Pun Salad

I have nothing to say about Israel's strikes on Iran except… well, good job, Israel. Hope things work out well.

But we are going for amusement today, for example the video genius of Austin Bragg and Andrew Heaton at Reason, imagining a celebration slightly different from the one scheduled tomorrow: D.C. parade fail.

If I were still living in the area, I might take the Metro downtown to check that out.

Also of note:

• On the LFOD watch. My Google News Alert notified me of the provocative headline at (I am not making this up) Big Think: Why don’t Americans trust experts? Just ask a paranormal investigator.

  Well, of course. The average paranormal investigator is totally qualified to provide insights into the US zeitgeist.

  But things kind of go off the rails and into the New Hampshire wilderness in the interview with Matt Hongoltz-Hetling:

  Big Think: Why do so many people in New Hampshire see ghosts, aliens, and cryptids?

  Hongoltz-Hetling: New Hampshire has a perfect storm of dynamics within its culture. First, New England is much more infused with a sense of history and age than other parts of the country; it was settled first, and there’s a constant homage to the past. 

  New Hampshire is also famously individualistic. This expresses itself in various ways. It’s the country’s libertarian hotspot. It has very high rates of atheism, which is sort of an opting out of an institution. It has its “Live free or die” motto. Those factors have also made New Hampshire the leader in institutional distrust. So all of those things together are a perfect recipe for breeding increased belief in supernatural phenomena.

  Showcasing this, New Hampshire has had some truly seminal moments in paranormal history. It was the site of the first widely popularized UFO abduction story, the Betty and Barney Hill incident.

  I think [that incident] seeded the local and regional communities with a higher awareness of those sorts of things. Instead of just reading about it through an AP story or seeing it talked about on The Tonight Show, you may know somebody who is connected to this big UFO incident. And that was just one of a handful of incidents to have occurred in New Hampshire.

  For all those reasons New Hampshire is in the perfect place at the perfect time to inherit an increased awareness of, and belief in, those “out there” phenomena. 

  Uh, fine. Although that answer does kind of have that uncanny AI LLM feel to it, where random Granite State factoids were pulled up from the web to form a superficially plausible explanation.

  So, history, individualism, LFOD, atheism? Let me throw in another possible factor.

  New Hampshire had the highest consumption of alcohol, with alcohol consumption per capita of 4.76 gallons. `

  Reader, the second-place state, Delaware, is not even close to us, at 3.52 gallons.

  (Matt Hongoltz-Hetling, by the way, authored A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear, on which I opined back in 2020.)

• Gee, it's been days since we insulted Greta Thunberg. So, take it away, David Harsanyi: Greta Thunberg is the embodiment of progressive vapidity.

  Professional leftist Greta Thunberg was brought to Israel this week after the “selfie yacht” she was traveling on attempted to break through a naval blockade of Gaza. The “Madleen” was part of a “flotilla” pretending to deliver aid to alleviate an imaginary famine. The same day, 62 Israeli trucks carrying food entered the Gaza Strip.

  The 22-year-old was given food and shelter and sent home by the Israeli government, which she accused of “kidnapping” her. All the usual suspects went along with this predictable framing.

  If Thunberg really wanted to better understand the concept of an abduction, she might have asked Hamas to visit the Israelis still being tortured in a dank basement somewhere in Rafa. But the “human rights activist,” which is how the media unironically describes her, has never once called for the release of the hostages taken by Islamists. Indeed, the flotilla effort was reportedly organized by a “Hamas operative.”

  That "Hamas operative" is Zaher Birawi, described as a "founding member" of the "Freedom Flotilla Coalition". Unsurprisingly, our local Hamas cheerleader, pastor of the Community Church of Durham, is over there in Israel. Among other things, plugging "Freedom Flotilla Coalition" videos at his blog.

• It's a negative-sum game all the way down. It's another confirmation for Betteridge's Law of Headlines as Scott Sumner asks: Borrow billions for babies?

  The administration has proposed giving newborn babies (whose parents have Social Security numbers) a savings account containing $1,000, which must be saved at least until the child reached the age of 18. Here is Ryan Teague Beckwith at MSNBC:

  If a lower-income family added no money to their Trump account, after 18 years that $1,000 would have grown to around $2,000, if we assume a generous 4% rate of return.

  So…

  Imagine the typical baby were to invest the $1,000 in government bonds yielding 4%. Then at age 18, they would come into possession of two things:

  1. A $2,000 government bond.

  2. An expectation that they’ll have to pay an extra $2,000 in future taxes (in present value terms) in order to service that debt.

  In other words, on average, they will be no better off than if the program had never been created. Under the assumption of Ricardo/Barro equivalence, they should just hold onto the bonds forever.

  In other words, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

  Might be able to fool 'em though.

• I still like Joni Ernst. And she was a good sport to accept Jeff Maurer's invitation to expand on her recent Iowa town hall remarks at his substack: When I Said "We're All Going To Die", I Meant "Soon"

  Recently, I made waves when, during a town hall meeting, I responded to an audience member’s concern that Medicare cuts will cause people to die by saying “Well, we all are going to die.” I expanded on my comments in a social media post, but that hasn’t lessened the uproar. The liberal media are determined to twist my words and portray my position as something that it’s not.

  So, let me be clear: I was not being flippant about that audience member’s concerns. Nor was I viewing a serious issue through an abstract lens. I was making a key point directly relevant to the conversation: We are all going to die. Not at some distant point in the future — imminently. I’m talking weeks, if not days. Why are we fighting about Medicare when the Reaper is at our doorstep?! We are all going to be worm food tout de suite, folks! And it seems like that really should override some pedantic point about Medicare.

  Liberals are cynically trying to make hay from my remarks. Activists, social media crusaders, and the lamestream media are portraying me as callous and out-of-touch — the progressive spin machine is going full throttle! They want you to think that I don’t care about people losing health insurance; they’re trying to turn this into a “let them eat cake” moment though misrepresentation and deceptive editing.

  It's been nice knowing you all. See you in the afterlife!

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