Pun Salad

I liked Don Boudreaux's Quotation of the Day yesterday. So much that I'm just gonna rip out the whole dang thing. While (of course) encouraging you to make Cafe Hayek a regular stop on your surfing itinerary.

First, the quote, from Thomas Sowell's Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective, Amazon link at your right.

Don's accompanying commentary:

Well, OK. I'll try to stop doing that.

Also of note:

• But speaking of imagined moral superiority… Jennifer Rubin announces her big news: I Have Resigned from The Washington Post, effective today.

  Corporate and billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences’ loyalty and sabotaged journalism’s sacred mission — defending, protecting and advancing democracy. The Washington Post’s billionaire owner and enlisted management are among the offenders. They have undercut the values central to The Post’s mission and that of all journalism: integrity, courage, and independence. I cannot justify remaining at The Post. Jeff Bezos and his fellow billionaires accommodate and enable the most acute threat to American democracy—Donald Trump—at a time when a vibrant free press is more essential than ever to our democracy’s survival and capacity to thrive.

  I therefore have resigned from The Post, effective today. In doing so, I join a throng of veteran journalists so distressed over The Post’s management they felt compelled to resign.

  The decay and compromised principles of corporate and billionaire-owned media underscore the urgent need for alternatives. Americans are eager for innovative and independent journalism that offers lively, unflinching coverage free from cant, conflicts of interest and moral equivocation.

  Well, fine. Equivocation is bad when you're right about everything, all the time.

  Jen's announcement is for her new substack, The Contrarian. I've put it on my Inoreader subscription list, just to witness all the "innovative and independent journalism that offers lively, unflinching coverage free from cant, conflicts of interest and moral equivocation." For as long as I can stand it.

• And our first example‥ doesn't seem to be Contrarian at all. Olivia Julianna ("Texas Democratic Strategist and Gen Z firebrand") tells of her journey From the Trailer House to the White House. It helps if you imagine it with background music, some sort of trumpet-heavy fanfare…

  My story is an American story.

  One of the young girl who’s great grandparents came to America from Mexico hoping to give her a better life.

  One of the students who dreamed of something more.

  One of the Americans whose life was changed because of Joe Biden's Presidency.

  I would tell this to the President, tears in my eyes, standing in the middle of the Oval Office. He held my hand and told me that is exactly why Democrats do what they do– to help people. Right before this, President Biden briefly spoke to a small group of my peers in the Roosevelt Room. Behind him as he spoke was a portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The image of them side by side will be etched into my memory forever.

  Yes, Olivia is a partisan Democratic hack. She proclaims, presumably with a straight face: "I firmly believe that in time, this administration will be regarded as one of the greatest in American history."

  Her story is very much "Life of Julia"-esque. And she is "grateful to the boy from Scranton and the girl from Oakland who didn’t forget about those who had too little."

  Uh huh. I can't help but notice that that "boy from Scranton and the girl from Oakland" get her fulsome thanks, but not the taxpayers that actually footed the bill.

• Can't hear no buzzers and bells. Kevin D. Williamson writes on Foreign Distractions.

  I would be very, very surprised if Donald Trump could point to Greenland or Panama on an unlabeled map, and I’d bet $10,000 he could not lay a finger on Denmark without advice and assistance. But Trump has decided that it is of paramount importance to the United States to wrest control of the Panama Canal away from Panama and to wrest control of Greenland, a territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, from Denmark.

  Why Greenland?

  Greenland is strategically located between the United States and Russia. So, there’s that. Of course, there are a lot of places strategically located between the United States and Russia: Iceland, Norway, Sweden … the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain … Ukraine. Most, but not all, of those countries have something in common with Greenland: There is already a U.S. military base there or formal U.S. access to local military installations. In fact, there are about 31 countries located somewhere roughly between the United States and Russia. Harry S. Truman and Dean Acheson had the good sense to organize a dozen or so of those countries with an interest in the North Atlantic into a treaty organization, which they imaginatively named the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—NATO, the bulwark of the free world against Russia and aligned enemies, which Donald Trump has spent pretty much his entire political career micturating on from a great height. We don’t have to twist any Danish arms into getting them to help us against threats from Moscow—they’ve been doing their part since 1949.

  This is why KDW gets the big bucks: he types "micturating" instead of "peeing".

• A burning question liberals are asking themselves. Asked by Jeff Maurer: Why Doesn't Hitler McFuckface Like Us Anymore?

  Mark Zuckerberg has announced big changes at Meta. The content moderation policies favored by many on the left are out, and the company is rolling back DEI and cozying up to Trump. Zuckerberg also recently went on Joe Rogan’s podcast to criticize the Biden administration and decry the lack of “masculine energy” in the corporate world.

  Like many liberals, I’m shocked by this pivot. What happened to the Mark Zuckerberg who, after the 2016 election, kowtowed to progressive lawmakers? Where is the guy who backed left-wing causes and clashed with conservatives? What’s causing this? Is it something in his personal life? Craven pandering to the new administration? Or is there any chance that it has something to do with more than a decade of people on the left calling him a corrupt plutocrat who might be the biggest pile of shit in the cosmos?

  It’s hard to trace the roots of Zuckerberg’s falling out with the left. Maybe it started in 2011, when the guy from The West Wing wrote a big, award-winning movie about how Zuckerberg is a total asshole. That doesn’t happen to most people — it’s really just Zuckerberg and former Oakland A’s manager Art Howe. After the 2016 election, some on the left blamed Facebook for Clinton’s loss, and Cambridge Analytica ended up on the Rachel Maddow show more than Rachel Maddow. In 2020, progressives demanded that Biden take down “new oligarchs” like Zuckerberg, which led to Lina Kahn hunting Zuckerberg with the tenacity of Javier Bardem’s character hunting Josh Brolin in No Country for Old Men.

  Read the whole thing of course. There are guest appearances by Dickhead McFarthuffer and Pedo von Shiteater.

• Maybe if Zuck wasn't a Harvard dropout… OK, but he's been enmeshed in free speech issues for years. You would think he'd be able to avoid being schooled by Emma Camp: Yes, Mark Zuckerberg, you can shout 'fire' in a crowded theater.

  Mark Zuckerberg has joined a dubious list of prominent Americans—including judges, members of Congress, and even a vice presidential nominee—who believe that you can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater. In an interview with Joe Rogan last week, the Meta CEO attempted to justify the company's pandemic-era censorship policies by arguing that "even people who are like the most ardent First Amendment defenders" know that there is a limit to free speech.

  "At the beginning, [COVID-19 was] a legitimate public health crisis," Zuckerberg told Rogan. "The Supreme Court has this clear precedent: It's like, all right, you can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater. There are times when if there's an emergency, your ability to speak can temporarily be curtailed in order to get an emergency under control. I was sympathetic to that at the beginning of COVID."

  The thing is, Zuckerberg is simply wrong when it comes to how the First Amendment works.

  So let's hope, on his way to remaking Facebook more free speech-friendly, that Zuck will read Emma.

Recently on the book blog:

This was the Raymond Chandler estate's first effort at making some money off an author who'd been dead for 30 years. It is (however) an honest co-authorship: Chandler wrote the first four chapters, while Robert B. Parker ably supplied the final 37. I try to ignore the inherent profit-driven ghoulishness, and instead concentrate on the pleasures of finding out what Philip Marlowe is up to.

What he's up to, at first, is settling into marriage with Linda Marlowe, née Loring, out in the tony desert town of Poodle Springs. Linda's daddy is rich, and so is she. Marlowe, on the other hand, is relatively poor, and wants to continue making his honest living doing what he knows: being a private detective, going down those famed mean streets, assuming he can find any of those in Poodle Springs. This is a continuing source of friction in their marriage. Like throughout the book, a continuing bone of contention that seems unresolvable.

Soon enough, Marlowe gets a client: Manny Lipshultz, who operates a gambling den outside the city limits. He has accepted an IOU from a shady photographer, Les Valentine, in the amount of $100,000. But now Valentine has vanished, and Lipshultz is worried that the casino's (anonymous) owner will find out and be irate.

From there on out, the plot gets complicated, and eventually homicidal.

I bought and read this in hardcover when it came out in 1989, being a fan of both Chandler and Parker. I think I liked it better on the re-read, about 35 years later. Parker got Marlowe pretty much right, although there are definite notes of Spenser in the wisecracks. (It may be heresy to say this, but: Parker's Spenser was always funnier than Chandler's Marlowe.)

I notice that HBO made a movie based on the book, with James Caan playing Marlowe. I didn't know that. I'll see if it's streamable!

Today's headline is a famous quote from Milton's Paradise Lost; today's eye candy is (I think) a PL-inspired etching; our first item is from Allysia Finley at the WSJ, and she describes How the Left Turned California Into a Paradise Lost.

Allysia is not kidding about that "Trump-proof" effort. The Hill reports that, after apparently having satisfied themselves that all other "burning" priorities have been adequately funded, California Democrats approve $50M budget to help Newsom ‘Trump-proof’ the state.

At Reason, J.D. Tuccille also (1) confirms my priors; and (2) satisfies my (admittedly deplorable) urge to rubberneck at scenes of tragedy and horror: California’s fire catastrophe is largely a result of bad government policies.

But one more thing about Paradise Lost: a lot of results from the Getty Image search are of Paradise, California. You may remember (as I didn't): that town was a victim of the Camp Fire, which happened in November 2018, killed 85 people, destroyed over 18,000 structures (mostly houses), part of $16.65 billion (2018 USD) in damages.

But by all means, California Democrats: Trump-proof your state.

Also of note:

• A lone voice of sanity. Dominic Pino begs: Don't Make the Tax Code More Complicated, Republicans.

  One of the biggest wins in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the Republican tax reform law passed at the end of 2017, was the doubling of the standard deduction. That reduced the number of taxpayers for whom it was advantageous to itemize deductions. In 2017, before the TCJA, 46.8 million taxpayers itemized; the next year, only 17.5 million did so. The share of taxpayers who itemize, which was stuck around 30 percent for decades, immediately dropped post-TCJA to around 10 percent, where it has stayed in the years since.

  That means about 20 percent of taxpayers who used to itemize no longer have to waste their time doing so. That’s good news for them, but it’s also good news for future tax reforms. When fewer taxpayers take advantage of carve-outs in the tax code, the carve-outs become easier to repeal entirely. Conservatives should be striving for a flatter income tax with a broader base and lower rates that is easy to pay, and the TCJA was a step in the right direction to getting there.

  Aside from doubling the standard deduction, the TCJA also reduced the cap on the mortgage interest deduction from a principal of $1 million to $750,000 and capped the state and local tax (SALT) deduction at $10,000. Now, with these provisions in need of renewal by the end of 2025, some Republicans, including Donald Trump, have said they want to raise or eliminate the SALT deduction cap.

  It falls to Audrey Fahlberg to report the sad news on that front: New York Republicans Are Optimistic about Lifting the SALT Deduction Cap, after Mar-a-Lago Meeting with Trump.

  Sigh. "New York Republicans". Who knew there were any still out there?

  A group of House Republicans from New York, California, and New Jersey departed a meeting with Donald Trump this weekend feeling optimistic that the president-elect will keep his campaign pledge to lift the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap — a controversial tax write-off that allows individual and married joint filers in high-tax states to deduct $10,000 from their state and local taxes from their federal income taxes.

  “The president didn’t back away from the commitment that he made on the campaign trail to fix SALT,” Representative Nick LaLota (R., N.Y.) told National Review on Saturday, a few hours after meeting privately with Trump in Mar-a-Lago alongside 15 other House Republicans and two of the president-elect’s political advisers.

  Talk about feeding the caricature of the GOP doing favors for fat-cat millionaires in their McMansions!

• But at least the incoming FCC chief will be a warrior for free speach, right? Sadly, no. Joe Lancaster reports: The Incoming FCC Chief Is No 'Warrior for Free Speech'

  President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office next week, and his second-term agenda is taking shape as he fills out his administration. One of the first hires announced after the November election was the elevation of Brendan Carr, who sits on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to be the agency's new head.

  Trump dubbed Carr "a warrior for free speech," and in response, Carr pledged to "dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans." But Carr appears all too willing to wield the federal censorship apparatus on Trump's behalf.

  Over the weekend, Charles Gasparino reported in the New York Post that Carr is unlikely to quickly approve a proposed merger between Paramount Global—the media conglomerate whose assets include the Paramount Pictures film studio as well as the broadcast network CBS and its CBS News division—and Skydance Media, which produced recent hit films like Top Gun: Maverick and entries in the Mission: Impossible series.

  Apparently, the bee in Carr's bonnet (perhaps placed there by his soon-to-be boss) is CBS's creative editing of a 60 Minutes interview, replacing Kamala's word-salad answer to a question with something more coherent and responsive.

  Click through for Joe's use of a portmanteau with which I was unfamiliar: "Sanewashing". Usually an epithet deployed against softball coverage of Republicans, but Joe notes there's room for bothsidesism.

• Once a grifter… NHJournal reports on local news from our state's capital city: Concord City Councilors Defend 'Cash Cow' DEI Consultant, Approve $40k Contract.

  Complaining about news coverage from the “anti-progressive New Hampshire Journal,” the Concord City Council approved a $40,000 contract for a DEI consultant who previously hosted a “get rich from consulting” event.

  NHJournal first reported on James Bird Guess, now president and CEO of Racial Equity Group, and his background, pitching his “From Broke to Millionaire Consultant” web page on Monday morning.

  NHJournal's previous story about James Bird Guess is here. And you definitely want to check out JBG's website plugging his 2020 Cash Cow Consultant Conference. For some reason, it's still alive. You don't want to miss the pic of him lighting a large cigar while sitting on the hood of his new Bentley.

Imagine paying into one of the highest tax cities in the nation, and then none of the municipal services you pay for are there for you when you need them and so you have to resort to private services — and then are shamed for doing so! pic.twitter.com/b3kkccM5fE

— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) January 12, 2025

Noah Smith encourages us to Learn smart lessons from the L.A. fires, not stupid lessons. And his Smart Lesson Number One is:

Noah's article is substack-paywalled but much of his insurance company tutorial shows up.

At the NR Corner, Dominic Pino describes How Price Controls Have Made California Wildfire Recovery Harder.

I just hope Harry Bosch and Elvis Cole are OK.

Also of note:

• Yes, 1A even protects the speech of people you wish would just crawl back under their rocks. Jonathan Turley, lawprof at George Washington University, has some local news: New Hampshire Supreme Court Rejects Hate Speech Enforcement.

  The New Hampshire Supreme Court just handed down a victory for free speech in Attorney General v. Hood. As is often the case, defending free speech means supporting viewpoints that most of us find grotesque and hateful. However, the justices rejected the position of the Portsmouth Police Department that it could force the removal of a racist banner from an overpass. Such signs and flags are commonly allowed, but the police and prosecutors insisted that racist messages “interfered with the rights” of other citizens.The controversy began on July 30, 2022, when a group of roughly ten people with NSC-131, a “pro-white, street-oriented fraternity dedicated to raising authentic resistance to the enemies of [its] people in the New England area,” hung banners from the overpass, including one reading “KEEP NEW ENGLAND WHITE.”

  The ADL has more information on NSC-131, sample:

  The Nationalist Social Club (NSC) or 131 Crew (131 is alphanumeric code for ACA, Anti-Communist Action and Anti-Capitalist Action) is a neo-Nazi group with small, autonomous regional chapters around the country. They also claim chapters in France, Hungary and Germany.

  NSC-131 members consider themselves soldiers fighting a war against a hostile, Jewish-controlled system that is deliberately plotting the extinction of the white race. Their goal is to form an underground network of white men who are willing to fight against their perceived enemies through localized direct actions.

  Anti-Communist and Anti-Capitalist? Geez, they really are Nazis.

• As if we needed another one. Becket Adams notices: USA Today Conducts a Master Class in Subservience.

  Last week, USA Today managed somehow to embarrass itself even more with its “exit interview” of President Joe Biden, a floundering, pointless exercise in awestruck subservience. From lobbing slow-motion, underhanded softballs of no public interest to failing to seek clarification for unintelligible tirades to ignoring or allowing falsehoods and blatant political spin, the interview serves less as a public service and more as a reminder of why USA Today no longer holds the distinction of being the most circulated paper in the United States.

  […]

  Consider, for example, Biden’s sudden pardon of his ne’er-do-well son, Hunter. The president promised he wouldn’t do it. Then he did it, making up weak excuses along the way for this obviously self-serving act and calling down on himself well-deserved, bipartisan scorn.

  Yet in her interview with Biden, Susan Page, USA Today’s Washington bureau chief, set the stage thus: “Every parent can understand why you would want to protect your son. Do you have any concerns that your pardon of Hunter sets a precedent for future presidents? One that might be open to abuse?”

  Notice how she ignores the ethics surrounding the president pardoning his son’s felony convictions. Notice how she avoids acknowledging that the pardon represents a bald-faced reversal for Biden. Observe how she frames the issue as a loving parent swooping in to rescue his wayward child. Grab the tissues. Notice Page doesn’t even take the easy palace-intrigue route, passing on the chance to ask the president to respond to the Democrats’ criticism of his decision. Most importantly, notice how Page’s question focuses on hypothetical abuses rather than the actual abuse staring her right in the face.

  You can read a transcript of the tongue-bath interview here.

  Only one week left to go before this babbling geezer is out the door! Unfortunately, Susan Page will remain.

On a related note, Jonah Goldberg writes his G-File on Urban Dismay. On his way to make a point about that:

I get it too. So maybe, given the useful distinction between "government" and "the state", Mr. Ramirez shoulda written "Statism" on Murthy's pill bottle instead.

Or we could just keep blurring the distinction, which I've been doing here for about twenty years. Mea Culpa, Jonah.

To be relentlessly topical, the devastating Los Angeles area fires reminded me of Andrew Koppelman's facile book Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed; his leading example of "delusion and greed" was a 2010 Tennessee episode where a fire department refused to fight a house fire because the owners had not paid their subscription fee.

Now: This was hardly happening in Libertopia: the fire department was city-owned, following the rules laid down by the city government's democratic processes.

But as we've seen in LA, an even more government-besotted area, the local fully-socialized fire departments do an obviously lousy job of fire prevention and suppression. So much so that people who can afford it are hiring private firefighters to protect their homes.

Which, predictably, caused widespread resentment of "the rich", not the inept response of government.

Also of note:

• Good question. Answer: meh. Deirdre McCloskey wonders What to Call Liberalism? She'd like a term that doesn't needlessly offend her friends, so…

  So what to call the liberalism of Adam Smith and Mary Wollstonecraft and early J. S, Mill, and then people like Milton Friedman? What is often called “classical” liberalism, or in the U.S. “libertarianism,” both have their own problems. “Classical” makes liberalism sound out of date, which is incorrect. And “libertarianism” has never become clear in the minds of most Americans, even though its policies are in fact what most Americans want. My grandmother, born in the 1890s, had a good classical-libertarian principle: “Do what you want, but don’t scare the horses.” Yet some self-labeled libertarians in the U.S. these days are so coercively against any socialism that they’ve tilted fascist, and support Trump. Amazing. They scare the horses, and certainly me.

  What’s my new label? “Sufficient” liberalism. I mean an equality of permission, not equality of income or opportunity—both of which involve coercion, and anyway are unattainable even roughly. But we can start giving people permission, tomorrow, by taking away the millions of regulations that clot the U.S. and the Brazilian economy. A woman can become an airline pilot, a Black can get a job in South Africa, poor people are allowed to live where they can pay the rent, without the state intervening, as it has, to segregate poor people in favelas.

  No masters, no coercions. It suffices.

  I don't think it's gonna catch on, Deirdre, but my respect for trying.

• It's not a floor wax either. Jacob Sullum looks at a insidious meme: 'The Constitution Is Not a Suicide Pact'. And we can blame SCOTUS Justice Robert H. Jackson, who started it of in his dissenting opinion in Terminiello v. Chicago:

  "This Court has gone far toward accepting the doctrine that civil liberty means the removal of all restraints from these crowds and that all local attempts to maintain order are impairments of the liberty of the citizen," Jackson complained. "The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact."

  In the decades since, that formulation has taken on a life of its own, cited as a justification for expanding government power and restricting individual freedom in situations far afield from the original case. The continuing influence of the "suicide pact" meme in legal and political debates is remarkable for two reasons. First, Jackson was expressing a view that the Supreme Court has emphatically and repeatedly rejected. Second, his concluding admonition was a rhetorical flourish, not a logical argument. Confusing the two invites shortcuts that sacrifice liberty on the altar of order.

  Nevertheless, it wormed its way into the public discourse as if it were a winning argument. Jacob tells the interesting story.

• At least the pay is decent. George Will has advice for some of the folks under the dome: Republicans, enjoy ineffectual control of Congress while you have it.

  How are you coping with the stress of life during today’s 43 “emergencies”? That’s how many of the 79 declared by executive orders or proclamations since 1979 are still extant. Several statutes empower the president to declare emergencies, thereby acquiring (by the count of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school) more than 130 standby statutory powers. The Cato Institute’s Gene Healy, in 2024 Senate testimony, said a 1934 law empowers the president to seize or close “any facility or station for wire communication” once he proclaims a threat of war. This, Healy said, is “a potential internet ‘kill switch.’”

  The incoming president will be able, on a whim, to unilaterally discombobulate international commerce — and the domestic economy — with tariffs. Congress has lost interest in exercising its constitutionally enumerated power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations.”

  In the meantime, my CongressCritter, Chris Pappas, is being effectual by…

  Chief Maloney’s tragic death in the line of duty is remembered to this day, as is his legacy as a leader who worked with passion to make NH safer and stronger.
  
  It is a small token of our gratitude that we name this Post Office in Chief Maloney's honor.https://t.co/eH1yX6CTlu

  — Rep. Chris Pappas (@RepChrisPappas) January 11, 2025

  Taking the brave Post Office-renaming stands, Chris. That's why you get the big bucks.

Recently on the book blog:

The latest Reacher novel from the Childs. (Children?) And, again, they have succeeded in separating me from $14.99 (Kindle version).

The beginning is pretty gripping: Reacher regains consciousness to find that he's been cuffed to a metal table, hands and feet. Worse, one arm is broken, and he's slightly concussed. Even worse, he has no memory of how he got into this predicament.

Since he's Reacher, he quickly outwits one of his captors and frees himself. But only to be plunged into a devious criminal conspiracy. It turns out he had accepted a car ride from one of the conspirators, only to wind up in a nasty accident on twisty Ozark road, which killed the driver. So now what? Well, of course: pretend to be a willing accomplice in the criminal activities, and…

I admit: I got about halfway through the book and said: Oh oh, I have no idea what's going on here. It may be my age. But, gee, the plot is as twisty as that Ozark road, and new characters keep showing up, all the characters are liars, and… well, I started over from page one, and finally made it through. And it eventually made sense, although I didn't think about it too hard. I even managed to figure out one of the Big Plot Twists before Reacher does. (Or at least, I figured it out before Reacher mentioned it.)

Bottom line: another enjoyable Reacher outing. But you might want to take notes along the way Pay special attention to the activities at the crash scene.

LFOD made it to the WSJ's "Best of the Web" yesterday: Report: Some Massachusetts Residents Haven’t Moved to New Hampshire Yet.

BotW's author, James Freeman, provides the bottom line: "Don’t be surprised if more Massachusetts residents embrace legal migration by scooting over the border into New Hampshire."

Also of note:

• Among its other flaws… In his continuing series about his least favorite bureau, Kevin D. Williamson point out: The ATF Is an Arbitrary Regulator.

  Consider the saga of the forearm brace, a footlong bit of plastic that might or might not have made you a federal felon, depending on how the ATF is feeling on any given Wednesday morning. Set aside questions about guns and violent crime and think about this as an issue of administrative license being used as a substitute for law made by duly elected lawmakers.

  The first thing you need to know about forearm braces is that they are … nonsense. I know I am going to hear from some disabled veteran writing to tell me that forearm braces made it possible for him to shoot again after suffering some terrible injury, and I am sure that is true. But forearm braces really were never about forearm braces. They were about short-barreled rifles (SBRs).

  As described earlier in the series, putting a shoulder stock on a handgun with a barrel less than 16 inches long—notice the immediate descent into regulatory minutiae—makes it a short-barreled rifle under the National Firearms Act, and making or having or selling one without a special federal permission slip in the form of an ATF-issued tax stamp is a felonious no-no. If you go into a gun shop and look at these “handguns”—and they say “handgun” right there on the side, to prevent any federally felonious misunderstanding—the thing you’ll notice is that a lot of them don’t look like what you’re thinking of when you think of a handgun. They look like AR-15s or other rifles with shoulder stocks removed and short barrels. Because that is what they are. For example, conventional handguns generally have a magazine well within the grip, but many of these “handguns” have magazines in front of the trigger, as in the familiar AR-pattern rifle and most other semiautomatic rifles as well as many bolt-action rifles. The stock is gone, and you can’t put a new one on without a tax stamp. But you can—or could—put a forearm brace on. And if that forearm brace happened to be roughly in the shape of a folding rifle stock, and if it happened to be just the right size and shape to use as a rifle stock—in that case, then you’ve got your SBR in effect without having to go through the rigamarole with the pile of paperwork and the tax stamp and the fingerprinting and becoming a firearms manufacturer.

  And, in case you're wondering if the regulation could get worse: it sure did. The phrase "arbitrary and capricious" appears six times in KDW's short article.

• Can you handle the truth? I think you can, and Megan McArdle supplies it: Here’s the truth: Meta ending fact-checking is a win against censorship. And she leads off with a libertarian insight:

  If you want to know who wields power in a society, there’s a simple and effective test: Who supports censorship?

  If you see someone advocating for more suppression of dangerous speech — be it heresy, hate speech or “misinformation” — you can be sure they expect their side to have exclusive use of the ban-hammer. The natural corollary is that when censorship regimes collapse, you know a power shift happened. That’s how you should understand the kerfuffle over changes in Meta’s moderation policies.

  Bonus link: Biden officials 'screamed' at Meta execs to take down vaccine posts. Or so Zuck tells Joe Rogan. Now.

• RIP, though. Corbin K. Barthold writes an obit at City Journal: Net Neutrality May Finally Be Dead—Good Riddance.

  Not long ago, liberals had a nervous breakdown over the decline (or so they imagined) of the Internet. Democrats predicted that we were about to “get the internet one word at a time.” A senator warned that we were on “a road to digital serfdom.” “The internet is dying,” declared the New York Times. There were street protests and death threats. The fear was that, unless the Federal Communications Commission imposed so-called net neutrality—a euphemism, in practice, for heavy-handed common-carrier regulation—we would soon have to pay to access individual websites.

  Last week, a federal appellate court likely put to rest the argument over FCC-imposed common-carrier rules. It was a quiet death: protesters didn’t mark the occasion, politicians have gone silent, and the media have moved on—for the simple reason that their cause was spurious, both in law and in practice.

  However…

• Not everyone's happy about its demise. For example, Karl Bode at TechDirt: U.S. Media Once Again Fails To Cover The Corrupt Net Neutrality Ruling With Any Clarity.

  Last week a corrupt court system bought and paid for by corporations effectively made it illegal for the federal government to protect broadband consumers from widely despised regional telecom monopolies.

  That, as we wrote at the time, is at the heart of the death of the several decade net neutrality fight.

  But if you read most U.S. press coverage of the ruling, you’d be hard pressed to walk away with that knowledge. Most of the nap-inducing articles can’t even be bothered to mention that U.S. broadband is a failed market dominated by hugely unpopular regional monopolies, coddled and protected by significant state and federal corruption (kind of an important part of the story).

  The word "corrupt" appears in the body of Karl's article four times; "corruption" appears not once, not twice, but thrice.

  I'm pretty sure the court ruling didn't "effectively ma[k]e it illegal for the federal government to protect broadband consumers". I mean, Congress could pass a law for that.

  Oh, but Karl says they're "corrupt" too. Never mind! The only non-"corrupt" folks in D.C. are the FCC commissioners, and then only when the Democrats have a majority.

Jacob Sullum has an explanation: Why we are still arguing about the health effects of moderate drinking.

And (as Jacob notes) there's that usual problem with self-reported alcohol consumption: people (perhaps especially Canadians) lie about it.

At National Review, Christian Schneider unleashes his inner libertarian. Alcohol Warning Labels Are Nanny Statism at Its Worst. And also a hefty dose of "This is America, Dammit!" patriotism:

And I can't resist another excerpt:

A "gifted" link from me to you. Click away.

Also of note:

• Another reason to wish its demise. Kevin D. Williamson continues his series on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives Too: The ATF Is a Tax Collector.

  For about 200 years, the United States of America got along without the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. And, for much of that history, most Americans lived under a firearms-regulation regime that was relaxed or, in many places, effectively nonexistent. It is worth considering that there is a parallel between the Second Amendment and the First Amendment, with early firearms regulations often taking the same form as permissible restrictions on speech and other communication: time, place, and manner regulations. Americans had generally unrestricted rights to acquire firearms but might have been prohibited from carrying them in certain urban areas or restricted places (such as saloons) or while drunk, which was a real consideration in the hard-drinking 19^th century.

  The progenitors of the ATF were all fundamentally tax collectors and assistants to tax collectors. The earliest bureaucratic ancestor of the modern ATF was the Revenue Laboratory established within the Treasury by Congress in 1886, whose role was to examine alcoholic products (and suspected alcoholic products) to ensure that all of the necessary duties had been paid and that the products were otherwise in compliance with federal regulations. 

  So it's a big source of government revenues, right? Well…

  Of course, the revenue isn’t the point—ATF collects only about $100 million a year in revenue from taxes authorized by the National Firearms Act but has a budget of $1.4 billion. The point is creating regulatory burdens to keep Americans from doing things certain people in the government don’t want Americans to do without explicitly prohibiting those things, i.e. treating the power to tax as a backdoor to the power to regulate where that regulation might not otherwise pass constitutional muster.

  That's at the Dispatch, which has no gifting links. Tsk!

• George: That’s specious reasoning, Joe. Joe: Thank you, George. George Will can spot speciousity from a mile away, especially when Biden’s ‘security’ concern about TikTok and U.S. Steel is doubly specious.

  When, on Friday, the Supreme Court hears the Biden administration defend the law that bans TikTok, the justices should remember what the administration said the previous Friday: “National security” justifies the president’s blocking the sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel of Japan. Formulaic uses of that phrase give a patina of respectability to government’s abuses — concentration camps in the past, control of the internet in the future.

  Oscar Wilde was said to have remarked that anyone who could read Charles Dickens on the death of Little Nell (in “The Old Curiosity Shop”) without laughing “must have a heart of stone.” Anyone who can read with a straight face Joe Biden on his “solemn responsibility” to protect U.S. “security” from a privately held corporation, almost a quarter owned by non-Japanese, must be incapable of laughter.

  "Of course, Trump will be better, right?" "No, sorry. Probably worse."

• GOVERNMENT WARNING: They lie a lot. The other Christian, Britschgi, explains Why building a lot of 'affordable' housing is bad news for affordability.

  On New Year's Eve, the Boston city government issued a press release touting the good work of its newly reorganized Planning Department at approving new development. The city reports that 3,575 net residential units were approved in 2024, of which a little over a third were "income-restricted."

  That top-line number is not necessarily anything to brag about. Despite having some of the highest home prices and rents in the country, Boston is permitting fewer homes than less-expensive peer cities with equivalent populations.

  […]

  Even more concerning than Boston not permitting a lot of new homes is how many of the homes it is permitting are "income-restricted."

  Those are units (often also just called "affordable," "below-market," or "deed-restricted" units) that are reserved for lower-income residents and where rents are capped at steeply discounted below-market rates. Despite the city's celebratory touting of that figure, such a high share of new housing being income-restricted housing is very bad news.

  It is unsurprising that governments use pleasant-sounding, but dishonest labels to describe policies that will have the opposite effect. (Also see: the "Inflation Reduction Act")

• Hey, look us over. Boston-based Jeff Jacoby looks north and attests to The growing appeal of the 'Live Free or Die' state.

  AT THE stroke of midnight on Jan. 1, New Hampshire stopped taxing interest and dividends. At that moment, the Granite State — which has never imposed a tax on wages — became a true no-income-tax state, one of only eight in America.

  That means that one of the best things about living in Massachusetts — its proximity to New Hampshire — is now even better.

  New Hampshire is not the lowest-taxing state in the union, but it has by far the lightest tax burden in the Northeast. It also boasts a more favorable return on investment than any other state. As Andrew Cline of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy in Concord, N.H., recently wrote, "We get very high quality services at a relatively low cost."

  Is it any wonder that so many Massachusetts residents yearn to live in New Hampshire? "In the Granite State, ordinary citizens are entrusted with considerable authority and government is restricted," I wrote in a 2023 column. "In the Bay State, by contrast, residents are allowed only what the state permits — and woe to those who buck the system." Moreover, New Hampshire is safer than Massachusetts, it imposes fewer regulatory burdens, and it has two competitive political parties. All that, and lower taxes too.

  The real fear up here is that migrants from Massachusetts might bring their big-government voting habits along with them.

• How well do you know your US history? Robert Graboyes looks at the latest craze: Manifest Destiny 2025.

  Donald Trump has launched the reboot of Manifest Destiny—the 19th-century notion that an expanded United States was the natural order of things. Like his predecessors, he wishes to change the map of North America. The components of his vision range from silly to sublime.

  A hundred and fifty years ago, the goal of Manifest Destiny was to push the nation’s boundaries and the trappings of modernity west to the Pacific. As noted in Wikipedia, the idea was “rooted in American exceptionalism and Romantic nationalism” and believed to be “both obvious (‘manifest’) and certain (‘destiny’).” Some harbored the broader ambition of annexing the entire Western Hemisphere. As my Inauguration Day post this month will discuss, that hemispheric vision still lingered at William McKinley’s 1901 Inauguration, along with some curious and amusing parallels with 2025.

  Click over for Robert's takes on "silly to sublime" components. And his slight modification to:

  

Recently on the book blog:

The author of this Woodrow Wilson biography, Christopher Cox, went literary with his subtitle; it's from the John Greenleaf Whittier poem "Ichabod", which (it says here) was intended as an attack on Daniel Webster, and his advocacy of the Fugitive Slave Law. And (further) "Ichabod" means "inglorious" in Hebrew. I did not know that!

I would have gone with something more concrete subtitle-wise: maybe "Raging Racist, Sexist Scumbag".

Cox had a long career in politics, including a 17-year stint as a GOP CongressCritter from California. His Wikipedia page goes into the details, mentioning his successful 1980 appearance on the game show Password Plus, but not, as I type, his authorship of this book.

A major theme of the book is Wilson's reluctance to support women's suffrage. He offered a number of excuses for his opposition; later, when that opposition became politically unpopular, he offered excuses for keeping his support merely tepid. But it seems that he was simply disdainful of the ladies intruding on a male bastion of power and privilege.

There are a number of "the more things change…" moments here. For example, there was a massive pro-suffrage demonstration the day before Wilson's 1913 inauguration. Which recalled this and (of course) this.

Another major theme was his undimmed, virulent, apparently lifelong, racism. He was a child of the Confederacy, despised Reconstruction, and was a big fan of the KKK. He was a good buddy of Thomas Dixon, author of (most notably) The Clansman, a novel that formed the basis of the classic pro-Klan silent movie The Birth of a Nation. Which featured Wilson quotes in intertitles. And was the first movie ever screened at the White House.

But the suffrage struggle takes center stage in Cox's telling. Unfortunately, to the exclusion of (in my opinion) matters of equal or greater importance. Cox goes into great detail on the trampling of the suffragists' civil liberties, which (among other things) involved sending off lady protestors to a rural Virginia prison/workhouse/hellhole for daring to unfurl banners in front of the White House.

But this was just one example of Wilson's suppression of dissent. For example, Eugene Debs goes unmentioned here except for being one of the presidential candidates in 1912. Reader, the Wilson Administration had him jailed for making rabble-rousing speeches.

Also unmentioned by Cox (unless I missed something): the infamous Palmer Raids; the mass deportation of left-wingers, including Emma Goldman.

Other topics are mentioned, but woefully unexplored. Wilson's re-election campaign in 1916 pictured him as a peacenik: "He kept us out of war", while his GOP opponent, Charles Evans Hughes, was pictured as a warmonger. This, while Wilson privately acknowledged that, yeah, we were gonna get into the war. And we did; Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany only a month after his 1917 inauguration.

World War I was also the excuse for Wilson to assume control of large swaths of the domestic economy. The Federal income tax was barely out of diapers; originally aimed at "the rich", the brackets multiplied, raised, and were unindexed for inflation, which raged. Price controls generated scarcity.

And Wilson demanded, and got, the power to deny any person to depart the US.

So, in short, this book is a very good resource if you want to know (roughly) everything about the campaign for the (eventual) 19th Amendment, and Wilson's interactions with that campaign. Beyond that, you might want to get some supplementary texts.

(A followup to yesterday's assertion from Neil Brown, president of the Poynter Institute, a global nonprofit that runs PolitiFact): “I don’t believe we were doing anything, in any form, with bias.” )

Today's example of Politifact "context":

Did 158 Democrats vote against a bill that would bar from the U.S. migrants who have committed sex offenses and domestic abuse? That was the vote count, but there’s more to this story than online posts are sharing. Here’s some context. https://t.co/FizsewykZ4

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) January 9, 2025

Politifact's article doesn't actually check any facts. It's just a barely-edited press release from Democrats offering their excuses for voting against the Laken Riley Act.

Has Politifact ever offered an equivalent "context"-supplying article on behalf of Republicans? I think not, but let me know if you can dig up any examples.

At NR, Ramesh Ponnuru offers a look at Politifact's Fact-Checking through the Years:

But about that bill: Ilya Somin is not impressed with it: The Laken Riley Act is Unjust - and a Trojan Horse.

I'm unconvinced by Ilya's argument, but check it out.

Also of note:

• We can all stand to learn something. So let's follow Jeff Maurer's lead: I Learned Something From That Weird Ass Jacobin Article That Said Blackstone Owns 1/3 of All Houses.

  Yesterday, a social media dunk-fest ensued after a hilariously wrong statistic was published in the socialist magazine Jacobin. And now, I shall stretch my hamstrings and lace up my Karl Malone signature LA Gear high tops, for I would like to participate in that dunk fest. Here’s the offending line, which was corrected after glass began raining down on Jacobin following a series of Darryl Dawkins-esque backboard shattering dunks:

  Take Blackstone, which owns a third of US housing stock: they can create scarcity and set prices.

  Now: If you’re an economist, realtor, banker, teacher, firefighter, dental hygienist, beekeeper, acrobat, sushi chef, pro wrestler, astrophysicist, karate sensei, or porn star, you know that Blackstone does not own one third of US housing stock. The real number appears to be about 0.042%, so Jacobin was off by a factor of 783. Keeping the “factor of 783” error margin constant, here are some statistics that are equivalent to the one that Jacobin saw fit to print:

  • I am 4,698 feet tall and weigh 64 and a half tons

  • The US Constitution is 184,788 years old

  • The MSRP for a 2025 Nissan Sentra is $16.9 million

  • Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis made $10.9 billion at the box office

  • The Baha Men have had 783 #1 hits, making them by far the most successful recording artist of all time

  [Jacobin's quote slightly edited.]

  But Jeff, what did you learn?

  … I actually read the 2,400 words around that hilariously wrong statistic, and — to my surprise — I learned something. I didn’t become a communist, but I think I might have a better understanding of why some people are drawn to communism.

  Ah.

• Yesterday, Charlotte Amalie; Tomorrow, Nuuk? A few days ago, I linked to Jonathan Turley's takedown of the anti-Constitutional fantasies of Stacey Plaskett, Delegate to the US House of Representatives from the US Virgin Islands. Which got me wondering: how did we latch onto those islands anyway?

  It turns out there's a rich history involved. But the bottom line was: we bought them.

  For $25 million.

  In gold.

  From … Denmark!

  You know, that country that currently owns … Greenland!

  So there's actual historical precedent.

  By the way, the Wikipedia article claims that $25 million in gold would be "$700 million" today. My calculation differs. (And let's hope I'm not messing things up as badly as that Jacobin guy.) Gold was going for $20.67/oz in 1917. So that works out to approximately 1.21 million ounces of gold.

  Today's gold price as I type: $2683/oz.

  So that 1.21 million ounces of gold: now worth over $3.2 billion.

  I don't know what that would translate to for Greenland. But Wikipedia sucks.

Recently on the book blog:

This is the start of what looks to be a new series of novels from Richard Osman, author of the wildly successful "Thursday Murder Club" books. You'll note the cover has a cat sitting on a gun barrel? This might be a hint that we're going to cozy-land? Hm. My usual mystery fare tends more to the hard-boiled. Not for me?

Well, I thought the same about the Thursday Murder Club. Wrong then, wrong now. I thoroughly enjoyed this, and I'm on board for any and all future entries.

The book centers around Steve Wheeler and his daughter-in law Amy. Steve is a retired investigator, a widower, content to live a quiet life; his only ambition is to make a good showing at his weekly pub trivia quiz. Amy, on the other hand, is an adrenaline junkie, working for a private security agency. She's currently protecting the best-selling author Rosie D'Antonio. But she can't help but notice that she's been physically nearby to each of a string of murders in widely varying locales. Each with a similar modus operandi: an "influencer" has been shot in the head, and money smuggling seems to be involved.

Lot of fun. Laughed out loud in a number of places. Rosie is especially a hoot.

I thought I would like this book better. (But as usual, I have forgotten my reason for putting it on my get-via-Interlibrary-Loan list.) But it's not awful. The author, Alexandre Lefebvre, seems to be going out of his way at times to make his argument accessible, with examples from the TV sitcom Parks and Recreation (he holds up Amy Poehler's character, Leslie Knope, as a hero); The Wire; Bird Box; The Good Place; … What's the most popular topic on Pornhub? ("The answer may surprise you!")

And he describes how he uses Legos in his classroom presentations to illustrate how people from different walks of life "fit in" to a social structure.

But (for me) the warning signs come early when Lefebvre lists off the features of liberalism he's championing. Many are unexceptionable, but… "progressive taxation" is one of them? Also: early on, Lefebvre explicitly excludes "neoliberalism" from his Big Liberal Tent; he's also down on Mont Pelerin Society "classical liberals", who (he claims) invented the term as a mere "polemical tactic" to (presumably) bathe in the aura of early liberalism. For some reason.

The book heaps praise on John Rawls. (Which made me look in the index for "Nozick, Robert". Nope.) Lefebvre has done his meticulous research on Rawls, including digging out his unpublished works in dank Harvard archives. He uses what he finds to illustrate and illuminate Rawls' fuller views, beyond those set forth in A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism. This assists Lefebvre in his advocaccy for adopting liberalism "all the way down", not just in advocating Rawls' well-known recipes for liberal legal and political structures.

In fact, he's generally critical of what he calls "liberaldom", which (my words) seems to be liberalism corrupted in numerous non-Rawlsian ways. This makes it easier for people to claim to be liberals, while in fact cooperating in all sorts of implicit and explicit illiberal ways in order to maintain their livelihood, wealth, and social status. Tsk! He points to a bad example in Australia, their tax-advantaged individually-owned retirement accounts. These are disproportionately used by the already well-off, hence maintaining structures of inequality? Double tsk!

Bottom line: Lefebvre seems like a nice enough bloke, but I didn't get much out of his book. That's on me, but I suspect that he wasn't trying to deal with my Rawls-skepticism.

I'd like to offer whoever wrote this headline at the New York Times a job at @TheBabylonBee pic.twitter.com/krJYrownuk

— Kyle Mann (@The_Kyle_Mann) January 7, 2025

(Kyle is editor-in-chief of the Babylon Bee.)

Robby Soave cheers the news: Mark Zuckerberg was right to fire Facebook's rogue fact-checkers.

That amusingly-headlined NYT post quotes two fact-checking folks:

I won't relitigate the bias charges (which only Neil Brown mildly tries to deny, not Lori Anderson). The facts, as they say, are well-known.

But not everyone is impressed by Zuck's change of heart. For example, Tristan Justice at the Federalist thinks Zuckerberg Owes Restitution To Those He Tried To Destroy.

I just use FB to follow far-flung friends and family; and I pretty quickly unfollow people who try to babble overmuch about their politics. And I'm much better for it.

Also of note:

• Please pass the popcorn. Jerry Coyne provides More fallout from the Big KerFFRFle: Freedom from Religion Foundation dissolves its entire Honorary Board (and other news)

  The conclusion, of course, is that the FFRF does not WANT an honorary board at all. Why? The only conclusion I can reach is that other honorary-board members could, in the future, cause “trouble” in the way that the three of us did, publicly criticizing the organization for its mission creep and adherence to woke gender ideology. Ditching the other 15 (I hope they’ve been told!) is an often-seen aspect of wokeness: any index of merit that conflicts with “progressive” ideology must be effaced. (Similarly, many American colleges have dropped requirements for applicants to submit standardized test scores, like those from the SAT and ACT.) It seems that the FFRF doesn’t want to take a chance with people on the honorary board publicly espousing the “wrong ideology.”

  Let me resurrect a Pun Salad post from way back in 2025 where I excerpted an interview of George H.W. Bush with Robert I. Sherman of (I am not kidding) American Atheist Press back in 1987. (My source link from 2025 has rotted.)

  RS:

  "Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?"

  GB:

  "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."

  RS:

  "Do you support as a sound constitutional principle the separation of state and church?"

  GB:

  "Yes, I support the separation of church and state. I'm just not very high on atheists."

  I didn't care for GHWB's first response, but "not very high on atheists" made me grin back then, and does now.

  I recommend the Google query to Jerry: why do atheists act like jerks all the time?

• Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and nannies gotta nag. Unfortunately, some nannies have political power to do more than nag. Another example of "Gee, we forgot to do this in the past four years, so…", as described by Jeffrey A. Singer at Cato: The Black Market Beckons: Biden’s Last-Minute Move on Nicotine.

  Axios reports that the Biden Administration is planning an 11th-hour move to order cigarette manufacturers to reduce the nicotine content in the tobacco cigarettes they market to consumers—possibly by as much as 95 percent. The FDA proposed the rule in 2022, and the Office of Management and Budget cleared the rule proposal on January 3, 2025.

  The Food and Drug Administration has not yet issued the rule but may do so within the next two weeks.

  Nicotine is the addictive component of tobacco cigarettes, but by itself is relatively harmless. The harm comes from carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas, and tobacco tar that contains carcinogens and other chemicals that harm the lungs and circulatory system. Britain’s Royal Society for Public Health claims nicotine is “no more harmful to health than caffeine.” As I have written here, what differentiates nicotine from caffeine is that it has calming as well as stimulative effects.

  Nicotine and caffeine are also possibly addictive, although it's claimed that nicotine is worse in that regard. Still, this FDA move promises to do more harm than good.

• Perhaps statists are addicted to statism? Kevin D. Williamson begins a multi-part series on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. What the ATF Does—and What It Doesn’t Do. Excerpt, containing a key point:

  Do we need an ATF? There is a reasonable—and strong—case to be made that we do not. At least as far as the question of regulating firearms goes, much of what the ATF does is unnecessary, and its necessary work would be better done by other federal agencies or by states and municipalities. (Other items in the ATF portfolio, such as alcohol and explosives, are beyond my scope here.) The ATF is a hodgepodge agency that has been overseen by different departments over the years ranging from Treasury to Homeland Security—its agents and leaders by their own account really want to spend their energy fighting organized crime, but its main firearms-related activity is the regulation of sporting goods stores. And it is not clear that the agency fighting transnational drug cartels should also be the agency regulating Dick’s Sporting Goods. What is clear from the data is that the activities of licensed firearms retailers are only indirectly and tangentially related to violent crime at all. American gun shops are not a major provider of firearms to American criminals, with more than 90 percent of them getting their firearms from other sources, mainly through theft and black market sales.

  Hope the folks at DOGE have Kevin's articles on their desks.

• I have mixed feelings about this. Harrison Richlin reports on something we missed, thanks to the Woke Mouse: David Fincher Pushed Back When Disney Didn’t Get His ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ Vision: ‘You’ve Read Jules Verne, Right?’.

  There have been many potential projects that haven’t come to fruition for David Fincher, from his take on Aaron Sorkin’s “Steve Jobs” starring Christian Bale to his “Black Dahlia” mini-series led by Tom Cruise. But one failed vision people were clamoring for, perhaps above all others, was his adaptation of Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

  [… alas …]

  Fincher intended on working with Disney, who still own the IP, and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns to make a newer, more modern version in the early 2010s, but faced issues after desired lead Brad Pitt (who would have played harpooner Ned Land) passed on the script. Disney wanted Fincher to cast Chris Hemsworth, hot off his starring roles in “Thor” and “The Avengers,” but Fincher wanted Channing Tatum. In a recent interview with Letterboxd, Fincher also pointed to not being able to get on the same page as Disney when it came to the story they were trying to tell.

  “You can’t make people be excited about the risks that you’re excited about,” said Fincher. “Disney was in a place where they were saying, ‘We need to know that there’s a thing that we know how to exploit snout to tail, and you’re going to have to check these boxes for us.’ And I was like, ‘You’ve read Jules Verne, right?'”

  Given Disney's penchant for taking a PC wrecking ball to its beloved intellectual properties, one can only imagine what "boxes" they demanded that Fincher "check".

• A bit of good news. TV has followed Sturgeon's Law for a long time. But one show I really enjoyed was David Janssen's "Harry O". It was a private eye series done right, with wit and intelligence.

  But sadly unavailable. Until now!

  <voice imitation="professor_farnsworth">Good news, everyone!</voice>. I stuck "Harry O" on my TiVo's "wishlist" years ago, and this week, it finally paid off, recording Season 1, Episode 1. Future episodes are queued up.

  (My TiVo has been in declining use recently, so I'm happy this worked.)

  Unfortunately, for those without a DVR: it's on "MeTV", Mondays at 4AM.

  But for those with a DVR: check it out, and enjoy. And would some streaming service out there just put up the entire series, plus the pilot/movies?

Speaking for myself, I might move some items in this array, but not far:

Mouseover: "I don't dig pit traps and cover them with sticks and a thin layer of leaves nearly as much as I expected; I find a chance to do it barely once a month."

In other news of adulthood, Ron Bailey joins the Vivek Murthy pile-on: Surgeon General claims alcohol is a leading cause of cancer.

Ron's bottom line: "The surgeon general is evidently eager to deploy a questionable cancer scare in his campaign to impose stealth prohibition. For your own good, of course."

Also of note:

• Also on his way out the door… is Merrick "Thank Goodness He's Not on the Supreme Court" Garland. His recent assertions about what took place four years ago causes Andrew McCarthy to ask, rhetorically: Mr. Attorney General, How Many Capitol Riot Murder Charges Did You Bring?

  Illustrating yet again that Democrats haven’t come to grips with why they lost the election and what Americans think of their politicization of law enforcement, here’s Biden attorney general Merrick Garland today, emoting on the fifth anniversary of the Capitol riot:

  On this day, four years ago, police officers were brutally assaulted while bravely defending the United States Capitol. They were punched, tackled, tased, and attacked with chemical agents that burned their eyes and skin. Today, I am thinking of the officers who still bear the scars of that day as well as the loved ones of the five officers who lost their lives in the line of duty as a result of what happened to them on January 6, 2021.

  Let’s stipulate that Garland is quite right to castigate all who punched, tackled, tased, chemically attacked, or otherwise assaulted police officers. There is chatter in the air about pardons of the rioters; I don’t know what President-elect Trump plans to do upon taking office, but it would be a profound mistake — one his administration would come to regret — if he grants clemency to people convicted of assaulting cops (or, for that matter, damaging property). As we’ve covered here extensively for five years, it was ridiculous for the Justice Department to prosecute hundreds of people on misdemeanor charges of parading and the like — the kind of charges DOJ would ordinarily never file but that the Biden Justice Department, under Garland’s leadership, prosecuted in a patently political effort to inflate the Capitol riot (aka “The Insurrection”), condemnable as it was on its own terms, as if it were a 9/11-scale terrorist attack.

  To repeat for the umpteenth time, no police officers died in the line of duty during the Capitol riot. The fact that Garland, federal bureaucrats, and police officials have tried to exaggerate the perils of the riot, and in so doing – and occasionally in grappling with insurance claims involving loved ones of cops who tragically committed suicide after the riot – have claimed police were killed due to the events of that day, does not make it so.

  Pam Bondi might be a bad Attorney General, but it's hard to see how she couldn't be an improvement over Garland.

• But let's not forget… Kevin D. Williamson notes that, like creepy monsters of literature, The Donald Is at the Door.

  On January 6, 2021, there was a riot at the U.S. Capitol. It was led by people who intended to interrupt the certification of the presidential vote in the hopes of keeping Donald Trump in office. Donald Trump himself egged them on in various ways, and he was, at that time, engaged in a multifaceted attempt to illegally hold on to the office he had lost in a free and fair election to Joe Biden, a senescent near-nonentity who, though a figure of fun, unseated an incumbent president while barely even bothering to campaign against him. We use “January 6” as a shorthand to talk about what Trump did after losing the 2020 election, but it is important to understand—and I think historians will agree about this—that the imbecilic clown show at the Capitol was the least important and least dangerous part of that episode. Trump’s attempt to suborn election fraud—which is what he was up to on that telephone call with the Georgia secretary of state on January 2, 2021—was the more serious part of the attempted coup d’état. Some coup-plotters are generalissimos who just march their troops into the capital and seize power, but many of them—many of the worst of them—take pains to come up with some legal or constitutional pretext for their actions. Often, the pretext is an emergency, as it was with Indira Gandhi, Augusto Pinochet, the coup that brought Francisco Franco to power, etc. You’ll remember that Donald Trump called for the termination of the Constitution as an emergency measure: “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote in his trademark kindergartner’s prose. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

  I fear that we're going to see a lot of KDW commentary in the near future that can be summarized thusly: Told ya so!

• Uncomfortable questions raised. Jeff Jacoby writes: A woman died in agony as onlookers pressed 'Record'

  HER NAME was Debrina Kawam, though we didn't learn that until nine days after she was burned alive in a New York City subway station. On the morning of Dec. 22 she was murdered in public, in full view of witnesses; it took so long to establish her identity because so little of her was left by the time the flames were extinguished. Eventually police were able to put a name to the victim by analyzing fingerprints, dental information, and DNA evidence.

  […]

  Video of the incident shows several spectators on the platform watching from a few feet away, some using their phones to record the atrocity. Two uniformed cops can be seen walking right past the immolation. One glances at the burning woman but makes no move to help her; the other strides in the other direction, speaking into a walkie-talkie without slowing down. Off-camera, a man can be heard shouting, "This is a person right here!" and "Oh, no!" But of the people visible in the clips posted on social media, none evinces concern or sympathy; none makes a move to intervene; none does anything but watch.

  Jeff wonders what that says about the spectators. And anyone with an ounce of introspection has to wonder: What would I have done in that position?

• Today's award for "Awesome Headline" goes to… TechDirt's Mike Masnick, for Jeff Bezos’ Latest Gambit To Bring Back Trust In Media: Silence Editorial Cartoonists Who Call Out Your Sniveling Compliance.

  Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos wants you to believe he’s on a noble mission to restore trust in media. His solution? Muzzling his own paper by blocking it from endorsing Kamala Harris in the runup to the election, a decision he defended in a self-serving op-ed claiming that trust in media is at an all-time low.

  Yet, as we noted at the time, the real reason people’s faith in the press is plummeting is that they’re tired of seeing billionaires throw their weight around to silence critics and shape media narratives to suit their interests.

  The latest example? The Post silencing criticism by blocking an editorial cartoon mocking billionaires, Bezos included, for throwing millions at Trump’s inauguration in a pathetic attempt to curry favor. And it’s exactly this kind of behavior that is destroying the public’s trust in media.

  I don't think Mike's causality is correct. I'm more persuaded by this take at Ace of Spades:

  I don't think any of these woke media outlets can ever reclaim the figleaf of nonpartisanship. They will never, never again be considered authoritative or honest.

  Therefore, there is no point in attempting to "re-position" CNN or the Washington Post as "centrist" and "objective." Anyone who wasn't a full on TDS #Resistance leftist stopped going to these sources years and years ago, and they're not coming back. And as these outlets shed audience, they catered harder and harder to the remaining audience of mentally ill leftwing lunatics, which caused even Democrat normies to flee, and left their remaining audience base even more partisan and weird.

  There is no way -- none -- to reverse this, so it's my business advice that they not even try. The only course is to accept that they are permanently diminished and marginalized as fringe outlets of the intensely woke ghetto. They have to downsize until they hit the right, profitable level for a niche conspiracy-theory outlet.

  That said, that editorial cartoon benefits from the Streisand Effect: the block caused a lot more attention to be paid to it than it would have garnered otherwise. And so let me add to that:

  

• Lileks rules. He was inspired by a BBC story about (!) US weather that referred to a "private meteorologist". Which caused him to pen the tale of Sam Isobar, Private Weatherman.

  I immediately imagined myself sitting in a slightly shabby office in an old office building, my name painted on frosted glass in the door. There was a large empty green screen behind me. I had my feet up on the desk and was considering a drink from the office bottle when the doorknob rattled. She came in like a low-pressure front - she paused, then turned around counter-clockwise as if to leave, and began to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She faced me, clouds forming on her face. “It’s my husband. I think there’s a forty percent chance he will cheat on me tomorrow, with his infidelity tapering off to slight expressions of affection by four PM.”

  I was interested. Mostly in her. She wore a necklace of red triangles. She looked like she’d come from a few states away. “What’s that got to do with me?” I said.

  And more. Need a chuckle? Click on over. And subscribe, like I do.

Another Biden appointee, after being in office for nearly four years, with only a few days left in his reign, suddenly realizes there's something he forgot to do. Noah Rothman describes Vivek Murthy’s Booze Bait and Switch.

The "bait and switch" involved?

It seems to be the opinion of the surgeon general that the public needs to be tricked into believing that they’re merely endorsing a salubrious public relations campaign when in fact they’re being gulled into endorsing a burdensome regulation. And all of it is predicated on uncharitable assumptions about how dirt-stupid most Americans are, and how terribly they will mismanage their own lives absent a guiding hand. That is a common misapprehension among aspiring reformers, to say nothing of the accompanying presumption that they are possessed of an above-average capacity for rational thinking.

[Aside: I assumed that would be the first time the word "salubrious" appeared in this blog, but a little grepping revealed it's been here before: specifically here, here, here, and here. Two occurrences from Kevin D. Williamson, one from David Harsanyi, and one I apparently came up with on my own. Congratulations to Noah Rothman for joining this exclusive club.]

At the WSJ, Allysia Finley answers your burning question: No, Moderate Drinking Won’t Give You Cancer.

I've inserted an image of the current GOVERNMENT WARNING up at the top of this post; there's a mouseover with a lame joke, and clicking the image will take you to the current Code of Federal Regulations, Title 27, Part 16, which mandates its presence in meticulous detail. I made some fun of it back in 2012. Where I made the only semi-satirical request that appropriately-worded GOVERNMENT WARNINGS should be attached to government buildings, mailings, projects, and outposts.

Also of note:

• The bull does a lot of damage on his way out of the china shop. Andrew Follett reports on another departing pol who suddenly realized he forgot to do something for the past four years: Departing Biden Weakens American Energy Production.

  Joe Biden’s last weeks as president will be spent bowing to environmentalists by trying to permanently ban new offshore oil and natural gas.

  The outgoing president is preparing to issue formal designations of “sensitive marines areas,” according to Bloomberg. Biden’s offshore actions would follow a late December formal proposal to block energy development in Nevada for 20 years. Naturally, sources of offshore energy favored by Biden, such as offshore wind turbines (which may be killing whales), would likely be exempted from the designation.

  Fun fact: what can be done by arbitrary lame-duck Presidential decree may actually be difficult for Trump to undo on his own.

• But that's not all folks. There could be more of these shenanigans in the pipeline, causing Issues & Insights to wonder: Will We Make It Until Jan. 20? They include the above offshore drilling ban, of course, but there's more, including:

  Matthew Petti of Reason suggests that Biden has considered leaving “a very big mess on President-elect Donald Trump’s desk” by bombing Iran’s nuclear sites before his term is over. Not that doing so would be such a terrible idea. A nuclear-armed Islamist regime poses a grave danger.

  But the timing is suspect. Biden could have taken out the mullah’s atomic weapons program at any time during his watch. Instead, he’s thought about dumping a problem on Trump’s shoulders and escaping the responsibility that would come with such an operation. Should Biden follow through, it would not be done in the interest of national security but rather the spiteful act of a wretched man.

  I missed reading Petti's article when it went up on Friday, and I was dubious, but … hm, it seems more solidly sourced than I would have thought.

• A long strange trip it's been. Brian Doherty charts The Improbable Rise of MAGA-Musk. It's an article in the current print Reason. And for those who weren't paying attention a few years ago:

  Musk used to be publicly apolitical, outside his loud skirmishing with government regulators. (Since he has been a businessman in the payments, rockets, and car spaces, such clashes have been frequent.) "When I got into the company, there was a heavy, heavy focus on batteries," one former high-level Tesla employee recalls. "He never brought up politics in meetings except with regards for regulations."

  Musk had a reputation, Kate Conger and Ryan Mac write in their new book Character Limit, as "a libertarian with liberal tendencies, a business scion who backed Obama." Especially with Tesla, he coded as environmentalist-progressive, positioning his company "to help expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy toward a solar electric economy."

  During the 2016 presidential campaign, the entrepreneur lamented to MSNBC that the Republican nominee "doesn't seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States." After Trump won, Musk did join with other tech executives at a meeting with the president-elect, and he later volunteered for a White House business council, even while continuing to say things like (per Walter Isaacson's 2023 biography Elon Musk) "Trump might be one of the best bullshitters ever" and "if you just think of Trump as…a con-man performance, then his behavior sort of makes sense."

  Ah, well. I'm on board for the next Starship launch perhaps on Friday.

• Specifically, it's a reading comprehension problem. Jonathan Turley headline: “Does the Gentlelady Have a Problem?” : Yes, Delegate Plaskett Most Certainly Has a Problem.

  “This body and this nation has [sic] a territories and a colonies problem.” Those words from Del. Stacey Plaskett echoed in the House chamber this week as the delegate interrupted the election of the House speaker to demand a vote for herself and the representatives of other non-states. The problem, however, is not with the House but with Plaskett and other members in demanding the violation of Article I of the Constitution.

  After her election in 2015, Plaskett has often shown a certain disregard for constitutional principles and protections. Despite being a lawyer, Plaskett has insisted in Congress that hate speech is not constitutionally protected, a demonstrably false assertion. Where there is overwhelming evidence of a censorship system that a court called “Orwellian,” Plaskett has repeatedly denied the evidence presented before her committee. When a journalist testified on the evidence of that censorship system, Plaskett suggested his possible arrest. (Plaskett suggested that respected journalist Matt Taibbi had committed perjury due to an error that he made, not in testimony but in a tweet that he later corrected).

  Plaskett is a delegate to the US House of Representatives from the United States Virgin Islands. (Her official government page falsely calls her a "Congresswoman".)

  Fun fact: the US Virgin Islands' population is 87,146 as of the 2020 Census. This is less than 20% of the 2020 count of the least-populous state, Wyoming.

It's a word you can use: kakistocracy. And the Google will tell you that it derives from the Greek kakistos, meaning "worst", and the English -ocracy suffix, meaning… well, you know. Hence: government by the worst.

Google also seems to indicate the alternate spelling is in less frequent use: cacastocracy. And our inner five-year-olds know what "caca" is.

Which brings us to:

Statement from David B. Burritt, President and CEO, on Today’s Order by President Biden.https://t.co/85iuRNiCAM pic.twitter.com/h6rbOgiitW

— U. S. Steel (@U_S_Steel) January 3, 2025

Shameful and corrupt. And business as usual for these last few weeks of the Biden Administration.

Other reactions:

Scott Lincicome writes at Cato on Nippon Steel and the "National Security" Hoax.

Scott usually doesn't get this hot under the collar. So, yeah, it's bad.

Over at Reason, Eric Boehm finds perfection: Biden blocking the U.S. Steel sale is a perfectly disgraceful end to his career.

And in case you want more in the same vein, Don Boudreaux has a compliation of these and other reactions at Cafe Hayek. His excerpt from the WSJ editorialists:

Which goes back to our etymology lesson above. As far as I know, Hayek never used the word "kakistocracy" but chapter 10 of his The Road to Serfdom was titled "Why the Worst Get On Top". And (again) our inner five-year-olds know what floats.

And so did Ben Franklin:

In Rivers and bad Governments, the lightest Things swim at top.

Also of note:

• A supplement to our etymology lesson. Provided by Steven Greenhut, who wonders: Is America entering her kakistocracy era?

  The Economist this year named kakistocracy its word of the year after reflecting on President-elect Donald Trump's selection of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R–Fla.) for attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for health and human services secretary, and Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. Those picks are indeed among the most noteworthy events of the year—and a reflection of the sorts of people who probably shouldn't be in power.

  The U.S. House released a report, which alleged "substantial evidence that Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress." Gaetz denies any wrongdoing and has withdrawn from consideration, but please don't expect meritocracy.

  Trump says that he will let anti-vaccine activist and apparent victim of a brain worm, RFK Jr., "go wild" on public health. He presumably will also let Gabbard—the former Democratic representative known for her unusual views about Syria and Russia—go crazy on U.S. intelligence. Whatever their charms, it's odd to see them float to the top.

  Steven also notes the Ben Franklin quote, but not the Hayek chapter title.

• As the intelligence of our leaders declines… Maybe the computers will save us! Because, as Megan McArdle says, we are On the brink of an unimaginable AI future. Excerpt:

  I won’t speculate about the risk of an emerging artificial superintelligence casually disposing of its inefficient carbon-based architects; I’m not enough of a technician to understand whether this is likely. What’s clear is that things are going to get weird.

  AI will replace a lot of work that humans do now, from writing code to diagnosing illness to analyzing databases to making art. Aesthetes may protest that the computer-generated stuff will lack the crucial human element, but a quick glance over the past 200 years suggests that most people will eagerly substitute cheap, mass-produced anything for a lovingly handcrafted version that’s more expensive.

  And this time around the machines will displace some of the highest-status, highest-paid jobs. This is not entirely a bad prospect, especially as regards the problem of inequality. A whole lot of affluent people are likely to become considerably more equal. But those folks will not give up good jobs quietly. Political and cultural upheaval can be expected as the elites fight to maintain their status.

  Megan is open to apocalyptic speculation. But I'm old enough to remember reading Future Shock by Alvin Toffler, which claimed "the accelerated rate of technological and social change leaves people disconnected and suffering from 'shattering stress and disorientation'".

  And, reader, that was 55 years ago. So I'm not too worried about today's predictions of tech-caused doom: I've heard and read dozens of 'em over the decades. We've gone through a lot of "real soon now" promises and predictions.

  Wake me up when they happen.

• Dylan on tech. Nate Anderson, writer at Ars Technica tells us that Bob Dylan has some Dylanesque thoughts on the “sorcery” of technology. And digs out a quote from a 2022 interview:

  I’ve binge-watched Coronation Street, Father Brown, and some early Twilight Zones. I know they’re old-fashioned shows, but they make me feel at home. I’m not a fan of packaged programs, or news shows, so I don’t watch them. I never watch anything foul smelling or evil. Nothing disgusting; nothing dog ass. I’m a religious person. I read the scriptures a lot, meditate and pray, light candles in church. I believe in damnation and salvation, as well as predestination. The Five Books of Moses, Pauline Epistles, Invocation of the Saints, all of it.

  Since I have a dog, I'm required to watch some dog ass stuff. But otherwise, Bob's your uncle.

• Another language lesson, this one short. David R. Henderson takes issue with the NIMBY acronym: It's Not YOUR Backyard.

  Here’s the problem: People who use the term, whether they oppose it or favor it, are using words incorrectly. That matters.

  If you objected to people building something in your backyard, you would be on solid ground (pun intended.) The reason is that, unless you gave them permission, they would be trespassing. Imagine someone tries to build a small cottage in my backyard without my permission. Almost everyone, whatever his or her view of housing development or housing density, would agree that that person should not be allowed to do so.

  What do people really mean when they “Not in my backyard?” They mean that their neighbors shouldn’t be allowed to build in their backyard—or front yards, for that matter. So if they wanted to use words honestly, an acronym that would be much closer to the truth is “NIYBY.” This stands for “Not in your back yard.”

  You can see why they don’t want to use that term: it makes explicit that they favor violating other people’s property rights.

  Belated New Year Resolution: try to avoid that acronym in the future.

Not to get all creepy on you, but I find Emma Camp's geek chic strangely appealing:

Does more school spending mean better results? Reason’s @emmma_camp_ explains more. pic.twitter.com/j15bwRRDfJ

— reason (@reason) January 1, 2025

A critic in the comments section says (accurately) that "correlation is not causation". True enough! But I think that misunderstands the myth Emma is disconfirming; see my headline.

Also of note:

• In our continuing "Good Ideas That Won't Happen" series… OK, maybe I'm way too cynical about this stuff, but that's my reaction to Veronique de Rugy's column: Thinking Big as Trump, Congress Tackle Taxes. Vero, what's the problem at the heart of our tax system?

  At the heart of the problem is the definition of income developed by Robert Haig and Henry Simons in the 1920s and '30s, which provided a theoretical foundation for modern taxation. It defines income as the sum of a person's consumption plus the change in his or her net worth over a given period. Put in practice, Haig-Simons creates a tax bias against saving and investment.

  Decades of trying to correct these flaws have set the tax code on a path to extreme complexity, thanks to a resulting maze of exceptions, special treatments and differential rates — all while lots of double taxation, which undermines both efficiency and fairness, stayed in place.

  How? Imagine someone who earns $100 and saves it. This person first pays tax on the earnings. If the savings generate enough interest, dividends or capital gains, the saver pays again, though at a reduced rate. If the asset is left to heirs, the same income might be taxed a third time through estate taxes. In contrast, someone who earns the same $100 and consumes it immediately only pays the first tax.

  She goes on to advocate a flat 19% rate on wages above a generous deduction for individual taxpayers; something equally simple for businesses.

  But I think it's that classic public choice problem: too many people with political clout benefit from the nooks and crannies of the tax code. (Since I task Fidelity Investments to make my portfolio "tax efficient", I'm probably one of them. Except for the "clout" part.)

• Hegseth, not Buttigieg. Kevin D. WIlliamson takes on Hollywood Pete. And explains for you and me:

  Being secretary of defense is not like being a television host or even a military-focused television pundit. It is, in terms of budget, responsibilities, and personnel, a lot more like being the chancellor of Germany. The DoD is the largest employer in the United States; it is one of the largest organizations of any kind in the world; its budget allocation, which runs the better part of a trillion dollars, actually understates the total financial resources committed to national defense, which is more like $2 trillion, roughly the size of the German, Japanese, or French national government budgets, with only the U.S. government itself and the Chinese government budget being much larger; in FY2023, DoD reported $3.8 trillion in assets and $4 trillion in liabilities; DoD has nearly 3 million employees, more than 2 million in uniform and nearly 1 million civilians; the Navy has more than 300 ships to keep up with and more than 4,000 aircraft; the Army has nearly 50,000 combat vehicles on its maintenance roster; the Air Force has more than 6,300 aircraft to keep up with and nearly 400 ICBMs. The managerial challenges of running that organization are immensely complex.

  If you read through the U.S. National Defense Strategy documents, you won’t see very much about infantry maneuvers, but you will see a good deal about different approaches to financial management. “Audit remediation is one of the major components of the National Defense Strategy’s line of effort focused on reforming our business processes,” reads one document. Now, go look at that video of Pete Hegseth riding around on the tricycle and tell me that—stone-cold sober or blackout drunk—he is the man to undertake that apparently critical audit-remediation work.

  He isn’t.

  But we'll probably get him anyway. As KDW bottom-lines: "One understands the appeal of a TV-host Cabinet for a game-show-host president."

• Git along, little DOGE. George F. Will provides advice in a Memo to Musk: Overhauling government isn’t rocket science. It’s harder.

  Elon Musk, a Don Quixote with Vivek Ramaswamy tagging along as Sancho Panza, recently ascended Capitol Hill to warn the windmills of tiltings to come. They have vowed to cut government down to the size they prefer. But when they descended from the Hill, their most specific proposal remained what it was before they ascended: to eliminate … daylight saving time. How this would improve governmental “efficiency” is unclear.

  Musk’s instrument for Washington’s betterment is the new “Department of Government Efficiency,” which might be more plausible if it did not incorporate two fibs in four words. DOGE is not a department; departments are created by Congress, which created pretty much everything Musk’s advisory committee exists to frown about. And his announced, and arithmetically daunting, goal is to slice a third of the federal budget from the less than a third of the budget that does not include Social Security, Medicare, debt service or defense.

  Musk does not just want government to do what it does more efficiently; he wants it to stop doing much of what it does. Bet on the windmills.

  I appreciate the literary metaphor; could have been even better if GFW had somehow worked in the lovely Dulcinea, played by Donald Trump in a wig.

• Is there anything cheaper than declaring yourself to be against hatred? Tim Cushing writes at TechDirt about the latest news: Federal Judge Strikes Down Unconstitutional Arkansas Book Ban Law.

  Like far too many legislators, Arkansas politicians have decided it’s time to codify irrational hatred. To do this, they pretended they had a sudden and urgent new obligation to protect “the children” harder than they’ve ever been protected before against the encroachment of alternative viewpoints.

  Like far too many other states, the Arkansas government piggy-backed on existing obscenity laws to declare content they personally didn’t like as “obscene.” Then they went further, saddling librarians at public libraries with civil and criminal penalties for not doing enough censorship.

  And, like many similar hateful efforts, this codification of hatred hit a dead end in a federal court. Public library plaintiffs managed to secure a temporary injunction blocking Arkansas’ book ban from being enforced last summer. The catch was this: the law would remain blocked only until the government presented its revised case for expanded censorship. If it could demonstrate it had a legitimate government interest in banning books these legislators felt were harmful to kids, the law could go back into force.

  Wow, that's a whole lotta hate goin' on in three short paragraphs. I suppose when you easily psychoanalyze your targets as haters, it relieves you of any duty to actually deal with the issues they're raising.

  To be clear, I'm a fan of people reading a wide range of books, whatever they like. On their own dime and time. Things get a lot murkier when you're talking about (1) taxpayer funding of state institutions, and (2) a profession that's been credibly accused of pushing an ideological narrative to the exclusion of others.

  One of my more radical libertarian leanings is "separation of school and state". I have pragmatic reasons for that. (See, for one example, that Emma Camp video above; it's not like the state is doing a good job of it.)

  But there are also principles at stake. See any argument for the "separation of church and state"; the same arguments apply when you substitute "school" for church.

  And also when you substitute "libraries". (Although I'd give my main library in Portsmouth NH a solid B- for their halfway decent, albeit only halfway, effort at ideological diversity.)

  

  But since school and state ain't gonna separate soon, that leaves us with the thorny issue of who decides what books to shelve in school libraries, and who gets access to them.

  (For the record, Amazon lists In My Daddy's Belly age-appropriate for "4+". Link at your right.)

  Tim excerpts the recent judicial ruling:

  The vocation of a librarian requires a commitment to freedom of speech and the celebration of diverse viewpoints unlike that found in any other profession. The librarian curates the collection of reading materials for an entire community, and in doing so, he or she reinforces the bedrock principles on which this country was founded. According to the United States Supreme Court, “Public libraries pursue the worthy missions of facilitating learning and cultural enrichment.”

  […]

  The librarian’s only enemy is the censor who judges contrary opinions to be dangerous, immoral, or wrong.

  The public library of the 21st century is funded and overseen by state and local governments, with the assistance of taxpayer dollars. Nonetheless, the public library is not to be mistaken for simply an arm of the state. By virtue of its mission to provide the citizenry with access to a wide array of information, viewpoints, and content, the public library is decidedly not the state’s creature; it is the people’s.

  It gets pretty close to saying: "Shut up and trust the librarians"

  Fine, but that's not an unchecked power we extend to any other government employee, in Arkansas or (I presume) in any other state.

  It could be the Arkansas law went too far in its zeal. I dont' know, and I wouldn't trust Tim Cushing to be the judge of that.

Apparently, "Dr Arlene Unfiltered" put this up on Election Day, early evening:

She was so spectacularly wrong it is hilariously awesome pic.twitter.com/FRHQfKoWNu

— The Best Ball Junkie (@BestBallJunkie) December 30, 2024

Yes, of course: as "The Best Ball Junkie" says: spectacularly wrong, hilariously awesome. I have additional observations:

• Like Kamala, she laughs inappropriately. At what? Her imaginary cleverness?

• If smug condescension could be monetized, she'd be a millionaire.

• I am skeptical about how accurate and honest her description of her conversation with the poor sap she ran into at the liquor store is. But (assuming it happened at all) this sounds real, when she asks him, rhetorically: "You do realize you wasted your vote, right?"

  Dr Arlene, as a "political scientist/analyst", your criteria for a "wasted" vote are elusive to me. Simply because you imagine he cast his vote for a losing candidate? Where can I read more about this?

• Dr Arlene's further musings on politics are easily Googleable. She seems to invariably start her TikTok videos with "OK, so…". Irritating tic, or does she perceive it as some kind of endearing trademark?

Also of note:

• Except how to fix it. Daniel J. Mitchell presents (ta-da): In One Chart, Everything You Need to Know about America’s Fiscal Mess. And here 'tis:

  

  You won't see a better illustration of Robert Higgs' thesis laid out nearly 40 years ago in his Crisis and Leviathan: Governments use crises as excuses to expand their scope and spending, and that expansion doesn't go away when the crises end.

  Daniel quotes from a recent WSJ op-ed from Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI):

  Federal spending is out of control. In fiscal 2019, which ran from Oct. 1, 2018, to Sept. 30, 2019, federal outlays totaled $4.447 trillion. In fiscal 2020, federal outlays jumped to $6.554 trillion because of the pandemic spending spree. …Even if you think Covid relief spending levels were appropriate (I don’t), there was no justification for maintaining that level of spending once the pandemic was over. Yet we’ve turned pandemic spending into the new baseline, spending $6.6 trillion… In a sane world, Covid spending levels would have been an extreme aberration, and we would have already returned to a more reasonable level of spending. …I think most people would agree that if you were able to grow your family budget based on the increase in your family size plus the rate of inflation… Why not apply that same discipline to the federal budget? …Using 2014 outlays as a base would establish a 2025 budget of $6.2 trillion with a deficit of $700 billion. Using 2019 outlays results in a 2025 budget of $6.5 trillion with a deficit of $1 trillion. …setting baseline spending to one of those budget years isn’t only reasonable but doable.

  Unfortunately… not a dime in that graph above gets spent without Congressional approval. And as this OpenSecrets page discloses, the re-election rate for House CongressCritters in 2024 was a (typical) 98.5%. And 90.9% of incumbent Senators were re-elected.

  So, who killed fiscal sanity? As Mick Jagger observed so long ago: "After all, it was you and me."

  But mostly you.

• Is a dream a lie if it don't come true? Or is it something worse? Well, it's pretty bad, according to Jeff Jacoby, who disagrees with Politifact about The real 'lie of the year'.

  You may have heard: their choice for LotY was the Trump/Vance yarn about culinary choices of immigrant Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. Didn't happen. But:

  The most consequential lie of the year was the one peddled again and again by the Biden White House and the president's political and media allies: the lie that the 82-year-old president was as intellectually sharp and mentally focused as ever and that claims to the contrary — even video to the contrary — were nothing but "cheap fakes." Everyone with access to Biden knew better, yet most of them brazenly denied it.

  As they say, Jeff has the receipts. Also piling on Politifact is Robby Soave at Reason: Joe Biden's decline was the biggest lie of 2024.

  The lie, peddled at the behest of Biden's aides and advisers, and sold by White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to a gullible and incurious mainstream media, was that President Biden remained fit for office—and that mounting public concerns about his age-related decline were based on misinformation. Well before Biden's historic collapse at the June presidential debate, a majority of Americans expressed serious reservations about Biden's ability to serve. When reporters pressed Biden's media surrogates about these polls, they insisted that the supposed evidence of the president's decline was being fabricated by his political enemies. Jean-Pierre thunderously attacked conservative media, and Fox News in particular, for circulating what she described as misleading videos that appeared to show Biden out of sorts.

  At the highest levels of the Biden administration, the official word was: Don't believe your lying eyes. And for the most part, the mainstream media bought it.

  I am pretty sure you will scour Politifact in vain for its evaluation of Biden's heartfelt 2021 promise to uncover the origins of COVID-19:

  The world deserves answers, and I will not rest until we get them.

  And there's his heartfelt promise in his 2024 State of the Union address about the American hostages held by Hamas:

  I pledge to all the families that we will not rest until we bring their loved ones home.

  I'm pretty sure that Biden has rested since.

• Speaking of lies… Bjørn Lomberg dons his "green" (heh) eyeshade, and writes in the WSJ: Green Electricity Costs a Bundle.

  As nations use more and more supposedly cheap solar and wind power, a strange thing happens: Our power bills get more expensive. This exposes the environmentalist lie that renewables have already outmatched fossil fuels and that the “green transition” is irreversible even under a second Trump administration.

  The claim that green energy is cheaper relies on bogus math that measures the cost of electricity only when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. Modern societies need around-the-clock power, requiring backup, often powered by fossil fuels. That means we’re paying for two power systems: renewables and backup. Moreover, as fossil fuels are used less, those power sources need to earn their capital costs back in fewer hours, leading to even more expensive power.

  I've already shown you one graph today, so I'll ask you to click over to see the striking positive correlation between contries' fraction of solar/wind-produced electrons, and the cost paid by consumers for those electrons.

Bryan Caplan writes E(X)>0: An Open Letter to Elon. He contrasts two Elon tweets: one, from 2023, says "we should greatly increase legal immigration of anyone who is hard-working, honest, and loves America".

The second, from 2024, says "Immigration should be limited to those who will obviously contribute far more than they take."

Bryan, being an open-borders guy, prefers the former take. He has a 15-point numbered list in response, and here are just the first two items:

Bryan's post is a real tour de force and I strongly recommend it. (I recommend reading everything I link to here, but this is above average.) It includes a couple pages from Open Borders, the comic book he did with Zach Weinersmith.

Also of note:

• I'm in favor of more imaginary strikes. Sean Higgins tells the tale of The Teamsters’ Imaginary Strike against Amazon.

  There was a historic strike by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters workers at Amazon facilities over the Christmas holiday, yet it didn’t appear to slow Amazon’s deliveries, and actual Amazon employees on picket lines were few.

  That is to say, the strike was more of a publicity stunt by the Teamsters than an actual grassroots revolt by Amazon workers. These holiday season strikes are an old public relations ploy by unions, who are good at creating a narrative and selling it to reporters.

  The unions know that the holidays are a tough period for news outlets. Not a lot is happening, because most people are on vacation. Many of the outlets’ own reporters are angling for time off. A news story that seems serious, like a labor strike, and that comes with all of the details provided by the union’s media team is something news outlets will usually jump on. Following up on the union’s claims can wait until after the holidays . . . by which time the strike is usually over and everyone has moved on.

  The Teamsters announced, just prior to Christmas, the “largest-ever strike against Amazon.” Stories in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, National Public Radio, and CNN, among others, reported on the walkout. “If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed,” declared Teamsters general president Sean O’Brien. Having gotten the headlines they wanted, the Teamsters officially called it off on Christmas Eve.

  'Twas fake news. Even my sainted Wall Street Journal was taken in, their headline reading "Thousands of Amazon Workers Strike During Pre-Christmas Rush". Article written by Gareth Vipers, whose author page says is based in London. England, I presume.

• It's a full-time job. Wilfred Reilly is visited by The Three Holiday Ghosts of Taking Responsibility.

  Now that we Westerners know we mostly do have free will, no one seems to like using it. A few days before New Year’s Eve, writing for a — nay, the — conservative magazine, this strikes me as a point worth discussing.

  That "free will" link goes to Scientific American. Which I would be a lot happier about (since I'm a free will fanboy) if Scientific American hadn't befouled itself by publishing a lot of woke claptrap recently. Ah well.

  But Wilfred's three ghosts are exemplified by recent newsmakers: Lily Phillips, Jordan Neely, and…

  On X and Facebook, we are currently seeing a broader example of the same trend of personal responsibility denial — and one which may hit closer to home for tax-paying readers of this article. Monorail salesman, likely genius, and of-late GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy just began a major conversation and attracted an apple-throwing mob by — while defending most recipients of H-1B foreign “talent” visas — pointing out that white and black American youth may not be the hardest working imaginable occupants of the classroom.

  Quoth he: “The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH: Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.”

  As you might imagine, that plain-talking spurred a tsunami of Vivek-hatred. It's what happens when you speak some unvarnished truth.

  ("Monorail salesman"? Probably explained here, a post which includes a video of the funniest one minute and fifty-six seconds of The Simpsons.)

  But Wilfred's bottom line is:

  As New Year’s Day approaches, it’s always worth remembering that the person responsible for probably 95 percent of what you do is you. Let us all work on ourselves, each other, and the country.

  Amen.

Explanation plagiarized from last year, which remains accurate:

Just in case you're interested in what I found informative, interesting, thought-provoking, etc. last year. The cover images are Amazon paid links, and clicking on them will take you there, where I get a cut if you purchase, thanks in advance. Clicking on the book's title will whisk you to my blog posting for a fuller discussion.

I am restricting the list to books I rated with five stars at Goodreads. Nota Bene: Goodreads ratings are subjective; they do not necessarily reflect a book's cosmic quality, just my gut reaction. And perhaps also my mood at the time, grumpy or generous. In other words, don't take this too seriously.

The complete list of books I read in 2024, including fiction, is here.

In order read:

	Road to Surrender:Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II by Evan Thomas. A punchy, accessible story of the thorny negotiations surrounding Japan's defeat. It was a close-run thing. I learned a lot I didn't know.
	Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative by Jennifer Burns. The definitive biography of a Pun Salad all-time hero. The author is unafraid to criticize him, and I'm sure he would object to the subtitle. But the lesson remains: one man can make a difference in turning a country toward liberty.
	The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism by Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi. "Bleeding-heart libertarians" tell the story of how this odd ideology (which includes me under its big tent) developed. Never fear, it's fair. And the authors identify broad ranges of agreement, even between folks calling each other nasty names.
	The New Deal's War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR's Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance by David Beito. A mostly-warts history of the underside of FDR's biography, showing his distrespectful, and probably unconstitutional, attitudes toward his political adversaries and (of course) Japanese in California. It's not a commonly-told tale.
	Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization by Ed Conway. Spoiler: sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. Conway is an enthusiastic and diligent researcher, who unexpectedly caught my interest on topics I didn't expect. Sand?
	The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised by James Pethokoukis. This is an age of miracles and wonder, but the author argues (convincingly) that we could have done better. Better than the Roomba, anyway. We need to encourage R&D, innovation, skilled immigration, and (generally) optimism. And (frankly) if it doesn't happen in the USA, it ain't happening anywhere on this planet in the foreseeable future.
	The Weirdness of the World by Eric Schwitzgebel. He's a philosophy prof who likes to think outside—way outside—the box. Is the United States of America is a conscious entity? Eric thinks so, and see if you don't agree. Tough going in spots, but in most parts wonderfully accessible and insightful.
	America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It by C. Bradley Thompson. He looks at that intro of the Declaration of Independence—the thing which Woodrow Wilson urged us to get beyond—and teases out the mood and thoughts of the country that caused it to be written that way.
	My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places by Mary Roach. Think Erma Bombeck, except still alive. Ms. Roach is Dave Barry-level funny, a natural humorist. All the columns here made me smile, many drew amused snorts, and (yes) a number of guffaws.
	The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America by Coleman Hughes. I found myself in violent agreement with just about everything Hughes says here, in support of his hopeful subtitle. Unfortunate that the dominant ideology these days seems to point the other way, meaning we have more division and animosity to look forward to.
	Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach. Yes, another Mary Roach book. It's a little old (2010) but holds up pretty well. Despite the title, there isn't lot of Mars-specific stuff here. Mary interviews astronauts, scientists, engineers, etc., all dedicated to figuring out how to get people into space and back in one piece, keeping them functional while on the way.
	Democracy: A Guided Tour by Jason Brennan. He clearly states his goal: "a guided tour of the best and most important arguments for and against democracy over time." And he doesn't treat "democracy" as a sacred cow, which is refreshing.
	The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America by Jeffrey Rosen. I found this book to be complementary to C. Bradley Thompson's (above), and also excellent. Rosen compiles a reading list of philosophers that the Founders considered insightful: a lot of stoics, and also Hume, Locke, and Adam Smith.
	The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI by Ray Kurzweil. And Kurzweil isn't kidding around when he says "merge". We're gonna plug those machines into our nervous system, and… well, he predicts we'll be uploaded. Did he just blow my mind? Yup.
	Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach. Yes, another Mary Roach book. Here, she looks at human/non-human interactions, mostly violent, gross, and otherwise unpleasant. Not as hilarious as her other books, because Mary (being nice) often takes the side of the non-humans.
	Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History by Nellie Bowles. A collection of essays from a very independent mind, who (as a lesbian feminist) is somewhat put out as being defined as a "non-man attracted to non-men". She tours outposts of woke ideology, coming away amused, disgusted, and outraged, in various proportions.

James Freeman highlights some recent violent rhetoric:

I suppose. I'm currently reading Christopher Cox's biography of Woodrow Wilson, which (for some reason) goes into a gory description of Representative Preston Brooks' (D-SC) caning of Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA) in 1856. Republicans, if Whitehouse starts carrying a walking stick into the Senate chambers, I'd be on my guard.

Metaphorically, my CongressCritter, Chris Pappas, is fond of claiming he's fighting. As are my state's senators, Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan. As far as I can tell, they refrain from "actual punches thrown", and just buy into the lame, overused metaphor. Maybe they could make a new year's resolution to tone it down.

(But, amusingly, one of those Shaheen links brings up a 2020 newsletter article says she's "Fighting to protect domestic violence survivors during the pandemic". That's pretty funny to imagine non-metaphorically.)

Also of note:

• Incentives matter. James Freeman (yes, again) observes, helpfully: Technology Can Help Drain the Swamp.

  One of the reasons the Biden era will be fondly remembered in Washington is that our 46th president has managed to keep Washingtonians largely immune from the efficiencies of the digital revolution. Forget for a moment the political debates about how much to take from productive citizens and give to this or that special-interest group. What’s astounding—given how much of government involves the automation-ready tasks of collecting and redistributing money and information—is that the federal workforce continues to grow. While technology relentlessly makes things better, faster and cheaper in the private economy, the productivity wave isn’t washing over the turbid, still waters of the swamp.

  Outside of government, workers naturally wonder if their jobs may be replaced by robots or artificial intelligence or some other form of technological innovation. History says the results are wonderful—with new industries, new consumer benefits and new jobs in which highly-productive workers can demand higher pay. But for particular people in particular situations it can feel like an all-out sprint to stay ahead of the technological curve.

  Freeman points to this WSJ news article Where Did All of the Managers Go? It says (among other things):

  In all, U.S. public companies have cut their middle-manager head counts by about 6% since the peak of their pandemic hiring sprees, according to a new analysis of more than 20 million white-collar workers by employment-data provider Live Data Technologies. Senior executives, whose ranks have shrunk nearly 5% since the end of 2021, haven’t fared much better.

  It's way past time to trim the ranks of less-productive government employees.

• Pun Salad pounces on this report. Ronald Bailey says the science is settled: Moderate drinking linked to lower overall mortality rate.

  "When it comes to alcohol consumption, there is no safe amount that does not affect health," declared the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2022. "No, moderate drinking isn't good for your health," headlined The Washington Post citing a 2023 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) meta-analysis probing the epidemiological association between mean daily alcohol intake and all-cause mortality. Interestingly, two of the co-authors of the JAMA article have been associated with various neo-prohibitionist organizations.

  In any case, these pronouncements contradict decades of research that identified a U-shaped relationship in which mortality is greater for both non-drinkers and heavy drinkers than it is for moderate drinkers.

  A new report reviewing evidence on moderate alcohol consumption and health outcomes issued earlier this month by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) concludes that the WHO and the JAMA researchers are wrong. Moderate drinking is associated with some health benefits, with one notable exception.

  (The exception: breast cancer in women.)

• Fashion tips for all you white women out there. Jerry Coyne shares the Time magazine report: Women's March Rebranded, Reorganized, and Is Ready for 2025.

  When activist and organizer Raquel Willis spoke at the inaugural Women’s March on the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2017, the organization was very different.

  At that time, Willis was a burgeoning leader in social justice and activism, and she says the conversation around trans experiences was limited. “It was a time where there was more visibility than ever before, more trans folks engaged in social justice movement than ever before,” Willis says. “And yet there was a tension between, particularly cis women and trans women, but also women of other experiences too.”

  The first Women’s March was enormous, bringing an estimated 500,000 marchers to Washington, DC and over 4 million throughout the United States. At the time, the protest was the largest single-day protest in the country’s history, and it created indelible protest images of women in pink hats that would define a certain type of opposition to Trump’s presidency. But during the following years, the Women’s March fractured. There were multiple arguments among those within the organization, the group faced allegations of racism and antisemitism, and sponsors fled. There were also strategic questions: Willis says she was skeptical about centering Trump as a singular, isolated political event, and instead wishes there was discussion of him as “reflective of these long standing systems of oppression, white supremacy, cis heteropatriarchy, classism, and capitalism.”

  Capitalism! Oh dear! Gee, wonder why "sponsors fled"?

  But you have to have a heart of stone to read this paragraph without laughing:

  In a further sign that the People’s March is creating some distance with the iconography of the 2017 Women’s March, in the the [sic] Frequently Asked Questions section of its website, the site says marchers should not bring weapons, drugs, or Handmaid’s Tale costumes. "The use of Handmaid's Tale imagery to characterize the controlling of women’s reproduction has proliferated, primarily by white women across the country, since the show has gained popularity,” the site reads. “This message continues to create more fragmentation, often around race and class, because it erases the fact that Black women, undocumented women, incarcerated women, poor women and disabled women have always had their reproduction freedom controlled in this country."

  So keep those bonnets in the closet, white women!

  I'll also take issue with Time's description of the 2017 demonstration as the "first Women's March". Back in 1913, the Woman Suffrage Procession was similarly scheduled just before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration, in support of the (eventual) Nineteenth Amendment. (Yeah, again a bit of trivia from that Wilson bio mentioned above.)