Apr
30
2026

Bad For What Ails Ya

I'm apparently in a Goody Two-Shoes mood today, so:

Over at Reason, J.D. Tuccille tries to talk us all down from saloon brawls and corral showdowns: Government Shouldn't Be Important Enough To Fight Over.

Government shouldn't be important enough to motivate people to kill others to gain control. Moreover, people willing to engage in violence to seize the means of governance have no business exercising political power. These are points we should be drumming home after the latest in a series of assassination attempts against President Donald Trump and other administration officials at a time of surging political violence in the United States.

Cole Tomas Allen's apparent attack at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner was almost unremarkable for the banality of his manifesto and because, thankfully, injuries were limited to a Secret Service agent whose vest stopped the round. Allen's grievances were the bog-standard political verbiage seen these days at political protests. He complained that he was "no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes," clarifying that he himself is "not the person raped in a detention camp. I'm not the fisherman executed without trial. I'm not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration." He could have been at a "No Kings" demonstration—instead, he armed himself to attack attendees at a dinner. Unfortunately, while still a small minority, too many people are making similar choices.

By the way…

Apologies to any and all readers who tried to access the site last night. My hosting provider got caught by a zero-day exploit of cPanel, which I assume caused some anguish not only for us, but also their other customers.

As a one-time sysadmin myself, I sympathize. It could happen to anyone, and often does.

Also of note:

  • Can't say he wasn't warned. Phil Gramm and Michael Solon chronicle The Trump Tax Increase of 2026. (WSJ gifted link). Which you pay pretty much every time you buy something frivolous, like gas or food or…

    Republicans are counting on voters being pleasantly surprised by larger-than-expected tax refunds this spring thanks to new tax cuts from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Republican lawmakers hope this will ameliorate what Democrats call the “affordability crisis” and make it possible for the GOP to maintain control of Congress. The problem is that although the government is putting money back into taxpayers’ pockets on the one hand via tax refunds, it is taking more money out via tariff-driven price increases, leaving Americans worse off financially.

    The Trump administration insists that other countries are eating the cost of tariffs. That is a myth. If foreigners were absorbing the costs, import prices would drop: To keep their products at the same prices in U.S. stores, foreigners would have to lower their products’ prices to make room for the tariff. Instead, a Bureau of Labor Statistics analysis found that “U.S. import prices were unchanged (0.0 percent) in 2025.” It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that a Federal Reserve Bank of New York analysis finds that “there is 100 percent pass-through from tariffs to import prices, and therefore on U.S. consumers and firms.”

    Phil and Michael probably won't get indicted for their seditious propaganda, and the NY Fed probably won't get its charter revoked, but others aren't so lucky, for example…

  • How about we 86 Bolsheviks? I'd say the Trump Administration is this far (imagine me holding my thumb and index finger three millimeters apart) from organizing show trials. The NR editorialists make a reasonable request: 86 the Comey Indictment.

    Seashells? Really?

    Embarrassingly, the Department of Justice indicted James Comey for a stupid social media post with shells in the pattern of the numbers 86 47. 86, as in “get rid of,” and 47 as in the 47th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

    While it is true that 86 can be construed to mean “kill,” the likeliest origin of the expression “to 86” someone is in rhyming slang. 86 stood for “nix.” In criminal slang, 86 can mean to kill or dispose of something. 86 47 has become a numerical handwave on liberal and progressive merchandise during the Trump era. Posting an image of it to express anti-Trump sentiment is not a crime, even if it’s James Comey doing it.

    It could be true that Pam Bondi was actually the voice of sanity at the DOJ. In comparison, I mean.

  • Here's an idea: Ignore him. The NR editorialists go 2-for-2 here today, observing: Jimmy Kimmel Being Unfunny Isn’t a Matter for Government.

    In a skit last Thursday, ABC’s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel pretended to be the host of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and remarked of Melania Trump, “You have a glow like an expectant widow.” Given that President Trump had already survived two assassination attempts, it was tasteless even at the time. But the remark aged even more poorly when a third aspiring assassin crashed the actual event days later.

    In a rare statement, the understandably shaken first lady condemned Kimmel, saying, “His monologue about my family isn’t comedy — his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America.” She called on ABC to “take a stand” against the host. The president himself was more emphatic in calling for Kimmel to be fired immediately. Kimmel, for his part, described the joke as a “light roast” about their age difference.

    Kimmel benefits from the attention. Why give it to him? Eventually, even the dimmest bulbs in his viewership will come to realize that they are spending 40 minutes without cracking a smile. (Unless a clever commercial comes on.)

  • Among the many things sanctimonious rage will fail to do… Jeff Maurer highlights one of them: Sanctimonious Rage Will Not Get Us Good AI Regulation.

    Jeff takes apart a recent episode of HBO's Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, convincingly showing that it's in stiff competition with Kimmel for "Least Funny 'Comedy' Show". But making a larger point:

    When you’re wishing eternal damnation on tech leaders because they built LLMs that might be culpable for tragic incidents (or might not be — it’s complicated), I think it’s fair to say that you are thoroughly outside of your head. And “thoroughly outside your head” describes a not-insignificant chunk of the anti-corporate left. There are people who cheered the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson; there are people who thought the Titan disaster was utterly hilarious because the people who died were rich. There’s being concerned about bad behavior by powerful people, and there’s being a tin foil hat-wearing nutjob who sees the same sinister force lurking behind every problem. Some people are in the latter camp, and they sometimes try to present their obsession as analysis.

    For example: Did anyone notice that former FTC chair Lina Khan is now making affordability the stated goal of her regulatory agenda? That works for me, I think consumer interest should be the primary goal of antitrust enforcement, but Kahn famously spent her time at the FTC arguing loudly against that view. The so-called “consumer welfare standard” has been the North Star of American antitrust policy for decades; Khan thought that sometimes, consumer interest should take a back seat to other goals. I’m glad that she’s come over to my side, but the through-line of her worldview appears to have nothing to do with consumers and is simply “corporations are bad”.

    As an alternate-universe Dean Wormer might have said: "Smug, sanctimonious, and simplistic is no way to go through life, son. Also you, Lina."

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