Pun Salad

J.D. Tuccille is pretty steamed at recent developments in an ongoing fight, pitting Trump vs. Free Markets.

Further along in J.D.'s article there are further grounds to make a free marketeer groan:

I used to point out that Democrats seemed to believe there wasn't a single dollar in private hands that they imagined the government couldn't spend more wisely and justly.

For Trump and his toadies the null set is: private businesses which would be illegitimate to bully into submission.

Also of note:

• A worrisome trend? Or internal sabotage? Jonah Goldberg warns: Beware the New Americanism. (archive.today link)

  I went down an ugly rabbit hole the other day. In case you didn’t know, the Department of Labor is pursuing a … novel digital marketing campaign. It posts pictures of 1930s-style graphics of clean-cut young white men with captions like “Build Your Homeland’s Future!” “Your Nation Needs You!” and “American Workers First!” Maybe because I recently rewatched The Man in the High Castle, I’m a bit over-primed to find them creepy.

  The department has been doing this for a while, and I’ve largely ignored the posts, intentionally. So much of what this administration does is a kind of trolling. They want people to complain so they can then say, “See! Our critics are anti-white!” or “Look at what their TDS has caused them to get mad at now! These are inspired by Norman Rockwell!”

  But then over the weekend Labor put out this doozy with the tagline “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage. Remember who you are, American.”

  As many have noted, this was awfully close to “Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Führer.” And then there was what seems to be a dog whistle to Which Way Western Man?, a tract by Nazi sympathizer and white supremacist William Gayley Simpson.

  So, are there some serious wannabe fascists in the Department of Labor?

  Or (alternatively) are there malicious Department of Labor employees who want to paint the Trump Administration as being fascist-adjacent, and nobody in a position to stop them has noticed?

  Neither explanation is good, but fingers crossed it's the latter.

• Those horseshoe ends keep getting closer. New Hampshire Journal notes a local pol who probably has one of those big corkboards filled with newspaper clippings, pushpins, and yards of dot-connecting red yarn: NHDem Chair Buckley Spreads Conspiracy Theory That 2024 Was Stolen From Harris.

  Before the Trump era, claims of stolen presidential elections were largely the domain of the Democratic Party.

  In 2000, prominent Democrats declared George W. Bush “selected, not elected.” Four years later, a conspiracy theory involving Diebold voting machines inspired 31 House Democrats to vote against certifying Bush’s victory in Ohio.

  In 2016, it was Hillary Clinton and allegations of Russian collusion.

  But in the wake of President Trump’s 312-226 Electoral College victory in 2024— including wins in all seven swing states — theories of election theft have largely been relegated to the fringes of the internet.

  And Ray Buckley’s social media feed.

  And darned if those new allegations don't bear serious resemblance to Trump's raves about 2020's "stolen" election.

• But are they really? Aporia Magazine wonders Why are intelligent people more liberal? The answer is obvious if you're a liberal. (I'm not, unless you stick "classical" in front.) But:

  In an 1866 debate in the House of Commons, Sir John Pakington called out a fellow member of the House, John Stuart Mill, over a statement he had made in his book Representative Government.

  Pakington noted that “we, the Conservative party, by the law of our existence, and as a matter of necessity, are what he calls the stupidest party in the State”. Mill replied: “I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant that stupid persons are generally Conservative.” He then added, “I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any Honourable Gentleman will question it.”

  While the concepts of IQ and general intelligence would not be invented for another 40 years,1 Mill was onto something. Studies consistently find that intelligent people are more socially liberal. Though the effect isn’t huge, it shows up in practically every dataset. Intelligent people are less racist, sexist and homophobic. They are less religious and less nationalistic. And they’re more likely to support free speech, immigration, sexual freedom, abortion rights, gay marriage and legalisation of marijuana.2

  The author notes that the correlation is significant, but weak: there are plenty of smart conservatives, and plenty of dumb liberals. (Like Ray Buckley.)

  But he also attributes some of the effect is due to "cognitive error". So you'll want to avoid that.

• USPS delenda est. It can't happen soon enough. Reason's Jack Nicastro reports: The new USPS electric vehicles cost $22,000 more than other electric vans.

  In 2014, the United States Postal Service (USPS) began replacing its fleet of delivery vehicles. In the almost 12 years since, only about 6 percent of its 51,500 custom-built delivery vehicles have been delivered. The Postal Service says the rollout will last at least two more years.

  The signature USPS delivery truck is the Grumman Life Long Vehicle (LLV), which first entered service in 1986. Designed to last over 20 years, some have now been in service for twice as long, and don't include many modern amenities, like air conditioning and airbags. Maintaining the LLVs beyond their best-by date involved reverse-engineering the 130,000-strong fleet for discontinued parts, according to The Washington Post. In 2014, the USPS began its $9.6 billion fleet upgrade by announcing the Next Generation Delivery Vehicle (NGDV) program.

  Oshkosh Defense, which produces rather mean-looking tactical vehicles for the American military (and has never before produced a delivery van), was awarded a multibillion-dollar contract in February 2021 to produce the NGDV for the Postal Service over 10 years. The Post details the production nightmare that ensued. After repeated delays, setbacks, and quadrupling the minimum number of electric NGDVs, thanks to a generous $3 billion subsidy from the Inflation Reduction Act, Oshkosh had only delivered 612 of 35,000 e-NGDVs by November 2025, and only 2,600 of the 16,500 internal combustion engine NGDVs.

  The word "boondoggle" appears later in the article. I wonder whose congressional district Oshkosh Defense is in.

• Happy Feet! James Lileks observes that Hep Sheiks Love That Hot Tuba. But that's just an excuse to embed:

  James calls the video "insane", and that's an understatement. What drugs were these people on back then?

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