Pun Salad

Another week of bad news for President Bone Spurs, another week of having the bettors shave his odds down.

But perhaps he can console himself with his expanded lead in phony hits!

Warning: Google result counts are bogus.

• Boy, if there ever was a Reason article whose headline said "Read Me", it's this one by Eric Boehm. Potential Key to the 2020 Election: Voters Who Can’t Stand Both Trump and Biden. Hey, that's me!

  Voters who can't stand either major-party presidential nominee could be one of the keys to the election—and unlike in 2016, that might be bad news for President Donald Trump.

  Four years ago, in a contest between two of the least-liked presidential nominees in history, Trump benefitted from the number of voters who found him slightly less detestable than Hillary Clinton. But a new Morning Consult poll suggests that Trump isn't doing as well with the "haters demographic" this time around. Voters who hold unfavorable views of both Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden are more likely to hold their nose and vote for the former vice president than for the incumbent.

  I think I've previously mentioned that I'm trying to follow the advice of Arthur C. Brooks: Love Your Enemies. But that's an increasingly unpopular stance in these days of modern time ("… when you can't tell the ACs from the DCs … ").

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• It's true that Orange Man said some good things at Mount Rushmore a few weeks back. especially:

  One of [the "angry mobs'"] political weapons is “Cancel Culture” — driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees.

  Yay, right? But thanks to CNN, he's kind of a fair-weather friend. Just taking the most recent examples:

  September 2019: Trump suggests that actress Debra Messing should be fired for calling on a news outlet to publish the names of people attending a Trump fundraiser and for a tweet promoting a church sign that said "a black vote for Trump is mental illness." (Messing had apologized for the tweet about the church sign.)

  January 2020: Trump says The New York Times should fire columnist Paul Krugman, a winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, for having incorrectly predicted a global recession after Trump's victory in 2016.

  May 2020: The day after Twitter appended a fact check link to dishonest Trump claims about mail-in voting, Trump threatens to shut down social media companies: "Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen."

  May 2020: Trump seeks the firing of Chuck Todd, host of NBC's "Meet the Press," for the show playing a misleadingly shortened clip of comments by Attorney General William Barr. (Todd apologized, saying it was an inadvertent mistake.) Again broaching the power of the state, Trump tags the accounts of the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates television, and its chairman, Ajit Pai.

  Fortunately, little came of such bloviating. The lefties are much more effective in getting folks canceled than is Trump.

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• 

  In our occasional "Belaboring the Obvious" Department, Daniel Gallington in the Washington Times: Joe Biden's lying, bullying and cognitive deficits make him a poor choice for president. Just picking something from the middle:

  • Biden the bully: When he gets confronted by most anyone or anything, Mr. Biden’s automatic and practiced reaction is to bully the source of the challenge. As when he said that he has “three degrees,” was on “full scholarship,” graduated at the “top of his class” — all false — and that he has a “high IQ,” which is especially wishful thinking on his part. 

  In fact, he was almost kicked out of law school for massive plagiarism his freshman year and graduated at the bottom of his class — 76th out of 86. So, is Mr. Biden just stupid as well as demented? Could be, but for sure he also fits the “Seinfeld model” — when George tells Jerry “it’s not a lie if you believe it.” Can he actually believe the strange stuff he says? Whether he does doesn’t really matter — he seems simply not bright enough to know, so he’s not concerned by it.

  I predict a burgeoning market in 25th Amendment books. Link up there on your right if you want to get a copy to beat the rush.

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• Ronald Bailey at Reason says, accurately: Biden’s New Green New Deal Is the Same as the Old Green New Deal.

  Although he doesn't call it that, Joe Biden, the presumptive 2020 presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, rolled out his version of the Green New Deal during a Tuesday speech on how his administration would handle man-made climate change. Biden's "plan for a clean energy revolution and environmental justice" incorporates most of the environmental and economic policies outlined in previous Green New Deal proposals.

  Take the Green New Deal resolution introduced last year by Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.). While somewhat vaguely aspirational, this aims to commit the U.S. to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, to creating millions of unionized jobs, to investing much more in clean infrastructure and industry, to hugely expanding public transit and high-speed rail, and to greatly increasing federal support for research and development in no-carbon energy generation. In June 2019, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez estimated that the Green New Deal would cost $10 trillion.

  Biden's plan (link above, dodge the donation button as best you can) advocates construction of "small modular nuclear reactors". Those always seem to be years in the future, but all right. The "old" green new deal doesn't mention nuclear at all; AOC claims to have an "open mind" on the issue, but that's a cowardly wimp-out, unless she simply hasn't thought seriously on the matter.

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• Progressive Ted Rall provides (appropriately enough in LA Progressive) 10 Reasons I Won’t Vote for Joe Biden. His view of Joe's "Green New Deal" is quite different from Ron Bailey's:
  Joe Biden wants to kill the planet. He still refuses to support a Green New Deal whose goal is zero net carbon emissions by 2030. He wants to do it by 2050. Way too late! Climate change experts say that human civilization may be extinct by then. I cannot vote for anyone who wants everyone on earth to die. Here too, Biden has been corrupted by giant contributions by oil and natural gas energy companies.

  Well… I'll just point out that the "climate change experts" Rall links to are apparently two guys in Australia. They may be right, hey I'm no expert, but that's not a consensus view, even among alarmists.