about my death the way everybody finds out everything: from Google.

  What happened was, I Googled my name ("Dave Barry") and what popped up was something called “Google AI Overview.” This is a summary of the search results created by Artificial Intelligence, the revolutionary world-changing computer tool that has made it possible for college students to cheat more efficiently than ever before.

  Dave's battle with Google's AI is hilarious.

  I sympathize, sort of. I share a name with a semi-famous actor. He is, at last report, still alive and well, and so am I.

Planning on a Friday return to daily blogging, but until then a brief snippet from Jeff Maurer's wondering Is Epstein Finally the Thing?.

Yeah, it wasn't exactly Alpo and belly rubs for those poor pups, Jeff. But other than that, I know what you mean.

Recently on the book blog:

Isn't it pretty to think so?

— Paul Sand (@punsalad) July 21, 2025

And now back to our regularly scheduled non-programming…

Recently on the movie blog: