Pun Salad

As Scott Lincicome says, it's not as if they're doing such a hot job of it:

It's a divisive issue. On the one side, there's science, economics, family, and common sense. On the other, there's golf/candy lobbyists, big government, and immature night-owls. Really tough call for the political class! https://t.co/j3KJCPXvKq

— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) October 31, 2025

I mean, what would we do without government telling us when to get up, go to work, go to bed, …

Also of note:

• Attention should be paid. The WSJ editorialists provide us with The Truth About ObamaCare Costs. (WSJ gifted link)

  Every day come warnings that Americans will be priced out of ObamaCare next year if Republicans in Congress don’t renew pandemic subsidies. The media coverage reads like dispatches from an AI chatbot trained on Sen. Chuck Schumer’s press releases, and maybe readers would appreciate some non-hallucinations.

  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) this week released a fact sheet on ObamaCare’s pricing next year, and here’s the most important line: “The average Marketplace premium after tax credits is projected to be $50 per month for the lowest cost plan in 2026 for eligible enrollees.” Nearly 60% of “eligible re-enrollees will have access to a plan in their chosen health plan category at or below $50 after tax credits.”

  You read that right: The majority of enrollees will continue to have a plan at $50 a month or cheaper, even without the extra pandemic-era subsidy that is expiring. That’s a pittance compared to what many Americans shell out if they’re insured through their employer, even accounting for the fact that employer plans tend to be superior in their choices and coverage. Taxpayers on average are “projected to cover 91% of the lowest cost plan premium in 2026 for eligible enrollees” in ObamaCare, CMS reports.

  I follow my CongressCritter and my state's Senators on Twitter, and it's getting pretty tiresome to see them consistently work "skyrocket" into their doomsaying posts on expiration of the extra super-duper-premium tax credits.

• Room for improvement, then. The Josiah Bartlett Center brings a little bit of good news: Killing the I&D Tax leaps N.H. to No. 3 on national tax competitiveness index.

  Killing New Hampshire’s Interest & Dividends Tax has breathed new life into the New Hampshire Advantage. That’s the conclusion from reading the Tax Foundation’s 2026 State Tax Competitiveness Index, released on Oct. 30.

  Last year, New Hampshire slipped past Texas to claim the No. 6 spot on the index. Passing the famously conservative and economically booming Lone Star state was newsworthy, but the three-point jump in this year’s index is more so.

  Decades’ worth of research—from academic studies and government data to moving company records—show that states with lower individual and corporate tax burdens tend to be more attractive to individuals, businesses and investors. Entering the top three states in tax competitiveness puts New Hampshire squarely in the conversation for millions of Americans looking for a good place to live, invest or locate a business.

  We're getting beat by Wyoming and South Dakota. We are dragged down by our property taxes (#44!) and corporate taxes (#37).

• Newsflash: Kevin D. Williamson is still not a Trump fan. His latest on That Head of Gold. (archive.today link)

  A century and some before the American Revolution, the English republican Henry Haggar had argued: “If the God of heaven did in that age take away the Kingdom and Dominion of the whole earth from Nebuchadnezzar, that head of gold, and turn him out a-grazing among the Oxen, and give his kingdom to whomsoever he pleased; then let not men in this generation think it strange, though God Almighty hath taken away the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland (which are but a small part of the earth) from Charles Stuart, and given them to the honorable Parliament.” That argument appeared in a pamphlet titled No King but Jesus. (It bore the wonderfully cumbrous subtitle: “Or, The Walls of tyrannie razed and the foundations of unjust monarchy discovered to the view of all that desire to see it wherein is undeniably proved that no king is the Lords anointed but Jesus.”) Looking back to such spiritual forebears, Americans have held crowns in contempt since before we were Americans.

  Not so Donald Trump, who enjoys portraying himself wearing a crown and encourages others to do the same. He has for years tried to associate himself and his family with the British royal family, and it is not for nothing that his youngest son bears the name “Barron,” a pseudo-title of nobility borrowed from “John Barron,” the imaginary friend Donald Trump invented to lie to the New York Post about his sex life.

  Visiting South Korea, Trump was presented with a gold medal announcing him as a newly minted member of the Grand Order of Mugunghwa, which sounds like something out of a half-assed parody but is a real thing. Mugunghwa in English is the common hibiscus, which, like Trump’s parasitic brand of politics, is native to some parts of Asia but considered an invasive species in the United States. He also was presented with a golden crown, which clearly delighted him. I am surprised he is not wearing it, though I suppose it is possible that the scaffolding that keeps his hair in place might create complications.

  "Mugunghwa" is a pretty close approximation to what I say to my cat when she wakes me up at 3am, demanding breakfast.

• Jeff Maurer's right, Sirota is a douche. He has a confession, too: I Just Realised That the NIMBY Douche on My Twitter Timeline Also Wrote “Don’t Look Up”. Worse and worse!

  In the haunted carnival of freaks that populates my Twitter timeline, one weirdo who always catches my eye is a guy named David Sirota. Sirota’s malformity is that he is an adult human who does not seem capable of understanding the concept of supply and demand. His operating theory of housing prices is that high prices are caused mostly by corporate oligarchs creating an artificial shortage, but he also sees the influence of corporate oligarchs behind the so-called “abundance agenda”. So, which is it, David: Do oligarchs profit from constricting supply or from expanding it? Sirota rejects the NIMBY label but also thinks that loosening zoning laws would cause a housing bubble, and he recently attempted to deflect alleged slander of him as a NIMBY by trumpeting his support for a proposal that is, in fact, restrictionist. He’s also a “greedflation” guy and a defender of rent control, he’s one of the most illogical people I’ve ever encountered, and that includes my two year-old son, who likes to put orange slices in his sock drawer and say “For the duckies!”

  The other day, I finally decided to google this asshat (Sirota, not my son). It turns out that he was an adviser to Bernie Sanders (that tracks), is an editor-at-large at Jacobin (I should have guessed), but there was a bullet on his résumé that I didn’t expect: He co-wrote the 2021 climate-change-allegory movie Don’t Look Up. Maybe you knew that — I didn’t. Don’t Look Up was a tough watch for me: It’s about a topic I care about, stars several people I like, and Sirota’s co-writer (Adam McKay) has written several funny things. But watching this movie was like getting a lecture about appropriate office attire from a guy wearing a crotchless gimp suit. It worked for me on zero levels — as comedy, as allegory, or as a minimally coherent piece of storytelling — and now that I know that Sirota was involved, that all makes sense. So — four years too late — here’s my review of Don’t Look Up.

  I liked Don't Look Up slightly better than Jeff did; my report from 2022 is here. (I am easily amused.)

  But Sirota otherwise escaped my notice until a few days ago, with his worthless, dishonest take on that old excuse for gutting the First Amendment, "campaign finance reform".

Recently on the book blog:

I've been a Charles Murray fan for quite awhile. He's well-known for his takes on controversial issues, like IQ, race, welfare, etc. He presses a lot of hot buttons. I really liked his In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government, a succinct description of the "proper" role of the state. Specifically, limited and laissez-faire, enabling people to chart their own courses in life, bearing responsibility for their own choices, good and bad.

This book is somewhat of a surprise topic, and very personal. Murray details his spiritual odyssey over the past years, how he became interested in, and finally persuaded by, evidence that we are more than just bags of molecules interacting according to the dictates of physics and biochemistry. And how he came around to a more-or-less Christian belief in God, Jesus, and miracles, including the resurrection.

So, yeah, that's a lot for a relatively short book. But Murray's argument is well-presented, not didactic at all. He lays out his research, all the while inviting his readers to make up their own minds. His initial discussion is very similar to that of Ross Douthat in his recent book Believe: the "fine-tuning" of a universe that makes stars, planets, life, and (most unlikely of all) human intelligence possible. Murray makes the additional point about trying to "understand" God: we are likely in the same relationship between my dog and calculus. We not only don't understand, we don't even understand what there is to understand.

Murray is impressed, as Douthat was, with the uniformity of "near death experiences", where people who have been brought back from the brink report uncannily similar observations of what it's like. Murray adds in the phenomenon of "terminal lucidity", where dying people thought to be irretrievably comatose have recovered briefly, but inexplicably, to communicate with people at their bedside. This, after their brains have stopped working!

In the book's second part, Murray looks specifically at Christianity, with an appreciation of the arguments made by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. He notes the effort made over the years to debunk the history depicted in the New Testament; he counters with his own scholars and their arguments. (If you are refuting a debunker are you ‥ a bunker?)

Bottom line: Murray makes good arguments. I'm not planning to become a churchgoer (again), though. That's on me, not him.

If you're interested. Murray's book has generated some pushback from people I also like. Jerry Coyne, bless his heart, seems to take any religiosity as a personal insult, and argued against his views here and here.

Steven Pinker, peace be unto him, also dislikes Murray's "terminal lucidity" explanation, and wrote a letter to the WSJ about it. Murray responded here. (I think those are both free links.)