Pun Salad

Let's put Mr. Jefferson at second base. Reason's Ron Bailey explains Why Thomas Jefferson is the most fascinating Founding Father.

Like any good baseball scout, Ron is honest about TJ's major flaws involving that Peculiar Institution. But the bottom line:

Jefferson's hypocrisy with respect to slavery is a blot on his legacy. But he still deserves our praise for expressing the principles and framing the institutions that enabled the eventual extension of civil and political rights to all American men and women. On the anniversary of Jefferson's Declaration, it is up to us to sustain and extend that document's ideals.

Oh, by the way, that joke mentioned in the headline is here. Probably not the safest one to tell in mixed company.

Also of note:

• "Dr. Fieseher, a Mr. D. Bunker is Here to see you. He doesn't have an appointment." A couple days back I mentioned an op-ed column in my lousy local newspaper from Dr. James Fieseher. He bemoaned the sorry state of American healthcare and pointed the shaky finger of blame at insurance companies. Excerpt:

  Health insurers claim to add value by “managing” our healthcare. But is that really a value? Their idea of managing is to intervene in the doctor-patient relationship and decide, without having a medical degree or having seen the patient, which medications or procedures prescribed would be paid and which are unnecessary.

  Fieseher also claimed "health insurers are among America’s richest and most profitable companies and their CEO’s are paid among the highest salaries …"

  Which made me pay attention to a recent post by economist Noah Smith, which claims: Insurers aren't the main villain of the U.S. health care system. Some truth dropped along the way:

  Everyone knows that denying claims is in the insurance company’s financial interest. The more they can get away with taking your monthly premium and then weaseling out of their end of the bargain, the more their shareholders and executives can walk away with giant bags of money. They’re the ones buying huge houses and yachts and whatever on the money they made from finding some technical reason to send you and thousands upon thousands of people like you into medical bankruptcy after your chemotherapy. Who wouldn’t be mad?

  And yet when we take a hard look at the question of why Americans pay so much more for their health care than people elsewhere in the developed world, insurance companies and their profits just aren’t that big of a piece of the story.

  First of all, insurance companies just don’t make that much profit. UnitedHealth Group, the company of which [murder victim] Brian Thompson’s UnitedHealthcare is a subsidiary, is the most valuable private health insurer in the country in terms of market capitalization, and the one with the largest market share. Its net profit margin is just 6.11%:

  That’s only about half of the average profit margin of companies in the S&P 500. And other big insurers are even less profitable. Elevance Health, the second-biggest, has a margin of between 2% and 4%. Centene’s margin is usually around 1% to 2%. Cigna Group’s margin is usually around 2% to 3%. And so on. These companies are just making very little profit at all.

  I'm sure Dr. Fieseher was properly horrified by Brian Thompson's murder. But who knows whether his reckless and irresponsible misinformation won't inspire another psychopath to violence?

• Do you ever get the feeling that we're living in the middle of an Ayn Rand novel? That was a rhetorical question I posed a few days ago discussing Bernie Sanders' AI proposals. As it happens, those comparisons are coming thick and fast. Here's Veronique de Rugy's look at a different scheme: A Villainous Blueprint for Managed Poverty.

  Writer and philosopher Ayn Rand was often accused of inventing cartoonish villains. Rogues like Ellsworth Toohey in "The Fountainhead" would scheme to seize the global economy's commanding heights in pursuit of a distorted sense of justice. But the people who hold such ideas don't just appear in cartoons or in Rand's novels.

  Enter Thomas Piketty and company.

  In early June, Piketty — the French economist whose work on inequality has made him something of a rock star even while being serially challenged for methodological errors, data imputations and cherry-picked baselines — and his large team unveiled what can only be described as a villainous plan. It's a comprehensive program for global managed decline dressed up in the language of climate justice and equality.

  Vero goes into the demented details of Piketty's plundering plan.

  If you want me I'll be trying to find "Galt's Gulch" on Google Maps.

• The kids are all right. Born in my-my-my g-g-generation, Scott Sumner is tired of us taking the rap for today's woes. The silent revolutionaries.

  Now I’m going to say something that might be controversial but is obvious when you think about it. I am not personally to blame for all of the cultural, political and economic policy changes of the 1960s.

  I say this because I frequently see boomers being blamed for every single ill in modern society. The peak period of change was roughly 1965, sometimes called “the liberal hour”. I was ten years old. Not a single baby boomer was out of their teens. If you wish to blame a generation for all the ills of modern society, please blame the Silent Generation and the Greatest Generation. They got rid of traditional morality and pushed divorce rates much higher. They put Social Security on an unsustainable path. They ended the gold price peg for the dollar. They created affirmative action and NIMBYism. The ended the death penalty. Heck, they even invented rock and roll.

  I also see people suggest that boomers are the lucky generation. No, it is smaller generations that are lucky. Big generations face a highly competitive job market. In 1982, I was paid $19,700/year as an assistant professor, at a time when the unemployment rate was 10%. Even in real terms, starting salaries for young Gen X professors had moved far higher by the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was mostly the silent generation and perhaps a very few early boomers that left college and entered a strong job market during the 1960s.

  Scott's a solid economist, and he backs up his argument with actual data (not just anecdotes).

• In (sorta) local news… Writing in (of all places) the Bulwark, Poli Sci prof Bernard Tamas is heartened by recent news: The Libertarian Party is Trying to De-MAGAfy Itself.

  THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY LAST MONTH expelled its New Hampshire chapter from the national party. For years, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire (LPNH) has prided itself on being the radical vanguard of the liberty movement and made itself a public relations nightmare for the wider libertarian movement. Its chair, Jeremy Kauffman, became notorious for tweets he posted from the New Hampshire chapter’s account, including implying that historically black colleges and universities were “chimp factories” and declaring that “Anyone who murders Kamala Harris would be an American hero.” Faithless to the wider party, the LPNH endorsed and campaigned for Donald Trump over the Libertarian Party’s own presidential nominee, Chase Oliver, in 2024. When the vote by the Libertarian National Committee to eject the LPNH finally came during the party’s national conference, it was swift and decisive.

  The story here is bigger than a racist, right-wing group being removed from a party apparatus. Many political scientists, including me, believe that having only two competitive political parties hurts American democracy. And if we cannot have several different parties represented in Congress, the next best option is to have third parties that can force the major parties to make changes by undermining, or threatening to undermine, their candidates. But third parties are far weaker today than they were over a century ago, when they were able to discipline both the Republican and Democratic parties whenever either moved too far beyond the public will.

  Bernard Tamas is hopeful this move will make the LP a non-joke third party. I don't see any evidence provided; they were unable to crack the two-party duopoly even before the LPNH went off the reservation.

  For the record: during the 2024 campaign Chase Oliver accused Israel of committing "genocide" in Gaza. Sorry, Libertarian Party: Oliver's remaining foreign policy stances were merely isolationist, but that was a dealbreaker for me. (You want to argue with me about that? Too bad; read Sam Harris: Why I Won’t Debate Critics of Israel.)

Recently on the book blog:

A nasty little "psychological thriller" that made it onto the WSJ's best mysteries of 2024 list. (WSJ gifted link) It's a little gimmicky, but I found myself turning pages.

The narration is first-person, mostly from Dr. Caroline Strange. (She insists her patients call her "Dr. Caroline", so as not to be confused with the Marvel character played by Benedict Cumberbatch.) I admit that at first she comes off as honest and unsentimental about her patients. But slowly a couple of warning signs emerge: she lies to the cops on page 28; and then (worse!) lies to her husband on page 56.

Wait a minute! The cops? Yes, they have sought her out to ask about a missing journalist, Ellen Garcia. Which just might have something to do with a recent first-time patient, who mentioned that he might be killing someone, and that Dr. Caroline might know of that someone.

But we also get narration from Ellen, who has (indeed) been kidnapped, held in a storage facility. And also a guy named Gordon Strong, who's just been fired as a beer distributor. ("Without sales, we don't need distribution," he's told.) Gordon turns out to have a pivotal role in Dr. Caroline's story, but we don't find out what it is for a while.

As we go along all three narrators' flaws and foibles are revealed, leading up to (pardon the cliché) a pulse-pounding (and somewhat blood-soaked) climax. Well done.

Via Instapundit, the latest on one of those little issues prioritized even below the ones Mr. Ramirez lists: Social Security Administration report shows new trust fund depletion dates.

As you may have noticed, the pols running for the US Senate this year will be in office when the "trust fund" runs out. So let's look at…

Campaign website for GOP candidate John E. Sununu is pretty unspecific and vapid:

Well somebody has to step up and lower the temperature. Somebody has to get things done. Laser focus on the economy, jobs, our debt and making our lives more affordable. Somebody has to protect Medicare, do better for our veterans, and really tackle our healthcare costs. And, on social security we keep our promises to seniors, all of them.

Campaign website for GOP candidate Scott Brown: as near as I can tell, nothing on Social Security.

Campaign website for Democrat candidate Chris Pappas: also seemingly silent on Social Security. Although he's been endorsed by the "National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare-PAC". The relevant press release:

Apparently "strengthen benefits" focus-groups well; Pappas uses it twice. Silence on where the money to "strengthen benefits" will come from.

Also of note:

• And those faces stare back at you. Jeff Maurer invites you to Stare Into the Face of Your Populist Revolution. He's talking about those two "activists" that recruited Graham Platner to run for the US Senate in Maine:

  The full story of what happened is even more rage-inducing than that guy’s voice. Those two — their names are Dan Moraff and Leanne Fan — met when they were staffers on Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign. They’ve recruited several candidates to run for office, including Squad member Summer Lee and Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborn. They were looking for candidates to run in Maine, found Platner via a video he posted about a local issue, and approached him and convinced him to run for Senate. They promised Platner fundraising infrastructure (“we’d raise his first million dollars”) and promised to surround him with “competence and people who were doing it for the right reasons.” That last promise is interesting since Platner is now in a public spat with his ex-campaign manager, who wrote in The Washington Post that Platner is “not someone who would be good for Maine,” and a Platner ally is now publicly calling her a liar.

  Moraff and Fan have a theory of politics that seems to be premised almost entirely on the idea that the “establishment vs. outsider” divide is the only one that matters. In addition to Moraff’s “petri dish” dialogue, he said that he wants candidates “who didn’t run for student council,” and who have “a healthy contempt for existing Democratic party infrastructure.” Fan describes her ideal political candidate as “Somebody who feels authentically part of the culture of the district they come from.”1 Moraff went so far as to blame the country’s problems on “establishment politicians” and name checked Susan Collins, but then proceeded to say that the only Democrat who could lose to Collins would be one who “is even more of an establishment politician and even more responsible for the problems we face.” As always, the ur-villain in the leftist narrative — that malevolent hydra who sucks the souls from working people — is a mainstream Democrat. Which leaves me little choice but to reference the “Jimmy Carter is history’s greatest monster” joke for the second time in a week.

  Jeff is (as usual) R-rated in his bottom line:

  […] I hope that people see left-populism for what it is: An angry, paranoid movement with no ability to improve people’s lives. It’s not organic, and it’s not “of the people”, unless by “the people” you mean a Yale Law student with a vocal fry that could boil oceans. There’s a good chance Democrats will lose in Maine; these know-it-all leftists may have fucked us. And if Democrats don’t recognize the DSA movement for the oddball cult that it is, then we might be even more fucked in the future.

  I mentioned Moraff and Fan here a few days ago.

• Frankly, George, Maine voters don't give a damn. Nevertheless, Mr. Will points out an obvious truth: Graham Platner’s ‘journey’ evades accountability. (WaPo gifted link)

  Subhed: "The Maine Democrat and Senate aspirant and his apologists are marinated in the jargon of therapy-speak." Heh!

  Maine should send Graham Platner to Washington. But not to the Senate, for which that state’s Democratic Party has nominated him. He belongs in the National Museum of American History, displayed as a specimen of today’s no-fault culture.

  “At last” understates how speedily Platner has validated Ralph Waldo Emerson’s axiom that “every hero becomes a bore at last.” Today’s Democratic Party, which has anointed him a “working class” hero, evidently has met few members of that class.

  Most such members do not say they are surprised to learn that for 18 years they have had a Nazi tattoo on their chests. (Long before Platner decided to join Daniel Webster on the list of senators from New England, Platner reportedly spoke of his “Totenkopf” tattoo.) Few in the working class get $200,000 mortgages from their father, or have their mothers as their largest customers. (“Oyster farmer” Platner sells to his mother’s restaurant.) His sexting to sundry women occurred, he says by way of extenuation, early in his marriage. (He has been married less than three years.)

  I think I need to play Elvis Costello's "Red Shoes" at full volume, on repeat for the rest of the day: "Oh, I used to be disgusted / And now I try to be amused"

• Like Jurassic Park dinosaurs wanting to reproduce. Kevin D. Williamson notes that Political tribalism always finds a way. (Dispatch gifted link)

  The case for supporting Graham Platner, my Democrat friends assert, is the case for voting for any Senate candidate with a “D” next to his name. A Democrat-controlled Congress (that the Democrats will win a majority in the House is generally taken as given as of this writing, though I’m not sure it should be) puts a stop to Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, which is a very compelling argument until you consider that Donald Trump does not have a legislative agenda to speak of. But there are other levers of power attached to a congressional majority—oversight, confirmations, etc.—as well as an opportunity for Democrats to put forward their own legislative agenda, forcing Trump either to accept their bills or veto some popular proposals. And though a small Democratic majority in the Senate would not be able, on its own strength, to remove Trump (and possibly other members of his administration) from office once the Democrat-controlled House has handed down yet another impeachment (as many observers assume it will, as a matter of course), every jackass with a Kik account and a “D” next to his name who ends up seated in the Senate puts Democrats one step closer to realizing that end.

  That isn’t nothing. There are a dozen good reasons to impeach Trump and other members of his administration and remove them from office—from the illegally launched and incompetently executed war in Iran to the massacres of civilians at sea to the still-relevant issue of the failed coup d’état of 2020–21—and it would be useful and salubrious to have an empowered congressional opposition to check Trump’s various abuses of power, which range from trying to evade Senate confirmation in making high-level appointments to his attempt to simply loot the Treasury to set up a $1.8 billion slush fund to use for his own political purposes. The personal, venal corruption attending this administration is epic, and Democrats could perform a very useful public service by making it a headline issue under a new Democratic majority, if one should come to pass.

  Don't worry, KDW discusses Texas candidate Ken Paxton as well. And also a Mencken quote with which I was unfamiliar. It's a gifted link, go for it.

• "Carnival of Fools" is especially apt. That's the name of Jeffrey Blehar's newsletter, and there's not much doubt which merry-go-round he's discussing: In California, the Real Scandal Is What’s Legal. Specifically:

  […] with a universal mail-in ballot option, a seemingly endless window for ballot-counting, and legal mechanisms for unions and organizers to harvest (and later “cure”) ballots, California’s system is a black box to everyone except well-informed organizers and jaded electoral analysts — almost as if it were intentionally designed to fuel paranoia. It wasn’t, at least not at first: California’s horrible electoral system is the accumulated result of serially stupid decisions, like silt swept downstream that eventually clogs a river.

  And we shall close with that metaphor stuck in our heads.

Way back in 2021, in a post about Sidney Powell's delusional claims about the 2020 election, I said:

By the way: if you would like Pun Salad to link to your content, having the word "wacky" in the headline will measurably improve your chances.

It's not in the headline, but the subhed of Noah Smith's latest "Roundup" contains: "Piketty gets wacky".

At issue is French economist Thomas Piketty's latest effort to drive the entire world down the Road to Serfdom, expressed in (many) tweets. A sample:

We envision a new institution, the Global Justice Fund to finance this sustainable convergence path. The fund would raise revenue via global wealth and income taxes to be used for climate investments, expansion of health and education, and building up a World Sovereign Fund.

The… pic.twitter.com/IYXdWylaNk

— Thomas Piketty (@PikettyWIL) June 4, 2026

It really must be seen to be believed: those arrows in the bottom schematic represent a massive worldwide transfer of cash from "rich" to "poor". The W-word appears once again in Noah's commentary: it's a "truly wacky policy proposal" meant to combat "climate change."

Noah is a relatively mainstream Democrat economist, so his criticism is (for me) actually too kind to Piketty and his co-plunderers. Don Boudreaux is more on my wavelength with his letter to the Guardian: Unsustainable Piketty, et al..

Well, I'll quibble: There's always Orwell's sustainable scenario: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.”

Also of note:

• But speaking of George… Kyle Smith appreciates Orwell the Fortune Teller. (WSJ gifted link) Excerpt:

  “Politics and the English Language,” from 1946, is perhaps Orwell’s most famous essay, and should be studied intently by anyone who wants to be a writer. But take a look at the same year’s “The Prevention of Literature,” in which he describes an anticensorship conference in which the participants defend the suppression of disfavored texts. Step on any nominally “freethinking” campus today and you’ll find bookstores jauntily if nonsensically promoting “censored” or “banned” books that haven’t been censored or banned. Nearby, speeches promoting disfavored viewpoints continue to be canceled because of credible threats of violence, research is threatened for being culturally inappropriate and students want bans on speech that could upset “marginalized peoples.” “In its net effect,” writes Orwell of the event he attended, “the meeting was a demonstration in favor of censorship.”

  “In England,” he wrote, “the immediate enemies of truthfulness, and hence of freedom of thought, are the press lords, the film magnates, and the bureaucrats.” But over time, “the weakening of the desire for liberty among the intellectuals themselves is the most serious symptom of all.”

  There’s no exact analogue for Big Brother in America today. But that’s because there doesn’t have to be.

  Today, the person wearing the boot stamping on your face is likely to be an intellectual.

• Live Free or Bike. The WSJ reports some local political maneuvers: Rahm Emanuel Pedals Hard to Show Vitality as Aging Potential 2028 Candidate.

  (I must protest: everybody is "aging". What they really mean to imply is "old".)

  (And he's not that old.)

  (Anyway:)

  NORTH HAMPTON, N.H.—Rahm Emanuel has long been exercise-obsessed, swimming 3 to 4 miles a week, plus weight training, machine workouts and yoga. He put his vitality forward in a more public way over the weekend as he biked across a state vying to hold the first 2028 Democratic presidential nominating contest.

  The 66-year-old Democrat is likely to be one of the oldest—if not the oldest—in the field from either party if he enters the race. The former congressman, White House chief of staff, Chicago mayor and ambassador to Japan has a long résumé, but his more centrist instincts and age are potential strikes against him in a party that has moved leftward and faces calls for younger leaders.

  For the record, Rahm is getting a 2% chance at Polymarket for being the Democratic nominee in 2028. And Rahm is (indeed) one of the older people in their list.

• Fortunately, the headline on Tyler Cowen's article is misleading. It is: AI Isn’t Conscious. Neither Are We.

  I'm more interested in whether "we" are, so skipping over the stuff about AI:

  As for the people, it does not work to deny human consciousness and awareness altogether, as that would lead to a self-contradiction. Who or what, after all, would be doing the denying or would be aware that such denying is going on? It is more accurate to speak of human awareness as a kind of epiphenomenon operating on top of whatever the true decision-making processes may be. For whatever reason, Darwinian evolutionary processes have seen fit to place some partial awareness on top of a much larger set of operations in the brain.

  It is easy enough to see that some “primitive” animals may not be conscious, yet they can make complex calculations all the same. It is harder to admit that many of our decisions proceed on the same basis, just as sometimes you may drive or walk to work in the morning without much conscious awareness of how to take the proper route. All of a sudden you have arrived at your destination, as if by a miracle. More likely, that is how your brain usually is working, namely that lots of calculation goes on with a minimal or perhaps zero level of explicit awareness.

  Sometimes I like to say that “I am only conscious at the margin.” Tongue in cheek, I will suggest that I am only conscious enough to avoid the self-contradiction of asserting that I am not conscious at all. I feel I am honest enough to just not be very impressed by my own flow of conscious awareness or its ability to perform complex calculations. Still, I recognize that it is all I have got, so I need to treasure it, however paltry it may be.

  I am (a little) relieved that Tyler loads his argument with enough caveats to "avoid the self-contradiction of asserting that I am not conscious at all." But labelling it an "epiphenomenon" denies that it has any control over the lower-level mental processes. I'm pretty sure it does.

• It's Disagreement Day here at Pun Salad. It's turning out that way, anyhow. The UnPopulist site has Marlene Laruelle of George Washington University’s Illiberalism Studies Program interviewing Shikha Dalmia, purporting to explain How the Libertarian Movement Missed the Authoritarian Moment.

  Illiberalism Studies Program: Shikha, thank you for joining us for this Agora interview. I wanted to open with a personal question about your own ideological journey: Why did you leave libertarianism? How do you dissociate libertarianism from liberalism and which elements do you still believe are important?

  Shikha Dalmia: My break with libertarianism happened when Trump arrived on the scene. I was working at Reason magazine at that time and, the minute Trump came down the golden escalator, it was clear to me that he was a different kind of politician: he was a demagogue and an authoritarian, he didn’t really understand liberalism, and he didn’t understand America’s core commitments. He was closer to demagogues that I had seen in India, like Narendra Modi, who preceded Trump by a few years. Given this, I was a little bit more sensitized to demagogues in general and Trump in particular, so it was pretty clear to me that the libertarians around me were just not seeing him as the same kind of threat as I was.

  In fact, there was general chuckling at the way he was sticking his finger in the eye of the left and going after liberals. It is not that libertarians were completely unconcerned about Trump; it’s that they were just not taking the threat seriously. They were treating him as a normal politician, just bad in a different kind of way and, at best, maybe a corrective to the excesses of the left. This chasm between me and libertarian circles just kept growing, and it was getting hard to get my point of view taken seriously.

  Trump "came down the golden escalator" on June 16, 2015. Shikha kept writing for Reason for another 5½ years.

  Other than that timeline quibble, it seems that Shikha fuzzed up her disappointment with (some) of her Reason co-workers into a general distaste for (either) the libertarian "movement" or libertarianism itself. I think her specific criticisms miss the mark. I regret the cliché, but here it is anyway: It's a big tent, and there's plenty of room inside for people to disagree.

Mr. Ramirez dismisses:

And Mr. Geraghty has words to go with that: Why Graham Platner’s Supporters Don’t Care. After reviewing the vicious treatment accorded to Mitt Romney in the 2012 election from pundits and media…

This concludes your Platner item du jour.

Also of note:

• Here's an idea for Mr. Ramirez's next cartoon. Introduced by Kevin D. Williamson: Republicans Rat-Paddle Away From the SS Trump. (Dispatch gifted link)

  Do you hear that? Skitter. Scuffle. Scurry ... splash!

  The rodential squeaking started off sounding like the occasional whine of a rusty gate hinge. Pretty soon, it is going to sound like Indiana Jones in the catacombs underneath Venice. As the SS Trump founders and careens, it is impossible to miss the sound of rat bellies hitting the water, with the rats snug in their little rat life-preservers and praying for a ratty little lifeboat to come along and pick them up.

  And you know what that means: It is time to strafe the lifeboats.

  How bad are things for Donald Trump? His overall approval rating is down to 38 percent, according to the New York Times poll, a reminder that half of any population has below-average intelligence and that 38 percent evidently couldn’t beat a chicken at tic-tac-toe.

  I will point out, as usual, that Democrats are slightly, significantly worse. I don't think KDW would agree, but he's in no mood for whataboutism.

• By the way, Trump is messing up in the Mideast. Erick Erickson writes on The Pottery Barn Rule of Foreign Policy.

  Colin Powell is said to have warned George W. Bush before the Iraq war with a shopkeeper’s logic: you break it, you own it. Powell later denied using those exact words, and Pottery Barn has no such policy. But the principle outlived the quibble, because it is true. A nation that shatters the existing order takes ownership of whatever it leaves on the floor.

  The United States broke the order in the Persian Gulf. On February 28, American and Israeli forces struck Iran and killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Whatever one thinks of that decision — and I supported it — it ended one status quo and obligated us to build a better one. Roughly one hundred days later, we have not built it. We have built something worse.

  Consider what the President of the United States now presides over.

  Iran has laid naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which a fifth of the world’s oil moves; our own Central Command sank sixteen Iranian minelayers trying to stop it. Iranian drones have struck merchant ships in the Gulf. Iranian missiles and drones have rained on American-allied Gulf states, killing a port worker in Bahrain. And in the last twenty-four hours, Iran fired barrage after barrage at Israel — the first such bombardment since the April ceasefire — which the Revolutionary Guard cheerfully called “a warning.” Before February 28, ships moved through Hormuz and Israel was not under missile fire from Tehran.

  That was the status quo we destroyed. What replaced it is a shooting gallery. By any honest accounting, we are worse off than the day we started.

  What do you way, Donald? Shouldn't we just go back to blowing up the bad guys? Maybe we should never have stopped.

• It's a very special kind of disgrace. John Fund contends: California's Election System Is a Disgrace. Making a point too subtle to be made by the partisans on both sides:

  The system is indeed a designed mess: A voter can return a ballot in any county in California, no matter which county that voter is registered in. A decade ago, California legalized ballot-harvesting — which allows anyone to collect and deliver a limitless number of mail-in ballots — which increases the risk of fraud or coercion. The state mails ballots to all registered voters, 23.2 million of them. Ballots received by officials up to seven days after Election Day are counted.

  I agree with people who've been saying that there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the recent election. But (quite obviously) the system is designed so that it's easy to commit fraud without leaving evidence. We simply don't know how much fraud there was.

• You know that joke about why you shouldn't try to teach a pig to sing? Jerry Coyne recommended a substack article from Sam Harris, and he's right, it's pretty good: Why I Won’t Debate Critics of Israel

  First, my general attitude: I’m not interested in exploring all the ways that Israel has missed the mark—from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s corrupt alliance with the far right, to the many crimes committed by settlers in the West Bank, to the deaths of innocent noncombatants in several wars—because none of these failings, however grave, will alter my sense that (1) the ethical difference between Israel and her enemies remains vast, and (2) the global preoccupation with the Jewish state, as though it were the worst villain among nations, is contemptible, being the product of perennial lies and delusions.

  Next, a simple heuristic: As I suggested in at least one Community thread already, if my intransigence on these matters mystifies you, it might help to understand that, for whatever reason, I think militant Islam is ten times worse than you think it is. When I talk about “jihadists” and their various groups—Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, the IRGC, etc.—I’m talking about people who I consider to be worse than Nazis (jihadists being, essentially, Nazis who are certain of Paradise). My views about the conflict in the Middle East will not fundamentally change unless my critics produce evidence that Israel has become as evil as her enemies.

  However, you can rest assured that if the IDF morphs into a death cult that uses its own civilian population as human shields (and yet somehow remains widely popular), if ordinary Israelis begin to celebrate martyrdom above every earthly priority, producing generations of bright-eyed, suicidal fanatics, if the residents of Tel Aviv condone the taking of Palestinian infants, old women, and other noncombatants as hostages and then gather in crowds of thousands, baying for their blood—if, in other words, the Israelis begin to resemble the Palestinians, then I won’t care who wins this war. Short of this, there remains a world of difference between the two sides, and I believe that we should focus on how brutalizing it is for any free society to confront enemies that can sincerely claim to “love death” more than everyone else loves life—for this has been Israel’s predicament for the better part of a century.

  A brief excerpt from this powerful essay.

  (I was unimpressed with Harris's book on free will back in 2015. This essay is better.)

Recently on the movie blog:

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I like John Krasinski as action hero Jack Ryan just fine. He's an able substitute for (hold your breath) Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, and Chris Pine. Once you get over Jim from "The Office" shooting people, he does a good job.

This is on Amazon Prime, and unlike Krasinski's previous outings in the role, it's a single, stand-alone movie. As things open, Jack has eschewed his spying roles, and has taken a role in the private sector. He's also lost his girlfriend, Cathy, for some reason. (Major departure from the books and early movies!) But (as opening scenes reveal) there's some violence happening in Dubai, as good guys try (and fatally fail) in their mission to extract … something.

To be honest, the plot was nearly incomprehensible to me, other than knowing who the good guys and bad guys were. It serves mainly to string together a lot of gunplay, car chases, explosions, and the like. Mainly because the bad guys seemed to have a supernatural ability to know what the good guys were up to. Fortunately, Jack has an equally uncanny ability to deduce what the bad guys are up to. But not always quickly enough to avoid good guy fatalities.

Wendell Pierce is back as Jack's once and future boss; Michael Kelly is here as Jack's wisecracking (and very deadly) sidekick. They are good too. Sienna Miller shows up as a chain-smoking MI6 operative, and she and Jack exchange banter.

As part of Reason's "1776 All-Stars" collection, Jack Nicastro explains why Samuel Adams Was the Most Libertarian Founder.

Good enough for me!

(For headline quibblers: Yes, I know that Jim Koch, founder of the Boston Beer Company, which makes Samuel Adams beer, is no relation to the historic Samuel Adams. But I did get a free tour of Jim's original Boston brewery once. And their website is drenched in red-white-and-blue patriotism. So I'm a fan.)

And more (Platner-free!) items of interest:

• Try not to fall asleep. Maybe grab some coffee before reading Megan McArdle about America’s most boring nightmare. (WaPo gifted link)

  The nation is in a hole, and if it’s going to climb out, Americans need to take a hard look at the bill that is rapidly coming due, rather than stuff the notices in a drawer and try to forget they’re there.

  The debt held by the public is roughly $31.6 trillion, and it recently surpassed 100 percent of the gross domestic product. In other words, if we wanted to pay it off next year, we’d have to stop consuming anything and turn everything we produce, from apples to zippers, over to our creditors. Sure hope you remembered to stock up the chest freezer, or it’s going to be a very hungry year.

  Thankfully, we do not actually have to pay off the debt next year. In fact, we don’t have to pay it off at all. A nation with a healthy economy can sustain a modicum of debt, and even modest budget deficits, essentially forever. As long as the debt isn’t too high, the deficits aren’t too outrageous, and the economy keeps growing, inflation and economic growth will keep the national debt-to-GDP ratio within healthy bounds.

  Alas, the United States is well past that point. The outsize debt was barely sustainable even with the abnormally low interest rates between the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic. But with 30-year Treasury yields at their highest level in almost two decades, it is not. Interest costs alone exceeded 3 percent of GDP in 2025, more than the government spent on Medicaid or defense. That has helped push the annual budget deficit to almost $2 trillion, or 5.8 percent of GDP. Unless something is done, those numbers will get even worse as the boomers finish retiring and entitlements eat more and more revenue.

  The AI summary of the (as I type) 824 comments: they are "largely criticizing Republican policies, particularly tax cuts for the wealthy and increased military spending."

  Fun facts (from Google's AI): Uncle Stupid's total spending is 23.3% of GDP; tax revenue is 17.5% of GDP; military spending is 2.8% of GDP. We could cut military spending to zero, and that wouldn't get us even halfway to a balanced budget.

• A worthy followup. Friedrich Hayek postscripted his book The Constitution of Liberty with an essay titled "Why I Am Not a Conservative". (It's somewhat dated, but you can read it here.)

  Phil Magness was no doubt inspired by Hayek to write: Why I Am Not a Neoliberal. It's a downloadable PDF of a scholarly article. Abstract:

  I identify two strains of neoliberalism. I designate the most common use as pejorative neoliberalism, a term of disparagement for marginalist and freemarket thinkers. This use traces its origins to interwar Germany as a pejorative for the Austrian school. Since the 1990s, a nearly identical usage has been adopted by the academic far-left. I designate as non-ironic neoliberalism a post-2010 attempt to reclaim the term to describe moderately pro-market, but technocratic, beliefs. This version has more in common with the market-failure economic theorists of the mid-twentieth century than with the critics of their theories. I conclude that neither usage of the term has meaningful explanatory value for classical liberal economic theory.

  It's an interesting look, especially the "pejorative" part.

• Speaking of Hayek-inspired headlines… The WSJ editorialists are no doubt playing off The Road to Serfdom: The Road to AI State Socialism. (WSJ gifted link)

  Many of America’s worst policy mistakes have been bipartisan mind melds. A new example comes this week from Bernie Sanders, who wants the feds to take ownership stakes in AI companies. Hmmm. Which Republican might have inspired this statist brainstorm?

  Mr. Sanders teased his forthcoming legislation in a New York Times op-ed that pitched a U.S. AI sovereign wealth fund. “Even President Trump, in an executive order, has proposed establishing an American sovereign wealth fund,” Mr. Sanders writes.

  Yes, and we blasted the President’s idea last year. Sovereign wealth funds typically enrich a country’s rulers and friends far more than its citizens. Democrats criticize the Trump family businesses for profiting from the Presidency with crypto deals. Imagine the temptation for corruption if government owns stakes in America’s wealthiest companies.

  Another example of the rule: "Progressives" never seem to have any ideas that don't involve government demanding more money and power.

• Interesting observations from a pothead. No, I really mean it! Tyler Cowen shares an email that tells us Why drugs are here to stay.

  1. Drugs are fun.

  2. They open new ways of perceiving, sometimes by adversely impacting other ways of perceiving, particularly by adjusting attention response, and particularly for perceiving experiences that are sensory (what experiences aren’t sensory, ridiculous, I know, but here of course I mean art primarily.

  3. Since the experiences I am inadequately categorizing above are profoundly influential on people’s meaning-making, drugs can be as well, of course.

  4. Most people are not going to be as economically viable as they are now as producers of goods or services, and many, if not most, are going to be economically viable only to the extent that they generate demand, and here I think specifically demand for pleasure. Drugs are important in this social equation. People will use many more drugs of increasing variety and quality. This train has left the station, or, rather, these trains have left their stations. You will not call them back.

  Reader, those are the (anonymous) correspondent's first four points. There are 10 more.

  Mega-disclaimer: I've never used, nor do I recommend, any drugs other than ethanol (see above) and caffeine (ditto), and have no plans to. Still…

Andrew Heaton asks: Is this the dumbest healthcare law?.

Some text:

For "live free or die" fans: New Hampshire is one of the 12 states without a Certificate of Need law. And the only one in New England.

On the more general topic, local Dr. James Fieseher appears in my lousy local newspaper, Foster's Daily Democrat to assert: America needs a national healthcare system (archive.today link)

Reader, didya ever notice how much mischief is buried in that word "system"? There's that hidden implication of something carefully planned by benevolent experts. We don't need no stinking markets!

Anyway, Fieseher's article is an unsurprising and unholy mixture of fallacy and finger-pointing. I won't debate the whole thing, but things go wrong for him almost immediately:

Of course, "auto insurance" is part of our "transportation system". But it doesn't pay for our cars, gasoline, routine maintenance, and the like; we are expected to pay for that stuff ourselves. This doesn't make our "transportation system" perfect by a long shot, but it gets most people where they want to go.

Should "health care" work more like that? Sure.

Is that what Fieseher wants? Ha. No.

Also of note:

• Grumpy economist John H. Cochrane was asked to be one of the five participants in a WSJ forum with a question-begging title: How Can We Reduce Income Inequality? (WSJ gifted link) His response:

  It’s easy to reduce income inequality: Imprison the billionaires. Burn the evil capitalist businesses that generate their wealth and seduce us with wonders—iPhones, software, electric cars, Amazon, Walmart, miracle drugs, and so on. There, feel better?

  Our billionaires kept a fraction of the benefit they generated for us by starting these innovative businesses. Their great wealth remains reinvested in those companies to serve us even better in the future. Just what is the problem?

  It is right to worry about people of lesser means. But how does a kid who works at a carwash in Fresno even know how many billionaires there are, or what their net worth is?

  We should worry about opportunity. Teachers’ unions destroyed his schools. Construction restrictions make moving to good jobs impossible. Business regulations, taxes, minimum wages and occupational licenses limit his opportunities. Social programs trap him by taking away a dollar of benefits for each dollar of earnings. To provide opportunity, start by getting out of the way.

  Many people who worry about inequality hope to improve this kid’s life by taxing the innovators to send him a few more government checks—so long as he stays poor. But there aren’t enough billionaires to make a dent in the government’s ravenous appetite. And what a horrible vision: entrenched misery and idleness, in a stagnant society devoid of innovators, made only a bit better by a dwindling government check and dysfunctional social-service programs.

  Others who decry inequality want taxes to reduce the political power of the wealthy. But that hands even more power to the government. Fairly won inequality does not threaten democracy. Confiscatory taxation does. Don’t kill the golden goose.

  There is more at his substack: Inequality at WSJ.

• Sorry, I've got more on that guy in Maine. Or rather, Robby Soave does at Reason: Graham Platner has made #MeToo Democrats and their enemies switch sides.

  Expecting any level of ideological consistency from partisan political actors is a fool's errand; even so, the amount of sheer hypocrisy generated by the Graham Platner scandal is striking.

  In response to fresh allegations that Platner, the presumptive Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, was abusive in his past relationships, conservatives who in the past have been correctly discerning of the motivations behind certain sexual misconduct claims are now heralding these accusations as all but confirmed. In fact, they have assailed The New York Times, which published a detailed story about Platner's dating history and alleged violent episodes, for not going further in its indictment. Meanwhile, many Democrats who gleefully and uncritically embraced the "believe all women" mantra of the #MeToo era are broadly dismissive of the Times story, even though the evidence of wrongdoing is arguably more compelling in this case.

  Things are fluid enough that I feel I should visit the news sites before I post Platner-related items to find out whether he's dropped out.

• Beware of staffers bearing crullers. This NHJournal article received a Pun Salad chuckle: Donut-Wielding Staffer Put NHDems' Platner Problem on National TV.

  A doughnut-wielding staffer trying to block a video camera with a breakfast pastry put Stefany Shaheen in the national news and shone a spotlight yet again on Granite State Democrats dodging questions about their Nazi-tattooed neighbor, Graham Platner.

  For weeks, U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Chris Pappas and his fellow Democrats have refused to answer questions about Platner’s problematic behavior, including his Nazi SS tattoo, his statements praising a Hamas attack on Israelis, his insults targeting Black people and gay people, and, most recently, his sexting with multiple women in recent months despite being a married man.

  Shaheen, who is seeking the NH-01 Democratic nomination, was confronted by a Republican tracker asking whether she supported Platner’s Senate campaign. Shaheen did not answer. Instead, according to video of the incident, a campaign staffer repeatedly shoved a pastry into the camera as the tracker pressed the question.

  Also at Fox News: 'Meet the Press' interview cut short as Trump clashes with Kristen Welker. No donuts were involved, apparently.

• I'm old enough to remember when Democrats were better liars. Or at least they were better at consistent messaging. Jeff Maurer observes: “The Common Man Is a Racist Douchebag” Is Not the Populist Message Some People Think It Is.

  As of this writing, Graham Platner scandals include:

  • A Nazi tattoo that Platner explains1 by saying (in so many words) “I know very little and make poor decisions — anyway, vote for me!”;

  • Being a man in his 40s who not only knows what Kik is, but who created a profile on that app with a semi-nude pic;

  • Texting with 28% of the female population of Maine while married;

  • An ex-girlfriend describing him as a hard-drinking, abusive asshole;

  • Serial lying about the provenance of the Gus T. Oysterman character that he plays and about the finances of his alleged oyster empire;

  • Enough assholish Reddit statements to make you want to swim to the bottom of the ocean and yank out the big plug that powers The Internet.

  Those are the scandals as of this writing — 7:46 PM Eastern Standard Time on Thursday, June 4, 2026, Anno Domini. Though one suspects that Republicans might be sitting on a gargantuan opposition research folder that they’re going to drop on Platner like Wile E. Coyote getting crushed by an anvil the second it’s too late for Democrats to pick someone else.

  So, pass the popcorn. Or the donuts.

Our Amazon Eye Candy is a recycled item from five years ago today, used to illustrate Elizabeth Nolan Brown's article on The Bipartisan Antitrust Crusade Against Big Tech.

But that was, and is, part of a larger war that "progressives" are fighting, as described at the Freeman: The Ghost of “Neoliberalism”.

Gee, I wonder if Maine's favorite progressive has learned the word? Googling…

He sure has! Jacobin editor-at-large David Sirota managed to coax it out of him: Graham Platner On Why America Went From Obama To Trump.

Tsk! Obama was too neoliberal for Graham!

Not that I'm obsessed with the guy or anything, but… It's an all-Platner linkfest today:

• In case you were wondering about his grassroots campaign… The WSJ is pretty diligent in recounting The Messy Rise of Graham Platner. (WSJ gifted link) This bit jumped out at me:

  SULLIVAN, Maine—One of this year’s biggest political gambles began at 5:30 a.m. one day last July, when liberal activists Daniel Moraff and Leanne Fan showed up at the home of Graham Platner, a combat veteran and oyster farmer in this forested town.

  Moraff and Fan had no ties to Maine or to the Democratic Party’s election machinery, which made their mission all the more audacious: to recruit a working-class candidate to run for the U.S. Senate on a populist platform. The idea, Platner recalled telling his visitors, was “quite literally the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  I.e., not exactly a groundswell from Platner's friends and neighbors impressed with his homespun wisdom born out of hardworking callused-hand experience. Who are Moraff and Fan?

• As it turns out, there are more accurate labels than "liberal activists". The NYPost is more on target in its labelling, inviting us to Meet the champagne socialist duo who groomed rich kid Graham Platner into 'working-class' candidate.

  Graham Platner has done a better job of hiding his privileged roots than the Nazi tattoo on his chest — a move which is by design.

  The embattled Maine candidate for US Senate is vocal about his disabled-war-veteran, rugged-oyster-farmer, “working-class” persona — and less so about his attendance at an $80,000-a-year boarding school, his lawyer father, or his major architect grandfather.

  That’s because he’s been coached on how to present himself, molded to present a specific image — and, in a sense, manufactured.

  The truth is he was discovered and coached by a pair of Ivy League-educated radical Democratic socialists, replicating a playbook they’ve used in Nebraska and Iowa. That revelation could be more damaging than the tattoo, sexting women other than his wife, blasting fellow veterans and admitting to masturbating in a port-a-potty, as it strikes at the heart of Platner’s alleged authenticity.

  Moraff and Fan are longtime members of the Democratic Socialists of America. And somehow have the funding to wander around to states (like Maine) and recruit candidates (like Platner) who might have appeal to the "working class." At least the ones whose parents sent them to $80K/yr boarding schools.

• Is there worse to come? Erick Erickson seems to think so. And the results won't be pretty.

  The man has a Nazi tattoo. He said soldiers in combat deserved to die. He blamed Susan Collins for sending him to war, despite volunteering repeatedly, even going back with Blackwater. He bragged about killing people. He fantasized about rape and said rape victims deserved some blame. He bragged about taking leave to have sex with prostitutes in Southeast Asia. And he claimed he can’t get in a porta-potty without masturbating and fantasizing.

  Soon we’ll get the even worse allegations against him and what he did to women beyond fantasy.

  Just remember that the Democrats have stuck with him. Eventually, the PodBros, Bulwark, and the rest will abandon Graham Platner. Once they’re done blaming the Jews, the victims, the women around Platner, the Republicans, and others — they’ll abandon him. What’s coming will force them to abandon him.

  And when they finally flee, remember they were comfortable with him through all of these things — things that all point to where the next accusations will be.

• Making a pun I wish I'd thought of… is the always-reliable Jeffrey Blehar, with his headline: Graham Platner, the Mainechurian Candidate. (archive.today link)

  A mere five days ago — after the latest round of scandals facing presumptive Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, who hopes to unseat Republican incumbent Susan Collins in Maine — I posed a simple question: “What Other Skeletons Are Lurking in Graham Platner’s Closet?” Now we know quite a bit more about a man whose public profile seems to have been assembled around the overturned building blocks of a failed and profoundly selfishly lived life.

  Yes, we’d already discussed so very much, primarily the fact that every single biographical point in Platner’s political narrative — as sold to Mainers — was an upper-class, downwardly mobile fraud, as phony as Jasmine Crockett ever was. The man is a privileged failson of Maine Democratic elites with a biography nearly entirely fraudulent. (He claimed to be a reluctant Marine war veteran; he in fact volunteered out of a frankly stated desire to “kill people.” He claimed to be a hardscrabble oysterman; he in fact claims a 100 percent disability status in order to live on a government pension while selling his hobbyist haul to his restaurant-owning mother.)

  Speaking of mom, her restaurant's website is here. On US Route 1, a mere 3 hour and 21 minute drive from Pun Salad Manor. Featuring (yes): "The area’s only oyster bar serving Maine’s Waukeag Neck Oysters harvested locally from Frenchman Bay." $22 will get you six of the ocean boogers.

• But what does Jeff Maurer think? He notes that it's not just Democrats nominating phony slimeballs: The Platner/Paxton Symmetry/Asymmetry. Just a sample:

  Am I downplaying Platner’s flaws? Boy I don’t think so — just how hard am I supposed to roast this clown? Platner’s mistakes — all 105 of them — paint a clear picture of a guy with terrible judgement who is also an edgelord asshole. Recent news that he either cheated on his wife or tried hard to cheat on his wife but failed (which is worse?) didn’t faze me, because my take on Platner was already “He’s an unstable shithead”. Platner also continues to talk like a total dummy: Here he is complaining about “collapsing housing markets” even though the problem with housing is that prices are too high! Literally the only thing Platner has going for him — besides the piercing blue eyes of a Yeti — is that he might serve as a check against a guy who has all his same flaws times 100.

  That last bit deserves a footnote:

  The similarities between Trump’s defects and Platner’s are pretty striking (if not identical in scale). A history of philandering and being shitty towards women? Check. Uncomfortable proximity to extremist views? Check. Gobsmacking economic ignorance? Check. Odd affinity for the bad guy in a foreign conflict? Check. Obvious liar? Check. Asshole? Check.

  Maybe more tomorrow. Unless something comes along even more amusing between now and then.

George Will tries to provide a reality check: Democrats’ midterm ‘blue wave’ dreams face an icy challenge. (WaPo gifted link)

The last time I confidently predicted an election outcome was … President Hillary in 2016. That was enough to make me swear off predicting elections. I'll report on polls and prediction markets, fine.

And, as long as I mentioned it: the Lott/Stossel Election Betting Odds site gives the GOP a 54.9% chance of keeping hold of the US Senate, as I type. The Democrats have a 75.6% chance of taking over the House.

Also of note:

• WHO: Do you trust? Bjørn Lomborg writes at the WSJ "Free Expression" newsletter: Global Warming or Just Getting Old?

  The World Health Organization is at it again. A top commission—stacked with a former European Union climate commissioner, a former prime minister of Iceland, other former ministers and environmental campaigners—has recommended that the health body declare climate change a global health emergency. The commission’s headline evidence is a Lancet study showing heat deaths in Europe are rapidly rising, reaching 63,000 a year. This study shows that European heat-death risk has risen 82% since 1990.

  But the study and the commission report both ignore a crucial factor: Heat mortality risk rises sharply with age, and Europe has aged dramatically. Since 1990, the share of Europeans over 70 has increased by 78%. Aging alone explains virtually all the observed increase in heat deaths.

  Bjørn (I like to type his name with a slashed o) also notes that the WHO ignored the decline in cold deaths. That decline was about 250 times larger than the age-adjusted rise in heat deaths.

  So maybe ("at my age") I should break down and buy an air conditioner?

• Gee, that's too bad. You can almost hear Jim Geraghty chuckling as he typed this morning's "Morning Jolt" newsletter: The Graham Platner Candidacy Keeps Getting Worse.

  The claim from Graham Platner on MS NOW last night was that his girlfriend from 2013 to 2015, conservative activist Lyndsey Fifield, knew that the tattoo on his chest was a Nazi SS Totenkopf, and she told her friends that he had a Nazi tattoo, but she never told him that she recognized it as a Nazi tattoo, never discussed it with him, and that she is lying when she says he referred to it as “my Totenkopf.”

  “I feel like, you know, we’re kind of rehashing the thing we’ve been through. I’ve had that tattoo for 17 years,” Platner whined last night.

  Well, when the tattoo on your chest is the insignia on the hats of the guards in the concentration camps of the Holocaust, people are going to have a lot of questions, and they’re going to have a very hard time believing that a “military history buff” who chatted about World War II on Reddit threads never recognized it over an 18-year period.

  Jim also links to Lyndsey Fifield's tweet that expresses her disappointment with the coverage her accusations against Platner received in the NYT, after weeks of back-and-forth with their journalists.

• Already? It doesn't seem possible that it's Friday already, but here's Nellie Bowles, who's back with her TGIF newsletter. RTWT, but I smiled at:

  → Jill Biden worried Joe was having a stroke onstage: Jill Biden gave an interview to CBS News (a great network, if you haven’t heard of it) about her book, and described how she felt watching Joe Biden in that fateful 2024 debate: “I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never. . . . I don’t know what happened. As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.” I really get that. I’d feel the same way, Dr. Jill. Which is weird because afterward, that same night, she went onstage with Joe and led a chant of “four more years” and congratulated him for “answer[ing] every question.” In other news, Joe Biden has his own book, which he said comes out in September.

  In our last Biden family update—god bless these deli Kennedys—Hunter Biden is on X engaging with everyone who writes to him. He’s funny, he’s sarcastic, he’s got that Biden charisma mixed with some former crackhead energy. It never fully leaves your system, not really. Polymarket is putting the chances of Hunter Biden announcing a bid for president before 2027 at 11 percent.

  It most definitely was not. I would never have forgotten my drugs.

  — Hunter Biden (@HunterBiden) June 1, 2026

  And then:

  WTF timeline are we on. Someone called me the MAGA whisperer and I’ll gladly take the title. Left, right, D or R we all want the same things. We’re being divided on purpose by the Epstein Elite Oligarch class because as long as we’re at each other’s throats, they get fat and rich…

  — Hunter Biden (@HunterBiden) June 4, 2026

  Oh, he’s running. Once you start talking about the Epstein Elite Oligarch class, it’s game over. Someone print the lawn signs and tell the hookers to put on their Sunday thongs—we’re going on the road.

  Despite my disavowal of predictions above, I'll go out on a limb here: Hunter will not be elected President in 2028.

Bernie copying Trump, who copied Bernie, who copied Lenin. https://t.co/L6D12LcbYH

— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) June 1, 2026

… and that playbook seems to be referenced here.

I imagine Elizabeth Nolan Brown asking in her best Dirty Harry voice: Do you feel lucky, punk? The question posed in her latest "Sex & Tech" newsletter is more specific: Do you trust the government to control AI?.

So it's at least better than what Bernie Sanders is demanding. That's a pretty low bar to clear.

James Freeman is slightly less impressed than ENB: Trump and AI.

What's the problem?

To repeat for the nth time. There's nothing wrong with AI that Uncle Stupid can't make worse.

Also of note:

• Betteridge's Law of Headlines confirmed once again. Varonique de Rugy wonders, rhetorically: Will Single-Payer Health Care Champions Ever Offer Something Credible?

  Single-payer health care has been the progressive left's signature domestic demand for four decades. It has generated presidential campaigns, mass rallies, congressional cosponsors and an inexhaustible supply of Twitter righteousness. What it has never generated once is a workable legislative proposal.

  Brookings Institution economist Jessica Riedl has spent years waiting for one. Her challenge is simple: Show us a progressive bill that specifies (a) a provider payment system that actually saves money under America's existing, already expensive health infrastructure, and (b) a financing mechanism to replace the roughly $32 trillion in private premiums and out-of-pocket costs that would need to be covered by federal taxes over the next decade.

  Despite hundreds of legislative proposals and multiple presidential campaigns built around the issue, no one has met the challenge.

  I'm sure Jessica is not holding her breath.

• I've done something similar in Monopoly. As described by Jeffrey Blehar: George Santos Bets Against Himself. (archive.today link) You may remember George was furnished a literal "Get Out of Jail Free" card by President Trump last year. Alas:

  Some fraudsters make comebacks, but I doubt there will be any such for George Santos. Because as it turns out, character is usually destiny. We discovered yesterday that Santos is now being investigated by the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trade Commission for . . . you guessed it, fraud! Specifically, insider trading on the notorious political betting market Kalshi.

  You might be wondering how Santos could be an “insider” in any event, given that he’s an ex-con living in New York. Well, one thing he knows for sure is himself. And in a brazen con job, he first announced that he would be attending January’s State of the Union address. Since Kalshi brags about having “markets in everything,” even the utterly trivial, there was a lot of money flowing around that night, with bets placed on which political celebrities would be in the House gallery. With his Twitter confirmation, the “odds” of his attendance soared in the market. And then Santos secretly bet heavily against himself attending. Needless to say, he wasn’t there (on Twitter he claimed “airport delays” had prevented him from making it). And he cleaned up with the deception, until Kalshi noticed to whom it was paying out tens of thousands of dollars.

  Insider trading scandals on these new political gambling markets are now a genuinely scandalous fact of life. They are also incredibly easy to conceal and difficult to police. Which is why I love George Santos for being so howlingly, stupidly obvious in his fraudulence. It’s downright heartwarming in a way. Did he not think that regulators would inquire into the identity of the one guy in the market who suddenly bet against Santos appearing? Did he not think Kalshi would recognize what was going on?

  Pun Salad Public Service Announcement: You are unlikely to win at prediction markets.

At National Review, Andrew Stuttaford comments pithily on Sanders's AI Interference: From Smash to Grab. (archive.today link)

That's right: our Getty Image du Jour is a pic of the press conference where Bernie and Sandy (AKA AOC) announced that scheme. That was the "smash" part.

Andrew goes on to note Bernie's "grab" followup in the NYT: A.I. Is a Public Resource. You Should Own Half of It. (archive.today link) Bernie sez:

Bernie is 84 years young, and like many older drivers, he can't seem to decide whether to hit the AI brakes, or stomp on the AI gas. Or (to strain this metaphor furtuer) just advocate a bit of real-life Grand Theft AI.

Let's bounce over to Reason where Tosin Akintola observes: Bernie Sanders' AI wealth fund bill shows that he doesn't understand AI or wealth. Among the many things Sanders either doesn't know, or wants to ignore:

Do you ever get the feeling that we're living in the middle of an Ayn Rand novel? (I was going to leave that as a comment on Andrew's NR article, but someone else beat me to it.)

Also of note:

• And yet, somehow always dumb. Jacob Sullum points out: Trump’s self-promotion is always shameless and sometimes illegal.

  President Donald Trump has a long history of naming things after himself, including Trump Tower, the Trump National Golf Club, the Trump Taj Mahal casino, Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, and Trump: The Game. But as he discovered last week, such self-promotion can be legally problematic when it requires congressional approval.

  On Friday, a federal judge ruled that Trump's appointees exceeded their statutory authority when they attached his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The decision was the latest reminder of the president's tendency to trample the rule of law in his rush to glorify himself.

  It was somewhat fitting that Trump wanted to stick his name on one of D.C.'s ugliest buildings.

• He's got a fever, and the only prescription is: Less Israel! The WSJ editorialists reveal The Real Problem With Graham Platner. (WSJ gifted link)

  Maine Democrat Graham Platner’s bid for Senate has looked like it may have a half-life near the bottom of the periodic table, with unsavory revelations about his personal conduct. So what’s his master plan to pull his campaign out of a stall? Ginning up the progressive base with toxic insinuations about the Jews, apparently.

  “Senator Collins is bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu, and she votes accordingly,” Mr. Platner’s campaign account posted on X.com on Monday. The complaint is that Ms. Collins receives donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

  But so what? “Unsurprising that Jewish Americans are supporting the candidate who does not have a Nazi tattoo,” as GOP Sen. Tim Sheehy put it in his own post. Mr. Platner has said his now infamous chest tattoo was a drunken mistake and that he didn’t realize the symbol was associated with Nazis. But he’s hardly helping his case by implying that Israel controls American politicians.

  At least one Platner supporter is on the watch for any sneaky Jews that publish "hit pieces". AKA, facts.

  The NY Times journalist who wrote this hit piece, and a number of other hit pieces on Platner, was co-President of her "Students for Israel" chapter in college. https://t.co/g8oj1Oh99Y pic.twitter.com/t2YXdzK63H

  — Mike from PA (@Mike_from_PA) May 31, 2026

Reason's July issue has a dandy idea, illustrated at your right: the Founding Fathers on all-star team baseball cards. Whatever their flaws (and there were more than any modern person would like), they managed to bring about the best darn country ever.

Batting leadoff today is Eric Boehm's appreciation of the $100 bill guy: Benjamin Franklin Reminds Us To Just Do Things. Bottom line:

I spent a few days in Philidelphia when Mrs. Salad attended a conference there. I did not make it to Independence Hall, something I now regret.

Also of note:

• Has he dropped out yet? No? Well, then… I do live awfully close to Maine, so I'm taking an inordinate interest in their US Senate race this year. Graham Platner Is a Cultured Pearl. (WSJ gifted link)

  The problem with Graham Platner isn’t that he’s led a messy life. Many politicians, like most people, are saddled with human baggage. The problem with the Hotchkiss Oysterman is that the particular messes he’s made tell voters a larger story about what a certain type of Democratic man is really like.

  To be blunt: Mr. Platner seems like the kind of guy whose enlightened, forward-thinking views are all skin-deep. While he espouses all the fashionable left-wing pieties, underneath he’s really only a Reddit troll—misogynistic, antisemitic and a big fan of using the R-word to insult people’s intelligence.

  Mr. Platner is a veteran, and we thank him for his service, but he holds opinions about American soldiers that would make North Vietnamese actress Jane Fonda uptight. He’s a married man, but as the Journal reported this weekend, he sexts a lot with women who aren’t his wife. He claims to be an ordinary, red-blooded American male, but . . . what was that stuff about the port-a-potties?

  And there's a whole bunch of phoniness in his "blue-collar hero" shtick. RTWT, especially if you're a Maine voter.

  But you know, New Hampshire also has a US Senate race this year. NH Journal notes that a major candidate, my CongressCritter Chris Pappas, is clamming (heh) up when asked to comment about Platner. Or using a different, more alliterative metaphor: Pappas Plays Possum on Platner Problems.

  Frankly, I'd like to know the Pappas position on SCOTUS-packing proposals. Slightly more important.

• Oh, right: they're supposed to be working for us. Romina Boccia cracks the employer whip: If Congress Wants a Raise, It Should Do Its Job.

  Congress may finally receive the inflation adjustments lawmakers have spent years blocking. But before legislators get a raise, Congress should first do its most important job: budgeting responsibly.

  A federal judge recently ruled that Congress likely violated the Constitution’s Twenty-Seventh Amendment by repeatedly canceling automatic cost-of-living adjustments for lawmakers’ pay. Since 2009, congressional salaries have remained frozen at $174,000, even as inflation steadily eroded their value by about 31 percent.

  Members fear the political backlash of voting for higher pay. But the broader issue is not whether congressional compensation should keep pace with inflation. The real problem is that Congress routinely fails to fulfill its most basic fiscal responsibilities while operating one of the largest and most indebted governments in the world — an increasingly dysfunctional enterprise.

  What would it take to get them to pay attention? I suggest heading to the Donkey Sanctuary's article on Understanding donkey behaviour

  When looking at problem behaviour, it is important to consider what benefit the behaviour provides for the donkey. Essentially, by establishing the motivation for the behaviour, the cause can be established, and by removing this cause, there will be a change in the donkey’s behaviour. When attempting to establish the causes of behaviour it is important to look at each of the areas contained in this fact-sheet and consider the possible influences of each one, on the donkey’s behaviour.

  I did not google for the equivalent elephant methods.

• Ah, well, I wasn't planning on going anyway. Jeffrey Blehar on what should have been an obvious outcome: ‘Freedom 250’ Collapses into Another Trump Campaign Rally.

  You’ve probably heard some of the sad story already: When Donald Trump took office, he pushed aside the (admittedly moribund) bipartisan “America 250” commission formed in 2016 for his own Trump-branded “Freedom 250” commission — chaired by JD Vance and programmed from top to bottom by the administration. The big focus? A concert series throughout the summer on the Mall in D.C., climaxing in a three-day July 4 weekend spectacular.

  The problem, of course, is that Trump has been persona non grata among the artistic world for years now and is glowingly radioactive after slapping his own name onto the Kennedy Center in a mad fit of vanity.

  It’s important to realize the extent to which that one symbolic act, done in intemperate folly, permanently severed any possible link between American artists and the Trump administration. And don’t blame the artists, who know a naked attempt at PR maneuvering when they see one: By naming Washington’s primary civic performance venue after himself, Trump essentially commanded all who played there to pay tribute to him — an otherwise wildly unpopular president who would never command such respect in any other circumstance. To play at the “Trump/Kennedy Center” was to collaborate in one man’s desire to always make everything about himself at all times.

  I actually went down to the National Mall for the fireworks back in 1976. They were awe-inspiring.

• A worse idea than court-packing? Robert F. Graboyes seems to have found one: Extraordinary Popular Vote Delusions and the Madness of NPVIC.

  The NPVIC is a shaky scheme for circumventing the Electoral College and determining presidential elections by an ill-defined, highly-manipulable, easily-contested, fatally imprecise metric called “the national popular vote” (NPV). Short-sighted people, unaware of the concept of secondary effects, believe the NPVIC would have elected Al Gore over George Bush and Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump and that it will reliably favor Democrats over Republicans in future elections. A modest number of ill-informed Republicans also naively support the NPVIC on goo-goo (good government) grounds.

  The NPVIC would, in theory, force a majority of the Electoral College to support the presidential candidate who won the NPV. It would do so by means of a jerry-built line-up of states who promise on a state-by-state basis to award their states’ electors to the NPV-winner. This plywood-and-tar-paper construct is necessary for NPV fans because there is zero chance that the Electoral College can be abolished via constitutional amendment.

  As discussed below, the NPVIC has the potential to turn every presidential election into a coast-to-coast replay of the Florida 2000 catastrophe—or worse. And Democrats who think the NPVIC would have prevented the elections of George W. Bush (2000) and Donald Trump (2016) need to study up on unintended consequences.

  You might want to bookmark Robert's article if your state's legislators start making goo-goo eyes at NPVIC.

But Jeffrey Blehar keeps it metaphorical: What Other Skeletons Are Lurking in Graham Platner’s Closet?. (NR gifted link)

Jeffrey's story also covers the latest sordid revelations. ("Latest", unless there have been more sordid revelations since his article was posted yesterday.)

I've mentioned before that most politicians are several sigma off the mean on one or more personality traits. Platner seems to be no exception there, and not in a good way.

Also of note:

• You would think that FDR's experience would be a warning. The WSJ editorialists claim: Democrats Promise to Wreck the Supreme Court.

  Democrats are likely to retake the House and maybe the Senate in November, which is reason to ask: What would they do with that power? One emerging answer is that they seem determined to blow up the Supreme Court.

  Listen to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the betting favorite to be the next Speaker of the House. “The Supreme Court is a disgrace,” he said in April. “In the new Congress, we’re going to have to do something about this Supreme Court, and let me be very clear: Everything is on the table—everything to deal with this corrupt MAGA majority.”

  He’s serious, and his agent for this task is Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who is already making an argument to pack the Court with four new Justices. Why four? Mr. Raskin has a gussied-up explanation that might sound plausible if all you watch is MS NOW.

  “There are 13 federal circuits in America, and traditionally, the Supreme Court has been made up of the number of Justices equal to the number of circuits,” Mr. Raskin said recently. “We’ve got 13 circuits, but we only have nine Justices. So that means that under the best of circumstances, four entire federal regions, four federal circuits will be left out completely.”

  Court-packing should be wildly unpopular, just as it was in 1937, but we'll see. Ask your Democrat candidates this fall about their positions.

• Neither in a literal nor a figurative sense, I'm sure. Could the Libertarian Party tempt me back into its warm embrace? There are encouraging signs in Eric Boehm's article: New Libertarian Party Chair Evan McMahon has no interest in playing kingmaker.

  "The proper approach for a Libertarian candidate to take is to be a libertarian and run," says McMahon, who was elected the party's new chair at its convention last weekend. "Not to seek an armistice with somebody who's going to grow the state, who's going to bomb and kill children in other countries."

  Most of the time, that would be a rather noncontroversial take. In recent years, however, the Libertarian Party has been controlled by a faction that toyed with the idea that the best way to achieve pro-liberty political change is by cozying up with one of the two major parties. In practice, that meant doing things like inviting Donald Trump to speak at the Libertarian National Convention two years ago.

  Instead of playing spoiler, the idea was to use Libertarian voters as leverage to gain a seat at the table (or perhaps a position in the cabinet), even if doing so came at the expense of the party's own nominees. That has been a controversial approach within the party, which has seen membership and donations decline, and has yielded few positive results—yes, Trump freed Ross Ulbricht, but most of his second term has largely been a libertarian nightmare.

  McMahon wants a clean break with all of that.

  Well, good. The Rs and Ds seem to be in competition to see which can repel me faster, so I'm hopeful the LP nominates some non-fruitcakes so I won't have to leave my ballot blank next year.

  Further down, a couple paragraphs of local interest:

  McMahon supported the successful effort at last week's convention to disaffiliate the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire, something he says was "necessary" and had been "a long time coming."

  The former New Hampshire affiliate had endorsed Trump in 2024, rather than backing Libertarian nominee Chase Oliver. The state party has also gained a reputation for posting racist, bigoted, and authoritarian content on social media. The affiliate had become "a toxic group that is doing damage to our brand and to our candidates and our affiliates," McMahon told Reason.

  Well, they certainly drove me away.

• You'd think they'd aspire to at least "fast casual". Megan McArdle says AI fiction is the new fast food. (WaPo gifted link)

  Three things you may not know about me: I am a big woman, 6 foot 2 inches in my stocking feet. My laugh is loud, if not to say piercing. And I never apologize to furniture.

  That’s why I identified so strongly with Auntie Marsha, the hero from “The Serpent in the Grove,” one of five regional winners of the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

  “Big in the way of women who never apologise to furniture,” the story tells us, “she had a laugh that shook dust from joists and a voice that could soften to coax a child from a ledge.”

  I seldom apologize to furniture, but for some larger items, it's best to ensure you stay on its good side.

  Anyway, an AI program (perhaps recognizing a kindred spirit) flagged "The Serpent in the Grove" with near certainty as being written without human fingers on the keyboard. Apparently "crazy metaphors" are red flags.

  But Megan makes the counterintuitive observation: AI prose "in some specific ways, is too good."

  It is the literary equivalent of fast food: convenient, cheap, hyper-consistent and relentlessly optimized to tickle our pleasure centers.

  Hm. I wouldn't mind having my pleasure centers tickled. Maybe not a steady diet, but…

Recently on the book blog:

Recently on the movie blog:

A few days ago I read a WSJ article with a headline claim: Dad Books Are a Dying Breed (WSJ gifted link). Well, Father's Day is coming up, and if any of you sons or daughters are in a quandary, I can recommend this book for a Dad Book. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and I'm a dad. QED.

It's by Johan Norberg, a Cato Institute fellow, and the book is a paean to those historical societies that have managed, always imperfectly, to discover the wonders of liberty: free markets, free trade, and free minds. He looks at seven, in chronological order: (1) Athens; (2) Rome; (3) the Abbasid Caliphate; (4) Song China; (5) Renaissance Italy; (6) the Dutch Republic; (7) the Anglosphere. That last one is where I, and perhaps you, live today.

I was totally ignorant about (3) and (4). (They don't seem to come up much on Jeopardy!, whose writers instead seem to be fans of Those Darn Etruscans.) But Norberg told me a lot I didn't know about all seven, and his discussion was lively and informative, with occasional wry observations and interesting bits of trivia. And surprisingly timely in spots: you many have noticed that Xi Jinping mentioned the "Thucydides Trap" during President Trump's visit last month. That sent a lot of journalists scurrying to Google, but if you had read this book you would have known exactly what Xi was talking about! Norberg has a whole section about it.

A bit of trivia I picked up along the way: why the olive branch is a symbol of peace. After planting, olive trees take many years to grow and produce sellable fruit; their presence indicates the farmer has confidence that his property will not be ravaged by war or expropriation in the meantime.

And: after the fall of Rome, Western Europe essentially forgot the Greek language. That's where (I am not making this up) the phrase "It's Greek to me" comes from: a copyist hitting something written in that funny alphabet could only shrug his shoulders in helplessness.

And: it doesn't hurt to be reminded about #3's contributions to the modern world: their mathematicians gave us the decimal numbering system, with its zero. And their language gave us the words "algebra" and "algorithm". But also "assassin", so it's a mixed bag.

Well, there's more. Including the huge Song mural of everyday life Along the River During the Qingming Festival, which as a "combination of the Bayeux Tapestry and Where's Waldo".

So it's a lot of fun. But a somber note comes in at the end: you'll note that the "Golden Age" examples 1-6 eventually passed away, a combination of murder and suicide. And it's not difficult to detect analogous symptoms in our own privileged Anglospherical times. Will we be different? Norberg doesn't mention Trump much, but…