Pun Salad

News:

• I voted in our state's non-Presidential primary yesterday, and everyone I voted for won! That may be a first. Perhaps also a last.
• Didn't watch the debate, (see headline and our Eye Candy du Jour). But everyone seems to agree that Trump lost.
• The questions on Jeopardy! seem harder this year.
• I'm pretty sure I had never seen the episode of The Big Bang Theory I watched last night: ("The Skywalker Incursion", pretty funny.)
• I know it's September 11, but I have nothing new to say about that.

• I've been pretty hard on Kamala lately. But, as Kevin D. Williamson notes, the alternative is A Would-Be Tyrant and His Willing Accomplices.

  There are two aspects of Donald Trump’s character that are important to understand in September 2024: First, that he is a lunatic; second, that he is a coward. 

  Trump’s personal cowardice is, of course, legendary. His campaign has worked very hard to find something disqualifying in Minnesota Gov. Tim Waltz’s 24-year military career, and it has been nauseating to watch Marine veteran J. D. Vance play the attack dog (think yappy little dachshund) on that front, acting on behalf of a man whose father bought him a phony diagnosis of bone spurs (which miraculously healed without treatment!) to keep him out of military service when his country came calling during the Vietnam era.

  Trump is manifestly afraid of all sorts of things: germs (handshakes are “barbaric,” he once whined), birds, women who are not on his payroll, etc. But he also is afraid to do his own lunatic dirty work.

  Trump has recently intensified his habit of reposting Truth Social content of a barking-mad nature—calling for military tribunals to hear cases against Liz Cheney and Barack Obama, sedition charges against members of the January 6 committee, things of that nature. He reposts QAnon content, vague (and not-so-vague) threats to use violence against his political opponents. That these are reposts on his little-used narcissistic social-media platform rather than things he says himself in public is a way of avoiding direct accountability for this lunacy. Low-bottom sycophants and cowards such as Sen. Ted Cruz and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson find it easier to blow off questions about Trump’s reposts on an obscure digital outlet than questions about the lunatic things that come out of the man’s own mouth or phone.

  But those things are bonkers, too.

  There's more, much more. As always, I encourage you to subscribe.

  For the record, grep tells me I've referred to Trump as "Bone Spurs" 62 times since 2018. (And Biden as "Wheezy" 167 times.) Juvenile, but …

• Not that we're letting Kamala go unscathed. Jack Salmon at Reason says she's large, she contains multitudes: Kamala Harris Pledges To Soak the Wealthy—But Her Policies Have Enriched Them.

  As the presidential race enters its final weeks, Vice President Kamala Harris is positioning herself as the champion of middle-class America, vowing to finally make the wealthy pay their fair share. Yet a closer look at her record over the past four years reveals a stark contrast between her rhetoric and reality. Far from soaking the rich, Harris' policies have funneled resources to the wealthy and corporations while burdening middle-class taxpayers.

  Corporate subsidies have exploded under the Biden-Harris administration. In 2021, the 10-year budget allocation for corporate subsidies was $1.2 trillion. Three years later, it has now surpassed $2 trillion.

  The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act included $54 billion in corporate subsidies—Intel alone received almost $20 billion in grants and loans through the CHIPS Act. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) uncapped a slew of energy subsidies, massively expanding energy production and investment tax credits, and according to the Brookings Institution, will cost an estimated $780 billion, just in corporate welfare, by 2031.

  The beneficiaries of this largesse are extremely concentrated. Three-quarters of the benefits of the IRA are shared by just 15 large corporations, seven of which are foreign. Wind turbine manufacturers like General Electric, Vestas, and Siemens/Gamesa—who collectively produce 79 percent of all turbines—are among the biggest winners. These companies also have a presence on the board of the wind energy lobby, the American Clean Power Association.

  Kamala recently visited our fair state to extol small business and describe all the taxpayer largesse that she would drop upon them.

  And then later excoriate the more successful ones as price-gougers, shrinkflationists, greedheads,…

• Turnabout may be fair play, but it's often not a good idea. Jacob Mchangama has Reflections on Right-Wing Cancel Culture.

  “The Left started it.”

  That was the common retort from right-wing X accounts like Libs of TikTok and their supporters, who attempted and often succeeded at getting people fired for making tasteless social media posts about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump back in July. 

  Most of their victims weren’t public figures but regular Americans like Home Depot employees, firefighters, chefs, and school counselors. This was fine and good, many argued, because it constituted sweet revenge for cancel culture excesses driven by the Left. At The American Spectator, Nate Hochman claimed that the only way to get the Left to change is to make them “understand, at a visceral level, the penalties for the system that they themselves constructed—so much so, in fact, that they are no longer interested in perpetuating it.”

  But the idea that the Left invented cancel culture is a poor and convenient excuse for satisfying the intolerant impulses that have tempted all humans throughout history regardless of political orientation. Using similarly flawed logic, Catholic persecution of paganism was justified since emperor Nero “started it.” Protestants would be entitled to persecute Catholics, as Protestant states frequently did, because the Church excommunicated Luther, banned his books, and punished heretics. We would also have to reevaluate the censorship and persecution in socialist and communist states. After all, Marx, Lenin, and Stalin were all subject to harsh censorship from various political and religious factions of the “bourgeoisie” before the establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat turned the censored into censors.

  Just don't try to wreck peoples' lives just because they have some oddball, even odious, opinions.

• Not me, but I get it. Kat Rosenfield observes We Are All ‘Walz’s for Trump’.

  As we bate our collective breath for an October surprise, the American electorate is celebrating an even more beloved political tradition. Ladies and gents, this is Backstabbing September, that magical month when the most disgruntled members of a candidate’s extended family take to the airwaves, the papers, social media platforms—to let the public know that their politically ambitious relative is a monster and utterly unfit for office.

  Last week’s headline betrayal came courtesy of a group of Tim Walz’s Midwestern relatives, who posed for a photo announcing their support for Donald Trump, complete with a giant “TAKE AMERICA BACK” banner and matching MAGA aesthetic t-shirts that read NEBRASKA WALZ’S FOR TRUMP. In addition to triggering a meltdown among copy editors everywhere (Pro tip: The plural of “Walz” is “Walzes”), the photograph was met with outrage from Tim’s more loyal relatives: His sister said she didn’t recognize the people in it, and his mother identified them as distant cousins.

  But unfortunately for Tim, this was not the first dissenting Walz to throw a wrench in the works of his vice-presidential aspirations. The week before the faithless Nebraskans made their social media debut, Tim’s brother, Jeff, wrote a Facebook post publicly declaring his opposition to Tim’s ideology.

  Nobody has been enjoying this spectacle more than Donald Trump, who thanked Jeff on Truth Social, writing: “I look forward to meeting you soon!” But Trump is far from safe when it comes to backstabbing relatives. He’s got Mary Trump, the grudge-holding niece whose loathing for her Uncle Donald is so intense that she’s published three books about it in four years. (Her new memoir, Who Could Ever Love You, is out today.) And then there’s her brother, Fred Trump III, who hopped aboard the Trumps Against Trump train this summer with his own less-than-complimentary memoir about the family. Subtitle: “The Trumps and How We Got This Way.”

  Fortunately, all my relatives make an honest living.

Recently on the book blog:

I very seldom post stuff to Facebook. But I found this kinda irresistible:

Need a headline reference? Here you go.

Also of note:

• The bull variety, I think. Jeff Maurer does his duty: Oh, Shit -- Kamala Posted Some Policies! And I Bit the Bullet and Read Them..

  To this point, the Harris campaign has been about as policy-dense as your typical Clifford the Big Red Dog book. That’s not entirely her fault; she was a last-minute replacement when her boss’ plan to slather makeup on his brain to make it look ten years younger somehow didn’t work. Some in the media have encouraged Harris to flesh out her plans, arguing that posting “SHE SO BRAT! 🥥🥥🥥” on Instagram does not constitute a policy platform. Yesterday, Harris gave in to this pedantic nitpicking and posted an issues page called “A New Way Forward”, probably because “A New Start” would have made people think of this Arrested Development joke:

  

  [Figure caption elided]

  What’s in Harris’ plan? Words, unfortunately. And words’ sinister cousin: numbers. This ensures that virtually no one will read the plan — even media folks who were hounding Harris about details will get bored around the time they encounter the phrase “long-term capital gains” (second paragraph) and instead write a story about the New Cold War between Taylor Swift and Brittney Mahomes.

  Maurer is remarkably sympathetic, noting that she's more or less consistent about posing as "moderate" as Democrats get these days.

  It doesn't hurt, in that regard, that apparently large swaths of her "issues" page were lifted directly from Joe Biden's now-defunct campaign site. Ed Morrissey comments:

  How ironic can this get? Joe Biden got plagiarized. The man who once claimed Neil Kinnock's origin story in a speech, and reportedly plagiarized his work in law school as well? Not only did Biden get plagiarized, he got plagiarized by the replacement he insisted on endorsing ... and the one who keeps promising a "new way forward" to boot. 

  Meet the new way forward, same as the old way forward, I guess.

• As Joe Biden would say, "Not a joke". The NYPost editorialists apparently got a chuckle anyway: Kamala Harris' freshly released policy ideas are a joke.

  Kamala Harris has finally posted some policy positions on an “Issues” page on her website — but they’re a joke.

  The intro, like Harris herself, uses a ton of words to say next to nothing: She plans on “building up the middle class,” creating an “Opportunity Economy where everyone has a chance to compete and a chance to succeed” and “bringing together organized labor and workers, small business owners, entrepreneurs, and American companies to create good paying jobs.”

  In the next update, she’ll surely come out in favor of apple pie, cute kittens and adorable puppies.

  And when she isn’t spewing platitudes, she’s doubling down with more pablum and outright bad ideas.

  To bring down the record-high costs of basic goods pummeling American families, she’ll “crack down on anti-competitive practices that let big corporations jack up prices,” and push through “a federal ban on corporate price gouging on food and groceries.”

  For a campaign that used "freedom" as a catchword, she's big on "cracking down" and "banning".

• But there are now nicer cars in the IRS parking lot. At Patterico's Pontifications, JVW is following the money: Democrats Spend Dollars to Recoup Dimes.

  Remember the Democrats demanding that $80 billion in additional money be allocated to the IRS over a ten-year period so that all of those super-wealthy tax-cheats can be tacked down and forced “to pay their fair share”? They got most of what they wanted in the end, and despite the Biden Administration’s claims that the money would be used for technology modernization and for “taxpayer services,” over half the money ($45.6 billion) went to “tax enforcement” (read: hiring new agents, lawyers, and bureaucrats) and another huge chunk ($25.3 billion) went to “general operations” (read: new office buildings, travel budgets, etc.).

  But hey, at least the IRS recouped tens of billions of dollars in the first couple of years, suggesting that this program will pay for itself in short order, right? Yeah, not so much:

  The IRS in February 2024 launched an initiative to pursue 125,000 high-income, high-wealth taxpayers who have not filed taxes since 2017. [. . .] In the first six months of this initiative, nearly 21,000 of these wealthy taxpayers have filed, leading to $172 million in taxes being paid.

  The IRS in the fall of 2023 launched a new initiative using Inflation Reduction Act funding to pursue high-income, high-wealth individuals who have failed to pay recognized tax debt, with dozens of senior employees assigned to these cases. This work is concentrated on taxpayers with more than $1 million in income and more than $250,000 in recognized tax debt. The IRS was previously unable to collect from these individuals due to a lack of resources. After successfully collecting $38 million from more than 175 high-income, high-wealth individuals last year, the IRS expanded this effort last fall to around 1,600 additional high-income, high-wealth individuals. Nearly 80% of these 1,600 millionaires with delinquent tax debt have now made a payment, leading to over $1.1 billion recovered. This is an additional $100 million just since July, when Treasury and IRS announced reaching the $1 billion milestone.

  So there you have it: in the first year this $80 billion “investment” over ten years has yielded gains of about $1.3 billion. Let’s say that number manages to grow at a robust 35% annually in years 2 through 10. That would only yield a net ten-year return of $76 billion, still below the money allocated for this ridiculous undertaking. And who among us expects the amount recouped to grow by 35% a year for a whole decade?

  A radically simpler tax code is not in the offing, no matter who wins.

• There's nothing wrong with Google that this won't make worse. We got our state's primary election. And a debate. And, as Elizabeth Nolan Brown notes: Google Goes On Trial (Again) Today.

  Google goes on trial today in the second of two antitrust cases brought by the federal government. This time around, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is accusing the tech giant of illegally maintaining a monopoly on digital advertising technologies.

  "Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies," the DOJ alleges in a civil lawsuit joined by eight states. It wants to force Google to divest parts of its ad tech stack, a suite of products that helps broker ad sales between website publishers and digital advertisers.

  Google contends that the government is making a mistake that will harm not just Google but website publishers and digital advertisers. "Ad buyers and sellers have a huge range of choices among ad tech providers, and they exercise those choices daily," wrote Google's Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland in a September 8 blog post. "The average advertiser uses three platforms to buy ads—and can choose from hundreds of options. And the average large publisher uses six platforms to sell ads—and can choose from over 80 options."

  ENB notes that the DOJ is griping about Google's acquisition of possible competitors, but those acquisitions were given the thumbs up back when they happened. Seems iffy.

• The real voting scandal. Back when it was an issue, I thought the dark conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems' machines somehow swinging the 2020 election to Joe Biden were hogwash. I still do.

  But John Hinderaker notes something much more concerning: Voter Fraud? What Voter Fraud?

  In Minnesota, our legislature has enacted laws that 1) allow illegal immigrants to get drivers’ licenses, and 2) automatically register those who get drivers’ licenses to vote. Secretary of State Steve Simon assured us that there is nothing to be alarmed about; safeguards are in place, he guaranteed, to make sure that unqualified voters don’t get ballots.

  Now, several honest (and legal) non-citizens have contacted the Republican Party to say that they received ballots in the mail after having obtained drivers’ licenses. Republicans are calling for an investigation, but Secretary of State Simon disclaims any responsibility, pointing his finger at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Of course, he was the one who told us there was no possibility of these new laws enabling unqualified persons to cast ballots.

  How many illegal ballots are cast in every election cycle? No one knows. Liberals assure us that the number is close to zero. But how could we know that? The hallmark of a successful fraud is that it is not discovered. And in most places, little effort is made to detect voter fraud, even when that is possible. Nevertheless, there are a large number of successful prosecutions of illegal voters.

  This is what I worry about, when I worry about such things: rules designed to make voting easy can be easily abused to make voting fraud easy, and also undetectable.

  That said, I'm about to go down to the American Legion hall to cast my primary ballot. Wish me not luck, but wisdom.

But he's making that difficult to resist:

Hayek nails it again 😂 pic.twitter.com/uot5QBGs4r

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 8, 2024

I'm going to keep calling it "Twitter", though.

Also of note:

• They got scooped, and they're pissed. I'm no fan of sloppily slapping ideological labels on people you don't like. (Disclaimer: I am probably not innocent of that sin, although I'm trying hard to be better.)

  For a (minor) example, today's edition of my awful local newspaper, Foster's Daily Democrat, has a story about a shady pol (but I repeat myself): NH House candidate in Dover area who faced investigation exits race.

  I'm not that interested in the sordid details, you can dig those out of the links if you want. Instead, this bit caught my eye [bold added]:

  Kennedy, a former state representative from Manchester under the name Andrew Bouldin, has been the subject of news stories by NH Journal, a right-wing media outlet, regarding an investigation into him by the Manchester Police Department in 2023. A police report was obtained by Foster's Daily Democrat and Seacoastonline. Kennedy was never charged.

  Quibble: as near as I can tell, NHJournal had one story about Kennedy, posted back on August 15, not "stories": the one linked to in the quoted paragraph above.

  But what I really want to point out is that "right-wing" label.

  Yes, NHJournal has a conservative slant. It's far from "right-wing". (They'll even publish dissenting views: (here's a recent example).

  But the label is not just inaccurate, it's gratuitous. It's totally irrelevant to the Foster's story, unless…

  Ah: unless it's the paper's subtle ass-covering excuse for not covering the story themselves. There's an air of bitter resentment that they were scooped on this weeks ago. It's information they knew about, but decided to withhold from their readers, even shorn of its icky right-wingitude.

• 

  I've never called her a Commie. But… Also recently in my worthless local newspaper, an opinion column from local bearded sage Ron McAllister. who claims: Kamala Harris is neither a commie nor an idiot. And he fits right in with the theme of the previous item: sloppy ideological labelling:

  In recent weeks, Kamala Harris has been called a fascist, a Marxist, a communist and a socialist. You don’t need to know the precise historical meaning of these words, of course. They all imply the same thing — that Kamala Harris is “foreign” and therefore dangerous. Labeling is far easier than linguistic accuracy. If you don’t have an argument as to why people should vote for you, calling the opposition scary names might help.

  The accusers are not trying to make an actual argument. Their purpose is to spread fear that foreign and dangerous things will happen if the opposition is elected. The litany of tired, old “isms” can still frighten voters. That’s the goal.

  Now, McAllister provides a few paragraphs with brief and tedious high-school-level definitions of "fascism", "socialism", "Marxism", and "Communism". And he's correct that it's wrong and facile to hammer the square peg of Kamala into the round holes of any of these ideologies.

  We won't even bother to provide examples of the labels folks attach to Trump. I'm sure MacAllister deplores them too, although he doesn't get around to condemning them.

  But what I really wish he'd said is something George Orwell pointed out seventy-eight years ago:

  The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’.

  And ditto for those other labels MacAllister denies apply to Kamala.

  But he merely asserts without evidence that Kamala is "not an idiot either."

  Now, I prefer the terms "nitwit" and "phony" over "idiot". But that's me. To resurrect a link I posted a few days back: Harris' problem: She's a complete phony.

  It’s not that she’s liable to pull a literal face-plant the way Mr. Biden was; it’s that she has a tendency to get stuck in catchphrase loops when she speaks about subjects with which she is not comfortable or familiar. When she’s out of her depth on a topic, she sounds like it, and everyone listening knows that she has no idea what she’s talking about.

  I would love for both Trump and Kamala to be asked at their debate about the last serious non-fiction books they read, and what they liked and disliked about them.

• If Google honchos are as smart as it think they are… They should seriously consider Andy Kessler, who wonders in the WSJ: Is the Google Breakup Coming? He distinguishes between a government-mandated breakup, and one that the company could do itself:

  Self-directed breakups don’t always work, but many do. HP split its profitable printer (really ink) business from other enterprise products. Johnson & Johnson split Band-Aids from its drugs and medical devices division. General Electric, albeit late, spun out its healthcare division and recently split aerospace and power generation. The smartest thing eBay has done in 20 years is spin out PayPal. Last week saw stories of potential Intel and Topgolf breakups.

  Should “monopolist” Google dump YouTube? Or its Android smartphone operating system? Or open its data cache to all takers? Maybe, but it shouldn’t be forced to. Google probably should have spun out YouTube to shareholders years ago. Or set up a stand-alone phone company to compete with Apple head to head. Now government bureaucrats might force changes that are almost guaranteed to be wrong, late and damaging to consumers as markets change.

  I know next to nothing about such business strategies. But thanks to the wizards at Fidelity, I'm "heavily" invested in Alphabet, Google's parent. So I'm along for the ride, no matter what happens. And I hope that Google writes its own destiny, instead of having the government write it.

Recently on the movie blog:

That video, from 2020 I think, is a post from John Lucas's substack, headlined Kamala Harris, Back When She Was Not Afraid to Give Interviews.

Let's not go into detail on Stephen Colbert's "gee, sorry that I need to pretend to ask you a tough question" obsequiousness. Amid all the sycophancy, he manages to get it out:

How did that transition happen? How do you go from being such a passionate opponent on such bedrock principles for you, and now you guys seem to be pals?

He's referring to Kamala's "passionate" race-based accusations hurled at Biden in their June 2019 debate. And:

Repeating non sequiturs while cackling is hardly responsive. (Also see: "My values haven't changed")

Kamala's campaign only lasted a few more months after her debate performances. (And, as she clearly implied to Colbert, they were performances.) She didn't wear well with the electorate.

Are we already seeing that happen? Let's look at the betting odds, as I type:

Hm. A definite Trumpward trend? Stay tuned, it's been a funny old year so far.

Also of note:

• Thank goodness for parenthetical clarification. I, for one, wish George F. Will were posing the Tuesday night questions: How to cause indecent exposure (of their minds) at the Harris-Trump debate. Taking a sample:

  For him: Accepting the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination, Walter F. Mondale said: “Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.” Because of your candor in promising high tariffs, which would be taxes paid by consumers, are you not a Mondalean?

  For her: “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel” (Genesis, 49:4). What research changed your thinking about banning fracking, imposing a single-payer health-care system, questioning cash bail and the existence of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, calling the southern border “secure,” etc.? You have jettisoned so many of your long-espoused convictions, why should voters believe the sudden restocking of your mental pantry?

  For both: A joke perennially pertinent in Washington concerns an economist and a normal person falling into a deep pit with sides too steep to climb. The normal person exclaims, “We’re trapped!” The economist placidly replies, “Don’t worry, we will simply assume a ladder.” What do each of you assume — torrid economic growth forever, 20 million elderly Americans moving to Australia, whatever — to justify your shared promise not to alter Social Security and Medicare, which are driving the nation off a fiscal cliff as their trust funds disappear?

  If I knew that any of GFW's questions would be asked, I'd probably tune in.

• I might write in "Drax the Destroyer" on my November ballot. Jacob Sullum points out yet another quote that indicates unfitness for high office: 'Sometimes You Need a Strongman,' Trump Declares.

  During his Fox News interview with Sean Hannity on Wednesday night, Donald Trump bragged about Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's "respect" for him. "They say he's a strongman," Trump said. "Sometimes you need a strongman. He's a strongman."

  Since Orbán is not known as a circus performer, Trump's meaning was clear. He was referring to the political version of strongman, variously defined as "a leader who rules by the exercise of threats, force, or violence"; "one who leads or controls by force of will and character or by military methods"; or someone who "has great power and control over his country, although his methods may sometimes be violent or morally wrong." As has long been clear, these are qualities that Trump admires.

  Orbán, a self-described proponent of "illiberal Christian democracy," was elected to his third consecutive term as Hungary's prime minister in 2022. Trump endorsed Orbán's reelection, praising his "strong leadership." At a rally last January, he called Orbán "a very great leader" and "a very strong man." Although "some people don't like him because he's too strong," Trump added, "it's nice to have a strongman running the country."

  Naw, I'll probably stick with either leaving that space blank or writing in Nikki.

The Google News Alert brought me a Concord Monitor story about the Democrat-side race for the New Hampshire gubernatorial nomination, and the headline was kind of a giggle, maybe you'll like it too: As Warmington and Craig attack, Kiper hopes his ambiguity is an advantage.

I'm pretty sure the headline writer meant "anonymity". Kiper is not getting a lot of attention; candidates Cinde Warmington and Joyce Craig are the big guns, and aiming their barbs mostly at each other.

Wonkery: Kiper's big idea is to impose additional taxes on "second homes, many of which he presumes are owned by out-of-state residents." I've seen estimates that this will raise around $30 million/year.

Which is about 1% of the current state budget.

(This was ostensibly an article about the "Live Free or Die Debate" last night at New England College, which is why I saw it.)

It's certain that government policies will keep encountering them: Great Moments in Unintended Consequences (Vol. 17).

Also of note:

• Chris thinks I'm Not Too Bright. The other day, I got a campaign mailer from Chris Bright, who's running for the Republican nomination for New Hampshire Congressional District 1. And it includes the shocking promise:

  Chris will rid our streets of dangerous drugs like fentanyl.

  My immediate thought: Huh. No he won't.

  And then I mused about how incredibly stupid Chris Bright must think his potential voters are.

  Does he have an actual, effective, plan to "rid our streets of dangerous drugs"? One that has escaped the well-meaning schemes of (probably) thousands of legislative drug warriors over (literally) decades?

  Big news if true. But it goes unmentioned at his campaign website. Why would he be hiding his wonderful drug-eradication plan from potential voters?

  I'm pretty sure I can guess, and I bet you can too.

• Good question. Randal O'Toole wonders: What Is Wrong With Our Country? But he starts out with a transit yarn:

  Four people were shot and killed on a Chicago Blue Line elevated train early Labor Day morning. Police say the victims, who were not seated together, appeared to be asleep at the time and “may have been homeless.” A suspect is in custody, and police say it was “an isolated incident and a random attack,” as if that is supposed to make people feel safer.

  When I learned about these murders, I had already been thinking about transit crime because of a story that appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press about the decline of the intersection of Snelling and University, two of the most important commercial corridors in Minnesota’s capital city.

  “The Green Line light rail, which launched in 2014, was supposed to reactivate economic development in an area that had seen more than its share of commercial departures,” says the article. “Instead, much of the commercial energy at the intersection is long gone.”

  “The light rail was the start of it going downhill,” says a local bookstore owner who has had to keep doors locked and buzz in customers on a case-by-case basis due to vandalism and violence. Another business owner, who originally favored the light rail, now says “it’s become one of the city’s biggest safety concerns.”

  The news is full of stories about the recent Georgia school shooting that also left four dead. But I bet you didn't hear about the four dead in that Chicago suburb. Or, unless you follow Chicago news, the six additional Labor Day weekend murders in the city proper.

  Well, the Chicago killings were more or less business as usual, I guess.

  But there's another point made in O'Toole's post. Our current Democratic candidates for New Hampshire governor are enthused for bringing Boston commuter rail up to Nashua, Manchester, and (even) Concord. They promise that the areas around the rail stations will undergo commercial revitalization. As seen, that's hardly guaranteed.

• I'd gladly pay you … never … for a subsidy today. The WSJ editorialists look at The Biden-Harris Subprime Bank.

  Move over Countrywide Financial (of housing panic fame). Washington’s new favorite subprime lender is none other than Uncle Sam. In a little noticed report last week—make that not noticed at all—the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the feds will lose $65.2 billion on risky loans and other “credit assistance” in the next fiscal year.

  Federal agencies play by fictional accounting rules under which they don’t account for the market risk of their loans. Look ma, no defaults. This lets bureaucrats and Congress disguise the cost of their spending. CBO thus estimates that Uncle Sam will lose a mere $2.4 billion on loans and loan guarantees issued in the 2025 fiscal year under government accounting standards.

  Ah, but under the rules that private businesses use, the cost balloons to $65.2 billion. That’s about twice as much as in 2019. Blame Congress for creating new lending programs. Biden officials are also underwriting more debt and easing payments and credit standards for borrowers.

  I'm finding it very tough to be amused by this, and keep sliding back into disgust. Help me, Elvis Costello!

• Blue Bloods gets more fictional every year. The NYPost reports: Feds raid home of NYPD Commish Edward Caban, other close Eric Adams allies.

  Federal agents hit NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban and members of the nation’s biggest police force this week — amid a stunning spate of raids on others in Mayor Eric Adams’ inner circle, sources said Thursday.

  Agents showed up to the homes of Caban, Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Phil Banks and the townhouse shared by Schools Chancellor David Banks and First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright with search warrants early Wednesday and seized their electronic devices, according to law-enforcement sources.

  If Frank Reagan were the actual NYPD Commissioner, he'd be leading the investigation, not a suspect in it.

• I think he might know something we do not. The National Review editorialists noted Hunter Biden’s Air of Entitlement and did not like it one bit.

  Bowing to overwhelming evidence and political reality, Hunter Biden finally pleaded guilty to tax charges on the day his trial was to begin with jury selection in Los Angeles federal court.

  Even now, already scheduled for sentencing for federal firearms felonies of which a Delaware jury found him guilty, the president’s 54-year-old son exhibited the haughty air of entitlement that has marked his adult life and disastrous choices.

  The normal defendant who is caught red-handed negotiates a plea, admits guilt, and asks for mercy from the court. Not Hunter. As a throng of prospective jurors descended on the courthouse to begin the selection process, Biden’s lawyers took prosecutors and Judge Mark Scarsi aback: Biden announced that he was prepared to plead guilty to all charges, and to concede that prosecutors could prove their case, yet he would continue to maintain his innocence.

  Read on (looks like a free link) to read about Hunter's effort to make an "Alford plea". And what an "Alford plea" is.

  But the bottom line is: expect Joe to pardon Hunter.

Recently on the movie blog:

Confession: I'm pretty sure I've never watched a Tucker Carlson show other than breezing by it with the TV remote. But I've posted quite a bit about other people commenting about Carlson over the years. Recently, it's been stuff like this, where I quoted numerous people eviscerating him, deservedly, for his rapturous take on Russia.

He's gotten worse, much worse over the years, according to his onetime friend, Jonah Goldberg, and his latest antics are reprehensible:

I’ve known Tucker for 30+ years. For most of that time, if I told him he’d become this guy one day, he’d have laughed, cursed me out, or punched me. This is just sad. It’s pathetic whether he’s doing it sincerely or as a grift. https://t.co/liy0NtW8Ct

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) September 4, 2024

That tweet's via Nick Catoggio's article at the Dispatch (probably paywalled): Free-for-All.

Also commenting is Power Line's Scott Johnson: The Tucker op; he includes a recent tweet from Cooper (@martyrmade), commented on by Abigail Shrier:

Tucker Carlson is a very bright man. He has the largest conservative podcast in the country, and eight weeks before a presidential election, he is approvingly boosting Nazi apologists.

The Occam's Razor explanation?

He wants Kamala Harris to win. pic.twitter.com/MzIDHXTuKZ

— Abigail Shrier (@AbigailShrier) September 4, 2024

Concludes Scott: "The damage Carlson is doing to the conservative movement has yet to be fully registered. There is more to come." And Jim Geraghty is wondering: Is Vance still going to hang out with Tucker Carlson, even now?.

Someone's gotta tell J.D. that proverb about lying down with dogs, getting up with fleas.

Also of note:

• Also on the Russia sucker list. Jeff Maurer looks at the latest: Political Influencers Are Taking Russian Money, and I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Gotten in on That.

  The Justice Department has charged two employees of a Russian state news agency with funneling nearly $10 million to several prominent right-wing YouTubers. The influencers who received money appear1 to be Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Lauren Southern — you may not know those names, but you probably would if you were a sexually frustrated 19 year-old who thinks that a second civil war would be the coolest thing to ever happen on this flat Earth. The DOJ also seized 32 internet domains that were part of a Russian propaganda effort called “Operation Doppelganger”, which sounds like a book that John le Carré must have written but somehow didn’t.

  This revelation raises questions about who can be trusted in independent media. Which funding sources are okay? What obligation does a content creator have to disclose where their money is coming from? In the interest of leading by example, I’d like to assert that I Might Be Wrong receives no outside money: My work is funded entirely by subscriptions from readers like you. Which raises the question: How the fuck am I missing out on this gravy train? What the fuck, Russia? This blog is doing well, and I’ve made it beyond clear that I’ll debase myself for a modest fee — Russia…come on! You can’t even shoot me an e-mail and see what my integrity would cost?

  He's joking, tovarish!

  For the record, Maurer links to (credible) denials from Dave Rubin and Tim Pool that they had any idea about this funding.

  And, who knows? It could be a lawfare operation from the Biden DOJ that will turn out to be another nothingburger.

  (I've had some nice things to say, at least indirectly, about Dave Rubin in the past. But you know what they say about past performance.)

• Speaking of past performance… Damien Fisher reports on some sad news for the University Near Here: Once A Bastion of Free Speech, UNH Falls in Latest Ranking.

  For years, the University of New Hampshire had a reputation for fostering free speech and a diversity of ideas on campus. But that reputation has been under assault of late, and now its standing in the latest Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) annual rankings for campus speech has fallen from third in the nation to 59th.

  “I did not expect such a drop,” State Rep. Daniel Popovici-Muller (R-Windham) told NHJournal. He was the prime sponsor of a new law protecting free speech on campus passed earlier this year.

  You can peruse FIRE's 2025 College Free Speech Rankings for yourself. I can't find any explanation for UNH's precipitous drop, although it could well be more students reporting feeling a censorious atmosphere.

• Nvidia is a wildly successful American corporation, so naturally… OK, I have to admit I didn't expect this, as reported by Ars Technica: DOJ subpoenas Nvidia in deepening AI antitrust probe, report says.

  The Department of Justice is reportedly deepening its probe into Nvidia. Officials have moved on from merely questioning competitors to subpoenaing Nvidia and other tech companies for evidence that could substantiate allegations that Nvidia is abusing its "dominant position in AI computing," Bloomberg reported.

  I assume the corporate officers failed to give enough money to the DNC? No, that doesn't seem to be true. Donations to Kamala outweigh those to Trump by nearly 8-to-1.

Recently on the book blog:

One must have a heart of stone to read the tweets of Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Hal Corley without laughing:

As I said in my earlier tweet today, the strategy of the NYT seems to be to cast doubt on the competency of Harris. Images are powerful and this one shows Harris as "coming apart" & lacking focus- also gender stereotypes. https://t.co/B0XKSQKDd8

— Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat) September 2, 2024

"Help! I was annoyed by a Bret Stephens column clearly marked 'Opinion'!"

The little things add up: Corley claims to have "no effing words left', although I count 19 of 'em, including the only racial/sexual dismissive slur you can use in polite company: "white male". And one cannot imagine what grand "strategy" Ben-Ghiat thinks the NYT is operating under.

Problem: Kamala's a nitwit, and if you're a partisan hack, this is something that must not even be hinted at in a medium that voters might notice.

Similar to pointing out Joe Biden's cognitive woes pre-June 24.

I'd imagine a similar response to a different NYT article, as reported by James Freeman: New York Times Discovers That Democrats Aren’t Always Truthful.

If you're an NYT-only reader, I would assume you would have no idea what Freeman is talking about.

Also of note:

• Shut up, they explained. In the current print Reason, J.D. Tuccille considers The Soft Totalitarianism of the Political Class.

  It's no secret that governments around the world are chiseling away at people's liberties. Rights advocates document a nearly two decade decline in freedom. Civil liberties activists warn of a worldwide free speech recession. And while American restrictions on government power hold the line better than pale equivalents elsewhere, the political class seems determined to end-run those protections and impose creeping totalitarianism by leveraging the authority of allies in other countries.

  "Obrigado Brasil!" Keith Ellison, Minnesota's attorney general, wrote this week to thank that country's authoritarian Supreme Court for its recent ban on the X social media platform.

  The court demanded X censor political views it called "disinformation" and appoint a new legal representative to receive court orders—after threatening the previous one with arrest. Importantly, the ban threatens ordinary Brazilians with hefty fines if they evade the prohibition on the social media network. Nevertheless, demand for blockade-piercing VPNs surged in Brazil after the court decision.

  Ellison serves alongside Minnesota's Gov. Tim Walz, who is the Democratic candidate for vice president and has falsely claimed "there's no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech." He's also not the only prominent politician to have a real hate-on for X and its CEO, Elon Musk.

  Don't worry, J.D. Tuccille gets to J.D. Vance as another bad example further along.

• But there's also… Jonathan Turley notes that possibly the next POTUS is no fan of people saying stuff: “That Has to Stop”: Harris Denounces Unfettered Free Speech in 2019 CNN Interview.

  I previously wrote how a Harris-Walz Administration would be a nightmare for free speech. Both candidates have shown pronounced anti-free speech values. Now, X owner Elon Musk and former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have posted a Harris interview to show the depths of the hostility of Harris to unfettered free speech. I have long argued that Trump and the third-party candidates should make free speech a central issue in this campaign. That has not happened. Kennedy was the only candidate who was substantially and regularly talking about free speech in this election. Yet, Musk and Kennedy are still trying to raise the chilling potential of a Harris-Walz Administration.

  In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how the Biden-Harris Administration has proven to be the most anti-free speech administration since John Adams. That includes a massive censorship system described by one federal judge as perfectly “Orwellian.”

  In the CNN interview, Harris displays many of the anti-free speech inclinations discussed earlier. She strongly suggests that X should be shut down if it does not yield to demands for speech regulation.

  What is most chilling is how censorship and closure are Harris’s default positions when faced with unfettered speech. She declares to CNN that such unregulated free speech “has to stop” and that there is a danger to the country when people are allowed to “directly speak[] to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight and regulation.”

  You think that the mainstream media might have taken a slightly greater notice if she had spoken this way about newspapers or TV networks?

  And I hasten to point out: in her recent interview with Dana Bash, Kamala averred not once, not twice, but thrice, that her values have not changed. Simply because she flipflopped on so many issues.

• Potholes on the Road to Serfdom? Speaking of things that didn't get a lot of MSM attention, Jeff Jacoby says Most climate policies have something in common: They don't work.

  IN SEPTEMBER 1945, the classical liberal scholar (and future Nobel laureate) Friedrich Hayek published "The Use of Knowledge in Society." One of the most influential articles in modern economics, it explained that far-reaching government policies often fail because policy makers invariably lack all the knowledge required to understand a problem well enough to solve it. Consequently, government policies frequently backfire, trigger unintended consequences, or simply prove unavailing.

  Examples of Hayek's insight, often called "the knowledge problem," abound. Urban renewal tore apart once-vibrant communities, displacing tens of thousands of residents or relocating them into housing projects that became centers of poverty and crime. The war on drugs resulted in mass incarceration, yet drugs remain widely available and overdose deaths are at or near an all-time high. Crop subsidies have routinely led to overproduction, distorted markets, and the enrichment of agribusiness giants at the expense of small farmers. Minimum wage laws, intended to boost the earnings of vulnerable workers, invariably cost many of those very workers their jobs.

  Time and again, reality makes hash of the misbegotten assumption that politicians and regulators have sufficient information to plan or fine-tune complex economic systems. The bigger and more complex the system, the more likely that government policies designed to control it will turn out to be ineffective. And what system could be bigger or more complex than planetary climate change?

  Jacoby goes on to mention the Science story that we looked at a few days ago.

• In our "you gotta laugh to keep from crying" department… In hopping over to NESN last night, I noticed that Jordan's Furniture CEO Eliot Tatelman is pushing his store's summer promotion:

  If the Red Sox win the World Championship, anything you buy now through September 8th will be free!

  Uh, well… According to this morning's Wild Card Standings, the Red Sox are a solid 5.5 games out of wild card contention. They are at an even 0.500 for the season, they've lost five straight, and their last-10 game record is 3-7.

  The one bit of good news: they are hosting the woeful Chicago White Sox for three games over the weekend.

  But then it's three games with the Orioles and three with the Yankees. OK, stranger things have happened, but…

A tweet from Jeff Blehar:

One to remember. pic.twitter.com/o7ffS08Tso

— Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* (@EsotericCD) September 2, 2024

I know, making judgments based on a split-second physical appearance is unwarranted and juvenile, but … geez louise.

Blehar's associated text is at the NR Corner where it may be paywalled. Excerpt: Kamala Harris Campaign Stall Reflected by Non-Scandals It Promotes.

Isn't there enough actual stuff around to get outraged about, we have to get outraged about the phony stuff too?

For example, Matt Welch recalls just a few weeks ago When Biden's 'Bubble Wrap' Burst.

Had the "liars and hacks" Welch describes, above and later in his article, decided to be honest and non-hackish, we might have had a more "democratic" outcome, where the voters had some say in the Democrat-side nomination. Instead… well, see above, Welch's first paragraph.

Also of note:

• If you don't express yourself, ain't nobody gonna give a good cahoot. Kevin D. Williamson says we face A Nonbinary Choice in the voting booth.

  […] there are a couple of ways of approaching a vote in a presidential election. The first and most obvious—and the one I recommend—is: voting for the candidate you prefer. (A subset of that approach is not voting if you don’t like any of the candidates: That, too, is usefully expressive.) The second is: voting to send a message to one party or the other. If (to stick with the earlier case) Trump’s vote share in Texas declines a bit more in 2024, then that will tell Republicans something. But—and here is where I suppose my Bulwark friends and Joe Scarborough et al. really have their heads—it makes a difference whether Harris’ share of the vote goes up, too, or if Trump simply bleeds votes to the Libertarian Party or to Mitch Daniels or whomever it is my friend in Tarrant County is writing in. A voter who goes from the GOP to the Libertarians is a loss of one vote, but a voter who goes from the GOP to the Democrats is, in effect, a two-vote loss: Minus one for Trump and plus one for Harris. And if that is the message you want to send—or if you are a Democrat who wants to vote for Donald Trump to … I don’t know, maybe punish your party for failing to stage a coup d’état the last time it lost an election?—that’s how you do it. You add your voice to the other voices making the same point or a complementary one. 

  That’s all good.

  But don’t inflict your “binary choice” horsefeathers on your friends and the general public. There are lots of ways to use your vote, many of them effective as political expression and almost none of them likely to be very consequential in determining the outcome.

  I'll figure out some way to express myself in November. Probably not until then.

  And yes, I mashed up lyrics from Sly and the Family Stone and the Staple Singers in this item's headline. I swear, that's how I heard them in my head.

• Writing in "Nikki Haley" perhaps. The WSJ editorialists are disappointed in Biden, Harris, Trump, Vance and the Dumbest Economic Idea.

  A sign of the rotten political times is that President Biden, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump and JD Vance all agree on the dumbest economic idea of the presidential campaign so far: opposing Nippon Steel’s $14.1 billion acquisition of U.S. Steel.

  We’ll admit that the competition for the dumbest economic policy is fierce these days—with prices controls on food, a 10% across-the-board tariff, and national rent control on the table. But opposition to the Nippon deal deserves careful consideration for this distinct dishonor given the deal’s manifest benefits and nonexistent harm.

  Ms. Harris is apparently undaunted by economic illiteracy, telling a Monday rally in Pittsburgh that “U.S. Steel should remain American-owned and American-operated.”

  A politician with the U.S. national interest in mind would celebrate the Nippon Steel deal, which would boost U.S. manufacturing. The Japanese firm has promised to spend $2.7 billion refurbishing the Pittsburgh steel maker’s aging plants. It has also agreed to honor U.S. Steel’s collective-bargaining agreements with the United Steelworkers.

  I aassume there are economists advising both campaigns that are holding their noses real tight about this.

• A question that needs to be asked. And Jeff Maurer asks it: Is the GOP the Stupid Party Forever Now?

  This is something I’ve touched on before: Both parties are in something of an unnatural state right now. The so-called “conservative” party has the judgement of a goldfish who just tried cocaine for the first time. Meanwhile, the liberal party — which is supposed to be the domain of hippie freaks — has a sizable contingent of left-brained squares who like to talk about Ukraine and interest rates. It’s weird. And what I wonder is: Is this a temporary situation, and things will go back to normal after Trump? Or is this the early stages of a massive political realignment like what happened in the century after the Civil War?

  I dunno, but Maurer lays out the arguments for "just temporary" and "maybe not" with his usual R-rated gusto.

• More "studies" that you should have ignored. Geek Press wonders Are Blue Zones Of Longevity Based On Bad Data? Summary of an article that caught his attention:

  Blue Zones -- geographical regions that supposedly have the world's most long-lived people -- are dubious. Whether it's Sardinia, Okinawa, or Greece, the numbers of old people are wrong, due to census mistakes or "pension fraudsters". These errors propagate false claims about the benefits of wine-drinking or plant-based diets. Researchers seriously interested in longevity must look for better data.

  I decided long ago to pay strict attention to that wine one.

Recently on the book blog:

The non-Presidential New Hampshire Primary is a week from today, and I hate going into the booth unprepared, so I went to the Secretary of State's sample ballots page and downloaded…

You'll note there are only two contested races, so I don't have a lot of choices to make. And if you believe the University Near Here Survey Center, it appears Kelly Ayotte is way ahead of second-place Chuck Morse 65% to 21% in the gubernatorial contest.

They also have Russell Prescott in the lead for the right to oppose my current CongressCritter, Chris Pappas in November. But he's at 19%, and "Don't Know/Undecided" is at 60%!

I did get a mailer from Russell Prescott the other day. Endorsed by Rand Paul! That's a plus!

But I went to his campaign website. Here's a bit of his brave stance on Uncle Stupid's fiscal mess:

The overall problem is not that our government taxes too little; it is that it spends too much. I will take that same attitude to Washington, supporting a Balanced Budget Amendment, zero-based budgeting, and always looking for ways to give taxpayers back more of their hard-earned money.

I've said this before, but I think advocating a "Balanced Budget [Constitutional] Amendment" is phony. Passing a Constitutional Amendment is hard. And if you had enough Congressional votes (two-thirds) to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment, Mr. Prescott, you could just pass a balanced budget. You only need a simple majority for that!

But it gets worse. What to do about Social Security and Medicare? Nothing, as it turns out:

Promises made, promises kept. I will never vote to touch benefits that Granite Staters have rightfully earned. In Congress, I will be willing to make tough decisions elsewhere to ensure our seniors are protected and find solutions to ensure the program remains solvent for current and future generations.

He's "willing to make tough decisions elsewhere". But not there.

To be fair, scanning the other candidates' sites fails to find any profiles in courage on entitlements. See if you agree:

• Walter J. McFarlane III
• Hollie Noveletsky
• Max Abramson; to be fair, he does appear to have a gonzo "007 Tax Cut Plan"
• Chris Bright
• Joseph Kelly Levasseur
• Andy Martin

As long as we're looking at candidate websites, you might want to check out gubernatorial candidate Shaun Fife's, which includes his "Free Energy Solutions":

Choose life vote fife and free us from energy dependence by production of real local grown heirloom foods with gravity powered, ultra localized, power generation as the engine of food production.

You might like Kelly Ayotte, but where does she stand on gravity powered power generation as the engine of heirloom food production?

Also, um, unconventional but perhaps entertaining: Frank Negus Staples, and Robert Wayne McClory. Don't miss McClory's 6 Point Patriot page!

Also of note:

• "Terrible" is an understatement. Tyler Cowen thinks Taxing unrealized capital gains is a terrible idea. And he's kind of shocked that Harvard Econ Prof Jason Furman is for it, based on his tweets and his 2022 WSJ op-ed

  Let me start with [Furman's] quick summary:

  I like the Biden-Harris proposal to tax unrealized capital gains. For any given level of capital taxation it’s more efficient & fair to tax unrealized gains, reduces lock in & tax planning.

  Read through Jason’s own words in the WSJ — do you really think a system that complicated is going to reduce tax planning?  How about figuring out what percentage of liquid vs. illiquid assets to hold?  Whether to finance ventures through private equity vs. public markets?  Which risky assets to buy and sell before December 31?  How much to put into your foundation, so as to adjust your net wealth status?  Might there not be other “tricks” to adjust your tax eligibility as well?  What about those “live in Puerto Rico” decisions?

  When it comes to your assets, how is “tradeable” defined?  (Narrator: It isn’t)

  How about the “…rules to prevent taxpayers from inappropriately [sic] converting tradeable assets to non-tradeable assets”? Those are going to go down nice and smooth, right? And imagine the legal squabbles over what “tradeable” and “non-tradeable” mean. How about bundling assets and deliberately making them less tradeable? How does that count? Chopping up assets to make them less tradeable? Do we have to measure the intent of the investor? And doesn’t this make it much harder to invest in your own start-up? (As we will see below, Jason and others cite “capital flowing freely” as a supposed benefit of this plan — but their plan harms capital flows a great deal.)

  … and more. At the end, Cowen asks: "How many countries have ever made a system like this work?"

  And, reader, his answer is simple: "None."

• Clearing up some misconceptions. J.D. Tuccille points out some news I'd missed: Massachusetts Switchblade Ban Overturned on Second Amendment Grounds.

  The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution undisputedly protects the individual right to own and carry firearms for self-defense, sport, and other uses. But the amendment actually says nothing about guns; it refers to "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms," of which firearms are just one example of what dictionaries define as "a means (such as a weapon) of offense or defense." In Massachusetts, last week, that resulted in a decision by the state's highest court striking down a law against switchblade knives.

  "We conclude switchblades are not 'dangerous and unusual' weapons falling outside the protection of the Second Amendment," wrote Justice Serge Georges Jr. for the court in an opinion in Commonwealth v. Canjura that drew heavily on two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases: Bruen (2022) and Heller (2008). The decision found the state's ban on switchblade knives unconstitutional and dismissed charges against the defendant.

  A rare bit of good news on the legal front.

• Aw, you're no fun any more. The Google LFOD News Alert brought some sad news: New Hampshire Ranked Nearly Last for Most Fun State in America. And "Krissy", writing at "B98.5 Central Maine's Country" is critical:

  I'm gonna tell you right now, I find this ludicrous. New Hampshire being ranked and degraded as one of the least fun states in the world is just a serial killer move. Yeah, so here we go. Let me give you the facts. According to the guys (or girls) over at WalletHub, New Hampshire is the 43rd "least fun" state out of 50 (obviously), and Maine falls at #38. I get it, we're not Miami, but that's the beauty of it.

  You're going to tell me Portsmouth, New Hampshire, isn't a blast every time you bar hop on the water? Riverjack's Restaurant? Lazy Jack's Restaurant? C'mon, those are some elite establishments to people watch at. Not to mention the shopping in Portsmouth. There are all the little boutiques like Open & Oak, and there's a Bobbles & Lace location that I know Portland, Maine, girlies love.

  OH, I almost forgot. Another huge reason why New Hampshire is awesome and should be given a higher score on the fun scale: the Liquor Outlet is off the highway there. Not to mention there's no sales tax in the state. Go crazy! I mean, their state slogan is literally, "Live Free or Die", so I don't know how much more I have to say here. I'll agree that it might not be the most fun state, but it still isn't "#43 out of 50 states" boring.

  Yeah! Take that, WalletHub!

• On the other hand: The Google LFOD News Alert also rang for "Kira's" article at Q96.1 (a different Maine radio station) pointing out: New England State Named the #1 Best State in the U.S to Retire. And that would be us.

  When a person reaches that stage of life, many factors come into play in terms of deciding WHERE they would like to retire. For many the ideal retirement spot would:

  • have nice weather
  • be affordable
  • be close in proximity to family friends
  • have lots of activities/a sense of community

  Now, New Hampshire checks a few of those boxes. But I'd be lying to you if I said I wasn't flabbergasted that a publication called retirementliving.com named New Hampshire #1 spot for U.S. retirement destinations for the second year in a row!

  […]

  And let us not ignore the lack of income tax, estate tax, and sales tax. We have a lot more freedom than other states. It says Live Free or Die on our license plates for a reason.

  It's a far better slogan than "Boring But We Like It That Way".