Pun Salad

I responded to a recent tweet from my state's (very) senior senator:

Actually... https://t.co/uAzaYOpJSZ

— Paul Sand (@punsalad) June 1, 2025

As an unknown genius observed: "It ain’t so much the things that people don’t know that makes trouble in this world, as it is the things that people know that ain’t so."

Also of note:

• Let's get them on the record. Eric Boehm says Congress must vote on Trump’s tariff policy.

  President Donald Trump's unilateral attempt at imposing tariffs has evolved into a quantum state.

  You probably already know that Trump has repeatedly threatened, imposed, paused, delayed, raised, lowered, and "chickened out" on various tariff plans. In the past 48 hours, things got even crazier. The Court of International Trade blocked most of Trump's tariffs with an injunction issued Wednesday, but that injunction was temporarily paused by a federal appeals court on Thursday. Meanwhile, a second federal court also ruled Thursday that the tariffs are unlawful.

  The tariffs, which constitute one of the largest tax increases in American history, are simultaneously active and unlawful, subject to change at the president's whim, and could be turned off once again within weeks (when the appeals court's temporary stay will be reviewed).

  As of this moment, that means an American importer doesn't know whether it is due a refund for tariffs already paid, or whether it will owe more taxes for the next shipment of goods.

  This is, obviously, no way to run tax policy.

  To be honest, I'm not sure what Eric's "quantum" comment refers to, except both tariff policy and quantum physics use the word "uncertainty" a lot.

• It's where you learn how to be a good party member, I guess. WSJ reporter Chun Han Wong reports Harvard Has Trained So Many Chinese Communist Officials, They Call It Their ‘Party School’ (WSJ gifted link).

  U.S. schools—and one prestigious institution in particular—have long offered up-and-coming Chinese officials a place to study governance, a practice that the Trump administration could end with a new effort to keep out what it says are Chinese students with Communist Party ties.

  For decades, the party has sent thousands of mid-career and senior bureaucrats to pursue executive training and postgraduate studies on U.S. campuses, with Harvard University a coveted destination described by some in China as the top “party school” outside the country.

  It would be nice if they returned to China as dedicated champions of liberty, but there's no evidence that a Harvard education provides that.

• Live not by lies. Jack Butler fantasizes about: The Commencement Address Harvard Needs.

  These ought to be exciting times for attendees of a certain school in Boston. Perhaps one could call Harvard University’s ongoing conflict with the Trump administration exciting. But certainly not in the way that its graduates this year would have expected by the time of their commencement this past Thursday.

  The institution is coping as it knows best: through self-congratulation. Abraham Verghese, this year’s commencement speaker, assured graduates that “more people than you realize are grateful for Harvard for the example it has set” and praised the school’s “clarity in affirming and courageously defending the essential values of this university, and indeed of this nation.”

  [I assume he didn't mention that Harvard was the favorite school of Chinese Communists -- pas]

  Harvard’s attitude is that it has done nothing wrong, either lately, or in the past several decades. This is not the kind of honest introspection that aids the pursuit of the Veritas the school claims to seek. For that, we must turn to a Harvard commencement speaker from decades past. He used the occasion to deliver a righteous philippic that transcended his immediate audience, and the time in which he gave it.

  As you might have guessed, that speaker was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

• How about just anti-authoritarian? I read the The UnPopulist, even though it sometimes seems to just be a reflexive anti-Trump site.

  For example, their recent criticism of Trump's efforts to get NPR and PBS off the taxpayer tit didn't really object to Trump's stated rationale, but instead imagined the real reasoning was that those outlets "don't parrot MAGA talking points".

  But this article from self-described Bleeding Heart Libertarian Matt Zwolenski has some thoughtful points: To Fight Authoritarianism, Libertarians Need to be More Pro-Liberty, Not Just Anti-State.

  Recently, the center-left economic blogger

  Noah Smith

  apologized to the libertarian movement. This caught me by surprise. My own estimation of that movement, of which I’ve long considered myself a part, has taken a sharp downward turn over the last few years. Lured by a vague hope of deregulation and the more immediate pleasure of sticking it to the woke left, too many libertarians set aside their commitment to the rule of law and soft-peddled Trump’s threat. Some even threw their weight fully behind him. The Libertarian Party in particular experienced a takeover by a reactionary wing and is now an eager foot solider in MAGA’s culture wars against the left, as The Unpopulist has been chronicling.

  So this was a strange moment to be issuing an apology to the libertarian movement when even many libertarians are souring on it. But Noah’s piece was of course not issuing an apology to the MAGAfied libertarian movement or the Libertarian Party but the libertarianism that steadfastly stood for relatively free markets, free trade, and limited government even when these ideas weren’t popular anywhere else on the political spectrum. These commitments played a crucial role in keeping a lid on some rather reactionary right-wing tendencies and left-wing excesses. In his words, “Free-market ideology, for all its flaws, was keeping a lid on the right’s natural impulse toward Peronism” in addition to serving as “the proper foil for progressivism.”

  As I've said before: we'll just have to settle for the simple pleasure of being right about everything, all the time.

Recently on the movie blog:

Observation 1: Well, if you want to see Harrison Ford transform into a CGI Red Hulk, this is probably your only option. On the other hand, if you just want to see Mr. Ford as the US President, I recommend Air Force One instead.

Observation 2: If anger makes you into a Red Hulk, why did Bruce Banner turn into Green Hulk? Overcome by envy?

Observation 3: I watched this the night after I watched Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning. I'll give this movie credit for having a slightly more credible plot.

Observation 4: As it turns out, I really missed some continuity. The major plot driver is the presence of "Celestial Island" in the Indian Ocean made out of the miraculous metal adamantium. Which threatens war between the major powers, the US and … Japan?! It must have landed there in some other Marvel movie I missed. Googling… yeah, probably The Eternals.

Anyway: Sam Wilson, previously the Falcon, is the new Captain America. He's still got his wings, though, aided by Cap's shield. This helps him investigate a nefarious scheme involving President Thaddeus Ross (Mr. Ford), mind control, that adamantium isle, and so on.

Oh, and Liv Tyler shows up. Nice!

At National Review, Michael Washburn requests Sympathy for the Unpublished Young White Male Author (NR gifted link). After some discussion of "Conduit Books", a UK effort to publish "the work of male authors", he gets to the reason some might find such things necessary or desirable:

I discussed this issue a few times in recent years, examples here and here.

Today's data point: of Kirkus Reviews' Best Debut Fiction of 2024 list. Here are titles, authors, and (after a little Googling) my pigeonholing on their race, sex, ethnicity, and other relevant info:

• LET THE GAMES BEGIN by Rufaro Faith Mazarura (Black female, "British Zimbabwean")
• THE MINISTRY OF TIME by Kaliane Bradley (White female from Britain)
• MARTYR! by Kaveh Akbar (Iranian American male)
• GREAT EXPECTATIONS by Vinson Cunningham (Black male)
• HOUSEMATES by Emma Copley Eisenberg (White "American queer writer", apparently uses "she/her" pronouns)
• WHAT KINGDOM by Fine Gråbøl (White female from Denmark)
• JELLYFISH HAVE NO EARS by Adèle Rosenfeld (White female from France)
• HOMBRECITO by Santiago Jose Sanchez ("queer Colombian American writer and artist")
• YR DEAD by sam sax (White guy, lowercased name, self-identified as "a queer, jewish [sic], writer and educator")
• THE HISTORY OF SOUND by Ben Shattuck (Hey, an apparently straight white guy, married to onetime SNL cast member Jenny Slate)
• GOD BLESS YOU, OTIS SPUNKMEYER by Joseph Earl Thomas (Black male)
• THE SAFEKEEP by Yael van der Wouden (Dutch female)
• OURS by Phillip B. Williams (Black male)

I actually read one of those! Report here; executive summary from this Philistine: Meh.

But out of that baker's dozen titles, I count one unambiguously straight, white male. Back in my day, sonny, we'd call that guy a "token".

So (as I said before): aspiring authors who are in the wrong pigeonhole would be advised to have a backup career plan, unless you are married to a Saturday Night Live comic.

I should also mention that there's an attempted rebuttal to the Joseph Savage article linked above by Alex Skopic at Current Affairs: The White Male Writer is Fine, I Promise. It's long, wide-ranging, well-written, and … not that convincing.

Also of note:

• Hey, you got your subtext on my context! Jonah Goldberg writes on Pretext Upon Pretext. And what is a pretext? Jonah has examples from the world of politics:

  In his first term, Donald Trump used Covid as a pretext to deport illegal immigrants. Biden kept that pretext going for a while too. He tried over and over to cancel student loans invoking all sorts of arguments that were just obviously pretextual—including Covid. Biden also used Covid as a pretext for extending a moratorium on rental payments, which Trump had issued on a pretextual basis as well. The rent freeze and eviction ban made sense when the country was on lockdown, but keeping it around long after the lockdowns was simply politics.

  I focus on the Covid stuff because crises are the mother of pretextual politics. In our system, the only time a president has the ability to assume quasi dictatorial powers and subvert the rule of law, checks and balances, etc., is during a national emergency, especially a war.

  This is not new to Trump or Biden. The founders, having lived through the impotence of the federal government under the Articles of Confederation, recognized that the government needed the ability to deal with emergencies. “The circumstances that endanger the safety of nations are infinite, and for this reason no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power to which the care of it is committed,” Alexander Hamilton writes in Federalist 23.

  And, as, Jonah goes on to note: "[V]irtually the entire agenda of the second Trump administration is grounded in pretextual arguments."

  Contra Jonah, I think there are pretty good arguments for some of the stuff Trump wants to do, like defunding NPR and PBS; the relevant executive order makes those arguments pretty well.

  But on (say) tariffs, Jonah's pretty on target: the crazy-quilt nature of the implementation belies any principled rationale Trump might claim.

• Irony, on the other hand, is alive and well. Andrew Follett claims Another Harvard Scandal Proves That Science Is Broken.

  Aonce-prominent Harvard University professor was stripped of her tenure and fired this week for outright fabricating data on numerous academic studies of dishonesty and unethical behavior. The timing couldn’t be worse for Harvard: The troubled university currently faces a critical dispute over funding and foreign student visas with the Trump administration.

  Francesca Gino was regularly cited as an authority by prominent left-leaning outlets such as National Public Radio and the New York Times. Both outlets now admit that Gino’s research was likely fabricated. Disturbingly, the flaws in her research were exposed not by the allegedly robust university system of peer review, but by a series of posts by science bloggers.

  One can almost imagine ex-prof Gino muttering in her best Scooby-Doo villain voice: "And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for these blasted science bloggers."

• LFOD shows up at TechDirt. And Tim Cushing's headline is appropriately dirty: Trump, Republicans Have Fucked This Nation So Hard We’ve Created A New Class Of Refugees. It's largely based on this Guardian article we discussed back in April.

  We’ll start with the story of a teacher who abandoned New Hampshire for Vermont because of the state’s efforts to erase critical race theory and other things that might inform students that white doesn’t always mean right.

  John Dube, a high school teacher with 35 years of teaching under his belt, went up against local lawmakers’ attempts to ban CRT theory from being discussed in public schools. This put him in the crosshairs of far right activists, who engaged in a campaign of harassment so worrisome federal and local law enforcement stopped by to warn the teacher of what they had observed online..

  The backlash was instant. Granite Grok, a local rightwing website, posted the names of all New Hampshire signatories, and within hours of that Dube received a Facebook message that read: “Whats up homo? I heard your teaching Marxist commie CRT in your classrooms. You can fuck right off you garbage human.”

  Dube calmly replied that he would not be intimidated.

  Within days, police officers turned up at his house, having been dispatched by the FBI. Dube’s name was circulating on obscure chatrooms frequented by violent militia members. He was urged to install security cameras at home, but when he asked why the police didn’t arrest the perpetrators of the threats, he was told that was impossible on free speech grounds.

  So much for the “Live Free or Die” state. It’s now just the “Fuck Off and Die” state, heavily populated by people who believe your rights (and possibly, your life) end where their beliefs begin.

  Dube has since relocated to Vermont to teach. He’s not the only one fleeing persecution and/or prosecution in his former home state due to legislation passed by Trump sycophant’s or the disturbing actions of those who support Trump and his rampant destruction of constitutional rights.

  I won't repeat my previous comments here, except: (1) it's regrettable that people can get harassed for their political beliefs, although (2) the harassment in Dube's case didn't appear to rise to the "true threat" level that would trigger law enforcement; and (3) Dube seems to have made his Vermont getaway during the Biden Administration. Tim's effort to link it to Trump is kind of stretchy.

  I'll also note that most data on interstate migration flows typically show a net inflow to New Hampshire, and an outflow from Vermont. How many "refugees"?

Recently on the movie blog:

Pun Son and I trundled down to the Regal Cinemas in Newington (NH) to see what Tom hath wrought. No major surprises, but I was impressed with the stunts and special effects.

I usually report on the plot, but I will not do so here. Suffice to say: it's unbelievably ludicrous, just a framework to hang the action scenes on. It's a sequal to the previous franchise entry; my report on that is here. That entry was two hours and 43 minutes, and I said it could use some tightening up; this one is two hours and 49 minutes, and… ditto. (You might think that the movie is winding up, but then you correct yourself: no, they haven't done the biplane thing yet.)

Still, it was fun, and I enjoyed the epicness of it. There's a sweet connection to the very first movie in the series, which I liked as well.