Pun Salad

Once again, it's no Michael Ramirez, but I think ChatGPT did a bang-up job here. Except for maybe missing an engine on the plane's left wing.

In case you missed the news, the WSJ editorialists bemoan the latest kick in the nuts to the free enterprise system: A Dispiriting Airline Bailout. (WSJ gifted link)

Unfortunate. Not surprising. I'd like to offer some further wise remarks, but… gee, you can look back at what I said about the Intel bailout back in August 2025 (here, here, here, here) and just apply a mental search-and-replace.

Also of note:

• I like the WaPo editorial board, but… gee, they kinda made an own goal here:

  These two editorials by the Washington Post expose how the Republican Party and Democratic Party are held to completely different standards by the media.
  
  Texas gerrymander: “Not a threat to democracy.”
  
  Virginia gerrymander: “Power grab by Democrats.” pic.twitter.com/T2PfQKhRZc

  — Jon Cooper 🇺🇸 (@joncoopertweets) April 22, 2026

  In taxt, Kevin D. Williamson is a consistent both-sider: The Wheel of Redistricting Keeps A-Turnin’. (archive.today link)

  A columnist sometimes repeats himself. A columnist sometimes repeats himself for 30 years.

  So, one more time: Yes, Virginia, gerrymandering is normal.

  Redistricting is inherently political. When a legislature does it, it is the most political thing a legislature does. When a political party does it via referendum, as the Democrats have just done in Virginia, it is that much more political.

  In the case of Virginia, it is also ruthless and, if I am being entirely honest about my feelings here, hilarious.

  I encourage hilarity. Living, as usual, under the guidance of Elvis: "I used to be disgusted; and now, I try to be amused." So let's skip down a bit:

  There’s a lot of po-faced GOP snuffling and sulking this week in Virginia, with Republicans complaining that this kind of thing just isn’t fair. When the federal government goes after Donald Trump’s political enemies, Republicans turn their noses up and sniff, “Politics ain’t beanbag.” Democrats win an election in Virginia, on the other hand, and Republicans are ready to literally make a federal case out of it.

  If any of Trump’s sycophantic little enablers had ever bothered to read one of those Bibles the president hawks, they might have come across some observations about living by the sword and dying by it. The same is true for procedural maximalism in politics. For a long time, that maximalism was something conservatives complained about: Democrats’ weaponizing confirmation hearings, Democrats’ abusing the filibuster, Democrats’ using parliamentary shenanigans such as reconciliation to push through legislation they couldn’t hope to pass otherwise—and, of course, Democrats’ going to court to ask sympathetic federal judges to deliver to them the political victories they could not win in the legislatures or at the ballot box. Gerrymandering was kind of a Democratic thing, too, for a long time, and Democrats did not object to it very much until Republicans got good at it, having somehow roused themselves from their traditional comfortable stupor and employing high-tech tools to perform the political equivalent of laser microsurgery on electoral maps around the country. Republicans, thus sated, returned to their traditional comfortable stupor.

• It's all fun and games until… In the WSJ, James Freeman isn't impressed with a recent journalistic effort by one of his city's papers: The New York Times and the Politics of Theft and Murder. (WSJ gifted link)

  Remember that time when a former Enron adviser endorsed “budget chicanery” in the pages of the New York Times? Anyone hoping that it marked the nadir in the newspaper’s decline is bound to be disappointed as the Times now does its level best to legitimize theft and to excuse murder. If there’s to be any silver lining in this story of an appalling surrender of editorial standards to the post-morality Marxist mob, perhaps it will motivate some liberal journalists to decide they’ve had enough of the idea that there is no such thing as too far left.

  A Wednesday Times opinion piece begins:

  When does shoplifting become an act of political protest? The Opinion culture editor Nadja Spiegelman is calling this microlooting, and it describes the phenomenon of people stealing small things from big corporations like Whole Foods. The New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino and the political commentator Hasan Piker join Spiegelman for a lively discussion on what’s behind this trend and where it might lead.

  The transcribed discussion begins with Ms. Spiegelman asking whether such thefts represent “a slippery slope,” as if the civilizational destruction that would result if everyone started stealing from grocery chains would not be enough. As the “lively discussion” continues, the two guests enjoy the idea of thieves robbing art from the Louvre and endorse stealing from Whole Foods. There also seems to be some enthusiasm for sliding a long way down the slippery slope as long as it helps destroy free enterprise[…]

  That takes care of the theft, RTWT for the murderousness. I regret paying the NYT for my daily puzzle fix, but I suppose if I could figure out a way to get that for free, they wouldn't really have room to complain about it.

• But about the murderousness… Charles C.W. Cooke reads that same NYT article, and concludes: Hasan Piker Is the Enemy.

  In a rambling group chat that was filmed and transcribed by the New York Times this week, Piker repeatedly made it clear that he is disdainful toward the fundamental rules that keep our society together. Inter alia, Piker defended the murder of the United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, whom he deemed to have been guilty of “a tremendous amount of social murder”; suggested that he would happily “steal a car” if he “could get away with it”; and laid out a complex framework for when it is acceptable to shoplift (when the victim is “big corporations”) and when it is not (when the victim is “taxpayer-funded” with “union labor” and “adjusted prices”). Also “okay,” per Piker, is “I.P. theft, stealing movies, things like that.”

  To which Piker’s interlocutors, the Times’ Nadja Spiegelman and the New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino, responded, “Wow, that all seems utterly psychotic, have you considered getting professional help?”

  Nah, I’m just kidding. In reality, Tolentino responded by explaining that she is opposed to “profoundly selfish, immoral, collectively destructive” actions such as “getting iced coffee in a plastic cup” or flying on airplanes for pleasure, but that she is supportive of selfless, moral, collectively constructive actions such as “blowing up a pipeline,” and Spiegelman responded by saying, “I can relate to what you were saying, Jia. It is so hard to live ethically in an unethical society.”

  Apparently, New York City is doomed.