Pun Salad

The WSJ headline is: We Made This Film With AI. It’s Wild and Slightly Terrifying..

Okay, but I'd add "amazing", "beautiful", "funny", and "eye-opening". In case you were unaware of what the kids are doing in their labs and studios…

Thought experiment: probably today it would take at most a few months to write and shoot a sequel to… oh, let's say Casablanca. Starring, as far as anyone could tell, perfect re-creations of Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, and Paul Henreid. Oh, yeah, Dooley Wilson too, somehow.

"Rick, the Germans have captured Victor! Can you help?" "I'll see what I can find out, kid. Louie, who do you know in the resistance near that prison camp?"

The biggest expenses would probably be a first-rate screenplay and evocative music. (But you don't have to pay royalties for "La Marseillaise" do you?)

Who could possibly complain? Well, the Screen Actors Guild, probably.

Also of note:

• It's hard to sympathize. Karl Rove thinks Tariffs May Cost the GOP in 2026 (WSJ gifted link).

  The [tariff] story isn’t good for the GOP. While President Trump’s general job-approval numbers in the RealClearPolitics average on Wednesday were 47.8% approve to 49.7% disapprove, on handling the economy he was at 42.3% approve to 52.8% disapprove.

  His tariff demands are weighing him down. Only 37% of Americans told a May 15 Marquette Law School poll that they approve of tariffs, while 63% disapproved. Fifty-eight percent said tariffs hurt the U.S. economy; a mere 32% believe they help. That starts to explain why stock markets drop when Mr. Trump rattles his trade saber and rebound when he walks back his tariff threats.

  The president’s frenetic back-and-forth on the subject, declaring a trade war one day then postponing new tariffs the next, leaves voters confused. Early Friday, the president posted on Truth Social that discussions with the European Union were “going nowhere” and announced a 50% tariff on all EU goods. Later that morning, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went on Fox News to reposition the comment, saying the president was trying to “light a fire” under the EU to accelerate a trade agreement. Americans are left wondering what the White House’s real policy aims are.

  Another example: Last month Mr. Trump acknowledged tariffs would mean higher prices for Americans. “Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30,” he said, admitting they’d “cost a couple of bucks more.” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick later contradicted him, saying, “Don’t buy the silly arguments that the U.S. consumer pays.” Instead, “businesses and the countries” exporting to the U.S. will “primarily eat the tariff.”

  Maybe these apparent flip-flops were all planned by the master of the Art of the Deal. But to many, it looks like cleanup on aisle six.

  If you've been paying attention to the news… you probably know more than I about what's going on.

• An early Thanksgiving. Declared by Dominic Pino: Thank Goodness for Libertarian Law Firms. But first, let's note the scorn heaped upon cowards and toadies:

  On April 2, Donald Trump unilaterally imposed tariffs on all imports, in violation of the Constitution. The law he cited to do so, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, had never before been used to impose tariffs. Article I of the Constitution clearly grants the tariff power to Congress, which was not involved in creating the original policy.

  The unconstitutionality was plain as day, but the president went through with the policy anyway. The question became: Who will do something about it?

  One might think Congress would. Its authority was usurped, and it has the legislative power to do something about it. It could assemble a veto-proof majority to force the president’s hand.

  That assumes Congress is actually interested in using its constitutional authority. It isn’t. A handful of lawmakers introduced resolutions to terminate the bogus national emergencies that Trump declared to impose the tariffs, and those efforts failed.

  With Congress impotent, one might think that business groups would challenge the tariffs. Some of America’s largest corporations, including Walmart and Amazon, rely heavily on international trade. They would face enormous tax bills and would likely have to pass the costs on to their price-sensitive customers. Cash-strapped small businesses that import could face extinction.

  Yet there were no lawsuits from Walmart, Amazon, the Chamber of Commerce, or the National Federation of Independent Business. Big businesses seem to have calculated that they are better off trying to kiss up to Trump than to challenge him. Small businesses often lack the resources to bring a major lawsuit on their own.

  Therefore, the most likely candidates to stop the unconstitutional tariffs are out of commission. Thankfully, there are libertarian public-interest law firms to pick up the slack.

  It's like we're living in an Ayn Rand novel. (This comment also left on the article.)

• How about 'Make America Free Again'? You may not have noticed, but Jeffrey A. Singer, Terence Kealey, and Bautista Vivanco did. At Cato they find Premade Conclusions, Post-Hoc Data: The Problem with the MAHA Report.

  The MAHA Report, released by Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in late May amid much fanfare, was produced by the Make America Healthy Again Commission, which was established under President Trump’s executive order issued on February 13, 2025. This order required the commission to develop a “Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy” within 100 days of the order’s date.

  Again? Make America Healthy Again? It’s an odd slogan in a country that has long ranked last in health outcomes among its peers. If the United States were merged with Canada, Greenland, and Panama, our average health statistics would improve overnight. […]

  Happily, the Commission already knows why US children are uniquely unhealthy. By a strange coincidence, these reasons happen to be the ones the Commission’s chairman, one Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been trumpeting for years. They include US children’s consumption of ultra-processed food, their use of smartphones, the chemicals in their environment, their lack of exercise, their stress levels, their lack of sleep, and their overmedicalization, especially with those pesky vaccines.

  Oddly, however, the data in the report bears little relationship to its conclusions. For example, the first sentence of the introduction reads: “Despite outspending peer nations by more than double per capita on healthcare, the United States ranks last in life expectancy among high-income countries—and suffers higher rates of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes.” But the graph the Commission supplies shows that, dating back to 1970, the US has always ranked last in life expectancy among comparator nations. Were Americans back in 1970 dying sooner than Canadians, Europeans, or the Japanese because of ultra-processed food, smartphones, chemicals, a lack of exercise, stress levels, a lack of sleep, and overmedicalization? Probably not.

  The authors note many, many additional problems with the report. As did (eventually) the report's authors as well. A site called "NOTUS" (News Of The United States) reports: The MAHA Report Has Been Updated to Replace Citations That Didn’t Exist

  The White House is downplaying the “Make America Healthy Again” Commission report’s citation issues, even as it scrambles to fix them.

  A NOTUS investigation published Thursday found that at least seven of the report’s citations appeared to not actually exist. The White House publicly blamed any problems with the report on “formatting issues.”

  "Hey, we didn't think anyone was gonna actually read this."

• Need a couple more things to fret about? Veronique de Rugy notes something that should have been fixed after the previous disaster, wondering Are We Headed for Another Disaster With Fannie and Freddie?

  The movie The Big Short—dramatizing the reckless behavior in the banking and mortgage industries that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis—captures much of Wall Street's misconduct but overlooks a central player in the collapse: the federal government, specifically through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

  These two government-created and government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) encouraged lenders to issue risky home loans by effectively making taxpayers cosign the mortgages. This setup incentivized dangerous lending practices that inflated the housing bubble, eventually leading to catastrophic economic consequences.

  Another critical but overlooked factor in the collapse was the Community Reinvestment Act. This federal statute was intended to combat discriminatory lending practices but, starting in the 1990s, instead created substantial market distortions by pressuring banks to extend loans to borrowers who might otherwise have been deemed too risky. Under threat of regulatory penalties, banks significantly loosened lending standards—again, inflating the housing bubble.

  After the bubble inevitably burst, Fannie and Freddie were placed under conservatorship by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The conservatorship imposed rules aimed at preventing future taxpayer-funded bailouts and protecting the economy from government-fueled market distortions.

  Now President Donald Trump's appointee to lead that agency, Bill Pulte, is considering ending this conservatorship without addressing the core structural flaw that fueled the problem in the first place: implicit government guarantees backing all Fannie and Freddie mortgages. If Pulte proceeds without implementing real reform, taxpayers on Main Street are once again likely to be exposed to significant financial risks as they are conscripted into subsidizing lucrative deals for Wall Street.

  Without genuine reform, the incentives and practices that led to the crisis remain unchanged, setting the stage for a repeat disaster.

  Oh goody.

• How dumb does she think New Hampshire Democrats are? NHJournal reports the bold stand taken by recently-announced Congressional candidate: Stefany Shaheen Supports Males in Women's Sports on 'Case by Case' Basis.

  In a rambling, difficult-to-follow answer to a direct yes-or-no question, Democratic candidate for Congress Stefany Shaheen said she supports allowing biological males to compete in girls’ sports on a “case-by-case basis.”

  “It depends on the situation. It depends on the sport. It depends on the athlete. And I think we need to make these on a case-by-case basis,” Shaheen said regarding her view of transgender athletes (biological males who identify as female) playing on girls’ sports teams.

  You can read Stefany's rambling and vacuous response on this issue here.

  Journalist Hanna Trudo, a New Hampshire native and progressive Democrat who briefly considered entering the race, told NHJournal she was unimpressed by Shaheen’s answer.

  “I’m not a sports person, but I can’t stand these types of non-answers framed around ‘fairness.’ We hear them a lot now,” Trudo said.

  “New Hampshire is the ‘Live Free or Die’ state. Last time I checked, that includes freedom for trans people. How is it fair to exclude them? Why would any Democrat want to limit freedoms for our most marginalized?

  You can use LFOD to support just about any position.

Recently on the book blog:

Some mystery authors who have established a well-known franchise protagonist will branch out to start new a new series, with a different hero. Michael Connelly is today's example; in the past, he's introduced Mickey Haller and Renée Ballard into his Harry Bosch universe. And now this new book brings in Stillwell. (I don't think his first name is disclosed.)

Stillwell is the lead representative of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department on the offshore island of Catalina. Catalina is seen as the "Island of Misfit Toys" as far as the department's concerned; a place where cops who are considered to have blundered on the mainland, but not badly enough to be fired, are exiled. But, as it develops, Stillwell's only mistake was being too diligent and honest.

As the book opens, Stillwell is investigating a gory crime: someone has decapitated one of the island's beloved bison population. (Which, reader, is an actual thing.) And soon an even more heinous crime is uncovered: a bloated body has been discovered in the island's yacht harbor. It's a woman with a purple (specifically "nightshade") streak in her hair. She's linked to the island's exclusive "Black Marlin Club", which (coincidentally?) has just reported the theft of a jade sculpture of (what else?) a marlin jumping out of the sea.

It's the stuff dreams are made of.

As mentioned, Stillwell is a diligent detective, but he has a lot to deal with. The animosity that relegated him to Catalina is still festering on the mainland. He's got a girlfriend, but their relationship is fragile. Some of his staff are less than competent, and one is laid up with a concussion incurred in a bar brawl. And, unfortunately, the closer he gets to the culprits in these crimes, the more perilous his situation becomes.

Connelly does his usual excellent job of getting me to flip Kindle pages.