Jul
2
2026

"I guess irony can be … pretty ironic sometimes."

Via Power Line:

Today's headline from Airplane II, as delivered by … well, you know:

Also of note:

  • Not fooling anyone, perhaps except himself. Tosin Akintola, for example, sees it clearly: Trump scapegoats gas companies for price hikes caused by his Iran War.

    On Monday, President Donald Trump renewed his threats to the oil and gas industry, telling gasoline retailers they "must get their Prices down, IMMEDIATELY!" to around $2.50 per gallon. The president first threatened the "big Oil Companies" last Wednesday, when he ordered the Justice Department to investigate whether they were engaged in price gouging.

    "Price gouging" is a standard tactic of the populist demagogue, and it's (of course) bipartisan. Why, 'twas only a few weeks ago I linked to Nancy Pelosi's press release describing her 2006 call for a "New Direction for America". Which, among many other promises, pledged to "Crack down on price gouging" to "Lower Gas Prices and Achieve Energy Independence".

  • But other goats needed presidential scaping! John R. Puri noticed more of the same from the "It's not my fault!" President: The Government Gives Away Its Beef-Price Fiction (archive.today link)

    The president wants beef prices to fall to relieve consumers, except when he wants them to rise to aid cattle ranchers. He is learning through interventionism that every price paid is someone else’s income. Therefore, the administration is seeking a scapegoat.

    It has found one in meat processors — the companies that slaughter, butcher, and package beef. Last November, the president directed his subordinates to investigate potential collusion or price-fixing among the four firms that account for 85 percent of the beef-processing market. It was a conclusion in search of evidence. The Department of Justice is currently investigating the four major companies, and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche believes he has unearthed “anti-competitive activity.”

    Shocker! He 'unearthed' exactly what Trump wanted him to unearth!

    John goes on to note that the administration is also giving a half-billion dollars to keep meat processors in business.

    So if they are price gouging, they're doing a lousy job of it.

    Or maybe Trump's first instinct when faced with bad news is to revert to a fact-free accusation about shady others.

  • Good advice, part I. It's from (a)Bill Maher, directed to (b) politicians, relayed from (c) Kevin D. Williamson: Stop Being Funny. (Dispatch gifted link)

    When politicians are being ridiculous, Maher said, “I put them in jokes—jokes that work.” Jokes that work is the key thing. It is axiomatic in comedy that the way to kill a joke is to explain it, but it is worth thinking about why and how Maher’s jokes, and other jokes about politicians, work. If politicians are to stop being funny, then they will need to answer the question: When are politicians funny?

    For one, politicians are funny when they are needy—especially when they show themselves to be in desperate need of attention and adulation. Pete Hegseth’s risible workout videos are an example of this. Bill Clinton’s general neediness was both pitiable and funny as he tried to fill whatever awful vacancy is at the center of him with junk food and junk sex. Donald Trump’s pharaonic megalomania is both disturbing and hilarious, even if the scolds insist that there is nothing to laugh about in such times as these. Jill Biden’s insistence upon calling herself “Dr. Biden” is funny. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s need to swan around at the Met Gala while pretending to be an in-the-trenches class warrior is funny. European Central Bank boss Christine Lagarde’s constant sophomoric LinkedIn posting, which makes her look like she is desperately seeking employment, is eminently mockable.

    Beyond neediness, politicians—and media figures and activists—also are funny when they are unreasonable. Ross Perot’s mania was a gift to Saturday Night Live’s Dana Carvey and other satirists. There is a reason everybody makes fun of vegans, Bible-thumpers, libertarians, and the fading memory of Greta Thunberg. Humor is one of the ways we try to keep politics inside the 40-yard lines—extremists are inviting targets for satire. About half of The Blues Brothers is an extended riff on the ridiculousness of George Lincoln Rockwell and his American Nazi Party.

    KDW's article doesn't mention Ronald Reagan, who knew how to deliver a line, punchlines included.

  • Good advice, part II. It's direct from Erick Erickson, aimed at you and me: Calm Down.

    Well, more aimed at you, maybe. I'm always pretty calm.

    Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the immigration policies on citizenship of the last 140 years will continue.

    Today, you’d think the nation was coming to an end. We’ve literally been implementing the 14th Amendment this way for, again, 140 years.

    Having now read the full decision, did you know there were up to eight votes for the idea that illegal aliens could become citizens by being born in the United States? There might have been a ninth. As it were, there were six, not five, votes for the decision.

    I bet you heard 5-4, but the people spinning you up did not tell you that even Clarence Thomas raised the possibility that an illegal alien born in the United States could be a citizen.

    Six Justices, not five, definitely held that a child born in the United States to illegal aliens was a citizen. Justices Thomas and Gorsuch both, in their dissents, noted that a large number of children of illegal aliens would also most likely be citizens. Even Justice Alito suggested an unquantifiable number of children of illegal aliens would be citizens.

    Erick's got an interesting take, as usual.

  • Mea Culpa, I guess. At least according to Leonora Barclay at Persuasion: Reading Is Dead. And We Killed It.

    Earlier this year, publishing house Hachette pulped the upcoming horror novel Shy Girl by Mia Ballard, following allegations that Ballard relied on artificial intelligence to write the book. Meanwhile, half of novelists in the UK fear they will be completely replaced by AI. As artificial intelligence continues to replace creative activities previously considered uniquely human, there’s a fear that fiction will grow ever more distant from the human experience, with predictable plots and simplistic dialogue and characters. Literature will start to function as synthetic junk food for the brain.

    Unfortunately, we didn’t need AI to do this. Literature has been functionally artificial for a number of years now, since long before ChatGPT came on the scene. It wasn’t computers that did this, it was us—publishers, agents, writers, and readers. Over the last 20 years, modern novels have become shorter, with simpler language and shorter sentences. At the same time, people are reading less. In 2023, the number of Americans aged 15 and older who read for more than 20 minutes a day was 15 percent, compared to 22 percent in 2003. In some ways, shorter novels can be a blessing (I know it’s supposed to be Charlotte Brontë’s best novel, but I spent most of Villette wishing the main character would just get on with it), but it’s worrying that authors are now writing for diminished attention spans.

    Well, maybe. But (since I am old) I hold Sturgeon's Law in high regard. ("Ninety percent of everything is crap") Are things worse now than they were in the 1950's, when Sturgeon proposed it?