Pun Salad

Remember how I try to adhere to the Costello Doctrine? "Don't get disgusted, try to be amused"?

That's not working for me today, because of…

Even if aspiring homeowners save for years, it is often still not enough.

My administration will provide first-time homebuyers with $25,000 to help with the down payment on a new home.

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) August 27, 2024

You can probably guess at the irritant, but I'll spell it out anyway: What Kamala says:

My administration will provide…

What she really means is more than slightly different:

My administration will force taxpayers to provide…

I know, it's not as if I was going to vote for her anyway. Still the obvious dishonesty grates; she can't even buy votes without lying.

Also of note:

• Can we impeach them both? James Freeman wrote this before the CNN interview with Kamala and Tim was announced, but it makes the DNC's paeans to "freedom" ring a little hollow. Biden-Harris Administration: No Remorse for Free-Speech Abuses.

  … [Dana Bash] should demand to know why the Biden-Harris administration still won’t repudiate its abuse of First Amendment rights. The government’s refusal to admit fault for pressuring social-media companies to silence dissenting voices virtually guarantees that such abuses will happen again if she’s elected president.

  Americans who treasure their rights to free speech desperately need independent and courageous journalists. We’re also going to need lawmakers to codify punishments for government officials who trample on our First Amendment liberties. It would also be nice to find someone with the resources and smarts to mount a new court challenge against the Biden-Harris administration. This column nominates a man whose company was on the receiving end of outrageous government coercion and knows the territory as well as anyone.

  And that man is … (tada!) Mark Zuckerberg, who recently admitted/revealed that Meta/Facebook was bullied into censorshsip by the Biden/Harris administration.

  Nina Jankowicz's American Sunlight Project seems to have nothing to say about this. Perhaps they read Zuckerberg's revelations and … stuck them where the sun don't shine.

  (Sorry for recycling that joke. I am inordinately fond of it.)

• A question I've asked myself a lot over my lifetime. But in Kevin D. Williamson's case, "she" refers to Kamala: What If She Meant It? KDW is (very rightly) skeptical about Kamala's newfound moderation and devotion to "freedom". But…

  But first, a few concessions. As my friend David French points out, there is at least one important policy priority with regard to which Kamala Harris clearly offers conservatives an approach preferable to that of Donald Trump: U.S. policy vis-à-vis U.S. interests in Ukraine, whose people are valiantly fighting off an invasion undertaken by a tyrant whose junta is entirely hostile to U.S. interests and who is in bed with every important U.S. enemy and adversary from Tehran to Beijing. Donald Trump is essentially pro-Moscow in his stance; Deputy Troll J.D. Vance is as close to explicitly pro-Moscow in his stance as it is permissible to be and still hope to have a political future after the crash and burn that his ticket seems to be headed toward. (Seems, as of this writing. I don’t do predictions.)

  There are a few other areas in which Harris is clearly the preferable candidate from a conservative point of view. Trump’s “instinct” to put the Federal Reserve under his personal control (a position he half-articulated and then abandoned, as is his habit)—on the justification that “I made a lot of money, I was very successful, and I think I have a better instinct than, in many cases, people that would be on the Federal Reserve, or the chairman”—is precisely the sort of thing that your thinking-type person does not want to hear from the serial bankrupt gameshow host and quondam pornographer who is so bad with money that he somehow lost his ass owning casinos. Harris’ affirmation of support for the Fed’s independence, even if pro forma, is by far the better position. And while they still generally prefer butter to guns and remain at least partly captive to the union goons who wield such disproportionate power in their party, the Democrats today are marginally more friendly to trade than are the Republicans, much better-disposed toward critical organizations such as NATO, and much more inclined toward engagement in multinational institutions with our most important allies, including the European Union. If we must talk about “vibes,” Harris still is giving more Olaf Scholz than Angela Merkel, more Olof Palme than Carl Bildt, more Ed Miliband than Tony Blair, etc., but the apparent rhetorical shift in her team and her party is remarkable.

  That's a long excerpt, but I did want to get in that "quondam pornographer" bit.

• Heretics from the Woke Religion need not apply. Joy Pullman at the Federalist notes the veep nominee's devotion to "freedom" doesn't include guess what? Under Tim Walz, Minnesota Banned Christian Teachers.

  Effective July 2025, teacher licensing rules passed last year in Minnesota under Democrat Gov. Tim Walz will ban practicing Christians, Jews, and Muslims from teaching in public schools. Walz is now the presidential running mate of current U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. His resume includes a stint as a high school social studies teacher who sponsored a student queer sex club in 1999.

  Starting next July, Minnesota agencies controlled by Walz appointees will require teacher license applicants to affirm transgenderism and race Marxism. Without a teaching license, individuals cannot work in Minnesota public schools, nor in the private schools that require such licenses.

  Can't have the kiddos learning wrongthink in Minnesota!

• Everything you know is wrong, episode 987. Ron Bailey says the science is settled, but I don't think this will make the people who like to say "the science is settled" will like it: Plastics Are Better for the Climate Than Aluminum and Glass.

  "Plastics are the new coal," declares Beyond Plastics. "Pollution from the plastics industry is a major force behind the heating of the planet," reports The Hill. The Natural Resources Defense Council says "reducing plastic production is critical to combatting climate change."

  Producing plastics from fossil fuels emits a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which contributes to warming the planet. An April study by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates that in 2019 "global production of primary plastics generated about 2.24 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent," which represents 5.3 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions. So switching to plastic alternatives would help slow man-made global warming, right?

  Not so fast, says a new study in Environmental Science & Technology, which finds that "replacing plastics with alternatives is worse for greenhouse gas emissions in most cases." The European researchers report that in "15 of the 16 applications a plastic product incurs fewer greenhouse gas emissions than their alternatives."

  Well, I'm glad that no counterproductive regulations were issued based on faulty data… oh, wait a minute.

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