Pun Salad

And, as a bonus, it's funny!

For the record, I first used the Scrooge McDuck thing back in 2014, and perhaps way too many times since then.

Also of note:

• His mistake was in being too transparent about his lack of transparency. Christian Britschgi's Reason Roundup mentions the catching of a medium-sized fish: Former Fauci aide charged with evading transparency laws during COVID.

  Former Fauci aide charged. Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that they'd charged David Morens, a former adviser to Anthony Fauci, with evading federal transparency laws while he worked behind the scenes to reinstate funding for risky coronavirus research in the midst of the pandemic.

  In a number of almost comically blunt emails that involved debates about the origins of COVID-19, Morens instructed his correspondents to communicate with him via his private Gmail account to avoid Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and said he could provide information to Fauci via private channels.

  I would have deleted the "almost" qualifier to "comically", but I may be more easily amused than Christian.

• The Democrats are a big tent. Unless you support Israel. Nazi Tattoo? Hamas Defender? No Problem, Says Chuck Schumer. David Harsanyi looks at the latest news from the other side of the Salmon Falls:

  Maine Gov. Janet Mills has suspended her Senate campaign after failing to raise enough money to compete with socialist Graham Platner, who will now almost certainly face the perpetual centrist Republican Susan Collins in the general.

  Chuck Schumer and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairwoman Kirsten Gillibrand immediately backed Platner, proving that there's virtually nothing a leftist can say or do that is disqualifying.

  So, for 20 years, you've had a Totenkopf tattoo, which depicts a skull and crossbones, most famously used by Hitler's Schutzstaffel, the paramilitary organization that led, planned and executed the Holocaust?

  No problem!

  Just sayin': As previously mentioned, some Democrats are planning to enact Reichsfluchtsteuer laws to ensure their local Scrooge McDucks don't successfully escape with their property intact.

• Looking forward to Kristallnacht. Nellie Bowles' TGIF column this week could be a country song title: A New Tux on the Dirty Hilton Floor.

  → White House Correspondents’ Dinner: Is it even big news anymore when people try to assassinate Donald Trump? It’s a blip. Happens so often. I’ll scrape the back pages of America’s newspapers to find tidbits. Okay, so: It appears that the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was derailed after a crazed left-wing gunman allegedly stormed the hotel lobby to try to kill Trump. Shots were fired. Then he was stripped and rolled up in a tinfoil wrap like a little burrito (our copy editor tells me it’s a Mylar blanket). The only times a person gets wrapped in tinfoil are if they try to shoot the president or if they finish a marathon. Quite a delta between those endeavors, but the same outcome. And the dinner was canceled. Nothing to worry about.

  When journalists walked out of the ballroom, they were met by normal, run-of-the-mill protesters who carried signs reading: DEATH TO ALL OF THEM (a Wendy Williams reference). And DEATH TO TYRANT (the singular makes it more aggressive, I think). Everything is good. There is no relation between the protester holding a sign that says DEATH TO ALL OF THEM and the gunman inside trying to bring. . . death to all of them. He’s just mentally ill, I’m sure. There is no popular movement encouraging people to slaughter their political enemies en masse.

  I'm pretty sure this madness is temporary, as it has been in the past. Right?

• I was getting tired of all the nudging, anyway. Richard Morrison delivers a post mortem at the Daily Economy: After Nudging: The Rise and Fall of a Behavioral Economics Fad.

  The zeal of the convert can be a terrifying force to behold. An acolyte convinced of their own prior heresy will often be a more thorough inquisitor than the native-born believer. This dynamic may help explain why It’s on You by Nick Chater and George Loewenstein is so shrill and devoid of self-awareness.

  Having been leading researchers in behavioral psychology and economics who sought to manipulate individuals into ostensibly healthier and smarter choices — the world of “nudge” theory — they are doing a righteous penance by exposing the flaws of their former discipline. They have now decided that only government dictates can be relied upon to improve everything from retirement savings to climate change, and they are on a crusade to expose anyone who believes voluntary action by human beings can be useful for, well, anything.

  As the authors recount, the popularity of luring people into making the decisions that policymakers think best, rather than outright coercing them, really took off with the success of the book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (2008) by economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein. Sunstein would later hold an influential policy role as President Obama’s Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the chief White House overseer of proposed new federal regulations.

  Confession: I never got around to reading the Thaler/Sunstein book. Maybe if I'm in the mood for something "shrill and devoid of self-awareness", I'll try to find It's on You.

• From the archives… As it turns out, five years ago today, I posted a quote from Andrew C. McCarthy: Race Demagogues Poisoning Our Politics) (archive.today link)

  It is is eerily reminiscent of today's "discussions" about racial gerrymandering:

  Senator Tim Scott is entirely right: “America is not a racist country.” But America has a serious racial problem. Not a racism problem, a racial problem.

  We have a party in power whose strategy for remaining in power is to divide the country along racial lines. Democrats calculate that urban-centered racialist tribalism, amplified by media and pop-culture allies and underwritten by cowed corporations, can cast mainstream America as a deplorable bastion of white supremacism.

  The Republicans, the party out of power, generally lack Senator Scott’s confidence and tact in making the counter-case.

  The Department of Justice is a key to the Democrats’ strategy. The Obama-Biden administration politicized the law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus of our government, peddling with relish the progressive portrayal of an indelibly racist America. They’re ba-ack.

  … Indeed they are.