Pun Salad

Reason's Nick Gillespie complains: Trump Dodged My Question About the Federal Debt. He presents a non-deepfaked video in evidence:

Key points at the link:

And you know what they say about that snappy new wardrobe the emperor has waiting. Trust me, you don't want to see him in it.

Also of note:

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  Choosing the wrong Romans to emulate. I'm about to finish up reading a book about how the Founders and other notable American figures were inspired by classical writers. (Amazon link at your right.) Robert F. Graboyes notes a possible ancient inspiration for Donald and Kamala's Toga Party.

  In this, the year 2024 C.E., both major-party presidential candidates are emulating the Roman Emperor Diocletian, who believed that inflation springs from the greed and avarice of merchants and who insisted that the cure for inflation lies in price controls. His barely heeded, yet ruinous Edict on Maximum Prices (301 C.E.) stands as a founding document of the Really Futile and Stupid Gestures school of economic policy. No ideas in economic history have been more thoroughly debunked by logic and experience than the notions and deeds of Diocletian—whose price controls have been replicated, with similar results, by rulers across the millennia.

  The Edict stands as history’s most remarkable example of the impotence and counterproductivity of price controls. The law capped prices on over 1,200 goods, and violations were punishable by death. Pay more than 16 denarii for a pound of “smoked Lucanian pork sausage” or more than 15,000 denarii for a “first quality Nervian hooded cloak, the color of a lion” or 125,000 denarii for an actual “lion (second class)” and both buyer and seller faced death by decapitation or crucifixion or stoning or whatever method was then in vogue. According to a controversial account by “Lactantius” (De Mortibus Persecutorum):

  “Then much blood was shed over trifling and cheap articles; through fear, wares were withheld from market, and the rise in prices became much worse, until after the death of many men the law was through very necessity rescinded.”

  Despite the threats and actual bloodshed, people largely ignored the Edict, thus breeding contempt for rule of law, while disrupting commerce. The Edict could not cure inflation, for it was simply a toxic placebo for a misdiagnosed illness. In Ancient Rome, as in Modern America, as in future Martian colonies, inflation is not caused by greed or avarice or wicked merchants, but rather, in the words of a great philosopher:

  “Inflatio persistentes est semper et ubique phaenomenon pecuniarium.”

  Or, if you prefer the original, untranslated version:

  “Persistent inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”

  Did I mention the emperor's new wardrobe? I think I'd prefer to see Kamala in her imaginary toga. Close call though.

• "Kamala Harris is being deceptive about       " could be a useful headline template for the coming years. The NR editors fill in that blank thusly: Kamala Harris Is Being Deceptive about Georgia Abortion Deaths.

  Amid her endless vacillations, Kamala Harris has been consistent on one thing: her pro-abortion extremism. As California attorney general, U.S. senator, and vice president, she has both pushed for its expansion and its public financing and antagonized and prosecuted its opponents. So it is not surprising that Harris headed to the swing state of Georgia to take advantage of the firestorm caused by two abortion-related deaths of women in Georgia that the media and other pro-abortion forces are blaming on its heartbeat law. But like her allies, Harris is being deceptive about the cases.

  The left-wing, nonprofit journalistic outfit ProPublica, having apparently run out of Supreme Court justices to attempt to drive from public life, has led the charge on this deception. The overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 returned the task of regulating abortion to the people and to the states, allowing Georgia’s heartbeat law to go into effect. It outlaws abortion once a fetus has a detectable heartbeat (with exceptions for rape, incest, and maternal health).

  ProPublica blamed the law for the deaths of two women in the state who had taken chemical-abortion drugs: Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller. Thurman obtained abortion pills in North Carolina, then returned home to Georgia to take them. The pills killed her unborn twins, but did not expel their remains. She sought hospital treatment, but doctors did not remove the remains; Thurman died as a result. Miller, in a similar situation, declined to seek any treatment, and died at home. ProPublica implied that both women’s deaths were the fault of Georgia law: In the former case, doctors did not believe they could operate on Thurman; in the latter, Miller did not believe doctors could operate on her.

  Also weighing in is Dan McLaughlin: The Abortion Pill Killed These Women. Its Supporters Blamed Pro-Lifers.

  It takes a species of chutzpah rarely found outside of liberal and progressive politics to blame the harm done by your own policies on the people who oppose them. But that’s exactly what Kamala Harris and other pro-abortion politicians and journalists are doing right now with the deaths of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller. Both women died of complications after taking the abortion pill — and, worse, taking it without the medical supervision that was required by the FDA until the Obama and Biden-Harris administrations stripped away those safeguards. In Miller’s case, the pill was shipped by mail in violation of a federal statute that the Biden-Harris administration refuses to enforce.

  There ought to be no question about whose hands are marked with the blood of these two women. Rather than face any introspection about the costs of their determination to promote abortion at all hazards, Harris and pro-abortion journalists instead say that deaths traceable to the abortion pill should be blamed on pro-life laws. Not only are these people inverting reality; they are flatly misrepresenting the law. This is falsehood from top to bottom.

  Politifact seems to be silent on this. Unsurprising.

Recently on the book blog: