Pun Salad

Liz Wolfe's Reason Roundup leads with a question: Best Executive Order Yet? Tricorner-hat wearing Casey Mattox is a big fan too:

This is an OUTSTANDING Executive Order. It's somewhat nerdy and lawyer-y (which is maybe why I like it so much). But it might be the most significant thing this administration has done to date. https://t.co/GY9c3LPQp5

— Casey Mattox (@CaseyMattox_) February 20, 2025

Liz has the text.

So, just in case you needed a little cheering up today, there you go.

Also of note:

• But there's always bad news around the corner with this guy. I am like Jeff Maurer in that I’m Such a Hopeless Libtard That It Bothers Me When We Side With the Authoritarian Predator State.

  I confess: I’m a walking cliché sometimes. I live in a big East Coast city, I subscribe to The New York Times — I was at the Women’s March in 2016 and I might own a pussy hat if I knew how to knit. When Republicans picture an insufferable Acela corridor shitlib, they’re largely picturing me. And I even laugh at myself sometimes: I once carried a latte into a Volvo dealership while wearing a Weezer t-shirt and thought: “I hope Breitbart doesn’t snap a picture of this.”

  Because I know that I live in a blue bubble, I take my own perceptions with a grain of salt. So, take the Russia/Ukraine war: It seems to me that Ukraine got invaded by a country that is led by a dictator who has been explicit about his expansionist goals. It also seems that America has a clear moral and strategic interest in Ukraine winning this war. Miraculously, Ukraine has fought Russia to a standstill without the deployment of a single American soldier, and our aid to Ukraine might be the best value for money in the entire budget, because it asserts American power in a way that China, Iran, and North Korea can’t fail to notice. And that’s why I also find it shocking that Trump would fumble away that advantage by siding with Russia in what seems like an obvious contradiction of every possible conception of American interest.

  But I probably only feel that way because I’m such an embarrassing libtard! Honestly, just typing that paragraph made me roll my eyes — I sound like I’m auditioning for an MSNBC show called Resistance Roundtable. For Christ’s sake, Nicholas Kristof and Chuck Schumer said basically exactly what I just said; it’s like the Soy Boy Symphony Orchestra is playing “Self-Righteous Umbrage in D”, and I’m angling to be the key soloist. And the more I think about Ukraine, the more I seem like such a cringe-inducing liberal caricature that they’ll probably base a character on me in the next season of White Lotus.

  Just for the record: (1) Yes, I have an online NYT subscription, but only because they offered an insanely good one-year deal to their games-only subscribers. (2) No Women's March for me, past present or future. (3) And no pussy hats. (4) Never been on Acela. (5) I've actually never had a latte. (6) Or been in a Volvo dealer. (My car's a Subaru, though, probably nearly as bad.) (6) No Weezer merch of any kind. Etc.

  And, oh year, I'm an east coast guy too, but New Hampshire. That should count for something.

  Other than that, though, I resemble those remarks.

• A rare schism on the sensible right. Kevin D. Williamson notes: The Perfect Is Not the Only Enemy of the Good.

  There is a cliché about not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and it’s a fine piece of wisdom as far as such maxims go, but the perfect is not the only enemy of the good. 

  The bad, for example, is also the enemy of the good. 

  My friends over at National Review have published an editorial that is not good, and not because it is less than perfect but because it is bad. And one of the bad things it does is engage in a bit of intellectual dishonesty—and, not being eager to bruise any feelings, I am sorry the term is needed here—about DOGE, which is that its critics are judging it by unrealistic standards: “One ought not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” they write. This is, of course, an example—better than good and almost perfect—of begging the question. It is a bright red flag to mark a sickly argument.

  Fond as Trump is of the word “perfect,” no non-insane person has ever suggested perfection as a standard for the Trump administration. Decency and competency would represent shocking overperformance of all sensible expectations.

  But there’s no danger of such overperformance at the moment.

  KDW notes the "shoot first, ask questions later" approach of DOGE and Musk, with plenty of examples. If Musk ran SpaceX like this, we'd be dodging crashing Falcon 9s on a daily basis.

• I'm a sucker for adjusted Who lyrics in headlines. Jack Nicastro has one, and he's not happy about it: Meet the new FTC—same as the old FTC.

  Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Andrew Ferguson announced Tuesday that the 2023 joint merger guidelines adopted by the Biden administration's FTC and Department of Justice (DOJ) are still in effect. While continuity in merger policy is crucial for economic decision making, the 2023 guidance abandons the consumer welfare standard for an anachronistic approach based on market shares. The Trump administration should not perpetuate the Biden administration's error.

  The FTC and DOJ published their first joint guidelines in 1992. There have only been three revisions since. Ferguson explains that the continuity of these guidelines between administrations avoids "a recriminatory cycle of partisan rescissions" that frustrates the ability of businesses to plan. The deluge of filings submitted to the FTC's Premerger Notification Office in advance of the Commission's updated transaction thresholds and filing fees is evidence of this uncertainty; submitting before the most recent filing change saved firms over $100,000 on multi-billion-dollar mergers. Ferguson's concern about inconstant merger guidelines is well founded, but he ignores that the 2023 guidelines are themselves economically harmful.

  Maybe that Executive Order from our lead item above will save the day. To quote an old Hemingway lyric: Wouldn't it be pretty to think so?

• Common sense in unexpected places. Attention must be paid when that happens, and certainly this is a most unexpected place, the Boston Globe, where (as Jerry Coyne reports): Carole Hooven explains the binary nature of sex (and other stuff)

  Evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven was bullied out of Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology for public statements that were true, compassionate and biologically anodyne. As she explains:

  At the end of July 2021, I made my first live TV appearance, on the Fox and Friends show on Fox News. I was invited to comment on an article in The Free Press by Katie Herzog,in which I’d been quoted. She reported that medical school professors were backing away from using clear scientific terms such as male, female, and pregnant woman, largely in response to student complaints. I said I thought this trend was a big mistake.

  In the brief segment on Fox, my troubles began when I described how biologists define male and female, and argued that these are invaluable terms that science educators in particular should not relinquish in response to pressure from ideologues. I emphasized that “understanding the facts about biology doesn’t prevent us from treating people with respect.” We can, I said, “respect their gender identities and use their preferred pronouns.”

  I also mentioned that educators are increasingly self-censoring, for fear that using the “wrong” language can result in being shunned or even fired.

  The ensuing fracas at Harvard, during which Hooven found little support from her colleagues, led to her eventually leaving her department. But she hasn’t lost her cool and, in today’s Boston Globe, explains sex to the layperson, […]

  Jerry links to the article at the Globe website, but also to an unpaywalled version.

  It may be (I haven't checked) the only time the words "Trump is right about" have appeared in that newspaper.

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