Aug
27
2025

Coming To You Live, From Dimension Two Point Five

Sabine Hossenfelder takes a GOP CongressCritter, Anna Paulina Luna, as seriously as possible:

I watched the seemingly very successful Starship test flight last night, from liftoff to Indian Ocean splashdown. Cool stuff, but why aren't we just grabbing the interdimensional tech from the aliens?

Also of note:

  • In case you hadn't noticed. Back in the 1970s, there was a common saying: "A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality". Dare we hope that could be happening today? Kevin D. Williamson looks at the prospects of The Emerging Liberal Minority. Excerpt:

    Conservatives alienated from the Republican Party (as conservatives must be) may make their peace with the Democratic Party, as some have, but many (I suppose most) cannot muster much more than an “Ugh!” for a party whose moderate wing is characterized by Joe Biden and whose radical camp is rallying behind Zohran Mamdani, the professing socialist who aims to be not only the next mayor of New York City but also the new mascot of the left wing of the party of the left. But while there probably are not many estranged liberals who feel about the Democratic Party precisely the way conservatives are obliged to feel about the current Republican Party—in part because the Democrats are not at this moment led by a man who attempted a coup d’état the last time he lost an election—they are frustrated and disappointed and, at times, full of very reasonable contempt for their ancestral party. Liberals acknowledging painful truths of an uncomfortable ideological origin—whether those be Hayekian or neoconservative in character—have something in common with conservatives reckoning (as we must) with the fact that unsavory constituents such as racism, millenarian religious fanaticism, xenophobia, nihilistic antirationalism, and old-fashioned bumptiousness play a much more prominent role on the right than we had supposed. 

    I'm a little surprised that my Linux spellcheck didn't flag "bumptiousness". I guess it's a word.

  • Cognitive dissonance isn't a pretty sight. Is it on the upswing? Jim Geraghty: When Mamdani says it, it’s socialism. When Trump does it, it’s genius.

    Remember, Republicans: It’s important that we stop Zohran Mamdani from becoming the next mayor of New York. The man is a socialist!

    Mamdani talked about “the end goal of seizing the means of production” during a live-streamed conference of the Young Democratic Socialists of America in February 2021, and declared that “we have to continue to elect more socialists, and we have to ensure that we are unapologetic about our socialism.” (As much as one might be tempted to attribute that to youthful naiveté, Mamdani was 29 years old at that time, and he’s 33 now.) Mamdani wants the New York government to open and run its own grocery stores.

    It’s a good thing we have President Donald Trump and his administration to stop the spread of Mamdani’s socialist agenda. Instead of having the government take greater control of private companies the way Mamdani wants, the administration is having the government take greater control of private companies the way Trump wants.

    The AI summary of the 491 (as I type) comments on Jim's article mentions that "Some comments suggest that Trump's actions align more with state capitalism or even fascism rather than socialism."

    Uh, fine. We have a better all-inclusive label. Let me drag out, once again, the Hayekian cartoon I had ChatGPT draw last week:

  • Need some cheering up? Good news, bunkie, Noah Rothman finds it: At Least You’re Not Ken Martin. (Noah assumes Ken Martin, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, isn't reading National Review.)

    “Democrats, make no mistake, a storm is coming,” Martin said at the outset of the Democratic National Committee’s Minnesota summit on Monday. “In fact, it’s already here.” What we have today is “fascism dressed in a red tie.”

    “Rising inequality, attacks on democracy, voter suppression and a fascist regime that doesn’t play by the rules,” he continued. Today, the Republican Party is “led by the dictator in chief” who has cast American “values into the dustbin of history.” The Democrats, therefore, need to fight fire with fire. “I’m sick and tired of this Democratic Party bringing a pencil to a knife fight,” Martin declared. “We cannot be the only party that plays by the rules anymore. We’ve got to stand up and fight.”

    The DNC chair isn’t the first Democrat to pose as the fighting fighter who fights. The consultant class can read the polling of anxious Democrats as well as anyone, although the Democratic lawmakers who are being asked by constituents to take a bullet for the cause shouldn’t need a public opinion survey to understand their voters’ restlessness. Those Democrats, too, are offering their voters thin gruel: gratuitous profanity, all-caps social-media posts, and anguished self-pity masquerading as sorrow for the state of the country.

    I got a chuckle out of the "fighting fighter who fights" phrase. My CongressCritter, Chris Pappas, seems to work that into a lot of tweets, for example:

    Nothing says "fighter" than a cheek-to-cheek selfie with a supporter!

  • And this is simply wonderful. The WSJ has a front-page "A-Hed" daily column, and it's fun, but I really liked this one from yesterday: Baseball Organists Keep Bringing the Heat, Thanks to Their 78-Year-Old Muse. (WSJ gifted link)

    The Kane County Cougars were trying to rally against the Quad City River Bandits when bees started pouring from behind the visitors’ dugout.

    Umpires halted the game. Players sprinted for the outfield. Ushers hurried to shepherd panicky fans. Perched above the fray in a suite, Nancy Faust sprang into action.

    Placing her fingers on the keys of the ballpark’s organ, she launched into “Flight of the Bumblebee,” the frenetically paced number by Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. From there she segued into Jewel Akens’ “The Birds and the Bees,” Jimmie Rodgers’ “Honeycomb,” the Beatles’ “Let It Be.”

    She's a genius. The story goes on to note that when she was playing the organ at old Comiskey Park for the White Sox, she learned that visiting KC Royal, George Brett, had had recent hemorrhoid surgery. So:

    When he came up to bat, she played the Dovells’ 'You Can’t Sit Down.”


Last Modified 2025-08-27 7:43 AM EDT