Pun Salad

He tries to panic my geezer peeps, and I am irked:

Congrats on the twofer: demagogic and dishonest. Actual proposal here: https://t.co/nxkmESMDGA

— Paul Sand (@punsalad) March 7, 2025

Pappas did not even have the basic honesty to post a legible version of that 152-signature letter, denying his followers even a slight hint as to what he was talking about. Fortunately, U.S. Rep. Grace Meng (D-Queens) was a little more informative (but no less demagogic) in her press release, which includes a link to the PDF letter sent to SSA Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek.

As indicated in the SSA release I linked in my tweet: the "gutting" is the proposal to trim the Social Security workforce from its current 57K to 50K, and to rejigger its "bloated" organizational structure.

There are, sadly, no plans to "gut" Social Security, by which I mean: no plans to avoid its coming day of fiscal reckoning. That's still on track for sometime in 2035. And, as near as I can tell, neither Pappas, nor Democrats or Republicans generally, have no plans to offer about that.

Reality-based commentary from Veronique de Rugy, explaining Why Cutting Waste and Fixing Entitlements Are Both Essential. No surprises there:

It would be nice if "we, the people" actually did demand that. Unfortunately…

Ninety-seven percent of congressional incumbents were re-elected in 2024, slightly higher than the 96% re-elected in 2020. In 41 states, all congressional incumbents who sought another term were re-elected. In 41 states, all congressional incumbents were re-elected, the same as in 2022. In 2020, voters in 38 states re-elected their incumbents who sought another term.

Poll after poll show that "we, the people" think America's "on the wrong track". And yet, "we" keep re-electing the same clowns; why would we expect the circus to improve?

Here's a BBC report that at least one small European country, the one refusing to sell Greenland to us, isn't afraid to enter into the 21st century: Denmark's postal service to stop delivering letters.

If the Danes can adapt to market-based modernity, we can't we?

Also of note:

• Christian, you say that like it's a bad thing! Oh, wait, it is a bad thing. Christian Schneider puts his finger on it: Donald Trump Mistakes Weakness for Strength. Especially when compared to Ronald "We Win, They Lose" Reagan:

  One of the favorite parlor games within MAGA Nation is comparing Donald Trump to Reagan, hoping to launder Trump’s weakness through a prism of morally unambiguous Reaganism. This week, Trump’s first-term deputy national security adviser K. T. McFarland, who might want to check that her house is properly ventilated, argued that Trump is doing the “exact same thing” as Reagan regarding negotiations with Russia.

  These arguments target gullible people on the right who are also prone to believe that nobody out-pizzas the Hut. Of course, Reagan brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union through strength, moral determination, and courage. Trump’s pathetic stance toward Russia in its war of aggression against Ukraine hardly demonstrates the same fortitude.

  Trump is a weak man, as he reminds us every time he stands in front of a microphone. During his address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, he opened by complaining that his “astronomical accomplishments” weren’t being sufficiently cheered by Democrats. When discussing an anti-revenge-porn bill he wants to see passed, he took the time to remind America that “nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody.”

  Kevin D. Williamson has a different towering figure (and brave people) from that era in mind: Ghosts of the Cold War:

  “Here I am, then. I have come home.”

  So said Pope John Paul II after landing in Warsaw in 1983, bending to kiss the soil of his native country. The mood was patriotic and defiant. “Poland for the Poles!” came the shouts from the crowd—union men, priests, fathers and their sons. “We are the real Poland!” The pope continued: “I consider it my duty to be with my fellow countrymen in this sublime and at the same time difficult moment.” 

  The demonstrators unfurled banners advertising the Solidarity movement and chanted the name of its leader, Lech Wałęsa. The 81-year-old Wałęsa, one of the great heroes of the Cold War, is still very much with us, and still engaged in public affairs. “Gratitude is due to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood in defense of the values of the free world,” he said earlier this week. “We do not understand how the leader of a country that is a symbol of the free world cannot see this.”

  Wałęsa is not the only figure from that day who remains part of our public life. He and other supporters of Polish sovereignty, in Poland and around the world, were being spied on by the KGB’s foreign-operations directorate, whose roster of murderers, torturers, and villains included Vladimir Putin. The KGB’s mission was to do in Poland what it had done in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s—suppress the movement for liberty and sovereignty. The ghost of the KGB is now working toward that end in Ukraine.

  Cold War fantasies such as The Manchurian Candidate imagined it would take some incredible and complicated scheme to put a man willing to do the bidding of the KGB and its analogues and epigones into Washington’s halls of power. In reality, all it took was a man whose values align with those of the KGB rather than with those of the Founding Fathers.

  Gee, I wonder who he's talking about, there at the end?

  (And I admit I had to ask Google what an "epigone" was.)

  Speaking of MAGA Nation, my friends at GraniteGrok posted a review of Trump's recent speech to Congress ("America’s Renewal Shines in Historic Address")

  This was more than just a speech; it was a thunderous declaration of American greatness and a fiery testament to Trump’s undeniable leadership. With unwavering resolve, he proclaimed, “America is back,” revealing a bold and brilliant vision that patriots nationwide erupted in cheers. This marked a renewal of the American Dream, demonstrating that Trump is the only man who can make it a reality.

  Etc. It's the kind of prose that would have Kim Jong Un protesting to his hagiographers: "Don't you find that praise a little too effusive?"

• I can't tell whether Jeff Maurer has a more optimistic take than KDW or Christian. Nevertheless, he thinks There’s an Upside to the Dummies Winning a Few Rounds.

  I don’t love that “use taxpayer money to buy fake trash” is White House policy now. I also think that the proper role for a coked-up 20 year-old is dancing in a go-go cage, not auditing the federal government. Some of my other cranky old man opinions are that it would be easier to access Greenland’s minerals through trade than through an Eric the Red-style conquest, and that “Neville Chamberlain but an asshole” is a bad diplomatic posture. I doubt that many conservatives will disagree with anything I just said, because the main split in American politics these days isn’t liberal/conservative but rather total idiot/not.

  Of course, it doesn’t matter what I think, because I’m not calling the shots. Trump is calling the shots, and he’s removed many of the meddling nerds who thwarted his schemes in his first term. The running gag of the first Trump administration was Trump telling people to do awful things and his subordinates just…not doing them. For example: Remember when Trump told a room full of people to get the Justice Department harass Time Warner, and Gary Cohn walked out of the meeting and told everyone within earshot “don’t you fucking dare” do that? Remember when Mark Esper had to tell Trump that he can’t shoot protesters in the legs? It turns out that the “deep state” was actually just not-crazy people refusing to do crazy stuff.

  But this time around, Trump is free to be his worst self. Even if the courts uphold the law and Trump backs down from his crazier shenanigans, damage has already been done. Programs authorized by Congress have been haphazardly shuttered, alliances have been trashed, and volatility has given investors their twitchiest sphincters in 17 years. IMHO, this is bad — I’m not a person who cheers for total societal breakdown in the hope that my party will summon 56 Senate seats from the ashes. But even so, I can see a small upside to living in an Idiocracy for just a little while.

  Speaking of Idiocracy, there's a pic of Sara Rue in her sexy outfit from that movie at the link, and you don't want to miss that.

• Trump channels Emily Litella. And at Reason, Joe Lancaster takes the Jane Curtin role: No, HHS Didn't Spend $8 Million 'Making Mice Transgender'.

  "Just listen to some of the appalling waste we have already identified," Trump bragged. "$8 million for making mice transgender—this is real."

  Indeed, spending $8 million to make mice transgender would be an appalling waste of tax money, if it were real. Thankfully, it isn't.

  At the time of the speech, some online commenters noted that the program was likely not transgender but transgenic—"an organism or cell whose genome has been altered by the introduction of one or more foreign DNA sequences from another species by artificial means," according to the National Human Genome Research Institute.

  When corrected, Emily at least had the honesty to say "Oh, that's quite different! … Never mind." As Joe details, not the White House.