Pun Salad

… but it's also hilarious, so we'll allow it.

New Yorkers: if you hear voices, vote for the one named Zohranhttps://t.co/oJ1dt7PlxQ pic.twitter.com/iB5wHgrFkE

— The People's Cube (@ThePeoplesCube) June 29, 2025

By the way, I noticed that Twitter's "Grok" AI will now generate a "Profile Summary" for users. Here's what it figured out for me:

Pretty close, although two occurrences of "witty" might be over the top.

Also of note:

• As a humanitarian gesture, allow evacuation first. But otherwise, I agree with Rich Lowry: Blow Up Washington, D.C.’s Brutalist Buildings — and the Sooner, the Better.

  There’s a reason God created dynamite.

  The brutalist federal buildings that have blighted Washington, D.C., for decades deserve the same fate as Carthage after the Third Punic War, and the nation’s capital is finally beginning to move on from these concrete monstrosities.

  The Department of Housing and Urban and Development just announced that it is leaving its godawful headquarters in Washington for a less hideous space in Northern Virginia. HUD Secretary Scott Turner has described the structure as “the ugliest building in D.C.,” which is a dubious claim only because there are so many other buildings in Washington that compete for that distinction.

  He’s not the first HUD secretary to hate the building. Jack Kemp called it “ten floors of basement.”

  Meanwhile, the FBI is also departing its HQ, designated by the U.K. building materials retailer Buildworld as the ugliest building in the United States and the second ugliest in the world.

  Concentrating on D.C., Rich doesn't mention Boston City Hall. Which made the news earlier this year:

  Boston City Hall, known for its brutalist architecture, is now an official historic landmark despite once being named the fourth-ugliest building in the world.

  Mayor Michelle Wu and the Boston Landmarks Commission announced the decision in a press release on Friday. They said the structure has civic and cultural significance.

  Nobody asked me, but here's my opinion about BCH's "significance": it is a grotesque symbol of how far Boston, the onetime cradle of liberty, has driven down the road to serfdom.

• It's the health of the state. David R. Henderson describes Why Libertarians Should Be Critical of War.

  I'm sure that many of you are familiar with the libertarian-designed "World's Smallest Political Quiz." (It’s available on line at http://www.theadvocates.org/quizp/index.html.)

  Let me ask you a question: How many questions does that quiz have on foreign policy? [Someone in the audience answered, correctly, "Zero."] We libertarians have honed our principles and applied them to literally hundreds of domestic policy issues. We've done a great job. The depth of our understanding of how to apply our principles to these issues and of the importance of peace in the domestic realm is truly something for us to be proud of. But we haven't given nearly the same care to examining foreign policy.

  Even our language reflects the relatively primitive state of libertarian thinking about war and foreign policy. I don't know many libertarians who, in talking about the 1993 Clinton tax increase, say, "We raised taxes." They're much more likely to say, "Clinton and Congress raised taxes." In other words, they put the responsibility on the people who acted. But I frequently run into libertarians who will say, without the slightest hint of irony, "We bombed Nagasaki" or "We went to war with Iraq." In other words, they switch from the clear, clean language of individualism that they use in discussing domestic policy to the dark, obfuscatory language of collectivism in discussing foreign policy.

  I'll admit that when it comes to foreign policy, I tend to let the "conservative" side of my psyche come to the fore. But David (of course) makes a powerful argument as to why I shouldn't do that.

  But I don't think I could ever be a "Blame America first" type. And I'd worry that if the US went full-peacenik, we'd find ourselves being bullied and intimidated by other countries without such compunctions.

• I was almost prepared to dislike this article. But Kevin Frazier won me over with his carefully-described worries: The coming techlash could kill AI innovation before it helps anyone.

  The residents of New Braunfels, Texas, didn't volunteer to help accelerate AI development. Their once quiet corner of the state now buzzes with construction crews building power plants to sustain data centers—industrial warehouses that could soon consume as much electricity as entire cities to power state-of-the-art AI models. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in Irvine, California, scores of video game developers laid off by Activision Blizzard back in 2024 may still be still looking for their next gig as the entire industry sees AI take over more and more tasks leading to thousands of total jobs being cut.

  These aren't isolated incidents. They represent a small sample of an emerging public techlash that could derail AI development before the technology delivers on its most significant promises to revolutionize everything from education to health care.

  Kevin notes that similar anti-tech sentiments in the past set back civilian nuclear power and stoked unwarranted fears of genetic engineering. Arguably, we're worse off today due to that.

• I'm not sure a "race" is the appropriate metaphor here, but… I appreciate the libertarian sentiment when Stephen Moore says that For America to Win the AI Race, Keep Government's Hands Off.

  At the birth of the internet age in the early 1990s, the U.S. and Europe took opposite approaches to advancing this new economy-changing technology.

  Europe tried the approach of industrial policy: They allowed government to regulate, subsidize and then tax the swarm of new tech companies that emerged.

  Here in the U.S., Congress and the Clinton administration made a wiser choice. We passed laws that kept internet startups regulation-, tax- and lawsuit-free. It was the Wild West of startup technology companies. A Darwinian race to excellence and survival. Some of the big initial companies like AOL, Netscape and MySpace gave way to superior competitors like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Facebook.

  We all know the end of this story. For three decades America and Silicon Valley came to entirely dominate these earliest innings of the digital age. Today we have our Magnificent Seven tech companies -- many with a market cap above $1 trillion -- that are, combined, worth more than every company in Europe combined.

  I'm convinced by my usual argument: there's nothing wrong with AI that government regulation and central planning can't make much, much worse.

Unfortunately, Jonathan Turley thinks it's a bad thing: The Chilling Jurisprudence of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. It's about her dissenting opinion in Trump v. CASA. Just a slice:

James Taranto also comments on Ketanji:

An underappreciated passage of Justice Jackson's dissent in CASA is her appeal to the authority of a fictional space alien. pic.twitter.com/IEzqHgIn7j

— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) June 28, 2025

Sorry, the Twitter embedding code does some unfortunate clipping. The full paragraph:

A Martian arriving here from another planet would see these circumstances and surely wonder: “what good is the Constitution, then?” What, really, is this system for protecting people’s rights if it amounts to this—placing the onus on the victims to invoke the law’s protection, and rendering the very institution that has the singular function of ensuring compliance with the Constitution powerless to prevent the Government from violating it? “Those things Americans call constitutional rights seem hardly worth the paper they are written on!”

I take issue with the Martian arriving here "from another planet". Almost certainly, he'd be coming in from Mars, right?

Also of note:

• What would Ketanji's Martian think about this? Veronique de Rugy notes an entirely predictable upcoming disaster: Social Security and Medicare are racing toward drastic cuts—yet lawmakers refuse to act.

  Considering recent news, you may have missed that the 2025 trustees reports for Social Security and Medicare are out. Once again, they confirm what we've known for decades: Both programs are barreling straight toward insolvency. The Social Security retirement trust fund and Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund are each on pace to run dry by 2033.

  When that happens, seniors will face an automatic 23 percent cut in their Social Security benefits. Medicare will reduce payments to hospitals by 11 percent. These cuts are not theoretical. They're baked into the law. If nothing changes, they will be made.

  I have nothing against cuts of this size. In fact, if it were up to me, I would cut deeper. Medicare is a terrible source of distortions for our convoluted health care market and needs to be reined in. Social Security was created back when being too old to work meant being poor. That's no longer the case for as many people.

  I don't want to toot my own horn (too much) but this is the twentieth-year anniversary of this blog post in which I linked to this (still-online!) Will Wilkinson article at the American Spectator. Which (in turn) noted then-Senator Barack Obama demagoguing away at then-President Bush's proposal to (among other things) establish personal retirement accounts, deeming such things "Social Darwinism".

  Gee, whatever happened to that Obama guy, anyway?

• Tomorrow is Bastiat's birthday! And, at the Unseen and Unsaid substack, Jack Salmon notes we now have Eight Years to Fix Social Security.

  There is a line in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises where a character is asked how he went bankrupt. “Two ways,” he replies. “Gradually, then suddenly.” It’s the perfect epitaph for America’s entitlement crisis.

  According to the Social Security Administration’s newly released “Trustees Report,” the retirement trust fund — the pool from which benefits are paid — is set to be depleted in 2033. When that day comes, retirees will see a mandatory 23% cut in their checks, regardless of income, need, or political promises made on the campaign trail. The rapidly depleting trust fund is partly due to the misnamed Social Security Fairness Act, which increases benefits to state employees with already generous pensions. Medicare's hospital insurance trust fund will also dry up in 2033, with an 11% cut to payments for seniors.

  We’ve known for years that the system is paying out more than it collects. That’s what happens when you design a pay-as-you-go pension scheme in a country with falling birth rates, rising life expectancy, and a Congress that treats long-term actuarial projections like unread user agreements.

  And yet, Washington remains in a state of wilful paralysis. Former President Biden pledged never to touch a penny of Social Security. President Trump has promised the same. Neither party wants to face the fact that if nothing is done, today’s 59-year-olds will reach full retirement age just in time to receive a quarter less than what they’ve been promised.

  It's easy, and somewhat appropriate, to blame the politicians. But to reiterate a point I made in a different post back in 2005: this is a democracy, we're the ones electing these cowards and demagogues. The finger always points back at us.

• Reading the by-line, checking it twice. The WaPo headline puts it plainly: Zohran Mamdani’s victory is bad for New York and the Democratic Party. (WaPo gifted link)

  And it's not from George Will, Megan McArdle, or Jim Geraghty. It's from the frickin' Washington Post Editorial Board.

  Zohran Mamdani, the charismatic 33-year-old who is now the front-runner to be the next mayor of New York, might seem like a breath of fresh air for a Democratic Party struggling to move past its aging establishment. In fact, New Yorkers should be worried that he would lead Gotham back to the bad old days of civic dysfunction, and Democrats should fear that he will discredit their next generation of party leaders, almost all of whom are better than this democratic socialist.

  […]

  Now, a man who believes that capitalism is “theft” is in line to lead the country’s biggest city and the world’s financial capital. His signature ideas are “city-owned grocery stores,” no bus fares, freezing rent on 1 million regulated apartments and increasing the minimum wage to $30 an hour. No doubt these might strike some voters as tempting ideas. But, as with so many proposals from America’s far left, the trade-offs would hurt the people they are supposed to help.

  Fun fact: over 4000 comments on the editorial, and my non-AI summary of the WaPo's AI summary: the readers don't like it.

  For not the first time, and probably not the last, this Menckenim: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

• And about those city-owned grocery stores… Joe Lancaster checks the history, and finds: America has plenty of experience with government-run stores, and it isn't pretty.

  Some have come to Mamdani's defense, saying city-owned grocery stores are not as radical as they sound—in fact, some states already have them, without becoming socialist hellscapes. Some have compared this plan to states that control liquor sales. But in each case, the comparison is unflattering to Mamdani's proposal.

  When I lived in the D.C. area back in the 1970s, we had the socialist-sounding "Peoples Drug" chain. Despite the name, it was privately owned, but I always told Mrs. Salad I was headed there with a bad Russian accent: "I'm off to Pipples Drugs, dollink. You is needing anything?"

  Here in the Live Free or Die state we have those state liquor stores. Which aren't bad. But if you like the occasional gin-and-tonic, you have to go to two different stores, one for the gin, one for the tonic. Or jump across the border to Maine.

Recently on the movie blog:

Please note the "2" exponent. That's how it shows up in the movie itself, I looked up the Unicode, and I think it looks cooler than just a bare "2".

I watched the previous movie in this series back in 2017 My report here, but I thought it was pretty good. Unfortunately, a major bright spot in that movie, the pride of Portland ME, Anna Kendrick, does not show up in this sequel. But the other bright spot, J.K. Simmons, does! Uh, briefly.

Oh, heck, this isn't much of a spoiler: Simmons' character, Ray King, gets pretty much killed right at the beginning, but he leaves a clue scrawled in pen on his arm: "FIND THE ACCOUNTANT". That's Ben Affleck, whose on-the-spectrum skills serve both to uncover financial skulduggery and other misbehavior. He also is pretty good at fisticuffs, gunplay, explosions, and fast driving. He must have picked that up from being, occasionally, Batman.

He gets help from his estranged, equally skilled hit-man brother, Braxton (Jon Bernthal). (Sorry, a spoiler from the first movie.) All this in support of a thin but complex plot involving a hit woman, her kidnapped child, money laundering, … I had a difficult time figuring that out.

The movie is very violent, but also funny in spots. The chemistry between The Accountant and his brother generates some chuckles.

I just think Mr. Ramirez's latest cartoon is pretty cool looking.

And just in case you were wondering. I can't vouch for the material I quote from other sources, but as it says over there on your right: Unquoted opinions expressed herein are solely those of the blogger.

Not some bot.

At least not yet.

Also of note:

• 

  It's a matter of degree. Kevin D. Williamson reflects on the victory of Zohran Mamdani in the NYC mayoral primary, and wonders: Does ‘Socialism’ Still Mean Anything?

  People are interested in socialism. The light little book I wrote on socialism more than a decade ago has been by far the best-selling of any of my books, and I am amused from time to time to see advertisements for the Portuguese version of it that was apparently well-received in Brazil. (Parents often buy the book as a graduation present for college-bound students, and many of them ask me to write some version of “Don’t believe everything those commies at Brown tell you next year!” in signed copies.) I shouldn’t be surprised by that, given that people are also very interested in such exotic nonsense as astrology and veganism, but socialism does seem like one of those things we should all have gotten over before now. 

  There are very few socialist countries left in the world, and those that remain tend to be basket cases such as North Korea and Cuba. India is constitutionally socialist, but that is strictly parchment socialism. It probably would not be accurate to describe the so-called People’s Republic of China as socialist, but it would be fair to say that it is a country in which the single-party police state that runs the place is led by men who take socialism seriously, who think of themselves as socialists and their project as a socialist project. 

  I bought and read KDW's "light little book" back in 2011; my report is here, and you can use the link on your right to get it at Amazon.

  From that report, by the way:

  [… KDW] uses the word "syncretic" on page 52. And I've resolved to look that up some day.

  And if I did that, I've forgotten what it means.

• Unseen, unsaid, and probably undone. At my newly-discovered Substack, The Unseen and The Unsaid, contributor Joshua Rowley provides Seven Options to Replace Byrded-Out Savings in OBBBA. That's the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act", now getting attention from the Senate. Specifically, the Senate Parliamentarian's attention, who's pointing out the provisions that are subject to filibusterization, and hence won't make it ("Byrded-out") into the final version.

  This one might make me wince a bit:

  2. Remove the new deduction for seniors. The House version of OBBBA includes a new $4,000 deduction for seniors as a nod to President Trump’s campaign pledge to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits. This new deduction is in addition to an existing deduction for the blind and elderly that equaled $1,550 last year. The Senate version raises the new deduction to $6,000, with a $91 billion price tag — a substantial cost for a policy that amounts to simple pandering to an age demographic already at the top of the wealth distribution.

  Sure, go ahead and push granny off the cliff.

  When I think about all the dollar flows between me, my employers, and Uncle Stupid over the years, I've developed a deep appreciation of how arbitrary it all is. I'm sure whatever comes out of the latest process will be just another layer on that cake.

• Just making it up as they go. Jessica Riedl looks at that topic from a different angle: The Collapse of GOP Policymaking.

  Republicans vociferously claim their tax legislation—the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by the House and working its way through the Senate—would unleash an economic boom so colossal that its resulting tax revenues would offset the entire cost. This dubious boast was shredded by a recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reality check showing that the bill’s broader economic effects actually increase the 10-year cost projection by $356 billion.

  According to this “dynamic score,” the bill is so poorly designed that it would fail to produce any significant long-term increase in economic growth. Instead, the tiny amount of growth revenues would be swallowed by $441 billion in added 10-year federal debt interest costs that would result from the bill raising interest rates across the economy and on the entire federal debt. Those “dynamic” interest costs from rising rates are in addition to $551 billion in interest costs that would be paid specifically on the bill’s $2.4 trillion in 10-year borrowing.

  Rather than address the bill’s extraordinary cost, Republicans responded by attacking the CBO. They challenged the agency’s historical accuracy by claiming that it failed to competently score the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA)–even as CBO’s subsequent revenue estimate achieved 99.5 percent accuracy up until the pandemic. President Donald Trump accused the CBO of being run by Democrats even though its director is a Republican. Sen. Tim Scott produced a video claiming that CBO also erroneously scored tax cuts in the 1930s and 1960s—which is impossible because CBO did not exist until 1974, not to mention that those 1930s tax cuts actually took place in the 1920s. All because the CBO refused to pretend that the House Republican tax bill would pay for itself or even offset a portion of the cost.

  Like Joshua above, Jessica uses the p-word in characterizing the GOP's efforts: "lazy special-interest pandering combined with an almost mystical belief in an economic nirvana that never arrives."

  That is, they sound more like Democrats every day.

• Almost? So you're saying there's a chance? George Will thinks Exploding U.S. indebtedness makes a fiscal crisis almost inevitable. (WaPo gifted link)

  Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, was more tantalizing than illuminating when he recently said, regarding the nation’s fiscal trajectory, “You are going to see a crack in the bond market.” Details, even if hypotheticals, would be helpful concerning the market where U.S. debt is sold.

  Twenty-five percent of Treasury bonds, about $9 trillion worth, are held by foreigners, who surely have noticed a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill (1,018 pages). Unless and until it is eliminated, the provision empowers presidents to impose a 20 percent tax on interest payments to foreigners. The potential applicability of this to particular countries and kinds of income is unclear. It could be merely America First flag-waving.

  But foreign bond purchasers, watching the U.S. government scrounge for money as it cuts taxes and swells the national debt in trillion-dollar tranches, surely think: What the provision makes possible is possible. Such a significant devaluation of foreign-purchased Treasury bonds would powerfully prod foreign investors to diversify away from Treasurys, which would raise the cost of U.S. borrowing an unpredictable amount.

  And so on that cheerful note… see you tomorrow, I hope.

Attention should be paid when Jim Harper thinks The Engineers at the ACLU Have Some Good Things to Say.

I read Identity Crisis back in 2009 (after buying it in 2007); my report is here.

And—sigh—I got my "REAL ID" driver license earlier this year.

Also of note:

• A complete unknown. I noticed a new (to me) substack in town, The Unseen and The Unsaid; a subtle Bastiat reference, yay! And one of the contributors is Pun Salad favorite, Veronique de Rugy. Who, earlier this week, pleaded for some honest language: Stop Saying We Need to “Pay for the Tax Cuts.” We Need to Pay for the Spending, Not Tax Cuts.

  Few talking points in Washington are more misguided than the demand that we must “pay for the tax cuts” or that “we don’t need to pay for tax cuts.” As Congress debates whether to extend parts of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), this stale refrain is back, and it’s just as wrongheaded as ever – but not for the reasons you think.

  Let me explain. The primary (and I would argue, sole) purpose of the tax code is simple: to raise revenue to fund the government that voters say they want. That requires that we debate what we think the size of the government should be. I believe it should be very small, with most functions currently handled by the federal government instead being carried out by the private sector, by state and local governments, or the voluntary sector including philanthropy and civil society. Most people seem to disagree with me.

  Either way, whatever we decide the size of government should be, we should then decide what is the best way to design a tax code that raises the necessary revenue with the least economic distortion. Economists have been debating this question for a long time, and a consensus seems to have emerged about consumption taxes being significantly better and less distortive than income taxes.

  I'm in total agreement. Although I am at the stage in life where I planned to cut back on income, but keep on consuming. We call that "retirement", and a certain amount of my financial planning over the decades assumed that strategy.

  Oh well. The way things seem to be proceeding, a consumption tax might be the least painful alternative for me.

• Don't work blue. Jay Nordlinger has moved his "Impromptu" schtick from National Review over to a Substack. And it's his usual blend of decency, attention paid to repression, and oddball observation. Example from yesterday: Blue Streaks, &c.

  Normally, this column does not “work blue.” If there are swear words, they are usually accompanied by asterisks (though not always). (Sometimes asterisks can be prissy.) But let me quote you an article, published yesterday:

  On Tuesday, President Trump dropped a bomb—not a bunker-buster but the F-bomb. Talking to the press about Israel and Iran, he said, “We have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”

  I wrote that article for The Spectator World. Here is the second paragraph (the first being the one I have already quoted):

  There is a lot to say about this statement—starting with the implied moral equivalence between the two countries. But let’s focus on the F-bomb. Has a president ever before used this word in public? Used it deliberately, in a public statement? Trump seems to have recorded a first.

  Yes. From there, I went through a little history—a history of presidential profanity—“from Truman to Trump,” as the subheading of the piece says (alliteratively).

  Call me crazy, but I think pols should work as clean as Bill Cosby used to.

Recently on the book blog:

I've been taking my time working through Mary Roach's books. (Fortunately, the Portsmouth (NH) Public Library book-selector seems to be a fan as well.) This one is from 2003, and it's Mary's usual travel guide into weird, gross, and (occasionally) hilarious topics that would be considered off-limits in polite dinner party conversation. In this case, as the subtitle says, it's about dead people and what can happen to their bodies (or parts).

There are a lot of possible paths and destinations: organ donation, of course; anatomy class; crash testing; wound research; testing the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin; cannibalism. And more.

One of Mary's investigations takes her to the island of Hainan to investigate reports of cannibalism. Reader, it's not a tourist spot.

Another fun fact: painter Diego Rivera was not just a fan of Marxism also cannibalism!

Mary is often irreverent, with a smart-ass remark never far away. I get the feeling that her everyday conversation can be considerably more R-rated than the prose that makes it into her books. But some things are (literally) dead serious here; one example is her description of the detective work carried out on the recovered bodies from the doomed TWA Flight 800 in 1996. Was it a bomb? A missile? A bolide? Theories abounded, but the investigators managed to debunk them, thanks to clues provided by the corpses.

It never hurts (much) to be reminded that our survivors are going to need to somehow dispose of our remains, and Mary devotes a couple final chapters discussing possible alternatives. There are a lot of them! One intriguing one was "alkaline hydrolysis", which involves a few hours in a pressure cooker, submerged in a lye solution. The process results in a pH-neutral sterile liquid that can safely go in the sewage system, and crumbled-up bones. It is, at least theoretically, more environmentally-friendly than usual cremation via flame.

As noted, this book is from 2003. Surely, things have changed since then? A little Googling shows that progress has been slow on that front. Although there have been a lot of euphemistic names proposed for the procedure: "water cremation", "aquamation", "resomation", …

But what really surprised me: it's illegal in New Hampshire! Your survivors, if they desire to go that route, will need to trundle you off to Vermont or Maine.

I will remind you that the NH motto is "Live Free or Die". Perhaps they should add "But when you die, don't think about being free to use alkaline hydrolysis."

(My guess is that Catholic opposition to the process explains its continuing illegality here. Also verboten is "human composting", another possibility Mary describes.)

I notice that after a long hiatus, Mary has a new book coming out in September: Replaceable You. If I haven't undergone alkaline hydrolysis by then, I'll be grabbing it off the library shelf.

The fifth (and, as I type, most recent) book in Stephen Spotswood's "Pentecost and Parker" series. "Pentecost" is Lillian Pentecost, famed proprietor of her late 1940s New York City detective agency. And "Parker" is Willowjean, her diligent, wisecracking investigative assistant, who narrates most of the book. (There are some excerpts from Lillian's journal.) Two out of the five back cover blurbs make reference to the similar, obvious, precedent of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe/Archie Godwin mysteries.

But this one moves off formula: an antagonist has been shot in the head at a shindig where he had promised to reveal a dark part of Lillian's family history to the world. Lillian arrives to confront him, and … bang, bang, he's dead, apparently shot by Lillian. Ballistics seem to point to her gun! Lillian is arrested, awaiting trial in the wretched "House of D" ladies' prison. To make it worse, one of the prison guards has it in for her.

So Willowjean is tasked with clearing her boss's name, finding the truth about what happened. It is a classically convoluted plot, with numerous possible suspects, each with possible motives. A lot of red herrings. Never fear, eventually the truth is uncovered, Lillian is cleared. This is a continuing series, after all; the outcome is never in doubt. And there's a setup for (I assume) book number six.

Trivia, not that it matters: I caught an anachronism at the start of chapter 38, where Willowjean's girlfriend, Holly, is "stubbing out her Chesterfield in the Folgers can." Ah, in 1947, that would have been a "Folger's can", with an apostrophe. The brand didn't lose its apostrophe until 1963 when acquired by Proctor & Gamble.

The mystery follows the "classic" formula in another way I've always found a tad irritating: Lillian and Willowjean figure out the true culprit, and accumulate supporting evidence, without telling the reader. Yes, this sets up for the Grand Reveal at Lillian's trial later. But this I-know-but-you-don't game kind of emphasizes the artificiality of the narration.

I also found it unfortunate that Spotswood saw fit to append a virtue-signalling "Author's Note" where he bemoans "a wave of laws passed across the country criminalizing gender and sexuality, and stripping women of their bodily autonomy." Sigh. Eye roll. Shut up and write.

Bryan Caplan's defense of "libertarian" free will: Solipsism>>Determinism.

I'm with Bryan. And his choice of words is telling: he's "long believed in" free will. "Believing in" something means your certainty is strong, but way short of 100%. Would that all philosophical pundits adopted this implicit humility.

(What does this have to do with solipsism? See Bryan's post for his explanation.)

I would love to see a debate on free will between Bryan and Sabine Hossenfelder. Here's a recent video from Sabine:

I think there's a logical gap between asserting (1) "I can't understand how free will would work" and (2) "Free will can't work". I'm perfectly OK with (1); I don't think it necessarily entails (2).

And I'm pretty sure (although she seems to claim otherwise), in her everyday life, Sabine has conscious, rational, control of her actions.

No matter on which side of the free will debate people land on, they all manage to make decisions on matters large and small, every day. (Well, I think so anyway, but—see Bryan—I'm not a solipsist.)

Also of note:

• Trump dropped a different kind of bomb. Not a bunker-buster, the one beginning with F. Christian Schneider comments: Donald Trump Is the Real Obscenity.

  It shouldn’t be at all surprising that on Tuesday Donald Trump became the first president to willingly say the word “fuck” in front of the media. To date, he has sprinkled his stump speeches with the occasional “bullshit” or “ass,” although he had never uttered the Queen Mother of profanities in front of microphones.

  [Video at link]

  But Trump is a walking obscenity, unable to control his emotions or impulses, making American governance a byproduct of his glandular outbursts, not of law or tradition. Using a swear word is merely a symptom of his coarse imbecility, not the cause of it. It is simply further evidence that he has no respect for norms or etiquette if they restrict him in any way.

  Trump uttered the f-word when expressing disgust at Israel and Iran for continuing to bomb each other after the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend. Trump had taken credit for a cease-fire between the two nations, but got the “new phone, who dis” treatment from both nations when they decided to resume attacking each other. When he lashed out, Trump wasn’t mad that more people were being incinerated by warheads, he was incensed that the latest round of bombing made him look like a feckless boob. They had stolen the thing he craves the most: credit.

  Christian looks at how the f-bomb has worked its way into political discourse. ("Disraeli it ain't," he says, and true dat.) It's been a long time coming, and he links to his 2020 Bulwark article about the trend.

• "Don't look at me, I just work here." Ramesh Ponnuru comments on Lutnick's Sadness.

  Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick joined the administration pile-on against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whose sin is not cutting interest rates. There are good arguments on both sides of the interest-rate question. Then there’s Lutnick’s argument.

  Justifying a go-slow approach to reducing rates, Powell said that tariffs have already caused prices to increase for some products, such as personal computers. Lutnick calls that “really sad”: “You would think Powell would know there are no tariffs on personal computers. They currently don’t exist.”

  This is . . . not true. Some of the data showing it’s not true come from the Department of Commerce. In fairness, tariffs have been hard to keep track of lately — but that’s not a defense that Lutnick can make.

  Fortunately, I'm not currently in the market for a new PC. What, your kid needs one for school? Gee, that's too bad.

• Keep this in your back pocket. For the next time some Green advocate claims otherwise, point her or him to Adam N. Michel's fact-check: Fossil Fuel Subsidies Are Mostly Fiction, But the Real Energy Subsidies Should Go.

  You’ve probably heard the claim that fossil fuels are heavily subsidized by the federal government. The Biden administration estimated there were at least $35 billion of fossil fuel subsidies in the tax code alone. Elon Musk recently expressed a similar sentiment, insinuating that oil and gas receive subsidies comparable to those received by electric vehicles and solar.

  This common refrain simply doesn’t hold up. Official government data show that renewables are subsidized 30 times more than fossil fuels. Most of the subsidies are in the tax code, where 94 percent of the fiscal cost goes to green energy technologies. And even this breakdown is overstated. Most of what critics label as fossil fuel subsidies are standard tax treatments available to many industries.

  I haven't checked, but probably you won't see this at Politifact.

At TechDirt, Mike Brock rails Against Ironic Detachment. After desperately seeking some appropriate Eye Candy to illustrate "ironic detachment", I decided to go with xkcd: Hipsters:

And see, there's "ironic detachment" right there in the mouseover:

You may point out that this very retreat into ironic detachment while still clearly participating in the thing in question is the very definition of contemporary hipsterdom. But on the other hand, wait, you're in an empty room. Who are you talking to?

This comic is from 2013, so you can see that "ironic detachment" has been disrespected for quite awhile.

I, on the other hand, have adopted the Elvis Costello attitude: I used to be disgusted, Now I try to be amused. If you had to sum up "ironic detachment" in a pop lyric, I think that comes very close.

So anyway, here's Mike, who thinks he has something new to say:

Just an excerpt. Read the whole thing, and see what you think. Here's what I think:

Mike lacks humility, tolerance, and sympathy. You will, I'm pretty sure, look in vain for any specific examples, good or bad, of which he speaks, let alone specific recommendations for activism or policy.

Maybe I missed something. It was pretty tedious reading "good things are good, bad things are bad" over and over again. Broad, generalizing brushstrokes abound.

But most important, Mike fails to appreciate the dangers of moral certainty, even after it has undoubtedly fueled the actions of (examples off the top of my head) Luigi Mangione, Elias Rodriguez, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, …

Of course, your lack of ironic detachment doesn't have to make you a cold-blooded killer. You can stop short of that and merely be a humorless, self-important, strident, overwraught kvetch.

Speaking of which, Mike has a substack, Notes From The Circus. Browse as desired, up to the "Keep reading with a 7-day free trial" notices.

And, yes, today's headline is loosely based on a famous line from William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming".

Also of note:

• Obligatory Ghostbusters quote: "There is no Dana, only Zuul!" That's probably not what Charles C.W. Cooke meant to evoke with his NR headline: There Is No Trumpism—Just Trump.

  When, in 1898, Lord Salisbury was informed of the death of Otto von Bismarck, he is said to have asked aloud, “I wonder what he meant by that.”

  President Trump does not exhibit Bismarck’s cunning, inscrutability, or proclivity for complicated diplomacy. Nevertheless, there is something impenetrable about the man that renders pat classification impossible. For the better part of a decade, figures who spend most of their time around ideologically consistent thinkers have attempted to define what Trump represents. What is Trumpism (and MAGA, America First, and the rest)? Which factions does it exemplify? Which historical strands has it picked up? To which school of international relations theory does it belong? Is Trump a populist? Is he a Jacksonian? Does he owe more to the New Deal or to the Reagan Revolution? Jurisprudentially, does he side with the originalist or common-good school?

  Ten years in, this project seems rather silly. Clearly, there is no Trumpism. There’s just Trump.

  I think CCWC is getting it really right here. Hopefully, this means that after Trump is out of the picture, we'll start making principled arguments instead of shaking our pom-poms in support of whatever Trump said or did a few hours ago.

  Yeah, well, maybe.

  But it also means that Trump has no principles other than his own self. It's a trait others have labeled as narcissism.

  And … I'm out of NR gifted links this month, so subscribe, hippie.

• Another exercise in futility. They Don’t Even Want to Impeach Him Anymore. "They" being "most Democrats in the House." (WSJ gifted link)

  Damage assessments continue regarding the U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear sites. Back here in the U.S., a pernicious and dishonest movement that began after the 2016 elections appears to have been completely flattened. The spectacular implosion on the House floor Tuesday could be seen from as far away as the outer limits of C-Span cable households. Most House Democrats voted against initiating an impeachment of President Donald Trump even after he ordered a bombing without seeking congressional approval.

  Among those rising to Mr. Trump’s defense were Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) and former Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). These are politicians who have spent years “resisting” our twice-elected president as if he were an illegitimate ruler. They even impeached him once for demanding a Ukrainian investigation of Biden enrichment schemes that any reasonable person would say should have been investigated.

  Clearly their hearts are no longer in the effort to deny the results of our national elections, though they may try to keep bellowing about alleged authoritarianism at activist gatherings. It seems that many elected Democrats have been wanting to drop the “resistance” shtick for a while, but didn’t want to have to oppose another Trump impeachment publicly. Now they’re on the record affirming that he should continue to serve as our president. How can any of them ever rail about his alleged threat to democracy again with a straight face?

  Memo to Mike Brock: I don't think you can chalk this up to "ironic detachment."

  Voting breakdown is here. It took up, according to this record, slightly over 35 minutes of floor time yesterday.

David R. Henderson has worthwhile thoughts on a relevant topic: War and the Constitution. From a talk he gave on September 17, 2007, the 220th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution.

My heartfelt advice to youngsters: put not your trust in government officials, or those aspiring to be government officials.

Also of note:

• Justice in Washington caught peeking out from under her blindfold. David Keating notes a small problem with campaign finance laws: Campaign Finance Laws Institutionalize Corruption.

  There's new evidence in Washington state that enforcement of campaign finance laws often isn't about better government—it's about punishing political opponents.

  Consider four recent cases there that reveal the system's nature.

  The Service Employees International Union Healthcare 1199NW—a union of more than 30,000 healthcare workers across Washington, created by employees to advocate for common interests—failed to report $430,000 in political contributions until after the 2024 election, including $200,000 each to the Kennedy Fund, an arm of the Washington State Senate Democratic Caucus, and the Harry Truman fund, a PAC connected to the House Democratic Caucus.

  For such a huge omission, the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission issued a $6,000 fine, with only $3,000 required to be paid—less than one percent of the concealed amount.

  Compare that to tax-cut activist Tim Eyman, who was hit with over $8 million in fines, fees, and interest for campaign finance violations. The court acknowledged that the punishment left him "impoverished and almost destitute." His alleged violation was the late filing of campaign disclosures and using campaign funds for personal expenses.

  David's other examples are also telling.

  And for additional reading, check out Rich Lowry's This Is What They Wanted to Do to Trump, a look at (apparently successful) "lawfare" waged against Marine Le Pen in France. ("Elections are so much easier if your opponent can’t run.")

• L’Chaim. Martin Gurri has a moving essay on the Meaning Of It All: The Mortalist.

  The human condition is inescapably tragic. We suffer a thousand varieties of pain; then, without sense or explanation, the flame of life flickers out forever. There are no happy endings.

  The Buddhists console us with the thought that misery is illusion. Christianity promises a realm beyond the reach of pain. But most religions converge in the belief that this world—this narrow valley darkened by the shadow of death—is a place of tears and tribulations.

  So what’s the point of living?

  No one who has ever bounced a kid or a grandkid on a knee would ever ask that question. No one who has shared a life with a loving spouse would ask it. No one who has exchanged a secret laugh with a best friend, or enjoyed a brilliant conversation or felt a bond to someone or something that enlarged or even transcended the limited self—none would ask it.

  This isn’t logical or rational, because the tumultuous “gale of life” precedes logic and reason. We find ourselves here, alive, aware, deeply in love with as many things as cause us to suffer. That’s the starting position. We can’t back away. We can’t be unborn. No doubt there are evolutionary and biological drivers attaching us to the world—selfish genes, electrochemical impulses, etc.—but this doesn’t matter; only the abiding feeling of love and attachment does.

  As the Electric Light Orchestra didn't say: "Don't bring me down … Bruce!"

• 

  Betteridge's Law of Headlines Confirmed. Jack Santucci asks the question: Is Ranked-Choice Voting Working for New York?

  Just six years after adopting ranked-choice voting for primaries and special elections, New York City may be headed for another round of electoral reform—this time sparked by a tumultuous mayoral race.

  The fragmented Democratic primary means tomorrow’s winner will likely be determined by how voters rank candidates. If the result fractures the party, the general election could be similarly splintered—this time under a single-vote system. That outcome could prompt another push for reform, timed to coincide with the forthcoming revision of the city’s charter.

  In November 2019, New York City voters adopted RCV for closed party primaries. The goal was to select the nominee who best unifies a party’s primary electorate. Democratic voters first used the system in 2021 to choose Eric Adams, who went on to win the general election.

  Two major research findings suggest that ranked-choice voting does not live up to advocates’ promises. First, RCV often fails to produce a winner who earned a majority of all votes cast. Two political scientists warned of this possibility in a 2014 scholarly article on “ballot exhaustion.” This occurs when voters truncate their rankings—leaving some choices blank—or rank a frontrunner below a candidate eliminated early in the count. When enough ballots are exhausted in this way, the eventual winner may secure a majority of remaining ballots, but not a majority of total ballots cast. The most comprehensive study to date finds that 97 of 185 U.S. RCV elections from 2004 to 2022 suffered from this kind of “majoritarian failure.”

  As Bryan Caplan convincingly demonstrated in his The Myth of the Rational Voter, even Plain Old Single-Choice Voting is rife with irrationality and ignorance. Ranked-choice voting manages to add to that incorrect assumption, that voters will apply some sort of 4-dimensional chess game theory to filling in their ballots. "Good luck with that."