Pun Salad

The right people are freaking out in expected ways to recent news, as Steve Guest documents:

The unhinged fearmongering about President Trump rescinding the endangerment finding needs to be studied, mocked, and understood for what it is: propaganda from the climate cult. https://t.co/28488U3Yri pic.twitter.com/q4ZhWMM8cP

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) February 13, 2026

In this area, the Trump Administration is on the right track, and the WSJ editorialists add their cheers for Trump’s Climate Liberation Act. (WSJ gifted link)

The editorial goes on to remark on the irony of progressives, usually aghast at Trump's authoritarianism, now upset that Trump wants to cut back his arbitrary authority bequeathed to him by past administrations.

There's also a sane response from the WaPo editorialists, following their recent brave trend: EPA is right to reverse Obama overreach. (WaPo gifted link)

And if you enjoy reading progressive rants: the editorial has (as I type) 1,194 comments, and the AI summary begins "Participants in this discussion express strong disapproval of the opinion piece…"

And finally, NewsBusters busts … HYSTERICAL ABC NEWS: Trump’s Going to Destroy the Planet and Kill You. That assumes that superintelligent AI doesn't beat him to it.

Also of note:

• But let's not let Trump off the hook that easily. Joe Lancaster reveals the pettiness and corruption behind the throne: Trump imposed 39 percent 'emergency' tariffs when Switzerland hurt his feelings.

  Trump imposed "reciprocal" tariffs on nearly every country in the world last year, citing the "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States" that "large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits" posed. This included a 31 percent tariff on goods from Switzerland. He later modified rates in July, which included raising Switzerland's to 39 percent.

  "The wealthy Alpine nation has been hit with one of the Trump administration's highest tariff percentages," Justin Klawans wrote in The Week at the time. "This has led to people across Switzerland, a country that typically stays out of global conflicts, wondering why the nation is in Trump's crosshairs and what it means for the Swiss economy."

  Why, indeed. As Reason's Eric Boehm wrote after the initial round, "last year, the average Swiss tariff on U.S. goods was a minuscule 0.2 percent, while the U.S. charged an average tariff of 1.4 percent on goods imported from Switzerland." Switzerland then lowered the rate to zero, making it even more nonsensical for Trump to impose "reciprocal" duties of 31 percent. (Further adding to the confusion, Trump dropped the rate to 15 percent in November—not after economic concessions but when the Swiss gave him expensive gifts.)

  In a Fox Business interview that aired Tuesday, Trump told Larry Kudlow he imposed the original tariff on Switzerland because of a $42 billion trade deficit with the country, but he raised it because its leader was rude to him.

  "I got an emergency call from, I believe, the prime minister of Switzerland," Trump said, "and she was very aggressive, but nice, but very aggressive. 'Sir, we are a small country, we can't do this, we can't do this,' I couldn't get her off the phone….And I didn't really like the way she talked to us, so instead of giving her a reduction, I raised it to 39 percent."

  How about doing that checks-and-balance thing, Congress? SCOTUS?

• And another reminder of how unpresidential the President is. Christian Schneider adds to a long list: Trump Busts Another Taboo. (archive.today link)

  Trump loyalists once understood that attacking civilians had generally been off the table. It’s why they took such umbrage at Hillary Clinton in 2016 deeming “half” of Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables.” Shots at Trump were all part of the game, of course — but Clinton turning her ire against his supporters was like an irate hockey player dropping his gloves, skating over to the seats, and starting to punch out the fans.

  Nonetheless, Trump is willing to shout his disdain for rank-and-file Americans from the roof of the White House. Recall that he reposted an AI-created (we suspect) video of himself flying a fighter jet labeled KING TRUMP, from which feces are released on people protesting his actions below.

  Just this week, Trump used social media to call U.S. Olympic skier Hunter Hess “a real loser” after Hess expressed “mixed emotions” about representing the U.S. given the trouble happening back home.

  For the 235th time: We coulda had Nikki Haley instead. Just sayin'

• Taking her cues from the boss. Not to be outdone in arbitrary pettiness, as reported at the (reliably anti-Trump) Daily Beast: ICE Barbie’s Alleged Lover Fired Her Pilot for Absurd Reason. "ICE Barbie" is DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and her alleged lover is Corey Lewandowski.

  Corey Lewandowski, who serves as a senior adviser to the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, fired the pilot after a blanket belonging to Noem was left behind on a different plane, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

  Noem was forced to switch planes due to a maintenance issue, but the blanket she used was not transferred to the second plane, according to people familiar with the incident. In response, Lewandowski fired the pilot.

  In another plot twist, the pilot was then reinstated after no one else was available to fly the pair home.

  Linus Van Pelt was unavailable for comment.

  But if you would prefer your news with less obvious bias, here's the WSJ: A Pilot Fired Over Kristi Noem’s Missing Blanket and the Constant Chaos Inside DHS. (WSJ gifted link)

  Lewandowski and Noem, who are both married, have publicly denied the reports of an affair, but people said they do little to hide their relationship inside the department. The DHS spokeswoman said the department “doesn’t waste time with salacious, baseless gossip.”

  The pair have lately been using a luxury 737 MAX jet, with a private cabin in back, for their travel around the country, according to people familiar with the matter. DHS is leasing the plane but is in the process of acquiring it for approximately $70 million. DHS has previously used other planes through the Coast Guard or other agencies for the secretary’s use.

  What a pair.

Well, maybe I'm not recalling that correctly. But Mr. Ramirez's memory is pretty sharp:

A couple of relevant text-filled links about the scheme formerly known as Ponzi: Romina Boccia at the Daily Economy goes there: To Save Social Security, Stop Subsidizing Wealthy Retirees.

You know who this is aimed at? The guy I see in the mirror brushing his teeth every morning.

But (seriously) I have a problem: Romina aims proposed benefit cuts at the "wealthy", which is fine in theory, but I'm pretty sure Uncle Stupid has no infrastructure that would allow it to accurately determine the "wealth" of millions of geezers. It does some snooping on those it suspects of financial shenanigans, but taking snapshots on the (volatile) assets of everyone at retirement age? Ye gods, I think that's problematic!

(The IRS currently claws back some Social Security benefits, but that's based on recipients having a high income from other sources, not "wealth".)

Veronique de Rugy has a high-voltage insight: Congress May Finally Touch the 'Third Rail.' Inflation Will Hold Them Accountable..

Interestingly, a runaway inflation also makes the problem worse, very quickly, since Social Security benefits go up automatically. Aieee!

Also of note:

• The CBO weighs in on the credit card you forgot you had. And Eric Boehm summarizes: Interest on the national debt will cost $16 trillion over next 10 years.

  Increased spending on old-age entitlements and the cost of financing the national debt will push annual budget deficits from $1.9 trillion this year to over $3 trillion by 2036.

  That's according to the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) latest 10-year budget estimate, released Wednesday morning. Over the next decade, the CBO expects the national debt to hit a record high of more than 120 percent of America's gross domestic product, exceeding the previous high of 106 percent near the end of World War II.

  Much of that new borrowing will occur despite an anticipated increase in federal revenue, which the CBO expects will increase from about $5.6 trillion this year to $8.3 trillion by 2036. That increase in revenue is completely swamped by a projected rise in government spending, which will surge from about $7 trillion this year to over $11.4 trillion by the end of the 10-year budget window.

  Hey, but what about that $18 trillion that Trump promised was in the pipeline?

  In 2036, we'll still be awaiting that.

• I'm sure this will kill more people than ICE. And yet, people don't seem to be as outraged about it. The WSJ editorialists on Vinay Prasad’s Vaccine Kill Shot. (WSJ gifted link)

  It’s hard to recall a regulator who has done as much damage to medical innovation in as little time as Vinay Prasad. In his latest drive-by shooting, the leader of the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine division rejected Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine without even a cursory review. This is arbitrary government at its worst.

  The FDA rarely refuses to review a drug or vaccine application. Our sources say the FDA has rejected only about 4% of applications without a review, typically when they are missing important information. That wasn’t the case with Moderna.

  Dr. Prasad spiked Moderna’s flu vaccine because its Phase 3 trial was putatively not “adequate and well-controlled.” He quibbled that the control group in Moderna’s late-stage trial didn’t receive the “best-available standard of care.” He decides what is “best.”

  I assume Vinay is following Junior's orders here. I'm pretty sure that pharmaceutical companies have yet to develop a vaccine that would regrow his spine.

  On the same topic, Alex Tabarrok has the same bad news. I Regret to Inform You that the FDA is FDAing Again.

  I had high hopes and low expectations that the FDA under the new administration would be less paternalistic and more open to medical freedom. Instead, what we are getting is paternalism with different preferences. In particular, the FDA now appears to have a bizarre anti-vaccine fixation, particularly of the mRNA variety (disappointing but not surprising given the leadership of RFK Jr.).

  The latest is that the FDA has issued a Refusal-to-File (RTF) letter to Moderna for their mRNA influenza vaccine, mRNA-1010. An RTF means the FDA has determined that the application is so deficient it doesn’t even warrant a review. RTF letters are not unheard of, but they’re rare—especially given that Moderna spent hundreds of millions of dollars running Phase 3 trials enrolling over 43,000 participants based on FDA guidance, and is now being told the (apparently) agreed-upon design was inadequate.

  Alex's bottom line:

  An administration that promised medical freedom is delivering medical nationalism: fewer options, less innovation, and a clear signal to every company considering pharmaceutical investment that the rules can change after the game is played. And this isn’t a one-product story. mRNA is a general-purpose platform with spillovers across infectious disease and vaccines for cancer; if the U.S. turns mRNA into a political third rail, the investment, talent, and manufacturing will migrate elsewhere. America built this capability, and we’re now choosing to export it—along with the health benefits.

  I've said this before, but: It's Calvinball, except with lives in the balance.

• 

  If the flu don't get ya, the singularity will. I'm currently reading a dire prediction of AI doom predicting … well, you can read the title for yourself over there on your right. Nate Silver is not as apocalyptic, but he's pretty gloomy: The singularity won't be gentle.

  So here’s a take I consider relatively straightforward, but I don’t think has really sunk into the conventional wisdom. If AI has even a fraction of the impact that many people in Silicon Valley now expect on the fabric of work and daily life, it’s going to have profound and unpredictable political impacts.

  Last June, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, published a blog post entitled “The Gentle Singularity”. If you’re not familiar with the jargon, the Singularity (sometimes capitalized, sometimes not) is a hypothesized extremely rapid takeoff in technological progress — so technologies that would once have taken years or decades to come to fruition might be realized in months, days, hours, minutes, microseconds. I’m not sure that I want to weigh in right now on my “priors” about the Singularity. It’s probably safe to say they’re more skeptical than your average Berkeley-based machine-learning researcher but more credulous than your typical political takes artist.

  These guys have put some thought into likely scenarios, and I haven't. (I have a good excuse: I went to bed on November 7, 2016, glumly resigned to the fact that Hillary Clinton was going to be our next President. Since then, I've avoided making predictions, "especially about the future".)

Reason's latest entry in their continuing series: Great moments in unintended consequences.

Remember: birds are flammable, pickpockets are sneaky, balloons eventually pop, taxation is theft.

Also of note:

• Future unintended consequences: unnecessary flu deaths. That's what leaps to mind from reading the WSJ headline: FDA Refuses to Consider Approving Use of Moderna’s New Flu Vaccine.

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration refused to review Moderna’s application to sell a new seasonal flu vaccine.

  The FDA sent Moderna a “refusal-to-file” letter earlier this month, saying the company’s study testing the vaccine wasn’t sufficient, and the agency wouldn’t take up the company’s request for approval to sell the shot, Moderna said Tuesday.

  In the letter, the FDA said Moderna failed during testing to compare its experimental flu vaccine with the best available vaccine on the market.

  Moderna said the FDA didn’t identify any concerns about the safety or effectiveness of the company’s experimental vaccine. The company said it was asking the agency for a meeting to discuss the matter.

  Moderna was surprised by the rejection. “It does feel like the rules of the game are being changed after it’s been played,” Moderna President Stephen Hoge said in an interview.

  With RFKJr calling the "shots" (heh), pharmaceutical companies had best prepare for unpredictable Calvinball rule changes from the FDA.

• So I'm not debating it. But… Isn't Jeff Blehar's headline a tad self-contradictory: Bad Bunny Super Bowl Halftime Show Is Not an ‘Issue’ Worth Debating.

  Worse:

  I switched off the game early because it was so boring, so I didn’t watch the halftime show when it was on. Instead, I “Twitter-watched” it — watched the reactions of others online. And what I saw spill forth was a Rorschach inkblot spreading out in real time: Was it political? Was it mild and inoffensive? Was it an entertaining hoot or a bizarre failure? All I know is that everybody was fighting bitterly about the cultural import of a guy who self-identifies as a vicious hare — which I assume is about as seriously as we should take him — and the angles were almost entirely predictable based on partisan priors. (Notable exception: Commentary’s John Podhoretz, who delightfully zagged where others zigged.)

  When I finally checked the thing out myself, I had three takeaways: (1) My conversational Spanish is way rustier than I thought. (2) Golly, Puerto Rican women sure are lovely. (3) Whoever choreographed this should work on the next major stage production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Seriously, hundreds of humans dressed as tall reeds and sugarcane stalks? Watching them exit the field afterward was its own kind of surreal joy. Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane on Sunday night, so if you’re the sort to put stock in witch’s curses, best start contemplating the end of your reign.

  Jeffrey gets more content out of the halftime show by not watching it real time. I will have to remember this for next year.

• And that tune is "Misty Mountain Hop" by Led Zep. Jim Geraghty notes the Gray Lady having second thoughts about America getting its herb on: The New York Times Changes Its Tune on Marijuana, at Last.

  It’s always a good day when the New York Times editorial board catches up to our Charlie Cooke.

  Back in November, Charlie wrote a typically insightful and well-thought-out magazine piece lamenting that “marijuana legalization is a good idea with bad consequences”:

  The United States has some of the greatest and most interesting cities in the world — New York, Chicago, San Francisco — and, over the last five or so years, almost all of them have become unpleasant to walk around in thanks to the ubiquitous smell of weed. Truly, it is everywhere — including, most distressingly, wafting through open-air restaurants and sidewalk cafés. There is a reason that the colloquial name for marijuana is “skunk,” and there is a reason that one tries to avoid skunks: They are not, in any circumstance, nice to be around. . . .

  Nobody seems to believe that the omnipresent smell of weed is the inevitable consequence of their viewpoint. And they’re right: It’s not. Toleration of the public consumption of marijuana — whether explicit or implicit — is a choice that exists wholly independently of the underlying legal status of the drug. Indeed, when one stops to think about it for a moment, it’s rather peculiar that we have ended up in this position in the first instance. The go-to comparison for cannabis is alcohol. And, in almost every major city in the United States, it is illegal to drink alcohol on the street. How can it possibly be the case that we are more permissive toward a drug that has just been legalized than toward the one that has been a mainstay of our culture (including during Prohibition!) since the beginning of the republic?

  We could have just put piles of burning tires interspersed throughout the downtowns of major U.S. cities and achieved the same olfactory effect.

  Charlie also pointed out the absurdity that a culture that has effectively banned tobacco smoking in every public space is now completely fine with smoking marijuana in those same public spaces. A major argument that drove the ban on tobacco smoking in public places was the danger of secondhand smoke. Apparently, both the broader public and most lawmakers have decided that when it comes to marijuana smoking, we’re just not going to worry about that sort of thing.

  I lost my sense of smell a few years ago, so someone would have to tell me if that's an issue in the LFOD state.

• His competition is fierce, unfortunately. George Will notes an unofficial Olympic event: JD Vance vies for the gold medal in coarseness and flippancy. (WaPo gifted link)

  Spurning the rich subtleties of the English language, JD Vance has a penchant for words that he perhaps thinks display manly vigor, and express a populist’s rejection of refinement. In a recent social media post, he called someone whose posts annoyed him a “dipshit.” He recently told an interviewer that anyone who criticizes his wife can “eat shit.”

  Now, Vance might reasonably believe that many Americans enjoy potty-mouthed high officials. The “Access Hollywood” tape became public 32 days before the 2016 election in which the star of the tape, who mused about grabbing women’s genitals, was elected president. At a minimum, it would be reasonable for Vance to suppose that, after five years of a president who talks about “shithole countries,” Americans are inured to such pungent language.

  I will admit that I've grown inordinately fond of using "bullshit" when talking about Trump or Vance. In my defense, George, I'm not sure there's a better word available.

• I will try to keep this in mind. Kat Rosenfield advises us: Stop Asking Olympians How They Feel About America.

  The most salacious Winter Olympics drama of the week was, for me, an emotional roller coaster. A high-speed journey from dismay to horror to nauseated recognition, culminating in a sense of having fallen out of space and time as déjà vu collided with clairvoyance. The thing that was happening had happened before; it would happen again, and again.

  I am referring, of course, to the incident wherein American Olympic skier Hunter Hess said he had “mixed emotions” about certain U.S. domestic policies, and President Donald Trump called Hess a “real loser” who “shouldn’t have tried out for the team, and it’s too bad he’s on it.”

  Hess’s comments appear to have been made in response to a question from the press about how it felt to be representing the United States at this present moment of political turmoil (as opposed to, you know, any prior moment of the near-continuous turmoil of the past 15-odd years). That Trump responded by calling Hess a “loser” is best categorized, like so many Trumpian shenanigans, under “disappointment” rather than “surprise.” I’m not saying the 79-year-old president of the United States shouldn’t indulge in petty middle school–style beefing with an athlete one-third his age; I’m saying, if he’s going to do it, can’t he steal Hess’s girlfriend, put rotten eggs in his locker, and challenge him to a dance-off like a normal person?

  Fine, Kat. I just hope Gertie Burper does OK in (or at least, survives) the luge.

Recently on the book blog:

I put this book by Stephen Witt on my get-at-library list after reading the WSJ review last year. (WSJ gifted link). I seem to be doing that a lot lately. I was somewhat surprised by how much I enjoyed reading the book. Witt has a real knack for combining personal anecdotes, pungent observations, and layman-level technical detail into an interesting whole.

Part of the book is a biography of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. I think it's fair to say that he's flown under the radar for most of his career. There are businessfolk who can't/couldn't seem to stay out of the headlines: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, … But (shame on me, perhaps) I couldn't have told you who helmed Nvidia before reading this book. And, guess what, Jensen Huang might go down in history as having a bigger impact on the 21st century than any of those guys.

If you believe some of the AI pessimists, though, Huang might be known as "the guy who caused mankind's doom." (Except, small detail, there might be nobody left to make that claim.)

Huang's biography takes up the early part of the book. His unlikely origin story: born in Taiwan, raised in Thailand, sent by his parents (at age 10) to a dinky Baptist-run school in rural Kentucky. But (eventually) rejoined his parents in Oregon, worked at Denny's, became an expert ping-pong player, attended Oregon State, got a job at AMD in semiconductor design, and eventually…

He still likes to go to Denny's for a big breakfast. And, according to Witt, who tagged along one morning, he left a $1000 tip for the waitress. I don't think it's revealed whether that's his usual behavior.

What is, apparently Huang's usual behavior: angrily dressing down his employees in front of their co-workers. You wouldn't think that would be a successful business strategy, but it worked for Nvidia. Huang almost never fired those targets of his wrath. And they seemed to remain fiercely loyal toward the company and Huang himself.

It doesn't hurt, I suppose, that he made them all pretty rich along the way.

The book is also a biography of Nvidia; it is perhaps unappreciated how many near-death experiences the company had on its way to its current dizzying success. (As I type: a $4.58 trillion market cap, stock price up 1160% over the past five years.) But before that, they had their share of dud products, false starts, takeover attempts, etc.

The company in its early days was aimed at gamers who lusted after ever-higher performance video. But some curious coders noted that the Nvidia hardware could also do arithmetic incredibly quickly. Which allowed scientists to "smuggle demanding mathematical payloads—say, simulating the formation of a galaxy, or modeling the ignition process of a nuclear bomb—into hardware meant to render carjackings and disembowelments." (One of Witt's "pungent observations" I mentioned above.)

The third part of the book is a layperson's history of AI, a field full of hype, broken promises, and dead-end research. Huang's, and Nvidia's, success was in resurrecting and combining two scorned, out-of-fashion subfields: one in AI (neural networks), the other in computer architecture (parallel processing). This (eventually) turned out to work surprisingly well for the company, to put it mildly.

The penultimate chapter in the book is a look at the possibility that AI will kill us all. In the cheerful language of the theorists: p(doom), the probability of doom. I've always been an optimist about that, thinking that capitalist innovation and technical progress has always been an easy net win for mankind in the past. But it's hard to deny that a lot of smart people think differently.

Huang is not one of those people. In the book's final chapter, Witt describes his final interview with Huang, where he tries to elicit commentary about those dire predictions. This does not work out well: Witt finds himself at the receiving end of one of Huang's harangues. Witt is hurt and somewhat surprised, and has deep thoughts; it's almost as if Huang doesn't want to think about possible downsides.

So: we find ourselves fulfilling that (fake) Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times." Thanks to Huang (and others).

I put this book by SCOTUS Justice Amy Coney Barrett on my get-at-library list thanks to a good review from Barton Swaim last year in the WSJ.

Some of the book is autobiography, although she avoids being overly personal, or (heaven forbid) critical of her political/judicial adversaries. She tells feelgood stories about her career, colleagues, and family; outlines her career (SCOTUS clerk, lawprof, lower court judge, …). There's next to nothing, for example, about the overtly partisan confirmation process, where all Senate Democrats voted against her. In this area, she's all sweetness and light, with a lot of emphasis about how collegial SCOTUS is, with (sometimes bitter) legal disagreements never intruding on the Justices' mutual respect and affection.

Apart from autobiography, the book goes into detail about how SCOTUS works: what clerks do (she was at one time a clerk for Antonin Scalia); the mysteries of standing, certiorari, amicus briefs, and the like. Something I didn't previously appreciate: the Constitution restricts SCOTUS to Cases and [specific] Controversies; they can't just make up decisions on issues they find interesting or important.

Another portion of the book goes into methods of judicial interpretation. Justice Barrett lays out her case for Scalia-like originalism/textualism. (She's pushing on an open door in my case.) But there are also a couple of interesting chapters on how justices have to deal with sloppily-worded statutes, or some with outright mistakes. ("I think they meant to say 'illegal', instead of 'legal' there.") Laws are written (mostly) in English, and English is notoriously ambiguous! One of her examples: a lime-green gas-guzzler parked in front of a sign saying "Green Vehicles Only". Does the owner get ticketed?)

I was interested by the book, at the "aspiring dilettante" level. It occurred to me that it would make an excellent high-school graduation gift to a bright student contemplating a career in law. If they pore over the pages in rapt fascination, I'd encourage them to go for it!

Okay: the life preserver is labeled "D’Amaro", and that's the guy Mickey is advising, Disney's next CEO Josh D'Amaro.

And it's good advice, Josh.

Why post it? Hey, I just like Steamboat Willie.

Also of note:

• Flour and sawdust? Kevin D. Williamson goes up to Iowa's Hat: A New American Development. (Subtitle: "A short, sad tale of public grief and newfangled Midwestern Jacobinism in the City of Flour and Sawdust." (archive.today link)

  MINNEAPOLIS—Uff da! Minneapolis has seen better days.

  If you were going by the hallucinogenic Fox News/talk radio/your weird uncle who is on Facebook way too much/X/GOP press release/ipso-facto-nutso/parallel universe view of the world that informs so much of the right-wing side of the American political conversation, then you’d think that Minneapolis, the “City of Flour and Sawdust,” was pretty much exclusively run by some kind of al-Shabaab-adjacent Somali mafia, that it was all halal butchers and mosques and the muezzin’s call of Ashhadu an la ilaha illa Allah! ringing out incongruously over the frozen urban Wonder Bread tundra. But turns out, it’s a lot of familiar American slop: chain strip clubs and drag-show cabarets and ersatz retro diners, faux Irish pubs that fill up promptly at 5:03 p.m. on weekdays with broad-bottomed government workers in stretchy slacks knocking down a couple of vodka-and-Sprites after a long day’s bureaucratting, the now-ubiquitous sickly stench of marijuana smoke on the streets, and just scads and scads of downscale white people, both the expensively educated kind (“Try dunking some of that gluten-free chai cookie into this depth charge!” is a literal thing I heard from a young woman at the May Day Café recounting her internship in ceramics, and, by God, she really did say “gluten-free”) and the genuine lumpenproletarian cigarette-smokers, including these two pockmarked, runty Midwestern specimens in a crappy green Subaru who pulled up alongside me as I was walking down Lake Street inquiring with as much modest menace as they could muster about my “credentials.” Their faces were largely obscured by over-the-nose black masks (just like the insidious agents of you-know-who!) and big black sunglasses, but they were unmistakably pallid, dead-guy white and just trying real hard to sound like tough guys. They weren’t sharing their names, of course, but I immediately nicknamed them Elwood (the thinner one, at the wheel) and Jake (who had had a few more Twinkies in him and did the talking) inasmuch as they looked like a couple of antifa dorks trying to launch a Blues Brothers tribute act.

  Well, it's sheer genius from KDW. And I especially like the Uff da!, something my dad used to say when I was being obstreperous.

  Not that it matters: Although born in South Dakota, Dad had to spend some of his formative years in Norway, thanks to WWI making transatlantic travel perilous. After the war, back in the USA, he entered grade school in Lake Mills, Iowa not knowing English.

  And the "flour and sawdust" thing is explained here.

• Good question, but it's surprising who's asking it. It's the President of Dartmouth College, Sian Leah Beilock: Is a Four-Year Degree Worth It? (WSJ gifted link)

  Families across the U.S. are questioning whether a four-year degree is worth it. Student debt has soared. Recent graduates are struggling in a rapidly changing job market. Colleges can also be too ideological: On many campuses, students are exposed to a limited range of perspectives, signaling to them what rather than how to think.

  American higher education has a trust problem. We shouldn’t pretend otherwise, and it won’t solve itself. In 2026 I’d like to see colleges and universities across the country take steps to restore trust. As president of Dartmouth College, I’m committed to this goal, and how to restore public confidence in higher education animates conversations among my presidential peers.

  She makes a lot of sense, and I wish her luck. (There's a famous quote I can't find right now about even the most radical left-wing faculty can be amazingly reactionary when it comes to campus reforms.)

  I especially wish her luck with this:

  Third, re-center higher education on learning rather than political posturing. Too often, colleges and universities have participated in the culture wars. The result is an environment in which students and faculty feel they must toe an ideological line rather than explore ideas that fall outside prevailing norms.

  Our institutions must reclaim a narrower, firmer sense of our role. That means embracing institutional neutrality—or restraint, as we call it at Dartmouth—on issues that don’t directly affect our mission or core functions. When we, as institutions, rush to issue statements every time there’s a national or global controversy, we signal there’s a “right” position and that opposing views are unwelcome.

  At the University Near Here, adopting "institutional neutrality" was #1 on the "Findings" list last year from the President’s Working Group on Free Speech and Expression Policies and Communication. I haven't seen anything formal about that, though.

• Must I write about Epstein stuff? I find it pretty boring, mostly one nothingburger after another, except for the Andrew formerly knowing as Prince. But Andrew C. McCarthy has a pretty good take on the latest, and he's refreshingly honest: Of Course Ghislaine Maxwell Took the Fifth. (archive.today link)

  To recap, surrogates of the president’s 2024 campaign, including Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, who were later tapped to run the DOJ and FBI, got Trump supporters spun up about a massive Epstein cover-up — the notion that the Biden administration was suppressing what should have been charges against a pedophilia ring in which Epstein and Maxwell were supplying underage girls to prominent “clients.”

  The conspiracy theory never made any sense — and I say that as someone who has proved more than his share of actual conspiracies. First, the Biden DOJ, which indicted Trump twice and provided assistance to Democratic district attorneys who also indicted Trump, was trying hard to make any criminal case against Trump that might stick. Second, it is inconceivable that the Epstein prosecutors in the Southern District of New York (SDNY), led by Maureen Comey, daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, would have buried a career-making case against Trump or any other prominent person. Third, as Rich and I have discussed on the podcast several times, the big problem — the most publicly misunderstood problem — is that most sex crimes are not federal; they are state offenses. That includes sex with underage persons.

  Oh, right.

Well, it wasn't the Patriots. They were awful. But Anheuser-Busch InBev deserves some love for their commercial:

That's so cool.

I am normally a Sam Adams guy, but the next time I buy beer…

In other SB news: I kind of spaced during Bad Bunny. Not for me. Not aimed at me.

But I did like the opening ceremony's renditions of "America the Beautiful" and "The Star Spangled Banner". Which brings me to a very pithy quote from Yuval Levin's essay in the current National Review: America the Durable. (archive.today link)

Yuval's article is about our centuries-long collective worry that our country is circling the drain. That worry, too, has a long tradition of existence.

Also of note:

• Rhetorical Shenanigan #517. Well, actually, I haven't been counting. I've seen quite a few over the decades, though. In the WSJ "Free Expression" newsletter, Jack Butler chides users of one of his irritants: ‘Our Democracy’ Isn’t Your Free Pass. (WSJ gifted link)

  “Our democracy” is under attack. Not yours. Not theirs. Ours.

  Survey the rhetoric of left-leaning politicians and you’ll notice a liberal employment of this phrase “our democracy.” Of late, it has been a favorite of state-level Democrats defending their vigorous redistricting efforts. It is invoked as a civic-minded and incontrovertible proposition, an all-purpose warrant for whatever the speaker wanted in the first place.

  The left had already made “our democracy” a vernacular mainstay when Kamala Harris said she was running for president in 2019. “The American dream and our American democracy are under attack and on the line like never before,” she said.

  “Never before” happens a lot nowadays. Ms. Harris’s presidential campaign didn’t make it to 2020, but she ended up on the Democratic ticket that year and again in 2024. In June 2024, she issued the self-fulfilling nullity that “Our democracy is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it—and we stand prepared to do just that.” Once she became the Democrats’ presidential nominee, she promised to “stand for our democracy.” And after democracy rendered a verdict on her in that election different from the one she hoped for, she nonetheless said that “we will never give up the fight for our democracy.”

  Jack notes that "our democracy" is also at stake in recent efforts ensuring Congressional districts are gerrymandered to minimize the possibility that Republicans might get elected.

• I'm tired of looking at that big stupid orange rocket. So is Andrew Follett, who says: We Need a Private-Sector Overhaul of U.S. Space Exploration. (archive.today link)

  The [Artemis] program hasn’t just been inefficient in terms of time, but it’s been a money drain as well, a sign of the inherent inefficiency of even noble governmental endeavors. Even by the standards of government procurement, the rocket is massively over budget. The SLS was originally supposed to cost $7 billion. But before it has even flown a single crew of astronauts, taxpayers have already spent roughly $32 billion on the SLS rocket, according to the Planetary Society. The capsule necessary for astronauts to operate the rocket already comes to another $20 billion. In 2023, NASA’s Office of the Inspector General estimated SLS will cost $93 billion for the rocket to deliver astronauts to the Moon, and costs have only risen since then.

  “Artemis is not even an effective program to explore the Moon, offering significantly lower capability than we demonstrated during the Apollo missions more than a half-century ago,” Zubrin continued, discussing his objections to the plan to return to the Moon previously published in National Review. “It’s now been eight years since Trump started the Artemis program, and stuck with a mission plan that makes absolutely no sense, we are still years away from a Moon landing. Eight years after JFK announced Apollo, we were walking on the Moon. And that was done by an America with half the population and one quarter the GDP of today, using slide rules instead of AI to do its design work.”

  With all the hoopla about "fraud" in various entitlement/welfare schemes, it's difficult to focus on the reality here: there's no fraud, but vast sums of taxpayer cash wind up in some well-connected pockets, with very little to show for it. (Also see: California High-Speed Rail.)

• Jamie, you say that like it's a bad thing. Jonathan Turley looks at the latest excuse for opposing Voter ID laws, as promulgated by CongressCritter Jamie Raskin (D-MD): Voter ID Law Violates the 19th Amendment in Denying the Vote to Women. Raskin's reply to his CNN interlocutor, who threw him what should have been a softball:

  “… what’s wrong with the Save act? What’s wrong with it is that it might violate the 19th Amendment, which gives women the right to vote, because you’ve got to show that all of your different IDs match. So if you’re a woman who’s gotten married and you’ve changed your name to your husband’s name, but you’re so now your current name is different from your name at birth. Now you’ve got to go ahead and document that you need an affidavit explaining why. And why would we go to all of these, troubles in order to keep people from voting when none of the states that are actually running the elections are telling us that there’s any problem.”

  Jonathan debunks. But Jamie's condescension is over the top even taken at its face value: We can't expect these delicate flowers to do something as complex as meeting ID requirements! That's a man's job!

  Ladies—and gentlemen, for that matter—if you can't manage that, maybe the country would be better off with you not voting.

Recently on the book blog:

I recently completed a reading project: read (or reread) Ian Fleming's James Bond books. I did that in order to prepare for reading Anthony Horowitz's Bond novels. I'm a fan of his Hawthorne/Horowitz mystery series. And Mrs. Salad and I really liked the Brit TV shows he was involved with: "Midsomer Murders" and "Foyle's War". So:

Good news, this book fit right in with the Flemish ouvré. It actually includes some of Fleming's actual prose, as noted in the Acknowledgements: 400-500 words in Chapter Two, describing a meeting between Bond, M, and M's Chief of Staff. And Horowitz did a pretty good job, I thought, of settling into Fleming's writing style.

The book is set soon after the events in Goldfinger, somewhere around 1957. Bond has returned to London, and has set up an uneasy cohabitation with his nemesis/ally from that book, Miss Pussy Galore. His new assignment involves foiling a SMERSH plot to murder a famous Grand Prix driver during a German race. The unlikely method: Bond is to enter the race himself, and do in the Russian driver/assassin before he can complete his murderous scheme.

Which (small spoiler) Bond does, but in his preparations for the race, Bond notices a new face that seems to be collaborating with the SMERSH goons. This turns out to be Korean villain/psychopath Jai Seong Sin, who has hatched a nefarious (also: convoluted and unlikely) plot involving the USA's efforts in the "Vanguard" satellite project. It involves massive death and destruction in the heart of New York City!

There's a lot of action, an unlikely-named female sidekick ("Jeopardy Lane"), near-death escapes, all the usual 007 ingredients. Including the usual villain flaws: instead of just shooting Bond in the head, Sin engineers a complex death scenario that Bond is able, barely, to thwart. It wouldn't be a Bond book without that, I guess!

The punters at Polymarket seem to think this more likely:

BREAKING: The odds of Jesus Christ returning this year have doubled overnight.

4% chance. pic.twitter.com/fPOVV8aFSA

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) February 4, 2026

I suppose you'd see longer odds as you got more specific, for example "Jesus Christ returning at Levi's Stadium on February 8, 2026, disrupting Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl. That link goes to Philip Greenspun's speculation on BB's set list. "Monaco" sounds as if it could be rated NSFSBHS ("not safe for Super Bowl Halftime Shows"). Phil excerpts the lyrics (in English), which I won't do. But here's ChatGPT's analysis:

Well, I'll watch anyway, just in case JC shows. In that event, future postings may be put off indefinitely.

Also of note:

• Federalism was fun while it lasted. Yuval Levin engages in some long-memory whataboutism: Nationalizing Elections Is a Very Bad Idea, as It Was When Democrats Tried It. (NR gifted link)

  When Joe Biden entered office with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress in 2021, the Democrats insisted that their first priority would be to nationalize American election administration.

  A bill to do that, the so-called “For the People Act,” was H.R. 1 and S. 1 in the 117th Congress. In the immediate wake of a crisis of confidence in our election system created by a president who refused to accept his loss of a close election, the Democrats sought to have an exceptionally narrow Democratic majority in Washington take over key election-administration rulemaking in every state and impose new and often looser rules involving voter registration, ID requirements, eligibility, ballot harvesting, early voting, drop-boxes, mail-in voting, locations and hours of polling stations, voting by felons, campaign donations, and more. It was madness. Utter civic vandalism.

  The problem wasn’t even that their doing this would change the results of elections. It’s unlikely that it would have. The problem was just that this would be a needless assault on public confidence in the system at a moment of already collapsing trust. But anyone pointing this out at the time was sure to be dismissed as a racist partisan hack (believe me).

  Pun Salad's postings relevant to the "For the People Act" back in 2021: here, here, here, and here. I'd forgotten just how awful it was.

• I would have deleted "Maybe" from the headline. Tom Foley has a more modest proposal: Maybe It’s Time to Close the Kennedy Center for Good. (WSJ gifted link)

  Washington isn’t a cultural center the way New York, Nashville and Los Angeles are. It has no cultural infrastructure to support artists and art-based institutions: no Juilliard, no Grand Ole Opry, no University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. Washington doesn’t even have a bohemian or hip section of town where artists prefer to hang out. Given scant home-based talent and difficulty recruiting the best talent to Washington, the programming at the Kennedy Center hasn’t been competitive with what large-city performing arts institutions offer.

  The building is another problem. People try to be nice about it, but let’s face it, it’s cold, flinty and cheap looking. It lacks grace and grandness. Designed by Edward Durell Stone, it suffers from the out-of-date look of similar 1960s architecture. It’s a bunch of rectangular boxes stacked on top of each other. Too many straight lines and flat surfaces. It’s jammed into a tight space along the Potomac as if it were a low-budget real-estate development without enough money for land worthy of the building.

  The exterior and interior are bland. The building has no elegant approach. Despite its exterior Carrara marble surfaces, the building looks lightweight and poorly made. The pillars surrounding the building don’t fit it. The interior is cavernous with no comfortable, welcoming spaces (including the boardroom). Even the President’s Box feels as though the National Park Service manages it, which it once did.

  In the 1970s, when we lived in suburban Maryland, Mrs. Salad and I used to frequent the American Film Institute's small movie theater at the JFK Center, which showed classic movies, cheaply. The AFI boogied out of DC proper in 2003, moving out to a renovated theater in Silver Spring, Maryland. That was long after we moved back to New Hampshire, where the movies are more expensive, but everything else is nicer.

Recently on the book blog:

[Pictured book here is pretty close to my hardcover copy, obtained from the Science Fiction Book Club back in 1981 or so, unread until now, about 45 years later!]

I was encouraged at the beginning of this book; it threatened to have interesting characters, a unique setting, some intriguing ideas, some sly humor, … but it just went on too long, and got silly and incoherent, and I forgot what all the fuss was about.

It's set mostly on the planet End of Nothing, where a group of robots have established the "Vatican-17", a thousand-year-old project to create an ultimate true religion. In support of this effort, they have enlisted human "Listeners", and developed technology to send Listeners throughout space and time, so they may experience the variety of life's instances. For example, what it's like to have been a trilobite, back on early Earth, burrowing in the warm ocean mud.

Into this stable setup comes Tennyson, a doctor on the lam from planet Gutshot; he essentially stows away on the starship Wayfarer, helmed by a cynical captain, whose only purpose is to ferry passengers and supplies to End of Nothing. Also on the ship is Jill Roberts, a journalist who's been hired to write a history of Project Pope, describing its major findings. Once on the planet, they encounter Decker, who got stranded on End of Nothing after a long-ago starship disaster, and now leads a hermit-like existence with "Whisperer", who appears to him as a sentient cloud of sparkly dust.

Complications arise when one of the Listeners, "Mary", an older lady, claims to have encountered Heaven on her journey. Can that possibly be true?

So, not bad, but after a few hundred pages…

Plop, plop, plop went Poppler.

You would think this wouldn't be controversial: Governments should stop subsidizing stadiums for billionaires.

Once you've watched that (and you should, it's hilarious, while also maddening), you can check out the numbers for Publicly Funded NFL Stadiums at 22Zin, a website from Tom Knecht exploring the relationship between politics and sports.

Again, this should be as obvious as 2+3=5. Tom's article is from 2023, but here's a timeless observation, not adjusted for inflation since then:

Tom has charts showing the diverse levels of taxpayer subsidies for current stadia. Patriots fans rejoice: Gillette Stadium received $0 in direct subsidies! (But as Tom points out, "that doesn’t even count the myriad tax breaks, tax credits, tax rebates, donated land, infrastructure projects, and opportunity costs that state and local politicians give NFL owners."

Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, CA, site of tomorrow's Superb Owl, is also on the low end of the taxpayer ripoff scale, a mere $130 million in direct cash.

The current money pit under construction is the Buffalo Bills' Highmark Stadium:

Fun fact from that Wikipedia page:

During the excavation phase in September 2023, a fan jumped over a fence guarding the construction site and fell into a hole 30-40 feet. He was found "covered in human excrement" and under the influence of drugs and alcohol before being removed from the site.

Don't ever change, Buffalo.

Also of note:

• I'm sure I don't know the answer. Cass Sunstein wonders: Does Liberalism Have An Aesthetic?

  “There are reams of writing about fascist military parades and socialist-realist murals, yet there is almost nothing comparable about the dull tint at the end of history. Where is liberalism’s ‘Fascinating Fascism’? Who is its Riefenstahl?”

  So writes Becca Rothfeld, in an energetic, sharp, fun, and highly critical review of two books, one by yours truly (On Liberalism, if you want to know). https://thepointmag.com/criticism/listless-liberalism/

  Rothfeld’s review is called Listless Liberalism (ouch).

  Becca's review and Cass's observations are interesting enough. But what leapt immediately to my mind (for some reason) was Cafe Hayek's Quotation of the Day for yesterday:

  Liberalism is no religion, no world view, no party of special interests. It is no religion because it demands neither faith nor devotion, because there is nothing mystical about it, and because it has no dogmas. It is no worldview because it does not try to explain the cosmos and because it says nothing and does not seek to say anything about the meaning and purpose of human existence. It is no party of special interests because it does not provide or seek to provide any special advantage whatsoever to any individual or any group.

  The Cafe's proprietor, Don Boudreaux, cites Ludwig von Mises’s 1927 book, Liberalism.

  I'm not sure I totally agree, I'll have to think on it, but it seems relevant.

• Woodrow Wilson was an inspiration for Tolkien's Sauron.

  Well, that's probably not actually true.

  And yet, Dan McLaughlin asks fellow conservatives to Resist the Temptation of Illiberal Power. (archive.today link)

  First Things editor R. R. Reno made an unusual choice recently to write an ode of sorts to Woodrow Wilson. As the author of “The Hater’s Guide to Woodrow Wilson” (an ongoing series), it is my sworn duty to respond.

  But respond to what? As often seems to be the case with “postliberal” arguments, Reno is vague and euphemistic in exactly how he wishes to present Wilson as a role model other than to promote a general sentiment in favor of strongman government. We need “solidarity,” he writes, and “our history has . . . been marked by periods during which illiberal methods were employed to renew and buttress solidarity,” a process in which “Woodrow Wilson played a central role.” Wilson and FDR “sought to renew American solidarity, which required taming and restraining certain kinds of freedom, especially freedom of contract. (Roosevelt intimidated the Supreme Court to secure the overturning of Lochner.) In a word, Wilson and FDR administered strong doses of illiberalism.” This is, in unspecified ways, a good thing because the past gave us the present, and this makes it good. And we ought therefore to repeat the past:

  We are living in a similar period. Immigration, economic vulnerability, globalization—the American people are anxious. Once again, a powerful, energetic executive presses against liberal norms, as did Wilson and FDR. I don’t wish to commend any of the particular measures taken by the present administration, although some strike me as wise and necessary. My point is more fundamental. . . . We’ve been here before as a nation, and we have had statesmen who addressed liberalism’s failures so that the American ideals of liberty could be renewed and reshaped for new circumstances. In 2026, we would do well to study the methods of Wilson and FDR and weigh their achievements as well as failures. For we need something of their innovation and daring to navigate our present crisis.

  What methods of Wilson and FDR, other than intimidating the Supreme Court with threats of Court-packing, does Reno have in mind? The Palmer raids? Jailing dissenters? Segregating the federal government? Forcible sterilizations? German and Japanese internment? Covering up the president’s incapacitation? Or simply bureaucratic micromanagement of American commerce?

  I'm with Dan (and Nancy Reagan): just say no.

• Just off the top of my head: greed, envy, irresponsibility, demagoguery, power lust. Veronique de Rugy asks the musical question: What's Behind the Wild New Wealth Tax Proposals?

  When government grows to dominate ever-larger shares of the economy, and when politicians refuse to be responsible about what they spend, there's a predictable next move: Insist that the problem is "the rich" not paying enough. Never mind that high earners already shoulder a disproportionate share of the tax burden. Never mind that relying on a small and mobile group of people for the bulk of your revenue makes public finances more volatile, not more stable.

  No, once spending is treated as untouchable and restraint as politically impossible, it's only a matter of time before politics demands more, more, more. More taxes and more distortion. This helps explain why wild new forms of wealth taxes are popping up.

  California voters are heading toward a November ballot fight over a so-called one-time 5% tax on billionaires' net worth, tied to residency on a date that's already passed. Illinois lawmakers recently flirted with a tax on unrealized gains — think of stocks yet to be sold at fluctuating prices that only exist on paper — before retreating. And New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants a wealth tax to help close the city's roughly $12 billion budget gap. Prominent progressive Democrats have explicitly endorsed national wealth taxes (e.g., proposals from Sen. Elizabeth Warren).

  Different places, same impulse: Avoid hard fiscal decisions by squeezing a narrow group harder.

  Maybe I should have added "economic illiteracy" to my answer above.

• Don't cry for me, Jeff Bezos. David Harsanyi urges that you save your tears for more deserving institutions: Don't Cry for The Washington Post, It Helped Destroy Media.

  I generally don't celebrate when people lose their job. As most of us know firsthand, being laid off can be a brutal experience. Indeed, when an outfit such as the Post cuts back its workforce, good people will typically lose their jobs while the worst offenders stay on.

  But the unmitigated arrogance and sense of entitlement exuded by journalists, who seem to believe they have a God-given right to work no matter how much money they lose their employer or how poorly they do the job, speaks to the problem more.

  Over the past decade, the Post has been one of the leading culprits in the collapse of public trust in journalism. The once-venerable outlet has spent the past 10 years participating in virtually every dishonest left-wing operation, including giving legitimacy to the Brett Kavanaugh group rape accusations, delegitimizing the Hunter Biden laptop story, spreading the Gaza "genocide" lie, covering up Joe Biden's cognitive decline, sliming the Covington children, and countless others.

  I've kind of liked the WaPo's recent editorial turn to the center, if not the right. No clue what a reasonable path forward for it might be.

President Trump had an op-ed published in Last Saturday's WSJ, claiming "Donald J. Trump: My Tariffs Have Brought America Back". (WSJ gifted link)

I didn't bother reading it then. But here's one of his claims:

At Cato, Alan Reynolds aims his shotgun at that fish in the barrel: Trump’s Eighteen Trillion Dollar Hoax.

More at the link, but you get the idea. Trump's claim is bullshit.

Trump's op-ed also says:

That got the WSJ's Editorial Board to take exception: Are Trump’s Tariffs Winning?.

Again, Trump is spouting bullshit.

But what else is new?

Also of note:

• Shut up, Junior. Christian Schneider goes full libertarian, and good for him: Government Shouldn't Dictate Nutrition. (archive.today link)

  He quotes some critics of the new "inverted" pyramid. I won't bother you with the details, because…

  Yet the nutritional experts’ argument over what belongs in the food pyramid obscures the real issue: Isn’t it moronic for the government to have a food pyramid?

  The idea that the federal government should play a role in determining the food we eat only serves to stroke the egos of those who believe nothing worthwhile happens in the world without bureaucratic approval. What types of diets best serve individual citizens is one of the most-studied topics in human history, and most of that analysis has been conducted by private actors. There are infinite apps, websites, chat rooms, TikTok videos, workout plans, and the like that will get you where you want to go on your fitness journey, all thankfully operating outside the walls of the Department of Health and Human Services.

  Christian goes on to observe that, in addition to being inappropriate for a free country, Uncle Stupid's dietary advice has a lousy track record.

  For the record: I got e-mail from Dr. Oz yesterday, nagging me to

  Boost Your Protein and Healthy Fats. Think eggs, seafood, red meat, dairy, beans, nuts, and seeds. Aim for 6-7 servings per day (based on a 2,000-2,200 daily calorie level). And remember to keep saturated fats under 10% of your daily calories.

  I am in awe of the sheer arrogance involved in demanding that I (and my fellow geezers) break out the paper, pens, and calculators to figure out whether they've gone over that 10% figure.

  So: you shut up too, Dr. Oz.

• No actual elephants were harmed in getting them in that room. Eric Berger usually does straight reporting on space at Ars Technica, but he recently seemed to have lost patience: NASA finally acknowledges the elephant in the room with the SLS rocket.

  The Space Launch System rocket program is now a decade and a half old, and it continues to be dominated by two unfortunate traits: It is expensive, and it is slow.

  The massive rocket and its convoluted ground systems, so necessary to baby and cajole the booster’s prickly hydrogen propellant on board, have cost US taxpayers in excess of $30 billion to date. And even as it reaches maturity, the rocket is going nowhere fast.

  Eric recalls the dismal history of the unmanned Artemis I mission, plagued with multiple delays. And that was more than three years ago.

  Eric's analysis is worth reading in full, and so is James Meigs, in the WSJ's Free Expression newsletter: Artemis II Shows Why Private Spaceflight Should Lead the Way. (WSJ gifted link)

  While Elon Musk’s SpaceX has slashed launch costs by landing and reusing rocket boosters, SLS remains an old-school, expendable system; only the capsule survives each flight. No wonder NASA’s Office of Inspector General estimates this white elephant will cost a staggering $4.1 billion per mission. So, once again, NASA is saddled with a spaceflight system too expensive to fly routinely.

  New NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman knows all this. As a self-made entrepreneur and a veteran of two self-funded SpaceX flights, he’s an advocate for NASA’s commercial approach—and for retiring SLS. In his first confirmation hearing, Mr. Isaacman gently told the senators that SLS wasn’t “the long-term way to get to and from the moon and Mars with great frequency.” In a compromise, he suggested NASA should use the two existing SLS rockets to carry the Artemis II and Artemis III, which aims to put a crew on the lunar surface. After that, the agency should move on. The senators later approved Mr. Isaacson’s nomination. But they pushed back on retiring SLS, instead adding funding to build more SLS rockets to last year’s Big Beautiful Bill.

  Finally, Viking Pundit comments from personal experience: Don't light this candle

  I believe I mentioned this before but I briefly worked as a project engineer on the Orion program and it was - by far - the worst job I've ever had. Whatever excitement of "working for NASA" was washed away in a sclerotic bureaucracy that throttled any real progress. There were regular newsletters circulated that heralded how NASA programs were spread over every state in the Union which should tell you what you need to know: this is a jobs program, not a space program.

  The SLS/Orion program is still dependent upon Space Shuttle technology from over 40 years ago. Why? Because some Congressman didn't want to see a NASA subcontractor in his/her district lose that sweet federal money. This is all part of the grift along with the endless delays. There are never any consequences for delay so why not keep your job going? These programs achieve a kind of half-life behavior where progress slows the closer you get to the finish line.

  I hope and pray I'm wrong, but I fear this Artemis launch will result in cataclysm`

  When (or if) Artemis II launches, I'll be watching and hoping for the best. But like the VP, fearing the worst.

Leading off with Frank J. Fleming's effort, which is stunning and funny:

Look at this adorable, real thing that happened to me (not AI). pic.twitter.com/iASSYXNR1Y

— Frank J. Fleming (@IMAO_) January 29, 2026

At his substack, Frank discusses further: Totally Real Video of Me Caring for Wildlife.

And here's something I missed from last December:

Completely random… but different 😂 pic.twitter.com/Ha9S1evrv7

— Wholesome Side of 𝕏 (@itsme_urstruly) December 24, 2025

I know I've said this before, but I'm pretty sure creative geniuses with low budgets (and minimal concerns for copyright law) will start making feature movies with their choice of stars from the past. Sure, Sturgeon's Law says 90% of it will be crap, but 10% will be great, and the public will eat it up. There will be lawsuits galore, but in the end we'll get wonderfully entertained.

And maybe some things will be lawsuit-free. Last year, I looked at an effort to AI-restore Orson Welles' original version of The Magnificent Ambersons. And of course, my idea of a Casablanca sequel, with AI resurrecting the original cast? Still a dream!

Also of note:

• And he's pretty far ahead of whoever is in second place. Jim Geraghty observes The Most Erratic President in the World.

  He’s the rare kind of immigration hardliner who wants more H-1B visas.

  He’s warned that illegal immigrants are taking “Black population jobs, the Hispanic population jobs, and they’re attacking union jobs too” . . . and also proposed giving green cards to any foreign student who graduates from a U.S. institution of higher education.

  He added his own name to the Kennedy Center . . . and then shut it down for two years for renovations.

  He pledged that the addition of a new ballroom to the White House “won’t interfere with the current building” . . . and then tore down the East Wing.

  And that's just the first few paragraphs. Trump is increasingly unhinged from:

  • truth;
  • reality;
  • his own past.

  What could go wrong? Unfortunately, we'll probably find out.

• It doesn't seem like Congress is functioning well either. George Will lays out some possibilities, none pleasant, but: One path to U.S. fiscal disaster is most alarming — and most likely. (WaPo gifted link)

  GFW points to a recent report from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, titled What Would a Fiscal Crisis Look Like? Their scenarios:

  • Financial Crisis: Reduced confidence in U.S. Treasury markets could lead to a spike in interest rates, panic among traders, devaluation of assets, freezing or slowing of credit, and failure of key financial institutions.
  • Inflation Crisis: Attempts or fear of attempts to manage debt levels through monetization, artificially low interest rates, or financial repression could result in high and potentially spiraling inflation.
  • Austerity Crisis: Sharp tax increases and spending cuts enacted to stave off a fiscal crisis could create undue hardship, undermine demand, and push the economy into recession.
  • Currency Crisis: The U.S. dollar could face sudden and significant depreciation in response to fiscal stress and policy responses, resulting in destabilization of markets and the economy.
  • Default Crisis: Policymakers could explicitly or implicitly default on debt, including by failing to make debt payments or by restructuring existing debt.
  • Gradual Crisis: Living standards and fiscal and monetary flexibility could gradually erode in response to rising debt, potentially causing as much or more long-term damage than an acute crisis.

  GFW comments on that last one:

  The most probable, and most ominous, outcome would be a gradual crisis. In 2021, debt service consumed less than 10 percent of federal revenue. In 2025: 18 percent. By being gradual, a protracted crisis would mean a demoralized nation slowly accommodating perpetual economic sluggishness, waning investments in research and development, social stagnation, diminished contribution from the entrepreneurial energies of talented immigrants, and waning U.S. geopolitical influence.

  A gradual crisis would be anesthetizing, rather than an action-forcing, cymbal-crash event that could stimulate recuperative reforms of U.S. political culture. Instead, this culture would become more toxic. Political power would be fought for, and wielded, with the desperate ruthlessness of a zero-sum competition in which one faction’s gains must equal other factions’ losses.

  So, government would simultaneously become more powerful, more divisive and less legitimate. The currency is how everyone meets the government every day through the unstated — because presumably obvious — government promise that the currency it issues is trustworthy.

  That's the WaPo, which still exists, and last I heard, George Will is still there.

  I fear "zero-sum" in the second quoted paragraph is way too optimistic. Almost certainly we'll be looking at negative-sum conflicts at that point of the game.

• And don't look at tax gimmicks to fix things. Robert VerBruggen looks at a recent study that concludes Taxing the Rich Won't Raise Much Money. Cutting Their Taxes Won't Either. Invoking the Laffer Curve?

  This is a hard problem. But a fascinating new study, written by a trio of economists from Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, takes a crack at it, using more sophisticated methods than previous work has employed. Its intriguing title gives away its main finding: “Laffer Curves Are Flat.” We won’t raise money by cutting the top rate, it concludes, but we won’t raise very much by increasing it either.

  A harder problem, apparently: getting rid of the useless Department of Education. In recent news: The Department of Education Isn’t Going Anywhere. Which brings us to…

• If throwing money at schools didn't work, you didn't throw enough. That's the unshakable faith of seemingly every educrat. Jennifer Weber reports, on the contrary: New York Leads in School Spending—But Not Student Achievement.

  Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposed executive budget for fiscal year 2027, released January 20th, earmarks nearly $40 billion in state funds for K–12 education. Her proposal appears with New York leading the nation in per-pupil spending for the nineteenth consecutive year.

  Albany cites these nation-leading expenditures as evidence of the state’s “longstanding commitment” to giving students “the opportunity to excel.” But big spending has not meaningfully improved the metric that matters: student achievement.

  Per-pupil spending in New York State already exceeds $36,000 annually. If Hochul’s budget passes, New York will have increased state school aid by about $10 billion over the past five years. It will bring total state school aid to $39.3 billion—the largest in New York’s history, and a $1.6 billion increase over last year alone.

  If record investment translated into academic mastery, New York students’ proficiency rates would be increasing. Instead, they remain stubbornly low. According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 31 percent of New York eighth-graders were proficient in reading; only 26 percent were proficient in math.

  If you'd like, go back and read my post from two days ago in response to John Shea's (Superintendent of Schools in Somersworth NH). Shea wants New Hampshire's state educational spending to be more like New York's. Why?

• The sickness is metaphorical, but still… The WaPo editorial board (which still exists) looks at news you may have missed (like I did): Moderna’s chilling announcement is a symptom of a deeper sickness. (WaPo gifted link)

  Moderna’s recent disclosure that it plans no new late-stage vaccine trials because of policy uncertainty in the United States is a chilling consequence of the Trump administration’s anti-vaccine turn. It’s also symptomatic of a deeper sickness threatening American dominance in pharmaceutical innovation.

  Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is systematically eroding a vaccination infrastructure that has saved countless children from death and deformity. After a quarter-century, America is on the verge of losing its measles elimination status. Now he’s tinkering with the liability system that keeps vaccine manufacturers economically viable.

  Throw in government price controls, and you've got a perfect, and deadly, storm of government interference making things worse.

If you've given up watching Saturday Night Live, I can't blame you. Their political stuff generates clapter from the audience, and (sorry) nary a chuckle from me. And I despise Trump!

On the other hand, if you keep watching…

I've watched four times, and laughed every time.

I confess I've developed a thing for Jane Wickline. A completely inappropriate thing, for multiple reasons, including ones I'm probably not aware of.

Also of note:

• No, that's not a misspelling. Robert Graboyes, owner of Bastiat's Window, admits he suffers from Electile Dysfunction.

  Bastiat’s Window made no endorsement in the 2024 presidential election—nor in any other election before or since. We’re unlikely to endorse any candidates in the future—largely for three reasons described below—futility, disdain, and regret.

  I'm in Bob's boat, for the same reasons, plus an additional one: humility. I can't think of any reason you, Reader, would want or need my advice on who to vote for. (Or whether to vote at all.)

• Plus, it looks like an ugly shoebox. Jeffrey Blehar's Carnival of Fools newsletter Trump Closing Kennedy Center for Renovations: Artists Won't Play There.

  This is no secret. Hamilton already canceled its anticipated 2026 run at the Kennedy Center in response to Trump’s 2025 purge of the Kennedy Center board. After the name change in December, other cancellations followed — including from nonpolitical artists who understood that playing in a building illegally renamed by a sitting president after himself amounted to an endorsement of the act. But six days ago — and far more devastatingly for the Kennedy Center’s social calendar — composer Philip Glass withdrew his Lincoln symphony, written specifically to premiere there in honor of America’s Semiquincentennial. “Symphony No. 15 is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, and the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the Symphony.”

  I don’t blame Glass for the insult: Trump put his name on the building precisely because he wanted to insult Glass and all others forced to play there. I think President Trump is many things, but a fool is not one of them; he knows exactly how much he is hated, and he is especially well-informed about who specifically hates him. He renamed the Kennedy Center after himself precisely because in his limited time left in office, he was amused by the idea of watching luminaries from the hated artistic class forced to bow and scrape and play in King Trump’s Beautiful Memorial Building. It really goes no deeper than that. The original source of most of his impulses — and most of his biggest errors — is vanity and ego gratification, after all.

  Jeffrey also discusses the Grammy Awards show, extending some well-deserved disrespect to Billie Ellish, et al. And the Oscar nominees for Best Picture? Reader, I can't even get interested in watching the ones Jeffrey sorta likes.

  E.g., his take on One Battle After Another: "a technically well-made film with flashes of genuine wit and human empathy, but it ultimately drowns in the incoherence of its plotting and message." I'll just watch a couple old episodes of House on Amazon Prime, ThankYouVeryMuch.)

• You talkin' to me, Erick? Mr. Erickson has some well-meaning advice for … some folks, anyway: Y'all Need to Shut Up. 2026 Electoral success for the GOP is looking pretty dim anyway, and …

  That is why Republican leaders in Washington really need to shut the hell up on gun issues right now. Here is the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia on Fox News yesterday.

  Pirro: "You bring a gun into the District, you mark my words, you're going to jail. I don't care if you have a license in another district and I don't care if you're a law abiding law owner somewhere else. You bring a gun into this District, count on going to jail and hope you… pic.twitter.com/tiZ6PwtA1i

  — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 2, 2026

  This comes a week after Alex Pretti’s death, when the President and others in his Administration also attacked Second Amendment rights.

  I cannot think of a strategy better able to alienate Second Amendment voters from showing up in the midterms.

  I'll probably trudge down to the American Legion in November and unenthusiastically vote a straight-GOP ticket, but…

  (Not an endorsement! See above!)

• There's something about Tulsi. The Federalist's M.D. Kittle is pretty upset about a news item to which I linked a couple days ago: WSJ Hit Piece On Gabbard Based On Complaints That 'Weren't Credible'

  M.D. embeds a couple of tweets, one from Tulsi's Deputy Chief of Staff:

  As if the @WSJ needed to provide more examples of how it’s utter trash.
  
  Here’s the truth: There was no wrongdoing by @DNIGabbard, a fact that WSJ conveniently buried 13 paragraphs down. Even the Biden-era IC IG came to this collusion the Whistleblower’s allegations against DNI… https://t.co/0UeSvde67l

  — Alexa Henning (@alexahenning) February 2, 2026

  And one from DNI's official spokeswoman:

  This is not true and is one of the most disgusting cases of clickbait I have ever seen.
  
  There was absolutely NO wrongdoing by DNI Gabbard, a fact that @WSJ conveniently buried 13 paragraphs down. Even the Biden-era Intelligence Community Inspector General came to this… https://t.co/F9LMolUXCb

  — Olivia Coleman (@DNIspox) February 2, 2026

  In case you missed it: "conveniently buried 13 paragraphs down".

  (For what it's worth: those tweets were both posted at 8:21am on Monday. Who copied whom?)

  So, in fairness, here's the WSJ's paragraph 13:

  Gabbard answered written questions about the allegations from the inspector general’s office, a senior official at the spy agency said. That prompted the acting inspector general at the time, Tamara Johnson, to determine the allegations specifically about Gabbard weren’t credible, the official said. Johnson remains employed at the agency, which didn’t make her available for an interview.

  Just wanted you to know the whole story. Now you know as much as I do, which is nothing.

John Shea sounds the death knell in my lousy local newspaper, Foster's Daily Democrat: Open enrollment threatens to destroy public education in NH. His opening salvo:

I've bolded a couple sentences above. Shea loves to gripe about the state government's stinginess. He fails to mention that, overall, New Hampshire spends quite a bit on K-12 education. World Population Review has comparison data ("Per Pupil Spending by State 2026"): it shows NH as the seventh-highest in yearly spending per student ($21,898; behind only New York, Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Alaska).

Also, worse: Shea is bullshitting about NH being "dead last among the 50 states" in terms of state government K-12 funding. A supplementary table shows the state kicking in $6,344 per student annually. Dead last? No; it's more than Georgia, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Ohio, Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Nebraska, Arizona, South Dakota, Florida, and Texas.

(I almost wrote "Shea is lying" there, but "bullshitting" is the more accurate term. As Harry Frankfurt pointed out, bullshitters don't care whether they're telling the truth or not.)

John Shea is currently superintendent of schools of the Somersworth School District, just up the road from Pun Salad Manor. He first came to my attention in 2018, appearing in Foster's demanding a boycott of the Kittery (Maine) Trading Post, for daring to sell "semi-automatic assault rifles".

At the time, I suggested that Shea literally mind his own business: then, as now, running the Somersworth schools. Back then, their student scores on statewide tests were awful.

Guess what, they're still bad:

I will play the cynic: Shea has warned against the imminent demise of government schooling, and the awful people plotting it, in the past (Pun Salad comments are here, here, and here.) EFAs and Open Enrollment might make it economically feasible for Somersworth parents to escape his subpar school for better options.

For a sane look at Open Enrollment, see the Josiah Bartlett Center: Know the basics. Their summary:

Shea is frightened to death of competition. Maybe Somersworth should get a superintendent who isn't.

Also of note:

• Actually, it is rocket science. Ars Technica relates the sad story: Unable to tame hydrogen leaks, NASA delays launch of Artemis II until March.

  The launch of NASA’s Artemis II mission, the first flight of astronauts to the Moon in more than 53 years, will have to wait another month after a fueling test Monday uncovered hydrogen leaks in the connection between the rocket and its launch platform at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

  “Engineers pushed through several challenges during the two-day test and met many of the planned objectives,” NASA said in a statement following the conclusion of the mock countdown, or wet dress rehearsal (WDR), early Tuesday morning. “To allow teams to review data and conduct a second Wet Dress Rehearsal, NASA now will target March as the earliest possible launch opportunity for the flight test.”

  Whenever it goes, I'll be watching. And praying. Well, probably not literally praying, but you know what I mean.

• Lock him up. Kevin D. Williamson makes The Simple Case for Arresting Don Lemon. (Followed by "the less simple case against".) (archive.today link)

  The simple case for arresting and prosecuting Don Lemon for his role in the invasion of a St. Paul Church by a group of anti-ICE protesters is, well, simple: It seems that he probably broke the law, including a federal statute that forbids “nonviolent physical obstruction” of worship services.

  Lemon insists that he was not there to participate in the protest action but to cover it as a journalist. In fairness, he did not claim to be there as a good journalist—a claim to which I would take some exception—but, in any case, that does not matter very much: Lemon entered the church, disrupting its business, and stayed after he was specifically asked to leave by the people in charge. We do not license journalists in the United States—thank goodness—and acting as a journalist does not give anyone any special license to break otherwise applicable laws. The First Amendment gives Americans the right to publish and speak, but it does not protect those engaged in publishing and speaking from being prosecuted for criminal acts, including criminal acts that frequently come up in the course of doing a reporter’s work, such as trespassing, receiving classified documents, or making audio or video recordings in way that might violate local laws requiring the consent of those being recorded. Journalists, like those engaged in civil disobedience, at times willfully break the law in the course of doing something they think important, and, like those engaged in civil disobedience, they must be prepared to bear the legal consequences for illegal actions.

  Read on for that other case. And also for:

  It is a little weird to think about what a man on the edge of 80 might be when he grows up, but if Trump ever grows up, a fascist is what he will grow up to be. That said, I agree it is unfair to call him a fascist today for the same reason it would be unfair to ask my dachshund to write a commentary on Aristotle.

• I may go through 2026 without watching any movies. But Jeff Maurer braved the crowds and brings us his Review of "Melania"

  The inauguration coat is a major plot in Melania. You see, Melania was thinking of wearing one coat, but then she decided to wear another coat. A big bravura scene — the Melania equivalent of the Omaha Beach scene in Saving Private Ryan — happens when it looks like they might not be able to tailor the coat the way she wanted! But then…yes they can. Crisis averted! Before seeing the movie, if you had asked me how Melania picked out her inauguration coat, I would have said “I’ll bet someone showed her a bunch of different coats, and she looked at them, and then chose one.” I honestly did not need a feature film to confirm: Yes, that was it.

  The funniest part of the movie is when Melania claims that the movie is the story that “everyone wants to know”, and then there’s a near-smash-cut to her picking out a bureau for Barron’s room. Devil’s advocate: Did everyone want to know how Barron’s bureau was picked out? Surely someone exists who is fascinated by Barron’s bureau — like all of us — but who is ho-hum about the selection process. I can’t even imagine what footage was edited out of Melania — maybe footage of Melania watching an ice cube melt in a glass of water, or her sitting motionless staring at an ant farm for 90 minutes. Melania is so dull that it makes your average episode of Caillou seem like The Bourne Identity.

  60 percent of the movie is Melania being transported places. Did you ever wonder how she gets from the airport to Trump Tower? The answer is: a car. What about from one room in Mar-a-Lago to a different room? It’s hallways, sometimes including stairs. The movie seems to assume that the audience is suffering from Transient Global Amnesia, so if they see Melania in one room, and later she’s in a different room, they’ll freak out and yell “HOW DID SHE GET FROM THAT PLACE TO THIS PLACE?!?!?!?” To prove that Melania is not a teleporting shapeshifter, the movie treats us to excruciatingly long shots of Melania in cars, sometimes accompanied by “Gimme Shelter” or “Billie Jean” to try to provide energy where there is obviously none.

  But, surprisingly, Matthew Hennessey says: ‘Melania’ in the Money. (WSJ gifted link)

  “Melania” did boffo business at the box office this weekend. Why do I get a victory lap? Because one of the first Free Expression newsletters predicted this. It was headlined “Republicans Watch Documentaries, Too.”

  The film about the first lady opened on 1,778 screens and pulled in more than $7 million. That’s a lot for a documentary, most of which don’t play in theaters at all. The ones that do are lucky to make $70.

  But haters always hate. Much of the reporting on the film’s haul has noted that it’s still a long way from profitability. Amazon paid $40 million for “Melania” and reportedly invested another $35 million in marketing.

  Apparently some attendees did not attend just so they could make fun of the movie for their substack audience.

• Also overused: "perfect". James Lileks muses on the different approaches taken by the customer service people you wind up talking to on the phone: Awesome? That's a Negative.

  3. The Over-Effusive Youth. The levels of enthusiastic obsequiousness I get from younger customer-service reps is jarring. Can I get your phone number? Awwwesome. Zip? Awwwwesome. Sometimes it’s quick - awsm! - and sometimes it’s drawn out with reverence like they’re invoking some old Norse God named Ossum. We’ve been told that Generation Z (or maybe Alpha, I am too Boomery to care about these distinctions) has a social aversion to the phone, because it’s rude and intrusive. You mean I have to talk to someone, just because they want to? You mean I have to just call someone up and make them talk to me? Obviously not all of them feel like this, but the ones that are capable of talking on the phone really lean into it, like they’re doing something retro or vintage and they think that’s how it used to be done.

  I liked that mini-reflection in the middle: I am too Boomery to care about these distinctions. Me too, James, me too.

The Eye Candy Du Jour … looks like she knows something, doesn't it?

The WSJ has a scoop: a Classified Whistleblower Complaint About Tulsi Gabbard Stalls Within Her Agency. (WSJ gifted link)

I assume Joseph Heller is, somewhere in the afterlife, murmuring "Catch-22", perhaps with a wry grin.

I also assume Mick Herron will write a Slow Horses novel incorporating a similar plot thread someday, if he hasn't done so already.

Also of note:

• 

  Looks like it's up to you, Sweet Meteor of Death. I suppose many will see this as good news: Superintelligent AI Is Not Coming To Kill You. It is a Neil Chilson's brief review/debunking of the book Amazon-linked at your right.

  "We do not mean that as hyperbole," they write. They believe artificial intelligence research will inevitably produce superintelligent machines and these machines will inevitably kill everyone.

  This is an extraordinary claim. It requires extraordinary evidence. Instead, they offer a daisy chain of thought experiments, unexamined premises, and a linguistic sleight of hand that smuggles their conclusion into the definition of intelligence itself.

  The book's central argument rests on the "alignment problem"—the effort to ensure that advanced AI systems share human values. Yudkowsky popularized this concept. Humans, the authors argue, succeed through intelligence, which they define as "the work of predicting the world, and the work of steering the world." Computers will surpass human intelligence because they are faster, can copy themselves, have perfect memory, and can modify their own architecture. Because AI systems are "grown" through training rather than explicitly programmed, we cannot fully specify their goals. When superintelligent AI pursues objectives that diverge even slightly from human values, it will optimize relentlessly toward those alien goals. When we interfere, it will eliminate us.

  Well, I put it on my get-at-library list anyway, for when I'm in the mood for something apocalyptic.

• Speaking of apocalyptic no-shows: Commie broadcasting survives. I don't know if Becket Adams' story is good news or bad, but: NPR and PBS Never Needed Your Taxpayer Dollars. (NR gifted link)

  When Republican lawmakers moved last year to end taxpayer funding for PBS and NPR, a constellation of media CEOs and experts warned that the cuts would result in the closure of dozens, possibly hundreds, of affiliate stations.

  It has now been six months since President Trump signed a bill eliminating $1.1 billion in federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the predicted newsroom Armageddon has yet to materialize.

  In fact, of the more than 1,000 television and radio stations that make up the country’s public media system, nearly all remain operational.

  Becket gets in a wisecrack: "I distinctly remember being told that the budget cuts would kill us all. No, wait. Sorry. That was net neutrality." Before rattling off some of the dire predictions made by adherents.

  I suppose it's an interesting question: Now that NPR/PBS rely more on voluntary donations, has that made them more lefty, or less? Interesting question, but not interesting enough to make me Google.

• LFOD, unless prohibited by shaky legal rulings. Jonathan H. Adler is nonplussed by the success a recent legal shenanigan: Private Suit Commandeers New Hampshire Government to Maintain Vehicle Emission Inspections.

  This weekend car owners in New Hampshire were supposed to be done with regular automobile emission inspections. Although such inspections had been part of the New Hampshire's State Implementation Plan (SIP) under the federal Clean Air Act, the state legislature passed a law abolishing the program last year, effective today, January 31. Now, however, the inspections may be required after all.

  Gordon-Darby Holdings, which owns the company that administered the program under a contract with the state did not want the program (and its associated revenue) to go away, so it filed suit, seeking an injunction to force New Hampshire to continue requiring automobile emission inspections. According to Gordon-Darby, New Hampshire was required to maintain the program unless and until it received approval from the federal Environmental Protection Agency. On this basis, the company went to court and—quite shockingly—prevailed.

  Jonathan thinks the ruling made by federal district court judge Landya McCafferty is clearly flawed on "anti-commandeering" grounds. (Something "typically taught to first-year law students in the introductory Constitutional Law course.") So we'll see what happens. My inspection month was (and maybe still is) April, so they have a few months to figure it out.

Well, that's a pretty sad pic over there on your right, isn't it? Not only are the Canadians pissed with us, our local boozemakers aren't happy either. And they have a lot of extra hooch to drown their sorrows. As C. Jarrett Dieterle says, Trump's Tariff War Is Crushing American Alcohol Makers.

I hope SCOTUS will save us from this pointless stupidity. (But I note that we don't seem to be boycotting them: the state liquor store website shows plenty of Crown Royal in stock, although the prices seem steep to me.)

Also of note:

• Look out below! The WSJ editorialists write on The Perils of a Falling Trump Dollar. (WSJ gifted link)

  President Trump this week said he thinks a weaker dollar is “great,” but he should be careful what he wishes for. Many politicians over the years have contemplated a weaker greenback as an economic miracle cure. They often discover that a weak dollar is a liability.

  Mr. Trump made his remark Tuesday amid dollar weakness that is contributing to instability in global foreign-exchange markets. The WSJ Dollar Index, which compares the greenback to a basket of currencies, has fallen about 8% over the past year, and gold’s steady ascent, to above $5,300 per ounce this week, sends its own signal about dollar weakness. The dollar-euro exchange rate is among the most important in the global economy, and the greenback has lost about 14% of its value relative to the euro over the past year.

  I'd buy some gold, but unfortunately the ground in my backyard is frozen solid.

• Some say the world will end in… Well, you know the rest.

  Unbeknownst to me, Jeffrey Blehar has a weekly newsletter at the National Review site. And it's unpaywalled! Check out his latest observation: ICE Can’t Fight Activist Fire with Fire.

  Yesterday morning, I offered some blunt advice to President Trump: He should either fire Kristi Noem — preferably aboard a rocket and into the sun — or absent that, demote and back-burner her as the failed face of the Department of Homeland Security. (My actual wording was a bit harsher: “Can nearly everybody within the remote orbit of DHS leadership except for Tom Homan.”) And because Trump was in one of his rare obliging moods, he evidently was already taking that advice, declaring that both Noem and Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino would be departing Minneapolis, with Homan stepping in instead. It’s an excellent and necessary first step.

  But I am also alert to the fundamental problem the federal government is faced with: How can it be permissible in a functioning civil society for one narrow segment of it to simply decide it will collectively oppose enforcement of federal immigration laws? You cannot permit activists to effectively nullify federal law out of a misplaced sense of self-righteousness or progressive fervor. You also cannot, well, shoot them — not for being obstreperous agitators, not in America. How does the government enforce the law?

  If I had an easy answer, I’d offer it right now. But I don’t, and one reason for that is that the left has had a century-long head start in the (mostly legal, if largely invidious) techniques of organization and protest. It is important to understand the methodology used by the activists here, why it is so devilishly effective, and why the Trump administration needs to be smarter about how it chooses its confrontations. And that requires a bit of a history lesson.

  Woodrow Wilson had his methods: jail (e.g., Eugene Debs) and deportation (e.g. Emma Goldman). We don't do that any more, although I assume Trump is envious thereof.