Pun Salad

At least for today. In other news, I'm feeling kinda virtuous:

So, New Hampshire -- we're the 49th LEAST "Sinful State."

How do we feel about that?

Personally, I'm having a Bushmills and a Padron and thinking it over...https://t.co/48Asy99HLw@NHGOP @NHDems pic.twitter.com/SHmcsDRNid

— NHJOpinion (@NHJOpinion) February 23, 2026

And a related item from my Google LFOD News Alert: The Affordable New England State With The Best Health Care System In America For Retirees is, guess what?

"Experience all four seasons." Heh. There's a whole lotta snowblowing hiding behind that euphemism.

Also of note:

• Among the many things our brains can't handle… Megan McArdle reveals a biggie: Why our brains can’t handle a modern economy. (WaPo gifted link)

  Aficionados of internet discourse may recall the vogue for deeming things “stochastic terrorism.” A stochastic process has a strong element of randomness, even when the overall result is predictable. Thus the idea of stochastic terrorism, which has been defined as “the use of mass media to provoke random acts of ideologically motivated violence that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.” (For example, how the Islamic State used social media to inspire attacks.)

  The term was used ceaselessly and carelessly, and eventually became a calumny against any speaker someone disagreed with. But the idea of stochasticity remains useful. Lately, I’ve been thinking about what you might call the stochastic economy — the things we pay for to avoid outcomes that are statistically likely but individually rare. Because I keep having conversations with folks who claim that the economy simply stopped getting better some decades back, and I think one reason they feel this way is that stochasticity makes it harder to see real and valuable improvements. These discussions are happening as the disconnect grows between healthy economic indicators and Americans’ negative perceptions of the economy.

  Read on for examples. There are a lot of them.

• Riddle me this. Philip Hamburger asks the musical question: When Is a Tax Not a Tax? (WSJ gifted link) And he makes (what seems to me) a very good point:

  California’s proposed billionaire tax is unconstitutional. The ballot initiative calling for one-time retroactive 5% tax on the net worth of the state’s billionaires has prompted much unease, but the legal arguments against it have remained elusive. It’s therefore important to recognize that this tax is an uncompensated taking or at least a deprivation of property without due process, contrary to the Fifth and 14th amendments.

  Disgruntled taxpayers often grouse that taxation is state-sanctioned theft, and libertarians frequently complain about regulatory takings. But the billionaire tax is a problem for more basic reasons—reasons that are crucial for all of us, not only the hyperwealthy.

  For those without your Cato Institute Pocket Constitution handy, the relevant part of the Fifth Amendment saith: "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

  And the 14th Amendment would apply this to the states. Which really seems to scream: no wealth tax, in California or elsewhere.

• Yes, the guy in the mirror I see brushing his teeth. That's the answer Jack Salmon gives in The Real Social Security Debate: Who Should Bear the Adjustment? After outlining the irresponsibility of our current crop of CongressCritters; and outlining six "structural reforms" (raise the retirement age, change the COLA adjustment, …):

  The fairest additional adjustment is soft means testing, or put another way, limiting maximum benefits for high-income retirees.

  Consider: The average monthly Social Security benefit in 2026 is $2,071, while some retirees collect the maximum $4,152. One approach would cap the maximum benefit at $3,000 monthly. This would preserve the social insurance character of the program while ensuring high earners receive less than the actuarially calculated maximum.

  The choice is stark: Cut all benefits by 23%, hurting poor and rich alike, or scale back maximum benefits for high earners who have other retirement resources. The first path treats a widow surviving on $23,000 annually the same as a retiree with a $2 million 401(k) collecting nearly $50,000 in Social Security benefits. The second option recognizes that Social Security was meant to prevent poverty among elderly Americans, not maximize returns for the affluent.

  Ah, it's nice to be called "affluent".

  But I am unsure of how many of my fellow affluents wouldn't scream like stuck pigs and suddenly become single-issue voters (and contributors). Resulting in (as Jack says) a "default that reflects our cowardice."

• For all you political pigeonholers out there. Via Jerry Coyne, Frederick Alexander (The Gadfly) provides a handy guide: Five Progressive Types Behind the Racket. Classify your friends, family, colleagues, neighbors…

  Maybe it’s because I spent years working in PR for a British institution that I can detect progressive orthodoxy in parts per million. I can pick it up in the throat-clear before a politician says “people who menstruate”. I know within seconds of meeting someone if they will use a word like “intersectional” unironically.

  I can even tell which of five distinct types of progressive I’m dealing with. I’ll come to those in a moment.

  If you’re still reading this, I suspect you have similar radar systems and defence capabilities – perhaps even a natural-born immunity to progressive groupthink. In any case, you’re likely equipped with that most dangerous of intellectual habits: thinking for yourself.

  OK, Frederick, thanks for the flattery. Let's skip down to type #1:

  The True Believers are the rarest and most dangerous type. Usually found in university admin or HR, they genuinely think that questioning any aspect of progressive orthodoxy constitutes harm. The moment they make eye contact with reality, their pupils dilate, and they assume a glazed, faraway look like someone’s talking to them through an earpiece only they can hear.

  It’s the Tavistock clinician who dismissed parents’ concerns about rushing children into transition as “transphobia”. It’s the university administrator who considers “women” a radioactive word and the niqab an expression of female empowerment. It’s the civil servant who enforces unisex toilets because questions of “dignity” matter more than safeguarding.

  I believe the University Near Here has plenty of those, although they are desperately trying to fly under the radar these days.

• Then they came for the peanut butter cups. / And I did not speak out / Because I was on a diet. James Lileks, at his substack, however: Now they're ruining Reese's? Well . . .

  Everyone has a favorite candy, and every candy has a fan. There’s some oddball out there who can’t get enough Circus Peanuts. There are people who pine for bygone confections like “Rabbit Cake” or “Oodles O’ Boodles” only sold by strange vintage candy outlets. When I hit the homepage for Atkinson Candy, I’m back in 1966: Chic-O-Sticks, Slo-Pokes, Black Cows. I’m sure someone still makes the Snirkle. I’m sure someone sells the grail of jellied rectangles, the all-black pack of Chuckles. But I’ll pass on all those items, because I know what I want.

  What I want is a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Alas, according to AP, that’s a bit problematic now:

  The grandson of the inventor of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups has lashed out at The Hershey Co., accusing the candy company of hurting the Reese’s brand by shifting to cheaper ingredients in many products.

  Brad Reese, 70, said in a Feb. 14 letter to Hershey’s corporate brand manager that for multiple Reese’s products, the company replaced milk chocolate with compound coatings and peanut butter with peanut crème.

  Oh yum. What’s for dessert? Gosh I hope it’s compound coatings. I’m sure it’s a perfectly fine industry term, but to us laymen “compound coatings” sounds like you’re painting a car.

  James is properly scornful of what he calls, primly, this latest example of "encrapification".

Recently on the book blog:

I will save you a trip to Wikipedia (which I think you can trust on this): Hadacol was a patent medicine (12% alcohol) briefly popular in the 1950s. "Hadacol Boogie" was a popular song recorded by many artists, most notably Jerry Lee Lewis.

This is the 25th entry in James Lee Burke's series centering around Louisiana's finest, but also most psychologically tortured, cop, Dave Robicheaux. I am apparently up for reading them as long as Mr. Burke keeps writing them (he's 89 years old, as I type).

One difficulty faced by writers of long-running single-character series: how to deal with their characters aging. Mr. Burke solves it here by setting the novel "very close to the turn of the century"; which makes Dave old, but not 89,

Things kick off when Dave gets a garbage bag dumped on his front lawn by a scary-looking figure with sticks in its hair. The bag contains the nude corpse of Clemmy Benoit, a girl with a pair of rose tattoos on each breast and a guitar string wrapped around her neck.

The usual course of events occurs: an array of possible suspects are presented: a handyman/ice cream cart vendor who seems disconnected from reality, but nevertheless is obsessed with Dave; a pimp from Dave's Vietnam past; a mobster who wants to build a garish casino in Dave's town; a guy who tortures people for hire; bigoted cops; and (eventually) an Asian guy who knows how to fly a Huey helicopter, because, well, someone has to do it. And more.

But there are also the continuing characters on Dave's side: his daughter Alafair; his longtime partner Clete; his long-suffering boss, Helen Soileau. And a new one, detective Valerie Benoit; she's hiding something, but her heart's in the right place.

Dave's investigative method involves talking to all these people, which nearly always involves a lot of psychodrama, insults, threats, and occasional extreme violence. (Dave sometimes gets set off by remarks about his parentage.) And there's Dave's non-stop monologuing, reflecting on his past, and Louisiana's. And a hefty dose of left-wing politics He rambles about "neocolonialism" four times. Which is four times too many for me. He mutters darkly that JFK's assassination "may have had strong ties to New Orleans. We'll never know. The Warren investigation was not meant to clarify; it was meant to distract." Boy, anything to avoid pinning it where it belongs, on a Fidel fanboy.