Pun Salad

Well, there's no reason we can't do both, but let's start with a preview of the coverage of one of today's events.

And now moving on to the other inspiration for today's Federal Holiday, Jeff Jacoby turns his thoughts to Black patriotism and Martin Luther King Jr..

It is not MLK's actual birthday today; that was back on January 15. His actual birthday and the Federal holiday coincided last year; that won't happen again until 2029. For more on the jiggery-pokery Uncle Stupid plays with his calendar, see the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. There are (apparently) no current plans to move Christmas or New Year's Day to Mondays.

But I hear you asking: is the University Near Here doing anything MLKish this year? Yes it is, as it turns out! Sort of. See the page for UNH 2025 MLK Day of Service.

Nothing honors Dr. King more than supporting the local pet shelter!

But you can also sign up to volunteer for…

That runs from 10am to 11:30am on Saturday. Apparently that's all the rice that needs sorting for the year.

It didn't used to be this lame, although it was often more irritating. If you're interested, Pun Salad's obituary of UNH's old-style MLK "celebrations" is here.

Also of note:

• Unprotected from bad news: the rest of the country. Jim Geraghty checks the latest from the major newspaper he doesn't work for: Now the New York Times Tells Us: 'Six Key People' Protected Biden from Bad News. Specifically, Dr. Jill, Crackhead Hunter, and … four other people I'd never heard of.

  Here's a tidbit I found interesting from the NYT story, which attempts to excuse Biden's addled performance in his debate against Trump:

  Two people involved in planning the president’s schedule believe that in hindsight, he should not have been traveling so much during this period. He was exhausted from not one but two trips to Europe and a fund-raiser in California in the weeks before his debate with Mr. Trump on June 27.

  "Not one but two". Gee, wonder why they didn't just say "two"?

  But in any case, Jim calls bullshit:

  [Biden] went to the 80th anniversary of D-Day in France from June 5 to 9. The second trip was to the G7 Summit in Italy from June 12 to 14. He flew directly to Los Angeles for a fundraiser with George Clooney. He was back at the White House 9:30 p.m. June 16.

  Biden did not leave the east coast between June 16 and 27, and had no public events on his schedule from June 19 to 27. Those trips had been eleven days earlier! If you can’t recover from jet lag within eleven days, you cannot handle the duties of the president.

  Ah, well. Today, we move on to …

• And send the drainage to California. Jack Butler has advice for the incoming administration: The Swamp Is Yours Now, MAGA. Drain It.

  When Donald Trump swears at his second inauguration tomorrow to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,” it will be more than a return to the presidency for a man who left office four years ago. It will also be a rebuke to his skeptics. Consider one such skeptic, who early in 2023 called Trump “an obstacle to the achievement” of progress on “the important issues he brought to or revived in the conservative mainstream,” and declared that “the future of conservatism — even (especially) a conservatism influenced by Trump’s presidency — now depends on rejecting Trump.”

  Who could have been so blinkered, even at a time when Ron DeSantis and others were considering or had already announced presidential primary challenges to Trump, about the possibility of his political resurgence? That would be me. As Trump returns triumphantly to Washington, he can further vindicate his supporters and defy doubters by ensuring that he, those in his administration, and others around him make good on his promise to drain the swamp by dismantling the Beltway-centered governing apparatus of which he will soon assume control.

  I'm pretty sure I made some wrong-headed recommendations back in 2023, but I will leave finding them as an exercise for the reader.

John H. Cochrane's Unsolicited Advice is worthwhile reading. It's aimed at Trump's economic team, but even so:

And excerpt from his "Taxes" section:

Could, probably won't. But, hey, I did not think Trump had a shot at the presidency, either.

Also of note:

• I'm waiting patiently for the Contrarian to be anything other than partisan dreck. Jeffrey Blehar is watching too, and his headline is [sarcasm warning in three, two, one…] Andy Borowitz Inspires over at The Contrarian.

  One of my favorite catty apocryphal media rumors from the recent internet era is that “humorist” (scare-quotes intended) Andy Borowitz was let go by his longtime employer the New Yorker — that high-minded magazine of culture and political commentary — because its editors were secretly mortified that his sub-mediocre assembly-line dad jokes were always the most popular and high-traffic content on their website.

  One of my other favorite catty apocryphal media rumors from the recent internet era is that “columnist” (scare-quotes intended) Jennifer Rubin was unsubtly dared to “quit” a while ago by her longtime employer the Washington Post — that high-minded newspaper of the federal clerisy — because its editors were secretly mortified that her sub-mediocre assembly-line Resistance squawks were always the most popular and high-traffic content on their website.

  Who can know what to believe? All I know is that I myself couldn’t believe my excitement when Rubin announced earlier this week that both she and Borowitz — Batman and Superman — would be teaming up and bringing their Super Friends like Laurence Tribe and Sherrilyn Ifill along to the fortress of solitude known as The Contrarian to band together and resist tyranny. “Laughter is one of the most powerful weapons against autocracy,” wrote team waterboy Norm Eisen as he announced the new arsenal of democracy would be stocked by an unarmed man.

  That link in the first paragraph above goes to Salon, which is honest enough to admit that Andy Borowitz isn't funny. And (surprise) their article manages to be funny itself in elaborating on that assertion.

  But Jeffrey duplicates Borowitz's first effort, and … well, see what you think.

• Never was a metaphor so accurate. Eric Boehm looks back at the past few weeks and despairs: Regulation, prohibition, and litigation: Joe Biden's busy lame-duck period. Example one hasn't gotten a lot of attention:

  The latest in that string of last-second executive actions was a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Wednesday against Deere & Company, the manufacturer of John Deere tractors and other farm equipment. The lawsuit alleges that Deere has used proprietary software to ensure that only the company's authorized dealers can conduct repairs on the computer systems that run much of modern farm equipment.

  The lawsuit is a potentially big showdown for the so-called right-to-repair movement, which is seeking laws and court opinions that prevent companies from using those sorts of restrictive software components to force consumers into using certain repair services. Despite much of the FTC's track record over the past four years, this might actually be a useful and consumer-friendly development.

  But the process matters, and rushing this lawsuit out the door in the final days of the Biden administration is likely to harm its chances of succeeding. As Deere noted in a statement, the lawsuit seems to misrepresent some basic facts about what repair services customers can do on their own. In a dissenting statement, FTC Commissioner Andrew Ferguson (who will become chairman of the agency after Donald Trump is sworn in) condemned the effort as "the result of brazen partisanship…taken in haste to beat President Trump into office."

  In other words, this looks more like a performative final flourish by outgoing FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan rather than a serious attempt at improving consumer welfare.

  Equal time for Karl Bode at TechDirt, who predictably cheers this last minute lawfare: FTC Finally Sues John Deere Over Years Of ‘Right To Repair’ Abuses.

• The Summoner's Tale. Jonathan Turley is less than impressed with Biden's version: Biden Again Summons His “Leading Legal Constitutional Scholars” to Support an Absurd Constitutional Claim. Serious legal analysis has judged that claim anywhere from "ludicrous" to "contemptible". So:

  So Biden made a familiar call. In the film Casablanca, Captain Renault, played by Claude Reins, famously tells his men to “round up the usual suspects” to make things look good to the public. The Biden White House would often do the same thing when contemplating a clearly unconstitutional action.

  The top of that list has always been Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe, who once again was the most cited academic claiming that the 28th amendment was ratified despite the Justice Department, archivists, the courts, and mere logic claiming otherwise.

  Jonathan cites Tribe's history of bad legal advice and easily-debunked conspiracism.

  And on that note, Ann Althouse uncovers a Tribe quote that (I think) is a classic example of saying the quiet part out loud in NYT article: "In a political environment like this, you throw at the wall whatever you can."

  Ann embeds a classic excerpt from The Odd Couple (the Lemmon/Matthau movie), and if you watched that you can probably guess which scene. But anyway, from that article:

  Proponents of the Equal Rights Amendment have long made it clear that their strategy is primarily a political, not a legal one. Their goal is to dare Republicans to challenge the legitimacy of sex equality, and of moving to nullify something as simple as equal rights for women.

  “This is a political rather than a legal struggle,” Laurence Tribe, the constitutional scholar and professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, has said. “It would succeed only in a different environment than we have.”

  Mr. Tribe argued that the import of Mr. Biden’s move was in the signal it would send to the country.

  “The real question is what political message is being sent,” he said. “In a political environment like this, you throw at the wall whatever you can.”

  And… now it's garbage.

Recently on the book blog:

The latest adventure of private eye Elvis Cole and his partner/force of nature Joe Pike. It has been slightly over two years since the previous book; I hope this means Robert Crais is writing these books as the mood strikes him, and not under pressure from his publisher or agent to grind out schlock. This is schlock-free.

Elvis is hired by Traci Beller to find out what happened to her beloved father, who vanished ten years previous when she was 13. A previous effort by another detective turned up nothing except his last known whereabouts, the small (fictional) town of Rancha, out at the western end of the San Fernando Valley. (I assume that's what the book's title refers to; Google Maps doesn't show much out there.)

Money's no object, because Traci is a bona fide star in the world of Internet muffin-baking ("eight-point-two-million followers across her socials"), with potential to become a superstar. Her muffins are great, and she has a winning personality that translates to video well. But she's kinda obsessed with wanting to know what happened ten years ago. Elvis takes the case, but has to contend with Traci's posse (who don't care what happened to Dad, and want to stay on the gravy train) and Traci's mother, who (seemingly) would prefer Traci just Move On.

Elvis contends with more resistance out in Rancha, where his diligent investigation draws the attention of unsavory types who really don't want the truth about Traci's dad to be revealed. Things escalate to the point where Joe Pike is called to assist, but (unfortunately) too late to protect Elvis from some serious violence.

Bottom line: I can't think of any current writer who does the private-eye genre better than Robert Crais, and this is no exception.

Today I'm affirming what I have long believed and what three-fourths of the states have ratified:

The 28th Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protections under the law regardless of their sex. pic.twitter.com/oZtS6Q89zG

— President Biden (@POTUS) January 17, 2025

Thanks, Elon, for the "Community Notes" feature. The one on this tweet is brutal. But let's sample other commentary. For example, Dan McLaughlin excerpts his column on Joe Biden's Constitutional Vandalism.

There's nothing stopping you, ERA fans, from simply trying again, from scratch. You know, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg advocated, and thought necessary.

C.J. Ciaramella, who (according to his blurb) has graced the pages of (among others) Vice, The Weekly Standard, High Times, Salon, The Federalist, Pacific Standard, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and Street Sense, is also dismayed: Biden attempts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment by blog post. He bends over backwards to be fair …

Similarly, Jonah Goldberg believes that Biden's argument, such as it is, originates from someplace the sun fails to illuminate: Pulling It Out of Uranus. On what Joe has "long believed":

As a bonus, Jonah looks to the scatalogical gigglefest that is the Uranus Fudge Factory website. If President Dotard is looking for a retirement gig, he could, and probably will, do worse than employment as a fudge packer there.

And if you're looking for a sane take on the controversy, here's a Statement on the Equal Rights Amendment Ratification Process from Archivist of the United States Dr. Colleen Shogan and Deputy Archivist William J. Bosanko. (Which is linked by a number of folks cited above.) Excerpt:

By the way: my state's Senator Jeanne Shaheen tweeted her agreement with Biden's vandalism. And here's my reply:

Please reread your oath of office, paying special attention to the part about supporting and defending the Constitution. Then resign.

— Paul Sand (@punsalad) January 18, 2025

Also of note:

• "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative" That's the boring headline standard; Charles Blahous doesn't quite get there with Brookings’ Constructive Social Security Proposal.

  The U.S. Social Security system has been sinking into deepening trouble of late, its finances heading towards collapse, and with fewer friends in positions of power willing to do anything about it. There was once a time (the 1970s and 1980s) when each party’s leadership cared enough about Social Security to join in making politically difficult decisions to preserve its solvency. Unfortunately, a political schism emerged in the 2000s and 2010s, during which time only fiscal conservatives remained willing to sound the alarm, while progressives took to denying the reality of Social Security’s worsening condition. More recently, even purported conservatives have become increasingly unwilling to step forward and call for solutions.

  But on January 3, the Social Security Administration’s chief actuary released an analysis, requested by Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), of a comprehensive reform proposal developed by Wendell Primus of the Brookings Institution. Not only is the proposal a constructive one, but it may also have the potential to jump-start a desperately needed discussion of how best to rescue Social Security from impending insolvency.

  So it's interesting. Might even be better than doing nothing! But (bad news): it relies more on tax increases than cost containment. But see what you think. Charles does a fair job in describing and commenting on the proposal.

• Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. At least in the activity they enjoy most: ruling by decree, without effective checks and balances. George Will observes: Trump doesn’t have a mandate. But, oh, does he have executive orders. Some recent history:

  Donald Trump, reelected, promises a flurry of transformative improvements to the nation, immediately (“on Day 1”), if not sooner. He has perhaps been rereading the Federalist Papers: “To reverse and undo what has been done by a predecessor, is very often considered by a successor as the best proof he can give of his own capacity and desert” (Alexander Hamilton, No. 72).

  Four years ago, Casey Burgat of George Washington University and Matt Glassman of Georgetown University wrote in National Affairs that the presidency “changes more abruptly than other governing institutions.” A “strong disruptive incentive” grows stronger as presidents, impatiently disdaining Congress as an impediment to the flowering of their reputations, increasingly resort to achieving changes unilaterally, by executive orders.

  Barack Obama unilaterally ratified the Paris Agreement on climate change as an “executive agreement” rather than achieving something — e.g., a treaty — affirmed by Congress. Trump unilaterally undid what Obama did.

  On Inauguration Day 2021, Joe Biden’s 11-page enumeration of “Day One Executive Actions” included rejoining the Paris Agreement. And an executive order decreeing “a whole-of-government” initiative “rooting out systemic racism.” Trump’s executive orders can un-rejoin the Paris Agreement, and un-decree permeating government with racial calculations.

  We might change the National Anthem from "The Star-Spangled Banner" to "Call Me Irresponsible".

• When will they ever learn? Speaking of famous song lyrics, Pete Seeger wrote that one. (He eventually learned that Stalin was not a nice guy and the Soviet Union was a hellhole.) But that's not important right now. When will we learn that a free people should rebel against the FDA? Jacob Sullum notes the latest: FDA proposes a de facto cigarette ban, which would expand the war on drugs.

  On its way out the door, the Biden administration has proposed a rule that would effectively ban cigarettes by requiring a drastic reduction in nicotine content. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which unveiled the proposed rule on Wednesday, says the aim is to make cigarettes unappealing by eliminating their "psychoactive and reinforcing effects."

  Jacob is pessimistic that either Trump or probable HHS Secretary RFK Jr will see the libertarian light on this.

• Time for a new "Truth in Labeling" Law? After reading James Taranto, I think it might be a good idea: ‘Fact Checkers’ Become Rent Seekers.

  Someone at the New York Times had a little fun writing a headline last week: “Meta Says Fact-Checkers Were the Problem. Fact-Checkers Rule That False.” The allusion was to an Onion story from 1997: “Supreme Court Rules Supreme Court Rules.”

  The Onion headline was funny because it was true. Article III of the Constitution establishes that the Supreme Court rules, as the Supreme Court ruled in Marbury v. Madison (1803). The Times headline was an inside joke. Readers wouldn’t get it unless they were deeply familiar with a baneful 21st-century journalistic convention.

  The term “fact checking” has two distinct meanings in journalism—one venerable, the other recent and corrupt. The former refers to a process of self-correction in which an editorial staffer retraces a writer’s reportorial steps, inspecting and reinterviewing sources to make sure everything in the story is accurate. The New Yorker and Reader’s Digest were renowned in the industry for their rigorous fact-checking departments.

  When you hear the term today, though, it usually refers to something completely different—what the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler calls “political fact-checking.” This isn’t a behind-the-scenes quality-control practice but a subgenre of news, whose emergence Mr. Kessler dates to the founding of FactCheck.org in 2003. Political fact-checkers don’t seek to ensure that journalists tell the truth but to demonstrate that other people—principally but not only politicians—are liars.

  I keep looking for job openings for epistemologicians, but have so far come up empty. Mainly people on Twitter claiming to be one.

I'm sure that was Trump's reaction to a Timothy Snyder tweet:

"Pete Hegseth: The Short Course – 13 Steps to National Destruction"
A thread. Full essay via link in image below or profile. pic.twitter.com/74aimdwaAf

— Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder) January 14, 2025

You can click over for Timothy's conspiracy theory; it takes 13 separate tweets to explain. Basically, as I understand it, Pete Hegseth is too dumb to run the Department of Defense, but he is brilliant enough to bring about that "Christian Reconstructionist" decapitation strike.

As the kids ask: srsly? Or, as Charles C.W. Cooke asks: Does This Yale Prof Actually Believe Hegseth Is Part of a ‘Decapitation Strike’ on America? (Probably paywalled. I'm running low on gifted links for this month, sorry.)

I keep noticing Snyder's latest book On Freedom on the "New Non-Fiction" table at Portsmouth (NH) Public Library. I don't mind reading books outside my ideological comfort zone, so I was tempted, but … nah.

Also of note:

• In his defense, it's easy to misunderstand tasks when you're demented. Ramesh Ponnuru joins the critics: Biden’s farewell address, like his presidency, misunderstood his task.

  Joe Biden had two messages to send America in his farewell address: His administration has been a historic success, and the country is on the verge of becoming an oligarchic dystopia. Oh, and the chief problem with this oligarchy is that it isn’t active enough in telling the rest of us what’s true and false. With such discordant themes, I can’t fault him for tripping over his message this time.

  Unlike National Review, the WaPo is generous with its gifting links, so click away.

• It's an Islamic terrorist plot, I tells ya! James Skyles looks at The DOJ's War on Algorithmic AI.

  

  In short, entrepreneurs have developed software algorithms that utilize economic data (both backlogged and current data) to provide their user bases with a better, more comprehensive understanding of how differing consumer trends, seasonal changes, breaking news, and other factors affect the demand for their services and products. These software programs use that information to provide their users with pricing adjustment recommendations that they are free to take or leave.

  To say that this AI technology has taken off would be an understatement. Car rental companies, airlines, and hotels use it to ensure their prices match current marketplace trends. Hospitals and city and state governments use it to help quell congestion and long wait times. Farmers are even using technology to monitor and manage field variability, maximize outputs, reduce costs, and improve sustainability, a practice known as precision farming.

  However, the widespread utilization of algorithmic AI has the DOJ worried that businesses might begin using it for price-fixing, and it has begun throwing the antitrust books at many of these algorithmic software companies. Its actions have included but have not been limited to an October amicus brief filed against hotels and an August suit against one of landlords’ preferred algorithmic AI software. The Western District of Washington’s December 4 action against a different rent algorithmic AI firm has only added further fuel to the fire.

  "In short", it's another front in the War on Prices. With the added feature that it's an easy sell for demagogues who rely on scarifying people with anti-AI dystopianism. You know what else used algorithms? Skynet!.

  (And didja know: the word algorithm references the "Persian Polymath" Al-Khwarizmi, who invented some of the early ones. See this item's headline.)

• And yet, ye won't be missed. Tyler Cowen bids farewell: Net neutrality, we hardly knew ye.

  One of the longest, most technical and, as it turns out, most inconsequential public-policy debates of the 21st century was about net neutrality. Now that a federal appeals court has effectively ended the debate by striking down the FCC’s net neutrality rules, it’s worth asking what we’ve learned.

  If you have forgotten the sequence of events, here’s a quick recap: In 2015, during President Barack Obama’s presidency and after years of debate, the Federal Communications Commission issued something called the Open Internet Order, guaranteeing net neutrality, which is broadly defined as the principle that internet service providers treat all communications equally, offering both users and content providers consistent service and pricing. Two years later, under President Donald Trump, the FCC rescinded the net neutrality requirement. It was then reinstated under President Joe Biden in 2024, until being struck down earlier this month.

  Tyler notes that "Hardly anyone cares or even notices", and explains why. But:

  Internet experts Tim Wu, Cory Doctorow, Farhad Manjoo and many others were just plain, flat out wrong about this, mostly due to their anti-capitalist mentality.

  An observation that applies well to our previous item.

• OK, but it might be an answer to my problems. Yascha Mounk debunks one of my favorite panaceas: Proportional Representation Is Not the Answer to America’s Problems. Darn it!

  One of the things that is astonishing to any immigrant to America—even one who grew up in a reasonably affluent society like Germany—is the sheer amount of choice the country offers in just about every realm of life. There is an endless profusion of cable television channels. American grocery stores are incomprehensibly giant, offering a commensurably vast number of different products. Even sports is a notably variegated affair. In most European countries, soccer dwarfs all other sports; but while American football may be dominant in the United States, other sports like baseball, basketball and ice hockey also enjoy massive followings.

  Politics is the one realm which stands out for the poverty of the choices it offers. At every election, Americans trudge to the polls and are presented with the same choices. Unless they want to waste their vote on some third party candidate that has no chance of winning, they dutifully pick between two parties that have existed for over a century and a half: Democrats and Republicans.

  To the layman, this paucity of choice, so out of keeping with other realms of American life, may seem puzzling. But any political scientist knows that there is a simple explanation. The United States has a “majoritarian” electoral system. If you want to be elected to the House of Representatives, you need to win the largest absolute number of votes in your electoral district. In theory, this means that lots of candidates could vie for office. But in practice, a majoritarian political system strongly incentivizes voters to abstain from voting for smaller political parties or to lend their support to outsiders. For if you vote for a candidate who winds up getting ten or 20 percent of the vote, your preference effectively doesn’t count. Your vote is “wasted.”

  Yascha goes on to analyze the latest advocacy piece in the NYT from Jesse Wegman and Lee Drutman (which includes a very splashy presentation, gifted link.) Briefly: Congressional districts should have multiple members, and those members' party affiliations should reflect the popular vote. So, for example, if each district has 5 members, and the vote goes 60-40 for Democrats, three Democrats and two Republicans would be sent to DC.

  Both the Wegman/Drutman proposal and Yascha's rebuttal are long, and if you're in the electoral reform mood, click away.

  I'll just use this opportunity to (once again) plug my own crackpot proposal: Any candidate for the US House of Representatives who receives greater than 1% of the popular vote in the general election shall be entitled to a vote in the House equal to the fraction of the vote he or she receives.

  I'm pretty sure the objections Yascha raises to the Wegman/Drutman scheme might also apply, at least in part, to mine. But you know what? I don't care.

I didn't watch it, but Jeffrey Blehar did: Joe Biden Farewell Address a Fittingly Deluded End to Biden Era.

I would guess the speechwriters have rigorous guidelines for the text they put up on the presidential teleprompter: no big words, no words that can be easily misread or mispronouced, no hetronyms. Maybe someone will write a tell-all at some point in the coming years.

George Will takes a look back and discovers: Biden’s presidency got an early start on its road to ruin. If you can stand reliving that history, click away, it's a WaPo free link. GFW winds up with a relatively recent pothole:

Also of note:

• Deeper than you thought. C. Bradley Thompson writes on The State of the Union. His insights on the "deep state":

  By the Deep State, I mean more than what academics refer to as the “Administrative State” or the fourth branch of the federal government. We know, for instance, that the Administrative Deep State works closely with mission-aligned NGOs, the media, high-tech and social-media companies, white collar unions, etc.

  So, as we enter 2025, here’s the State of our Union a few days before we inaugurate a new President and a new administration. More precisely, here is the state of the Deep State. (The following list does not cover the full range of the Deep State, nor does it describe the size or personnel that make up each component part of the Deep State. I will leave for another day. Instead, I focus on the effects of the various component parts of the Deep State on the American people.)

  First, there is the Regulatory Deep State, which is sapping the energy and creativity out of American entrepreneurship and business.

  Second, there is the Welfare Deep State, which has created a nation of dependents and destroyed the family in many communities.

  Third, there is the Tax & Spend Deep State, which has left America $36 Trillion in debt, and which will enslave our children and grandchildren to our profligacy.

  And, reader, that's just the first three components on a list of twenty. Are you on depression meds? Maybe you don't want to click over.

• As Mrs. Loopner would say: it's a blessing and a curse. The Truth Fairy, Abigail Shrier, has notes on Trump's 'Cabinet of the Cancelled'.

  Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently expressed what many felt at the reelection of Donald Trump: not triumph so much as relief. “I hope this last ten years increasingly is just going to feel like a bad dream,” he told podcast host Joe Rogan. “I can’t believe we tolerated the level of repression . . . and anger and . . . emotional incontinence and . . . cancellation campaigns.” Much of it was orchestrated or encouraged by our government.

  One could say many things about Trump’s cabinet picks. At times, they seem to embody Government by Middle Finger. But they also, undeniably, represent Government by the Canceled: an assemblage that doesn’t need to be reminded of the administrative state’s ability to coerce the American public by calling in favors from Big Tech or pulling the levers of regulation, audit, or investigation. Many have experienced such treatment firsthand.

  Of course that doesn't mean Trump isn't raising his middle finger to…

  Trump just gave a massive middle finger to the establishment wing of the GOP.
  
  He is not hiring anyone who worked for:
  
  -Charles Koch
  -John Bolton
  -Nikki Haley
  -Mike Pence
  -Dick/Liz Cheney
  -Mitt Romney
  -Paul Ryan
  -Mark Milley
  -James Mattis
  -Mark Yesper
  
  This is a new party. pic.twitter.com/4aLtN4EiYR

  — Clandestine (@WarClandestine) January 16, 2025

  Just a reminder of how classy our once-and-future prez is.

• An ongoing question. Vinay Prasad is a (relatively) famous doctor, a non-quack, and deserves a listen when he answers: What is the truth about alcohol consumption[?]

  Right now, you are someone who drinks 0, 1, 2, 3 or more drinks a day. These drinks might be tequila neat, Mad dog 20-20, an Oakville, Napa cabernet, or Bud Lite. Probably, you are not consistent. You might drink 1, 2 or 4 nights a week. You might drink before meals, or after dinner. You might drink a hazy IPA after a long run, a Corona after mowing your lawn, or sip a gin and tonic on a hot summer day.

  Some of you are wondering if your habits are healthy— or should you drink fewer or perhaps more drinks? And what if you are starting from scratch: say you are a 16 year old who hasn’t yet had a drink, but thinking about it. Should you start?

  His essay is long, scientific, wise, and also funny in spots. Some of his recommendations are expensive, especially #19, but all are worth reading.

• What they really mean by 'equity'. Noah Rothman looks at the underlying ideology: ‘Equity’ in Misery.

  Occasionally, proponents of the concept of “equity” forget that they are supposed to emphasize the benefits of the discrimination they advocate on behalf of America’s allegedly marginalized minorities. Instead of highlighting their fraught but well-intentioned program of positive discrimination, they sometimes let the mask slip and indulge the bitter avarice that drives their ideological crusade. The San Francisco Chronicle did just that in a recent story on the private, for-profit firefighting teams who helped save some Los Angeles properties from going up in flames — “raising questions about equity” in the process.

  “Critics contend that when wealthy individuals hire their own firefighters, they compete with public teams for precious resources such as water, and could potentially interfere with those teams’ efforts by, for example, blocking or crowding narrow access points,” the Chronicle reports. That is a reasonable objection, although there have been few reports of such conflicts since the fires erupted last week. Rather, what has been reported is that residents suffered unduly from a shortage of LAFD personnel, which private firefighters would help mitigate.

  It’s all a red herring anyway; a smoke screen that distracts from equity advocates’ true objection to this phenomenon, which is their revulsion toward suffering that is not visited equally — perhaps even disproportionately — on those who they believe deserve to suffer.

  From his conclusion: "The desire to see an out-group suffer is about as atavistic as reptilian instincts get." An NR gifted link, go for it.

• Pun Salad Fact Check: Josh Barro speak truth. And he says: Meta Is Right to Fire the Fact-Checkers.

  Facebook is standing down in its efforts to use fact-checking to suppress “misinformation,” dropping its partnerships with third-party fact-checking organizations and turning to a user-driven “community notes” model similar to the one on X. This was inevitable — a top-down infrastructure to stop false ideas from spreading proved ineffective on several dimensions. Content moderation is a human project, and the fact-checkers (on whom the content moderators have relied to decide what’s true) invariably bring their preferences and biases to the fact-check process, and those biases have overwhelmingly gone leftward. Instead of helping a lot of people see the light (or whatever), this has led much of the population to view moderation efforts with appropriate hostility. Of course, it didn’t help that Facebook was also suppressing a wide variety of ideological views and unpleasant opinions, a practice it will also wind down.

  As Reed Albergotti writes for Semafor, Facebook’s approach to moderation was a “failed experiment,” and now it’s over.

  Of course, the anti-misinformation advocates are losing their shit; Casey Newton writes Meta “has all but declared open season on immigrants, transgender people and whatever other targets that Trump and his allies find useful in their fascist project.” Often, advocates of strong-handed moderation don't seem to know what hit them; ironically, that bewilderment arises from their own entrapment in a filter bubble. They see that they face political opposition. But when you operate in a bubble where all information is filtered by someone who thinks like you do, you’re unlikely to understand exactly why your opponents oppose you. In this instance, anti-misinformation advocates are steeped in years of news coverage and discussion of the issue that takes “misinformation experts” seriously as the exponents of a scientific and objectively correct method for controlling information — and treats opponents of the old moderation regime as people who are misinformed about misinformation and how it should be handled.

  That got me thinking: I bet Nina Jankowicz has something to say about this.

  And she does. And it is utterly predictable: also losing her shit.

I liked Don Boudreaux's Quotation of the Day yesterday. So much that I'm just gonna rip out the whole dang thing. While (of course) encouraging you to make Cafe Hayek a regular stop on your surfing itinerary.

First, the quote, from Thomas Sowell's Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective, Amazon link at your right.

Don's accompanying commentary:

Well, OK. I'll try to stop doing that.

Also of note:

• But speaking of imagined moral superiority… Jennifer Rubin announces her big news: I Have Resigned from The Washington Post, effective today.

  Corporate and billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences’ loyalty and sabotaged journalism’s sacred mission — defending, protecting and advancing democracy. The Washington Post’s billionaire owner and enlisted management are among the offenders. They have undercut the values central to The Post’s mission and that of all journalism: integrity, courage, and independence. I cannot justify remaining at The Post. Jeff Bezos and his fellow billionaires accommodate and enable the most acute threat to American democracy—Donald Trump—at a time when a vibrant free press is more essential than ever to our democracy’s survival and capacity to thrive.

  I therefore have resigned from The Post, effective today. In doing so, I join a throng of veteran journalists so distressed over The Post’s management they felt compelled to resign.

  The decay and compromised principles of corporate and billionaire-owned media underscore the urgent need for alternatives. Americans are eager for innovative and independent journalism that offers lively, unflinching coverage free from cant, conflicts of interest and moral equivocation.

  Well, fine. Equivocation is bad when you're right about everything, all the time.

  Jen's announcement is for her new substack, The Contrarian. I've put it on my Inoreader subscription list, just to witness all the "innovative and independent journalism that offers lively, unflinching coverage free from cant, conflicts of interest and moral equivocation." For as long as I can stand it.

• And our first example‥ doesn't seem to be Contrarian at all. Olivia Julianna ("Texas Democratic Strategist and Gen Z firebrand") tells of her journey From the Trailer House to the White House. It helps if you imagine it with background music, some sort of trumpet-heavy fanfare…

  My story is an American story.

  One of the young girl who’s great grandparents came to America from Mexico hoping to give her a better life.

  One of the students who dreamed of something more.

  One of the Americans whose life was changed because of Joe Biden's Presidency.

  I would tell this to the President, tears in my eyes, standing in the middle of the Oval Office. He held my hand and told me that is exactly why Democrats do what they do– to help people. Right before this, President Biden briefly spoke to a small group of my peers in the Roosevelt Room. Behind him as he spoke was a portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The image of them side by side will be etched into my memory forever.

  Yes, Olivia is a partisan Democratic hack. She proclaims, presumably with a straight face: "I firmly believe that in time, this administration will be regarded as one of the greatest in American history."

  Her story is very much "Life of Julia"-esque. And she is "grateful to the boy from Scranton and the girl from Oakland who didn’t forget about those who had too little."

  Uh huh. I can't help but notice that that "boy from Scranton and the girl from Oakland" get her fulsome thanks, but not the taxpayers that actually footed the bill.

• Can't hear no buzzers and bells. Kevin D. Williamson writes on Foreign Distractions.

  I would be very, very surprised if Donald Trump could point to Greenland or Panama on an unlabeled map, and I’d bet $10,000 he could not lay a finger on Denmark without advice and assistance. But Trump has decided that it is of paramount importance to the United States to wrest control of the Panama Canal away from Panama and to wrest control of Greenland, a territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, from Denmark.

  Why Greenland?

  Greenland is strategically located between the United States and Russia. So, there’s that. Of course, there are a lot of places strategically located between the United States and Russia: Iceland, Norway, Sweden … the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain … Ukraine. Most, but not all, of those countries have something in common with Greenland: There is already a U.S. military base there or formal U.S. access to local military installations. In fact, there are about 31 countries located somewhere roughly between the United States and Russia. Harry S. Truman and Dean Acheson had the good sense to organize a dozen or so of those countries with an interest in the North Atlantic into a treaty organization, which they imaginatively named the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—NATO, the bulwark of the free world against Russia and aligned enemies, which Donald Trump has spent pretty much his entire political career micturating on from a great height. We don’t have to twist any Danish arms into getting them to help us against threats from Moscow—they’ve been doing their part since 1949.

  This is why KDW gets the big bucks: he types "micturating" instead of "peeing".

• A burning question liberals are asking themselves. Asked by Jeff Maurer: Why Doesn't Hitler McFuckface Like Us Anymore?

  Mark Zuckerberg has announced big changes at Meta. The content moderation policies favored by many on the left are out, and the company is rolling back DEI and cozying up to Trump. Zuckerberg also recently went on Joe Rogan’s podcast to criticize the Biden administration and decry the lack of “masculine energy” in the corporate world.

  Like many liberals, I’m shocked by this pivot. What happened to the Mark Zuckerberg who, after the 2016 election, kowtowed to progressive lawmakers? Where is the guy who backed left-wing causes and clashed with conservatives? What’s causing this? Is it something in his personal life? Craven pandering to the new administration? Or is there any chance that it has something to do with more than a decade of people on the left calling him a corrupt plutocrat who might be the biggest pile of shit in the cosmos?

  It’s hard to trace the roots of Zuckerberg’s falling out with the left. Maybe it started in 2011, when the guy from The West Wing wrote a big, award-winning movie about how Zuckerberg is a total asshole. That doesn’t happen to most people — it’s really just Zuckerberg and former Oakland A’s manager Art Howe. After the 2016 election, some on the left blamed Facebook for Clinton’s loss, and Cambridge Analytica ended up on the Rachel Maddow show more than Rachel Maddow. In 2020, progressives demanded that Biden take down “new oligarchs” like Zuckerberg, which led to Lina Kahn hunting Zuckerberg with the tenacity of Javier Bardem’s character hunting Josh Brolin in No Country for Old Men.

  Read the whole thing of course. There are guest appearances by Dickhead McFarthuffer and Pedo von Shiteater.

• Maybe if Zuck wasn't a Harvard dropout… OK, but he's been enmeshed in free speech issues for years. You would think he'd be able to avoid being schooled by Emma Camp: Yes, Mark Zuckerberg, you can shout 'fire' in a crowded theater.

  Mark Zuckerberg has joined a dubious list of prominent Americans—including judges, members of Congress, and even a vice presidential nominee—who believe that you can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater. In an interview with Joe Rogan last week, the Meta CEO attempted to justify the company's pandemic-era censorship policies by arguing that "even people who are like the most ardent First Amendment defenders" know that there is a limit to free speech.

  "At the beginning, [COVID-19 was] a legitimate public health crisis," Zuckerberg told Rogan. "The Supreme Court has this clear precedent: It's like, all right, you can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater. There are times when if there's an emergency, your ability to speak can temporarily be curtailed in order to get an emergency under control. I was sympathetic to that at the beginning of COVID."

  The thing is, Zuckerberg is simply wrong when it comes to how the First Amendment works.

  So let's hope, on his way to remaking Facebook more free speech-friendly, that Zuck will read Emma.

Recently on the book blog:

This was the Raymond Chandler estate's first effort at making some money off an author who'd been dead for 30 years. It is (however) an honest co-authorship: Chandler wrote the first four chapters, while Robert B. Parker ably supplied the final 37. I try to ignore the inherent profit-driven ghoulishness, and instead concentrate on the pleasures of finding out what Philip Marlowe is up to.

What he's up to, at first, is settling into marriage with Linda Marlowe, née Loring, out in the tony desert town of Poodle Springs. Linda's daddy is rich, and so is she. Marlowe, on the other hand, is relatively poor, and wants to continue making his honest living doing what he knows: being a private detective, going down those famed mean streets, assuming he can find any of those in Poodle Springs. This is a continuing source of friction in their marriage. Like throughout the book, a continuing bone of contention that seems unresolvable.

Soon enough, Marlowe gets a client: Manny Lipshultz, who operates a gambling den outside the city limits. He has accepted an IOU from a shady photographer, Les Valentine, in the amount of $100,000. But now Valentine has vanished, and Lipshultz is worried that the casino's (anonymous) owner will find out and be irate.

From there on out, the plot gets complicated, and eventually homicidal.

I bought and read this in hardcover when it came out in 1989, being a fan of both Chandler and Parker. I think I liked it better on the re-read, about 35 years later. Parker got Marlowe pretty much right, although there are definite notes of Spenser in the wisecracks. (It may be heresy to say this, but: Parker's Spenser was always funnier than Chandler's Marlowe.)

I notice that HBO made a movie based on the book, with James Caan playing Marlowe. I didn't know that. I'll see if it's streamable!

Today's headline is a famous quote from Milton's Paradise Lost; today's eye candy is (I think) a PL-inspired etching; our first item is from Allysia Finley at the WSJ, and she describes How the Left Turned California Into a Paradise Lost.

Allysia is not kidding about that "Trump-proof" effort. The Hill reports that, after apparently having satisfied themselves that all other "burning" priorities have been adequately funded, California Democrats approve $50M budget to help Newsom ‘Trump-proof’ the state.

At Reason, J.D. Tuccille also (1) confirms my priors; and (2) satisfies my (admittedly deplorable) urge to rubberneck at scenes of tragedy and horror: California’s fire catastrophe is largely a result of bad government policies.

But one more thing about Paradise Lost: a lot of results from the Getty Image search are of Paradise, California. You may remember (as I didn't): that town was a victim of the Camp Fire, which happened in November 2018, killed 85 people, destroyed over 18,000 structures (mostly houses), part of $16.65 billion (2018 USD) in damages.

But by all means, California Democrats: Trump-proof your state.

Also of note:

• A lone voice of sanity. Dominic Pino begs: Don't Make the Tax Code More Complicated, Republicans.

  One of the biggest wins in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the Republican tax reform law passed at the end of 2017, was the doubling of the standard deduction. That reduced the number of taxpayers for whom it was advantageous to itemize deductions. In 2017, before the TCJA, 46.8 million taxpayers itemized; the next year, only 17.5 million did so. The share of taxpayers who itemize, which was stuck around 30 percent for decades, immediately dropped post-TCJA to around 10 percent, where it has stayed in the years since.

  That means about 20 percent of taxpayers who used to itemize no longer have to waste their time doing so. That’s good news for them, but it’s also good news for future tax reforms. When fewer taxpayers take advantage of carve-outs in the tax code, the carve-outs become easier to repeal entirely. Conservatives should be striving for a flatter income tax with a broader base and lower rates that is easy to pay, and the TCJA was a step in the right direction to getting there.

  Aside from doubling the standard deduction, the TCJA also reduced the cap on the mortgage interest deduction from a principal of $1 million to $750,000 and capped the state and local tax (SALT) deduction at $10,000. Now, with these provisions in need of renewal by the end of 2025, some Republicans, including Donald Trump, have said they want to raise or eliminate the SALT deduction cap.

  It falls to Audrey Fahlberg to report the sad news on that front: New York Republicans Are Optimistic about Lifting the SALT Deduction Cap, after Mar-a-Lago Meeting with Trump.

  Sigh. "New York Republicans". Who knew there were any still out there?

  A group of House Republicans from New York, California, and New Jersey departed a meeting with Donald Trump this weekend feeling optimistic that the president-elect will keep his campaign pledge to lift the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap — a controversial tax write-off that allows individual and married joint filers in high-tax states to deduct $10,000 from their state and local taxes from their federal income taxes.

  “The president didn’t back away from the commitment that he made on the campaign trail to fix SALT,” Representative Nick LaLota (R., N.Y.) told National Review on Saturday, a few hours after meeting privately with Trump in Mar-a-Lago alongside 15 other House Republicans and two of the president-elect’s political advisers.

  Talk about feeding the caricature of the GOP doing favors for fat-cat millionaires in their McMansions!

• But at least the incoming FCC chief will be a warrior for free speach, right? Sadly, no. Joe Lancaster reports: The Incoming FCC Chief Is No 'Warrior for Free Speech'

  President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office next week, and his second-term agenda is taking shape as he fills out his administration. One of the first hires announced after the November election was the elevation of Brendan Carr, who sits on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to be the agency's new head.

  Trump dubbed Carr "a warrior for free speech," and in response, Carr pledged to "dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans." But Carr appears all too willing to wield the federal censorship apparatus on Trump's behalf.

  Over the weekend, Charles Gasparino reported in the New York Post that Carr is unlikely to quickly approve a proposed merger between Paramount Global—the media conglomerate whose assets include the Paramount Pictures film studio as well as the broadcast network CBS and its CBS News division—and Skydance Media, which produced recent hit films like Top Gun: Maverick and entries in the Mission: Impossible series.

  Apparently, the bee in Carr's bonnet (perhaps placed there by his soon-to-be boss) is CBS's creative editing of a 60 Minutes interview, replacing Kamala's word-salad answer to a question with something more coherent and responsive.

  Click through for Joe's use of a portmanteau with which I was unfamiliar: "Sanewashing". Usually an epithet deployed against softball coverage of Republicans, but Joe notes there's room for bothsidesism.

• Once a grifter… NHJournal reports on local news from our state's capital city: Concord City Councilors Defend 'Cash Cow' DEI Consultant, Approve $40k Contract.

  Complaining about news coverage from the “anti-progressive New Hampshire Journal,” the Concord City Council approved a $40,000 contract for a DEI consultant who previously hosted a “get rich from consulting” event.

  NHJournal first reported on James Bird Guess, now president and CEO of Racial Equity Group, and his background, pitching his “From Broke to Millionaire Consultant” web page on Monday morning.

  NHJournal's previous story about James Bird Guess is here. And you definitely want to check out JBG's website plugging his 2020 Cash Cow Consultant Conference. For some reason, it's still alive. You don't want to miss the pic of him lighting a large cigar while sitting on the hood of his new Bentley.

Imagine paying into one of the highest tax cities in the nation, and then none of the municipal services you pay for are there for you when you need them and so you have to resort to private services — and then are shamed for doing so! pic.twitter.com/b3kkccM5fE

— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) January 12, 2025

Noah Smith encourages us to Learn smart lessons from the L.A. fires, not stupid lessons. And his Smart Lesson Number One is:

Noah's article is substack-paywalled but much of his insurance company tutorial shows up.

At the NR Corner, Dominic Pino describes How Price Controls Have Made California Wildfire Recovery Harder.

I just hope Harry Bosch and Elvis Cole are OK.

Also of note:

• Yes, 1A even protects the speech of people you wish would just crawl back under their rocks. Jonathan Turley, lawprof at George Washington University, has some local news: New Hampshire Supreme Court Rejects Hate Speech Enforcement.

  The New Hampshire Supreme Court just handed down a victory for free speech in Attorney General v. Hood. As is often the case, defending free speech means supporting viewpoints that most of us find grotesque and hateful. However, the justices rejected the position of the Portsmouth Police Department that it could force the removal of a racist banner from an overpass. Such signs and flags are commonly allowed, but the police and prosecutors insisted that racist messages “interfered with the rights” of other citizens.The controversy began on July 30, 2022, when a group of roughly ten people with NSC-131, a “pro-white, street-oriented fraternity dedicated to raising authentic resistance to the enemies of [its] people in the New England area,” hung banners from the overpass, including one reading “KEEP NEW ENGLAND WHITE.”

  The ADL has more information on NSC-131, sample:

  The Nationalist Social Club (NSC) or 131 Crew (131 is alphanumeric code for ACA, Anti-Communist Action and Anti-Capitalist Action) is a neo-Nazi group with small, autonomous regional chapters around the country. They also claim chapters in France, Hungary and Germany.

  NSC-131 members consider themselves soldiers fighting a war against a hostile, Jewish-controlled system that is deliberately plotting the extinction of the white race. Their goal is to form an underground network of white men who are willing to fight against their perceived enemies through localized direct actions.

  Anti-Communist and Anti-Capitalist? Geez, they really are Nazis.

• As if we needed another one. Becket Adams notices: USA Today Conducts a Master Class in Subservience.

  Last week, USA Today managed somehow to embarrass itself even more with its “exit interview” of President Joe Biden, a floundering, pointless exercise in awestruck subservience. From lobbing slow-motion, underhanded softballs of no public interest to failing to seek clarification for unintelligible tirades to ignoring or allowing falsehoods and blatant political spin, the interview serves less as a public service and more as a reminder of why USA Today no longer holds the distinction of being the most circulated paper in the United States.

  […]

  Consider, for example, Biden’s sudden pardon of his ne’er-do-well son, Hunter. The president promised he wouldn’t do it. Then he did it, making up weak excuses along the way for this obviously self-serving act and calling down on himself well-deserved, bipartisan scorn.

  Yet in her interview with Biden, Susan Page, USA Today’s Washington bureau chief, set the stage thus: “Every parent can understand why you would want to protect your son. Do you have any concerns that your pardon of Hunter sets a precedent for future presidents? One that might be open to abuse?”

  Notice how she ignores the ethics surrounding the president pardoning his son’s felony convictions. Notice how she avoids acknowledging that the pardon represents a bald-faced reversal for Biden. Observe how she frames the issue as a loving parent swooping in to rescue his wayward child. Grab the tissues. Notice Page doesn’t even take the easy palace-intrigue route, passing on the chance to ask the president to respond to the Democrats’ criticism of his decision. Most importantly, notice how Page’s question focuses on hypothetical abuses rather than the actual abuse staring her right in the face.

  You can read a transcript of the tongue-bath interview here.

  Only one week left to go before this babbling geezer is out the door! Unfortunately, Susan Page will remain.