Pun Salad

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.