Pun Salad

Mr. Ramirez provides the following commentary:

Briefly noted:

• Becket Adams describes The George Soros Double Standard.

  In 2020, a U.S. senator’s presidential campaign took out a full-page newspaper advertisement, promising voters her administration would target a specific Jewish man’s personal fortune. The advertisement highlighted the Jewish man’s considerable net worth, listing the dollar amount he’d be forced to surrender to the common good under the senator’s proposal.

  He “can’t buy us,” the senator had previously boasted.

  In 2017, a different U.S. senator’s presidential campaign produced a video asking what that same Jewish man planned “to do with all that money.” It added, “It doesn’t sound like he’s going to use it to help other people.” The video, which was produced for a series titled “The Faces of Greed,” likewise listed in dollar amounts the Jewish man’s personal wealth.

  CNBC called the newspaper advertisement a “bold move.” One reporter claimed it showed “chutzpah.” As for the video attack, it went almost completely unnoticed by the press, just another ho-hum episode in the senator’s crusade against the donor class.

  If you guessed the Jewish man is Democratic megadonor George Soros and the critics Republican lawmakers, you’d be wrong. The senators are Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and their target was the late Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson. The senators’ opposition to Adelson’s political engagement, and the press’s oftentimes sympathetic coverage of their opposition, is relevant even two years after his death because we are being told — once again — that it is antisemitic even to notice Soros’s political activity, let alone question it.

  To trot out the usual cliché: If not for double standards, Democrats would have no standards at all.

• J.D. Tuccille demands that Critics of School Choice Should Define 'High-Quality Public Education'.

  Arizona has one of the more liberating school-choice policies in the country, allowing funding for a student's education to follow that child to chosen learning options. The state also has a newly minted governor who is hostile to education freedom. Despite attending a private school, Katie Hobbs wants to roll back the state's scholarship program and offer all kids "high-quality public education" instead. With her allies, she pretends that's a goal easily defined and achieved with more money, instead of a hotly debated topic involving irreconcilable differences over priorities, education philosophies, and ideology.

  After Hobbs opposed school choice in her inaugural address, Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream asked, "Why shouldn't all students have a chance at what you said was so important in your own life?", especially in light of "the private Catholic high school that you went to."

  "My parents made that choice," Hobbs answered. "I begged them to send me to public school. We sacrificed a lot. There were times when we were on food stamps. So, it was a choice that they made, and they struggled to make that choice. What I want is for every student in the state of Arizona, no matter where they live, to have access to high-quality public education."

  Little Katie had a tough time getting along with the nuns, I guess.

  But J.D. points out that "high-quality public education" is becoming sort of a mantra, a hotkey-programmed term to be uttered or typed on demand, without need for critical thinking. Because who could be against it?

  Googling that term gives (as I type) about 247,000 results. So, yeah, it's a thing.

• I love every byte of this WIRED headline: You May Get More EV Options Thanks to Tougher Emissions Rules.

  Automakers have made plenty of promises about electric vehicles. General Motors, Ford, and Volvo—some of the more ambitious—have pledged to sell only zero-emission cars by at least 2035. That’s quite a commitment, as only 14 percent of new cars sold globally last year were electric, with the share in the US being half that.

  But a new proposal released by the US Environmental Protection Agency today threatens to hold automakers to their electric big talk—and to up the ante. The agency suggested tighter emissions standards that it calculates would require electric vehicles to make up two-thirds of new passenger vehicle sales by 2032, sending millions more EVs onto dealership lots. It also wants to toughen standards for heavy trucks, albeit less aggressively.

  Orwell would be proud, I guess: you get "more options" when government takes away your options to do anything else. And ("thanks") you are expected to be grateful.

• At Ars Technica (which is, like WIRED, part of the Condé Nast empire), I learned that Entangled superpowers cause portal-jumping havoc in The Marvels teaser.

  Remember Ms. Marvel's end credits scene, where Brie Larson's Captain Marvel suddenly appears in Kamala Khan's (Iman Vellani) bedroom, while Kamala finds herself on a spaceship with Goose (the cat that's really a Flerken)? Judging by a newly released teaser, that scene will lead directly into The Marvels, the sequel to 2019's Captain Marvel. It's part of Phase Five of the MCU, and the film is directed by Nia DaCosta (Candyman).

  I started reading… then realized I didn't care about any of that.

  It seems, at age 71.94, I've finally become a non-fanboy.