Pun Salad

You would think this wouldn't be controversial: Governments should stop subsidizing stadiums for billionaires.

Once you've watched that (and you should, it's hilarious, while also maddening), you can check out the numbers for Publicly Funded NFL Stadiums at 22Zin, a website from Tom Knecht exploring the relationship between politics and sports.

Again, this should be as obvious as 2+3=5. Tom's article is from 2023, but here's a timeless observation, not adjusted for inflation since then:

Tom has charts showing the diverse levels of taxpayer subsidies for current stadia. Patriots fans rejoice: Gillette Stadium received $0 in direct subsidies! (But as Tom points out, "that doesn’t even count the myriad tax breaks, tax credits, tax rebates, donated land, infrastructure projects, and opportunity costs that state and local politicians give NFL owners."

Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, CA, site of tomorrow's Superb Owl, is also on the low end of the taxpayer ripoff scale, a mere $130 million in direct cash.

The current money pit under construction is the Buffalo Bills' Highmark Stadium:

Fun fact from that Wikipedia page:

During the excavation phase in September 2023, a fan jumped over a fence guarding the construction site and fell into a hole 30-40 feet. He was found "covered in human excrement" and under the influence of drugs and alcohol before being removed from the site.

Don't ever change, Buffalo.

Also of note:

• I'm sure I don't know the answer. Cass Sunstein wonders: Does Liberalism Have An Aesthetic?

  “There are reams of writing about fascist military parades and socialist-realist murals, yet there is almost nothing comparable about the dull tint at the end of history. Where is liberalism’s ‘Fascinating Fascism’? Who is its Riefenstahl?”

  So writes Becca Rothfeld, in an energetic, sharp, fun, and highly critical review of two books, one by yours truly (On Liberalism, if you want to know). https://thepointmag.com/criticism/listless-liberalism/

  Rothfeld’s review is called Listless Liberalism (ouch).

  Becca's review and Cass's observations are interesting enough. But what leapt immediately to my mind (for some reason) was Cafe Hayek's Quotation of the Day for yesterday:

  Liberalism is no religion, no world view, no party of special interests. It is no religion because it demands neither faith nor devotion, because there is nothing mystical about it, and because it has no dogmas. It is no worldview because it does not try to explain the cosmos and because it says nothing and does not seek to say anything about the meaning and purpose of human existence. It is no party of special interests because it does not provide or seek to provide any special advantage whatsoever to any individual or any group.

  The Cafe's proprietor, Don Boudreaux, cites Ludwig von Mises’s 1927 book, Liberalism.

  I'm not sure I totally agree, I'll have to think on it, but it seems relevant.

• Woodrow Wilson was an inspiration for Tolkien's Sauron.

  Well, that's probably not actually true.

  And yet, Dan McLaughlin asks fellow conservatives to Resist the Temptation of Illiberal Power. (archive.today link)

  First Things editor R. R. Reno made an unusual choice recently to write an ode of sorts to Woodrow Wilson. As the author of “The Hater’s Guide to Woodrow Wilson” (an ongoing series), it is my sworn duty to respond.

  But respond to what? As often seems to be the case with “postliberal” arguments, Reno is vague and euphemistic in exactly how he wishes to present Wilson as a role model other than to promote a general sentiment in favor of strongman government. We need “solidarity,” he writes, and “our history has . . . been marked by periods during which illiberal methods were employed to renew and buttress solidarity,” a process in which “Woodrow Wilson played a central role.” Wilson and FDR “sought to renew American solidarity, which required taming and restraining certain kinds of freedom, especially freedom of contract. (Roosevelt intimidated the Supreme Court to secure the overturning of Lochner.) In a word, Wilson and FDR administered strong doses of illiberalism.” This is, in unspecified ways, a good thing because the past gave us the present, and this makes it good. And we ought therefore to repeat the past:

  We are living in a similar period. Immigration, economic vulnerability, globalization—the American people are anxious. Once again, a powerful, energetic executive presses against liberal norms, as did Wilson and FDR. I don’t wish to commend any of the particular measures taken by the present administration, although some strike me as wise and necessary. My point is more fundamental. . . . We’ve been here before as a nation, and we have had statesmen who addressed liberalism’s failures so that the American ideals of liberty could be renewed and reshaped for new circumstances. In 2026, we would do well to study the methods of Wilson and FDR and weigh their achievements as well as failures. For we need something of their innovation and daring to navigate our present crisis.

  What methods of Wilson and FDR, other than intimidating the Supreme Court with threats of Court-packing, does Reno have in mind? The Palmer raids? Jailing dissenters? Segregating the federal government? Forcible sterilizations? German and Japanese internment? Covering up the president’s incapacitation? Or simply bureaucratic micromanagement of American commerce?

  I'm with Dan (and Nancy Reagan): just say no.

• Just off the top of my head: greed, envy, irresponsibility, demagoguery, power lust. Veronique de Rugy asks the musical question: What's Behind the Wild New Wealth Tax Proposals?

  When government grows to dominate ever-larger shares of the economy, and when politicians refuse to be responsible about what they spend, there's a predictable next move: Insist that the problem is "the rich" not paying enough. Never mind that high earners already shoulder a disproportionate share of the tax burden. Never mind that relying on a small and mobile group of people for the bulk of your revenue makes public finances more volatile, not more stable.

  No, once spending is treated as untouchable and restraint as politically impossible, it's only a matter of time before politics demands more, more, more. More taxes and more distortion. This helps explain why wild new forms of wealth taxes are popping up.

  California voters are heading toward a November ballot fight over a so-called one-time 5% tax on billionaires' net worth, tied to residency on a date that's already passed. Illinois lawmakers recently flirted with a tax on unrealized gains — think of stocks yet to be sold at fluctuating prices that only exist on paper — before retreating. And New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants a wealth tax to help close the city's roughly $12 billion budget gap. Prominent progressive Democrats have explicitly endorsed national wealth taxes (e.g., proposals from Sen. Elizabeth Warren).

  Different places, same impulse: Avoid hard fiscal decisions by squeezing a narrow group harder.

  Maybe I should have added "economic illiteracy" to my answer above.

• Don't cry for me, Jeff Bezos. David Harsanyi urges that you save your tears for more deserving institutions: Don't Cry for The Washington Post, It Helped Destroy Media.

  I generally don't celebrate when people lose their job. As most of us know firsthand, being laid off can be a brutal experience. Indeed, when an outfit such as the Post cuts back its workforce, good people will typically lose their jobs while the worst offenders stay on.

  But the unmitigated arrogance and sense of entitlement exuded by journalists, who seem to believe they have a God-given right to work no matter how much money they lose their employer or how poorly they do the job, speaks to the problem more.

  Over the past decade, the Post has been one of the leading culprits in the collapse of public trust in journalism. The once-venerable outlet has spent the past 10 years participating in virtually every dishonest left-wing operation, including giving legitimacy to the Brett Kavanaugh group rape accusations, delegitimizing the Hunter Biden laptop story, spreading the Gaza "genocide" lie, covering up Joe Biden's cognitive decline, sliming the Covington children, and countless others.

  I've kind of liked the WaPo's recent editorial turn to the center, if not the right. No clue what a reasonable path forward for it might be.

President Trump had an op-ed published in Last Saturday's WSJ, claiming "Donald J. Trump: My Tariffs Have Brought America Back". (WSJ gifted link)

I didn't bother reading it then. But here's one of his claims:

At Cato, Alan Reynolds aims his shotgun at that fish in the barrel: Trump’s Eighteen Trillion Dollar Hoax.

More at the link, but you get the idea. Trump's claim is bullshit.

Trump's op-ed also says:

That got the WSJ's Editorial Board to take exception: Are Trump’s Tariffs Winning?.

Again, Trump is spouting bullshit.

But what else is new?

Also of note:

• Shut up, Junior. Christian Schneider goes full libertarian, and good for him: Government Shouldn't Dictate Nutrition. (archive.today link)

  He quotes some critics of the new "inverted" pyramid. I won't bother you with the details, because…

  Yet the nutritional experts’ argument over what belongs in the food pyramid obscures the real issue: Isn’t it moronic for the government to have a food pyramid?

  The idea that the federal government should play a role in determining the food we eat only serves to stroke the egos of those who believe nothing worthwhile happens in the world without bureaucratic approval. What types of diets best serve individual citizens is one of the most-studied topics in human history, and most of that analysis has been conducted by private actors. There are infinite apps, websites, chat rooms, TikTok videos, workout plans, and the like that will get you where you want to go on your fitness journey, all thankfully operating outside the walls of the Department of Health and Human Services.

  Christian goes on to observe that, in addition to being inappropriate for a free country, Uncle Stupid's dietary advice has a lousy track record.

  For the record: I got e-mail from Dr. Oz yesterday, nagging me to

  Boost Your Protein and Healthy Fats. Think eggs, seafood, red meat, dairy, beans, nuts, and seeds. Aim for 6-7 servings per day (based on a 2,000-2,200 daily calorie level). And remember to keep saturated fats under 10% of your daily calories.

  I am in awe of the sheer arrogance involved in demanding that I (and my fellow geezers) break out the paper, pens, and calculators to figure out whether they've gone over that 10% figure.

  So: you shut up too, Dr. Oz.

• No actual elephants were harmed in getting them in that room. Eric Berger usually does straight reporting on space at Ars Technica, but he recently seemed to have lost patience: NASA finally acknowledges the elephant in the room with the SLS rocket.

  The Space Launch System rocket program is now a decade and a half old, and it continues to be dominated by two unfortunate traits: It is expensive, and it is slow.

  The massive rocket and its convoluted ground systems, so necessary to baby and cajole the booster’s prickly hydrogen propellant on board, have cost US taxpayers in excess of $30 billion to date. And even as it reaches maturity, the rocket is going nowhere fast.

  Eric recalls the dismal history of the unmanned Artemis I mission, plagued with multiple delays. And that was more than three years ago.

  Eric's analysis is worth reading in full, and so is James Meigs, in the WSJ's Free Expression newsletter: Artemis II Shows Why Private Spaceflight Should Lead the Way. (WSJ gifted link)

  While Elon Musk’s SpaceX has slashed launch costs by landing and reusing rocket boosters, SLS remains an old-school, expendable system; only the capsule survives each flight. No wonder NASA’s Office of Inspector General estimates this white elephant will cost a staggering $4.1 billion per mission. So, once again, NASA is saddled with a spaceflight system too expensive to fly routinely.

  New NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman knows all this. As a self-made entrepreneur and a veteran of two self-funded SpaceX flights, he’s an advocate for NASA’s commercial approach—and for retiring SLS. In his first confirmation hearing, Mr. Isaacman gently told the senators that SLS wasn’t “the long-term way to get to and from the moon and Mars with great frequency.” In a compromise, he suggested NASA should use the two existing SLS rockets to carry the Artemis II and Artemis III, which aims to put a crew on the lunar surface. After that, the agency should move on. The senators later approved Mr. Isaacson’s nomination. But they pushed back on retiring SLS, instead adding funding to build more SLS rockets to last year’s Big Beautiful Bill.

  Finally, Viking Pundit comments from personal experience: Don't light this candle

  I believe I mentioned this before but I briefly worked as a project engineer on the Orion program and it was - by far - the worst job I've ever had. Whatever excitement of "working for NASA" was washed away in a sclerotic bureaucracy that throttled any real progress. There were regular newsletters circulated that heralded how NASA programs were spread over every state in the Union which should tell you what you need to know: this is a jobs program, not a space program.

  The SLS/Orion program is still dependent upon Space Shuttle technology from over 40 years ago. Why? Because some Congressman didn't want to see a NASA subcontractor in his/her district lose that sweet federal money. This is all part of the grift along with the endless delays. There are never any consequences for delay so why not keep your job going? These programs achieve a kind of half-life behavior where progress slows the closer you get to the finish line.

  I hope and pray I'm wrong, but I fear this Artemis launch will result in cataclysm`

  When (or if) Artemis II launches, I'll be watching and hoping for the best. But like the VP, fearing the worst.

Leading off with Frank J. Fleming's effort, which is stunning and funny:

Look at this adorable, real thing that happened to me (not AI). pic.twitter.com/iASSYXNR1Y

— Frank J. Fleming (@IMAO_) January 29, 2026

At his substack, Frank discusses further: Totally Real Video of Me Caring for Wildlife.

And here's something I missed from last December:

Completely random… but different 😂 pic.twitter.com/Ha9S1evrv7

— Wholesome Side of 𝕏 (@itsme_urstruly) December 24, 2025

I know I've said this before, but I'm pretty sure creative geniuses with low budgets (and minimal concerns for copyright law) will start making feature movies with their choice of stars from the past. Sure, Sturgeon's Law says 90% of it will be crap, but 10% will be great, and the public will eat it up. There will be lawsuits galore, but in the end we'll get wonderfully entertained.

And maybe some things will be lawsuit-free. Last year, I looked at an effort to AI-restore Orson Welles' original version of The Magnificent Ambersons. And of course, my idea of a Casablanca sequel, with AI resurrecting the original cast? Still a dream!

Also of note:

• And he's pretty far ahead of whoever is in second place. Jim Geraghty observes The Most Erratic President in the World.

  He’s the rare kind of immigration hardliner who wants more H-1B visas.

  He’s warned that illegal immigrants are taking “Black population jobs, the Hispanic population jobs, and they’re attacking union jobs too” . . . and also proposed giving green cards to any foreign student who graduates from a U.S. institution of higher education.

  He added his own name to the Kennedy Center . . . and then shut it down for two years for renovations.

  He pledged that the addition of a new ballroom to the White House “won’t interfere with the current building” . . . and then tore down the East Wing.

  And that's just the first few paragraphs. Trump is increasingly unhinged from:

  • truth;
  • reality;
  • his own past.

  What could go wrong? Unfortunately, we'll probably find out.

• It doesn't seem like Congress is functioning well either. George Will lays out some possibilities, none pleasant, but: One path to U.S. fiscal disaster is most alarming — and most likely. (WaPo gifted link)

  GFW points to a recent report from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, titled What Would a Fiscal Crisis Look Like? Their scenarios:

  • Financial Crisis: Reduced confidence in U.S. Treasury markets could lead to a spike in interest rates, panic among traders, devaluation of assets, freezing or slowing of credit, and failure of key financial institutions.
  • Inflation Crisis: Attempts or fear of attempts to manage debt levels through monetization, artificially low interest rates, or financial repression could result in high and potentially spiraling inflation.
  • Austerity Crisis: Sharp tax increases and spending cuts enacted to stave off a fiscal crisis could create undue hardship, undermine demand, and push the economy into recession.
  • Currency Crisis: The U.S. dollar could face sudden and significant depreciation in response to fiscal stress and policy responses, resulting in destabilization of markets and the economy.
  • Default Crisis: Policymakers could explicitly or implicitly default on debt, including by failing to make debt payments or by restructuring existing debt.
  • Gradual Crisis: Living standards and fiscal and monetary flexibility could gradually erode in response to rising debt, potentially causing as much or more long-term damage than an acute crisis.

  GFW comments on that last one:

  The most probable, and most ominous, outcome would be a gradual crisis. In 2021, debt service consumed less than 10 percent of federal revenue. In 2025: 18 percent. By being gradual, a protracted crisis would mean a demoralized nation slowly accommodating perpetual economic sluggishness, waning investments in research and development, social stagnation, diminished contribution from the entrepreneurial energies of talented immigrants, and waning U.S. geopolitical influence.

  A gradual crisis would be anesthetizing, rather than an action-forcing, cymbal-crash event that could stimulate recuperative reforms of U.S. political culture. Instead, this culture would become more toxic. Political power would be fought for, and wielded, with the desperate ruthlessness of a zero-sum competition in which one faction’s gains must equal other factions’ losses.

  So, government would simultaneously become more powerful, more divisive and less legitimate. The currency is how everyone meets the government every day through the unstated — because presumably obvious — government promise that the currency it issues is trustworthy.

  That's the WaPo, which still exists, and last I heard, George Will is still there.

  I fear "zero-sum" in the second quoted paragraph is way too optimistic. Almost certainly we'll be looking at negative-sum conflicts at that point of the game.

• And don't look at tax gimmicks to fix things. Robert VerBruggen looks at a recent study that concludes Taxing the Rich Won't Raise Much Money. Cutting Their Taxes Won't Either. Invoking the Laffer Curve?

  This is a hard problem. But a fascinating new study, written by a trio of economists from Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, takes a crack at it, using more sophisticated methods than previous work has employed. Its intriguing title gives away its main finding: “Laffer Curves Are Flat.” We won’t raise money by cutting the top rate, it concludes, but we won’t raise very much by increasing it either.

  A harder problem, apparently: getting rid of the useless Department of Education. In recent news: The Department of Education Isn’t Going Anywhere. Which brings us to…

• If throwing money at schools didn't work, you didn't throw enough. That's the unshakable faith of seemingly every educrat. Jennifer Weber reports, on the contrary: New York Leads in School Spending—But Not Student Achievement.

  Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposed executive budget for fiscal year 2027, released January 20th, earmarks nearly $40 billion in state funds for K–12 education. Her proposal appears with New York leading the nation in per-pupil spending for the nineteenth consecutive year.

  Albany cites these nation-leading expenditures as evidence of the state’s “longstanding commitment” to giving students “the opportunity to excel.” But big spending has not meaningfully improved the metric that matters: student achievement.

  Per-pupil spending in New York State already exceeds $36,000 annually. If Hochul’s budget passes, New York will have increased state school aid by about $10 billion over the past five years. It will bring total state school aid to $39.3 billion—the largest in New York’s history, and a $1.6 billion increase over last year alone.

  If record investment translated into academic mastery, New York students’ proficiency rates would be increasing. Instead, they remain stubbornly low. According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 31 percent of New York eighth-graders were proficient in reading; only 26 percent were proficient in math.

  If you'd like, go back and read my post from two days ago in response to John Shea's (Superintendent of Schools in Somersworth NH). Shea wants New Hampshire's state educational spending to be more like New York's. Why?

• The sickness is metaphorical, but still… The WaPo editorial board (which still exists) looks at news you may have missed (like I did): Moderna’s chilling announcement is a symptom of a deeper sickness. (WaPo gifted link)

  Moderna’s recent disclosure that it plans no new late-stage vaccine trials because of policy uncertainty in the United States is a chilling consequence of the Trump administration’s anti-vaccine turn. It’s also symptomatic of a deeper sickness threatening American dominance in pharmaceutical innovation.

  Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is systematically eroding a vaccination infrastructure that has saved countless children from death and deformity. After a quarter-century, America is on the verge of losing its measles elimination status. Now he’s tinkering with the liability system that keeps vaccine manufacturers economically viable.

  Throw in government price controls, and you've got a perfect, and deadly, storm of government interference making things worse.

If you've given up watching Saturday Night Live, I can't blame you. Their political stuff generates clapter from the audience, and (sorry) nary a chuckle from me. And I despise Trump!

On the other hand, if you keep watching…

I've watched four times, and laughed every time.

I confess I've developed a thing for Jane Wickline. A completely inappropriate thing, for multiple reasons, including ones I'm probably not aware of.

Also of note:

• No, that's not a misspelling. Robert Graboyes, owner of Bastiat's Window, admits he suffers from Electile Dysfunction.

  Bastiat’s Window made no endorsement in the 2024 presidential election—nor in any other election before or since. We’re unlikely to endorse any candidates in the future—largely for three reasons described below—futility, disdain, and regret.

  I'm in Bob's boat, for the same reasons, plus an additional one: humility. I can't think of any reason you, Reader, would want or need my advice on who to vote for. (Or whether to vote at all.)

• Plus, it looks like an ugly shoebox. Jeffrey Blehar's Carnival of Fools newsletter Trump Closing Kennedy Center for Renovations: Artists Won't Play There.

  This is no secret. Hamilton already canceled its anticipated 2026 run at the Kennedy Center in response to Trump’s 2025 purge of the Kennedy Center board. After the name change in December, other cancellations followed — including from nonpolitical artists who understood that playing in a building illegally renamed by a sitting president after himself amounted to an endorsement of the act. But six days ago — and far more devastatingly for the Kennedy Center’s social calendar — composer Philip Glass withdrew his Lincoln symphony, written specifically to premiere there in honor of America’s Semiquincentennial. “Symphony No. 15 is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, and the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the Symphony.”

  I don’t blame Glass for the insult: Trump put his name on the building precisely because he wanted to insult Glass and all others forced to play there. I think President Trump is many things, but a fool is not one of them; he knows exactly how much he is hated, and he is especially well-informed about who specifically hates him. He renamed the Kennedy Center after himself precisely because in his limited time left in office, he was amused by the idea of watching luminaries from the hated artistic class forced to bow and scrape and play in King Trump’s Beautiful Memorial Building. It really goes no deeper than that. The original source of most of his impulses — and most of his biggest errors — is vanity and ego gratification, after all.

  Jeffrey also discusses the Grammy Awards show, extending some well-deserved disrespect to Billie Ellish, et al. And the Oscar nominees for Best Picture? Reader, I can't even get interested in watching the ones Jeffrey sorta likes.

  E.g., his take on One Battle After Another: "a technically well-made film with flashes of genuine wit and human empathy, but it ultimately drowns in the incoherence of its plotting and message." I'll just watch a couple old episodes of House on Amazon Prime, ThankYouVeryMuch.)

• You talkin' to me, Erick? Mr. Erickson has some well-meaning advice for … some folks, anyway: Y'all Need to Shut Up. 2026 Electoral success for the GOP is looking pretty dim anyway, and …

  That is why Republican leaders in Washington really need to shut the hell up on gun issues right now. Here is the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia on Fox News yesterday.

  Pirro: "You bring a gun into the District, you mark my words, you're going to jail. I don't care if you have a license in another district and I don't care if you're a law abiding law owner somewhere else. You bring a gun into this District, count on going to jail and hope you… pic.twitter.com/tiZ6PwtA1i

  — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 2, 2026

  This comes a week after Alex Pretti’s death, when the President and others in his Administration also attacked Second Amendment rights.

  I cannot think of a strategy better able to alienate Second Amendment voters from showing up in the midterms.

  I'll probably trudge down to the American Legion in November and unenthusiastically vote a straight-GOP ticket, but…

  (Not an endorsement! See above!)

• There's something about Tulsi. The Federalist's M.D. Kittle is pretty upset about a news item to which I linked a couple days ago: WSJ Hit Piece On Gabbard Based On Complaints That 'Weren't Credible'

  M.D. embeds a couple of tweets, one from Tulsi's Deputy Chief of Staff:

  As if the @WSJ needed to provide more examples of how it’s utter trash.
  
  Here’s the truth: There was no wrongdoing by @DNIGabbard, a fact that WSJ conveniently buried 13 paragraphs down. Even the Biden-era IC IG came to this collusion the Whistleblower’s allegations against DNI… https://t.co/0UeSvde67l

  — Alexa Henning (@alexahenning) February 2, 2026

  And one from DNI's official spokeswoman:

  This is not true and is one of the most disgusting cases of clickbait I have ever seen.
  
  There was absolutely NO wrongdoing by DNI Gabbard, a fact that @WSJ conveniently buried 13 paragraphs down. Even the Biden-era Intelligence Community Inspector General came to this… https://t.co/F9LMolUXCb

  — Olivia Coleman (@DNIspox) February 2, 2026

  In case you missed it: "conveniently buried 13 paragraphs down".

  (For what it's worth: those tweets were both posted at 8:21am on Monday. Who copied whom?)

  So, in fairness, here's the WSJ's paragraph 13:

  Gabbard answered written questions about the allegations from the inspector general’s office, a senior official at the spy agency said. That prompted the acting inspector general at the time, Tamara Johnson, to determine the allegations specifically about Gabbard weren’t credible, the official said. Johnson remains employed at the agency, which didn’t make her available for an interview.

  Just wanted you to know the whole story. Now you know as much as I do, which is nothing.

John Shea sounds the death knell in my lousy local newspaper, Foster's Daily Democrat: Open enrollment threatens to destroy public education in NH. His opening salvo:

I've bolded a couple sentences above. Shea loves to gripe about the state government's stinginess. He fails to mention that, overall, New Hampshire spends quite a bit on K-12 education. World Population Review has comparison data ("Per Pupil Spending by State 2026"): it shows NH as the seventh-highest in yearly spending per student ($21,898; behind only New York, Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Alaska).

Also, worse: Shea is bullshitting about NH being "dead last among the 50 states" in terms of state government K-12 funding. A supplementary table shows the state kicking in $6,344 per student annually. Dead last? No; it's more than Georgia, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Ohio, Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Nebraska, Arizona, South Dakota, Florida, and Texas.

(I almost wrote "Shea is lying" there, but "bullshitting" is the more accurate term. As Harry Frankfurt pointed out, bullshitters don't care whether they're telling the truth or not.)

John Shea is currently superintendent of schools of the Somersworth School District, just up the road from Pun Salad Manor. He first came to my attention in 2018, appearing in Foster's demanding a boycott of the Kittery (Maine) Trading Post, for daring to sell "semi-automatic assault rifles".

At the time, I suggested that Shea literally mind his own business: then, as now, running the Somersworth schools. Back then, their student scores on statewide tests were awful.

Guess what, they're still bad:

I will play the cynic: Shea has warned against the imminent demise of government schooling, and the awful people plotting it, in the past (Pun Salad comments are here, here, and here.) EFAs and Open Enrollment might make it economically feasible for Somersworth parents to escape his subpar school for better options.

For a sane look at Open Enrollment, see the Josiah Bartlett Center: Know the basics. Their summary:

Shea is frightened to death of competition. Maybe Somersworth should get a superintendent who isn't.

Also of note:

• Actually, it is rocket science. Ars Technica relates the sad story: Unable to tame hydrogen leaks, NASA delays launch of Artemis II until March.

  The launch of NASA’s Artemis II mission, the first flight of astronauts to the Moon in more than 53 years, will have to wait another month after a fueling test Monday uncovered hydrogen leaks in the connection between the rocket and its launch platform at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

  “Engineers pushed through several challenges during the two-day test and met many of the planned objectives,” NASA said in a statement following the conclusion of the mock countdown, or wet dress rehearsal (WDR), early Tuesday morning. “To allow teams to review data and conduct a second Wet Dress Rehearsal, NASA now will target March as the earliest possible launch opportunity for the flight test.”

  Whenever it goes, I'll be watching. And praying. Well, probably not literally praying, but you know what I mean.

• Lock him up. Kevin D. Williamson makes The Simple Case for Arresting Don Lemon. (Followed by "the less simple case against".) (archive.today link)

  The simple case for arresting and prosecuting Don Lemon for his role in the invasion of a St. Paul Church by a group of anti-ICE protesters is, well, simple: It seems that he probably broke the law, including a federal statute that forbids “nonviolent physical obstruction” of worship services.

  Lemon insists that he was not there to participate in the protest action but to cover it as a journalist. In fairness, he did not claim to be there as a good journalist—a claim to which I would take some exception—but, in any case, that does not matter very much: Lemon entered the church, disrupting its business, and stayed after he was specifically asked to leave by the people in charge. We do not license journalists in the United States—thank goodness—and acting as a journalist does not give anyone any special license to break otherwise applicable laws. The First Amendment gives Americans the right to publish and speak, but it does not protect those engaged in publishing and speaking from being prosecuted for criminal acts, including criminal acts that frequently come up in the course of doing a reporter’s work, such as trespassing, receiving classified documents, or making audio or video recordings in way that might violate local laws requiring the consent of those being recorded. Journalists, like those engaged in civil disobedience, at times willfully break the law in the course of doing something they think important, and, like those engaged in civil disobedience, they must be prepared to bear the legal consequences for illegal actions.

  Read on for that other case. And also for:

  It is a little weird to think about what a man on the edge of 80 might be when he grows up, but if Trump ever grows up, a fascist is what he will grow up to be. That said, I agree it is unfair to call him a fascist today for the same reason it would be unfair to ask my dachshund to write a commentary on Aristotle.

• I may go through 2026 without watching any movies. But Jeff Maurer braved the crowds and brings us his Review of "Melania"

  The inauguration coat is a major plot in Melania. You see, Melania was thinking of wearing one coat, but then she decided to wear another coat. A big bravura scene — the Melania equivalent of the Omaha Beach scene in Saving Private Ryan — happens when it looks like they might not be able to tailor the coat the way she wanted! But then…yes they can. Crisis averted! Before seeing the movie, if you had asked me how Melania picked out her inauguration coat, I would have said “I’ll bet someone showed her a bunch of different coats, and she looked at them, and then chose one.” I honestly did not need a feature film to confirm: Yes, that was it.

  The funniest part of the movie is when Melania claims that the movie is the story that “everyone wants to know”, and then there’s a near-smash-cut to her picking out a bureau for Barron’s room. Devil’s advocate: Did everyone want to know how Barron’s bureau was picked out? Surely someone exists who is fascinated by Barron’s bureau — like all of us — but who is ho-hum about the selection process. I can’t even imagine what footage was edited out of Melania — maybe footage of Melania watching an ice cube melt in a glass of water, or her sitting motionless staring at an ant farm for 90 minutes. Melania is so dull that it makes your average episode of Caillou seem like The Bourne Identity.

  60 percent of the movie is Melania being transported places. Did you ever wonder how she gets from the airport to Trump Tower? The answer is: a car. What about from one room in Mar-a-Lago to a different room? It’s hallways, sometimes including stairs. The movie seems to assume that the audience is suffering from Transient Global Amnesia, so if they see Melania in one room, and later she’s in a different room, they’ll freak out and yell “HOW DID SHE GET FROM THAT PLACE TO THIS PLACE?!?!?!?” To prove that Melania is not a teleporting shapeshifter, the movie treats us to excruciatingly long shots of Melania in cars, sometimes accompanied by “Gimme Shelter” or “Billie Jean” to try to provide energy where there is obviously none.

  But, surprisingly, Matthew Hennessey says: ‘Melania’ in the Money. (WSJ gifted link)

  “Melania” did boffo business at the box office this weekend. Why do I get a victory lap? Because one of the first Free Expression newsletters predicted this. It was headlined “Republicans Watch Documentaries, Too.”

  The film about the first lady opened on 1,778 screens and pulled in more than $7 million. That’s a lot for a documentary, most of which don’t play in theaters at all. The ones that do are lucky to make $70.

  But haters always hate. Much of the reporting on the film’s haul has noted that it’s still a long way from profitability. Amazon paid $40 million for “Melania” and reportedly invested another $35 million in marketing.

  Apparently some attendees did not attend just so they could make fun of the movie for their substack audience.

• Also overused: "perfect". James Lileks muses on the different approaches taken by the customer service people you wind up talking to on the phone: Awesome? That's a Negative.

  3. The Over-Effusive Youth. The levels of enthusiastic obsequiousness I get from younger customer-service reps is jarring. Can I get your phone number? Awwwesome. Zip? Awwwwesome. Sometimes it’s quick - awsm! - and sometimes it’s drawn out with reverence like they’re invoking some old Norse God named Ossum. We’ve been told that Generation Z (or maybe Alpha, I am too Boomery to care about these distinctions) has a social aversion to the phone, because it’s rude and intrusive. You mean I have to talk to someone, just because they want to? You mean I have to just call someone up and make them talk to me? Obviously not all of them feel like this, but the ones that are capable of talking on the phone really lean into it, like they’re doing something retro or vintage and they think that’s how it used to be done.

  I liked that mini-reflection in the middle: I am too Boomery to care about these distinctions. Me too, James, me too.

The Eye Candy Du Jour … looks like she knows something, doesn't it?

The WSJ has a scoop: a Classified Whistleblower Complaint About Tulsi Gabbard Stalls Within Her Agency. (WSJ gifted link)

I assume Joseph Heller is, somewhere in the afterlife, murmuring "Catch-22", perhaps with a wry grin.

I also assume Mick Herron will write a Slow Horses novel incorporating a similar plot thread someday, if he hasn't done so already.

Also of note:

• 

  Looks like it's up to you, Sweet Meteor of Death. I suppose many will see this as good news: Superintelligent AI Is Not Coming To Kill You. It is a Neil Chilson's brief review/debunking of the book Amazon-linked at your right.

  "We do not mean that as hyperbole," they write. They believe artificial intelligence research will inevitably produce superintelligent machines and these machines will inevitably kill everyone.

  This is an extraordinary claim. It requires extraordinary evidence. Instead, they offer a daisy chain of thought experiments, unexamined premises, and a linguistic sleight of hand that smuggles their conclusion into the definition of intelligence itself.

  The book's central argument rests on the "alignment problem"—the effort to ensure that advanced AI systems share human values. Yudkowsky popularized this concept. Humans, the authors argue, succeed through intelligence, which they define as "the work of predicting the world, and the work of steering the world." Computers will surpass human intelligence because they are faster, can copy themselves, have perfect memory, and can modify their own architecture. Because AI systems are "grown" through training rather than explicitly programmed, we cannot fully specify their goals. When superintelligent AI pursues objectives that diverge even slightly from human values, it will optimize relentlessly toward those alien goals. When we interfere, it will eliminate us.

  Well, I put it on my get-at-library list anyway, for when I'm in the mood for something apocalyptic.

• Speaking of apocalyptic no-shows: Commie broadcasting survives. I don't know if Becket Adams' story is good news or bad, but: NPR and PBS Never Needed Your Taxpayer Dollars. (NR gifted link)

  When Republican lawmakers moved last year to end taxpayer funding for PBS and NPR, a constellation of media CEOs and experts warned that the cuts would result in the closure of dozens, possibly hundreds, of affiliate stations.

  It has now been six months since President Trump signed a bill eliminating $1.1 billion in federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the predicted newsroom Armageddon has yet to materialize.

  In fact, of the more than 1,000 television and radio stations that make up the country’s public media system, nearly all remain operational.

  Becket gets in a wisecrack: "I distinctly remember being told that the budget cuts would kill us all. No, wait. Sorry. That was net neutrality." Before rattling off some of the dire predictions made by adherents.

  I suppose it's an interesting question: Now that NPR/PBS rely more on voluntary donations, has that made them more lefty, or less? Interesting question, but not interesting enough to make me Google.

• LFOD, unless prohibited by shaky legal rulings. Jonathan H. Adler is nonplussed by the success a recent legal shenanigan: Private Suit Commandeers New Hampshire Government to Maintain Vehicle Emission Inspections.

  This weekend car owners in New Hampshire were supposed to be done with regular automobile emission inspections. Although such inspections had been part of the New Hampshire's State Implementation Plan (SIP) under the federal Clean Air Act, the state legislature passed a law abolishing the program last year, effective today, January 31. Now, however, the inspections may be required after all.

  Gordon-Darby Holdings, which owns the company that administered the program under a contract with the state did not want the program (and its associated revenue) to go away, so it filed suit, seeking an injunction to force New Hampshire to continue requiring automobile emission inspections. According to Gordon-Darby, New Hampshire was required to maintain the program unless and until it received approval from the federal Environmental Protection Agency. On this basis, the company went to court and—quite shockingly—prevailed.

  Jonathan thinks the ruling made by federal district court judge Landya McCafferty is clearly flawed on "anti-commandeering" grounds. (Something "typically taught to first-year law students in the introductory Constitutional Law course.") So we'll see what happens. My inspection month was (and maybe still is) April, so they have a few months to figure it out.

Well, that's a pretty sad pic over there on your right, isn't it? Not only are the Canadians pissed with us, our local boozemakers aren't happy either. And they have a lot of extra hooch to drown their sorrows. As C. Jarrett Dieterle says, Trump's Tariff War Is Crushing American Alcohol Makers.

I hope SCOTUS will save us from this pointless stupidity. (But I note that we don't seem to be boycotting them: the state liquor store website shows plenty of Crown Royal in stock, although the prices seem steep to me.)

Also of note:

• Look out below! The WSJ editorialists write on The Perils of a Falling Trump Dollar. (WSJ gifted link)

  President Trump this week said he thinks a weaker dollar is “great,” but he should be careful what he wishes for. Many politicians over the years have contemplated a weaker greenback as an economic miracle cure. They often discover that a weak dollar is a liability.

  Mr. Trump made his remark Tuesday amid dollar weakness that is contributing to instability in global foreign-exchange markets. The WSJ Dollar Index, which compares the greenback to a basket of currencies, has fallen about 8% over the past year, and gold’s steady ascent, to above $5,300 per ounce this week, sends its own signal about dollar weakness. The dollar-euro exchange rate is among the most important in the global economy, and the greenback has lost about 14% of its value relative to the euro over the past year.

  I'd buy some gold, but unfortunately the ground in my backyard is frozen solid.

• Some say the world will end in… Well, you know the rest.

  Unbeknownst to me, Jeffrey Blehar has a weekly newsletter at the National Review site. And it's unpaywalled! Check out his latest observation: ICE Can’t Fight Activist Fire with Fire.

  Yesterday morning, I offered some blunt advice to President Trump: He should either fire Kristi Noem — preferably aboard a rocket and into the sun — or absent that, demote and back-burner her as the failed face of the Department of Homeland Security. (My actual wording was a bit harsher: “Can nearly everybody within the remote orbit of DHS leadership except for Tom Homan.”) And because Trump was in one of his rare obliging moods, he evidently was already taking that advice, declaring that both Noem and Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino would be departing Minneapolis, with Homan stepping in instead. It’s an excellent and necessary first step.

  But I am also alert to the fundamental problem the federal government is faced with: How can it be permissible in a functioning civil society for one narrow segment of it to simply decide it will collectively oppose enforcement of federal immigration laws? You cannot permit activists to effectively nullify federal law out of a misplaced sense of self-righteousness or progressive fervor. You also cannot, well, shoot them — not for being obstreperous agitators, not in America. How does the government enforce the law?

  If I had an easy answer, I’d offer it right now. But I don’t, and one reason for that is that the left has had a century-long head start in the (mostly legal, if largely invidious) techniques of organization and protest. It is important to understand the methodology used by the activists here, why it is so devilishly effective, and why the Trump administration needs to be smarter about how it chooses its confrontations. And that requires a bit of a history lesson.

  Woodrow Wilson had his methods: jail (e.g., Eugene Debs) and deportation (e.g. Emma Goldman). We don't do that any more, although I assume Trump is envious thereof.

Jeff Maurer has a relevant suggestion: Stop Lionizing/Villainizing Victims.

All in all, it's proceeding as Kat Rosenfield warned a couple weeks back [pre-Pretti]: Minneapolis Isn’t a Movie. (archive.today link)

Also of note:

• It's all fun and games until you get trampled. The WSJ is shaking its head at another social engineering plot gone awry: A Plan to Save Elephants Sparked a Deadly Conflict. (WSJ gifted link)

  Three-year-old Dickson Ngwira was deep into his afternoon nap when half a dozen elephants, using trunks as trowels, gouged a five-foot-wide hole in the brick wall near his bed.

  His mother, Matilda Banda, was caught out in the open. Unable to reach Dickson, she hid in the bushes as the animals wrecked her home and devoured the family’s corn supply.

  She pictured her son being trampled to death. It wasn’t hard to imagine; elephants had crushed her cousin the previous year.

  Dickson survived the November rampage, concealing himself under a pile of baskets. Since then, he’s suffered from bouts of uncontrolled sobbing and relentless nightmares.

  “My child is no longer the same happy little boy,” said Banda, 23.

  The well-meaning villains could have been plucked from an Ayn Rand novel:

  In 2022, a Netherlands-based conservation group, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, helped the government of Malawi truck 263 elephants from Liwonde National Park in the south, which had too many elephants, to Kasungu National Park in central Malawi, which had far fewer. The 280-mile relocation was part of the country’s broader conservation efforts.

  […]

  The toll on the human side over the past three years: 26 villagers dead, scores injured, $4.5 million in crops destroyed and hundreds of homes damaged, according to Warm Heart Initiative, a Zambian nonprofit providing social support and advocating for locals.

  Moral: Beware of Nederlanders bearing elephants.

• Somebody has to. George Will has high hopes: With this decision, the Supreme Court can and should rein Trump in. (archive.today link)

  As the Supreme Court prepares a landmark ruling about the scope of presidential power, the current president is acting more unleashed than any predecessor. He is demonstrating that a president not self-restrained by his or her constitutional conscience is almost unrestrainable.

  The court case concerns whether presidents have the power to remove, for any reason, all principal officers of executive agencies exercising significant executive power. The ruling will emphatically bolster or substantially quarantine the “unitary executive theory.” It holds that all executive power is vested in the president, who exercises sole authority over executive branch activities. The theory says Congress has no authority to limit the president from exercising command over administrative policymaking by denying the president’s power to remove agencies’ principal officers.

  GFW previously plugged a book by Michael W. McConnell, which I wound up reading and liking: The President Who Would Not Be King — Executive Power under the Constitution. McConnell is a fan of the unitary executive concept, and GFW is (emphatically) not.

  This is one of those thorny Constitutional issues that has good arguments on both sides. Every time I see an argument making me lean one way, the next argument pulls me back the other way.

• Italy is lovely this time of year, no? Dave Barry talks about past and upcoming Winter Olympics.

  If I had to describe, in one word, the fun and excitement of being a professional journalist at the winter games, that word would be “unpleasant bus rides.” I say this because to get to the competition venues, you often have to travel long distances on winding mountain roads in hot buses filled with members of the international press corps, a group not known for taking regular showers, if you catch my drift. These buses can get very crowded, so you might wind up standing for hours pressed so tightly against an aromatic photographer from some vowel-free nation that by the time you reach your destination one of you is definitely going to have the other one’s baby.

  But despite the bus rides, I enjoyed covering the winter games. Once I even got to try my hand at an actual Olympic event, namely curling. This is a sport that originated in Scotland in the 16th century, when some Scottish people, who we can assume were pretty hammered, discovered that if you slid a heavy stone along a frozen surface, and then ran next to the stone frantically sweeping the ice with a broom, you would look like an idiot. From these humble origins curling went on to become hugely popular worldwide, by which I mean in Canada and parts of Wisconsin.

  No gifted link, sorry. Subscribe, you won't be sorry.

• No, Nellie Bowles isn't referring to Pun Salad. Her regular Friday column at the Free Press is TGIF: Wonderful, Gracious, Charming. Lots of different topics, this one caught my eye:

  → Senator Ted Cruz to Supreme Court? Ted Cruz was caught on audio at donor meetings criticizing Trump (for tariffs) and J.D. Vance. “Tucker created J.D.,” Cruz says on the recordings from last year, which Axios reported this week. “J.D. is Tucker’s protégé, and they are one and the same.” One second it’s Peter Thiel who created J.D., now it’s Tucker. Can’t a vice president get to the bad ideas on his own anymore?

  Now Trump is floating sending Ted to the Supreme Court: “He’s a brilliant man. If I nominate him for the United States Supreme Court, I will get 100 percent of the vote,” Trump said. “The Democrats will vote for him because they want to get him the hell out, and the Republicans will vote for him because they want to get him the hell out, too.” I hate compliments like this, when it starts nice, and then ends with someone wanting me the hell out. It’s so fronthanded. Cruz reportedly had this to say about Trump’s interesting idea: “No, just no. Hell no.” Three no’s means yes, Justice Cruz. Robe up!

  I've always kind of liked Ted, as much as any politician. But he seems to rub everyone else the wrong way. Might be interesting to see how he would do on SCOTUS, which is legendary for its collegiality.

  

  Yes, that's Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Antonin Scalia on an elephant. Can't we all get along as well as they did?

Charlie and John tag-team Tim:

Federal agents are in a recalcitrant state trying to enforce federal law, and the governor of that state wonders if it’s Fort Sumter without stopping to puzzle out which side that makes him in the analogy.

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) January 29, 2026

Also of note:

• Professor Pinker is no pinko.

  I spoke with @LaulPatricia about Marxism:
  
  One is: What’s remarkable is that Marxism has been tried. Now, of course, defenders of Marxism say it hasn’t really been tried anywhere, but certainly the people who implemented it claimed they were implementing Marxism.
  
  And this is a… pic.twitter.com/rpPkvEti8C

  — Steven Pinker (@sapinker) January 26, 2026

  Excerpting a few more paragraphs:

  And this is a massive experiment—a global experiment—with a very clear outcome. Namely, the Soviet Union was a disaster. The imposition of communism on Eastern Europe was a disaster. The imposition of communism in Venezuela was a disaster. The imposition of communism in Maoist China was a disaster. Disaster in terms of both poverty and oppression and genocide and stupid wars. So the world has told us what happens under communism, and it’s a sign of how out of touch intellectuals can be that there are still people who defend it despite the entire world giving a very clear-cut answer.

  One more is: would you rather live in North Korea or South Korea? Would you rather live in the old East Germany or West Germany? We have an experimental group and a matched control group in terms of culture, language, and geography, and the answer is crystal clear. So this is a sign of, I think, the pathology of intellectual life—that Marxism can persist.

  More at the link, and it just gets more brutal on Marxism as it goes.

• Depends on what you're trying to accomplish. David Harsanyi throws an Econ 101 textbook at the GOP's wannabe populists: Price Controls Won't Work Any Better for Republicans Than It Does Democrats.

  Demonizing greedy bankers and landlords is the last refuge of the poorly polling politician.

  And, as affordability remains a leading issue among voters, the Trump administration has regularly used rhetoric and ideas that mirror those of progressive Democrats like Zohran Mamdani.

  Take the president's recent idea for capping credit card interest rates at 10%. Or rather, the idea that's already proposed in a bill sponsored by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Josh Hawley. "They've really abused the public," the president said of credit card companies. "I'm not going to let it happen."

  Kevin D. Williamson chimes in: Don’t Cap Credit Cards. (archive.today link)

  Trump, of all people, is well positioned to understand how this works in the real world. During his time as an incompetent real estate developer, Trump made almost as many appearances in bankruptcy proceedings as he did on Page Six. Trump is a known deadbeat and a bad credit risk. When you are a bad credit risk, you pay higher interest rates and get credit on generally worse terms. And then, at some point, you simply cannot get credit at all, at least through ordinary channels. Toward the end of his run in real estate, Trump found it practically impossible to get loans from any of the major lenders with which he had been associated—often to those banks’ regret—over the years. Trump is, at the moment, legally prohibited from taking out commercial loans from banks in the state of New York after having been found by a court to have engaged in financial fraud. 

  […]

  Capping interest rates at 10 percent would, to be clear, simply destroy the credit card business as we know it. High income people with very high credit scores typically pay more than 15 percent as it is, whereas lower income people with worse credit scores pay a lot more—and the average rate is around 20 percent. At 10 percent, there would be more profitable things for firms to do with their money rather than take on the risk and work of operating a credit card business. If you think a bank could make a good go of it by offering credit cards at 10 percent, then my advice for you is: Do it. If you succeed, then you probably will end up being one of the wealthiest entrepreneurs in the world. 

  Of course, advocacy of price controls "works" for demagogic politicians, who need to fool their economically illiterate base into thinking they are "doing something" to help.

• Go home, Chief Lee, you're drunk. The College Fix has the University Near Here in the news: U. New Hampshire student-turned state lawmaker pushing for ‘campus carry’ law.

  Samuel Farrington is a college student and New Hampshire state representative who believes that public universities should allow students to exercise their Second Amendment rights.

  Farrington, a Republican and a senior at the University of New Hampshire, recently introduced a “campus carry” bill in the state House to require just that. The bill would prohibit public colleges and universities from “regulating the possession or carrying of firearms and non-lethal weapons on campus.”

  So hooray for Representative Farrington. He makes the standard, sensible, argument that "gun-free zones" are soft targets for the murderous. This bit caught my eye, though:

  During a committee hearing on Jan. 16, two students testified against the bill, while nine students spoke in favor of it. UNH Police Chief Steve Lee also testified against the bill.

  Steve Lee has also been in our local news more recently. For example, at WMUR: UNH police chief charged with DUI.

  The police chief for the University of New Hampshire Police Department is now on administrative leave after being arrested and charged with DUI.

  Court documents show Chief Steven Lee was arrested Thursday after allegedly driving on I-95 in Portsmouth while drunk.

  Lee has pleaded not guilty. A trial date is set for March.

  UNH said it has launched an internal investigation, and Capt. Mark Collopy is now serving as the department's interim chief.

  I occasionally drive on I-95 in Portsmouth, and I have to ask: how crazily do you have to drive on I-95 to get the attention of the cops?

He writes at the WSJ: America Doesn’t Do Fascism. (WSJ gifted link)

Read on for Barton's refutation.

Today's Eye Candy from Getty Images is a pic of the Roman fasces, adopted as a symbol by Italian Fascists in 1919. That is, in fact, whence the term "fascism" derives.

And, well, make of this what you will: the fasces used to be pretty popular in America too. It appeared on the Mercury Dime from 1916-1945. The Lincoln Memorial (designed in 1913, completed in 1922) features the symbol throughout. And, notably, the US House chamber has featured two big bronze fasces up on the rostrum since 1950. Versions have been in the House chambers since 1789; so, as they say: a long tradition of existence.

Also of note:

• Your periodic reminder. And it comes from Romina Boccia at the Daily Economy: Social Security Isn’t a Retirement Account.

  The senators elected in fall 2026 won’t be able to avoid dealing with Social Security. The program is projected to hit a financial cliff before the end of 2032, forcing Congress to consider benefit reductions, higher taxes, or more borrowing.

  The looming deadline exposes a deeper problem than arithmetic: Congress has spent decades selling Social Security as something it isn’t. Public misunderstanding of the program’s true nature is one of the biggest obstacles to reform.

  Many Americans think Social Security works like a retirement account. In Cato polling conducted in August, about one in four said they believed they had a personal account within the system. That misconception didn’t arise by accident. Politicians routinely describe payroll taxes as “contributions,” speak of a “trust fund” as if it held real savings, and defend benefits as “earned.”

  Social Security is not a savings program. It is a pay-as-you-go transfer system. Today’s workers’ payroll taxes fund today’s retirees’ benefits. There is no individual account accumulating a balance over time. Payroll taxes are taxes, neither deposits nor savings.

  The Social Security Administration bears some of the blame: once you assure them of your identity, they will happily let you download your "Social Security Statement", showing the amounts you (and your employers) have forked over to them over the years.

  And to some extent, your retirement benefits are based on that history. But the details get very arbitrary very quickly once you look into it. And (you may have heard) if you're making too much other income, you have to turn around and send some of that cash they sent you … back to Uncle Stupid.

  Okay, I'm done ranting. As a public service, if you have US Senate candidates running this year, demand they tell you their plans for avoiding that financial cliff.

• I'm not sure whether to be happy or sad about this. Jeffrey Blehar says that Democratic Overreach on Immigration Beckons. (archive.today link)

  A thought on developments in Minnesota and nationwide. In the wake of the Minneapolis shooting, and particularly in the wake of the perceived — and real — climbdown of federal authorities in the city, the far left is now rising like a rabble to not only claim victory but push boldly forward. The rhetoric is loud and growing louder: Trump must somehow be compelled to formally restrict his own powers! ICE or DHS must be abolished! Rise, leftist Lilliputians, and tie President Gulliver down while he’s still dazed!

  And this, incidentally, is why sending Greg Bovino home to retire and bringing in Tom Homan was the strongest possible countermove the Trump administration could have made: not only because Homan is a professional but because progressives who misinterpret the politics of the moment will wipe away their situational advantage by massively misjudging the mood of the American people.

  I should note Jeff Maurer (a liberal Democrat) is making the same observation as Jeffrey: I See a Way for Democrats to Fumble Away Their Sudden Advantage on Immigration. And I'm gonna swipe his graphic:

  

  In words:

  If people trusted the left more on immigration, then Democrats might have more leeway to have a nuanced conversation about immigration enforcement. But they don’t and they don’t, so “illegal things are illegal” seems like a good message for now. Democrats can offer an alternative to Trump’s marauding gangs of unaccountable thugs by championing professional, practical enforcement of immigration law. They might even go nuts and get serious about E-Verify, surely the most practical way to reduce illegal immigration. For the first time in a decade, Democrats could gain an advantage on illegal immigration. And they might do exactly that, though “overreach and fumble the advantage back to Trump in a shockingly brief amount of time” remains very much on the table.

  So… look forward to more of the (awful) same? For the foreseeable freakin' future?

• I'm not sorry either. Erick Erickson criticized Trump on his substack, and a commenter wondered if this meant he regretted voting for Trump in 2024.

  Newsflash: Erick is Not Sorry.

  The 2024 election was going to be between the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, and the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris.

  This summer, when Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas retire from the United States Supreme Court, I’ll be very happy Donald Trump is picking their replacements, not Kamala Harris, even as Trump grumbles about Leonard Leo.

  Last week, when Renee Good hit an ICE officer with her car and was killed, I was very glad Donald Trump was President and chose not to drag the ICE officer through the mud or a perp walk for his act of self-defense.

  And more in that vein at the link.

  I get it. And I don't exactly disagree, but I put myself on a different path.

  For the record (in case you've missed it), I didn't mark a vote for President in 2024. I'm not sorry about that. I am sorry that GOP primary voters didn't seem to like Nikki Haley earlier in the year.