Mar
19
2026

I Liked the Original Better

The WSJ editorialists make a valid point about Brendan Carr and the TikTok Dodge.

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr is threatening broadcasters over slanted coverage of the war in Iran. He’s firing the wrong missile at the wrong target. He might want to tell President Trump that TikTok is a real national-security risk and a bigger source of fake news.

The FCC's bullying of broadcasters (i.e., users of a bit of the electromagnetic spectrum that Uncle Stupid claims to own) is not only unconstitutional, but also ignores the reality of where people get their news in these days of modern times. ("… when you can't tell the ACs from the DCs …")

Also of note:

  • About time, too. Charles C.W. Cooke notes: The Democrats' Tax Lies Have Caught Up with Them. (NR gifted link)

    It is nice, for once, to see the Democratic Party well and truly hoisted by its own petard. With the gleeful help of the American press, the Democrats have spent four decades convincing their voters that the poor and lower-middle class are overtaxed, while the rich pay next to nothing. And, would you believe it, those voters now believe this to be true.

    In reality, the American income-tax system is extremely progressive. Per the IRS’s latest records, the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 40 percent of all the federal income taxes collected, while the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers paid just 3 percent. And yet, thanks to the tireless work of the Democrats and their friends in the media, this inconvenient fact has been carefully buried beneath a pile of indignant propaganda. Politically, one can grasp the case for this ploy. Practically, though, it has proven costly. False accounts are all fun and games until it comes time to present a plan of one’s own — at which point mathematics is liable to reenter the chat and wreak its bloody revenge.

    CCWC takes a look at the recently-proposed tax plans of Senators Cory Booker and Chris Van Hollen and finds that both are totally out of whack with the class-warfare propaganda of those previous four decades.

    And he makes a valid observation in his final paragraph: The "contemporary Democratic Party sees new taxes less as a means by which to pay for new spending, and more as a punishment to be imposed upon those whom they disdain."

    And (not that it matters but) I finally got my taxes done a few days ago. The IRS demanded calculations having their usual stench of arbitrariness and obscurity. (Divide line 17 by line 18. If line 17 is more than line 18, enter "1".) Uncle Stupid and I ritually send each other thousands of dollars from time to time; sometimes our electronic payments even cross in the e-mail. If I think overmuch about how crazy it is, I would probably wind up drinking too much.

  • And another George Will column I should probably avoid lest it drive me even further down the road to intemperance. He's looking at The nation’s accelerating self-assassination. (WaPo gifted link)

    The Ides of March came and went with less drama than in 44 B.C., when Julius Caesar was assassinated. Nevertheless, 2,069 years on, there was a reason to beware mid-March this year. It marked another momentous, if mostly unremarked, moment in the nation’s accelerating self-assassination.

    The Peterson Foundation says that on or about March 18, the national debt will reach $39 trillion. This was less than five months after it reached $38 trillion. At our current pace of profligacy — it probably will accelerate — three trillion-dollar milestones can be passed during one fiscal year.

    The Congressional Budget Office projects that in 10 years, the nation will annually be spending more than $2 trillion (two thousand billion) just on debt service, which already is the fastest-growing part of the budget. The national debt will exceed $40 trillion by the end of October, the Peterson Foundation projects.

    GFW also shares the imminent 10-year anniversary of:

    The debt has doubled in the 10 years since Donald Trump, on March 31, 2016, vowed to eliminate the debt in eight years.

    Just another reminder that there's no reason to believe anything that guy promises.

  • Doesn't quite have the ring of "President Bone Spurs", but… Jim Geraghty comes up with a new nickname: President Softie Pushover.

    President Trump in an interview with Brian Kilmeade of Fox News Radio, March 13:

    Kilmeade: You think Putin is helping [the Iranians]?

    Trump: I think he might be helping them a little bit, yeah, I guess. And he probably thinks we’re helping Ukraine. Right?

    Kilmeade: And you are. Right? [Laughs]

    Trump: Yeah, we’re helping them also. And so, he says that. And China would say the same thing. You know? It’s like, uh, hey, they do it and we do it in all fairness. They do it and we do it.

    That is not exactly a forceful denunciation of Russian assistance to a country currently firing missiles and drones at the armed forces of the United States as well as civilians, nor was there any warning or message to the Russians to knock it off or face consequences.

    I am not a violent person, so if were ever to meet Trump, I would not kick him in the bone spurs.

  • At Patterico's Pontifications, guest-poster Dana shares a tweet containing further outrage-bait:

    Ah, but easing those sanctions might bring Americans' gas prices down a bit, and improve GOP chances in November. So sorry, Ukraine.