Pun Salad

Mr. Ramirez remembers:

I posted my minor memoir of the day back in 2008, and have nothing to add to it.

On a related "remember this" matter: Like most libertarian-leaners, I've been pummelling Trump and his FCC lackeys for threatening TV networks about their negative news coverage. But John J. Miller had a plus ça change sorta-relevant column in the WSJ a few days back, bringing us A 9/11 Story Some Want Us to Forget. (WSJ gifted link)

Read the whole thing; The show's crime was apparently to portray Sandy Berger, President Clinton's National Security Advisor, in a negative light. Among other pressures exerted, ABC got a bullying letter from five Democrat senators, including then-Majority Leader Harry Reid and future Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

ABC's immediate response was craven: "The scene with Berger was chopped up."

Miller doesn't mention Berger's 2004 unauthorized removal and destruction of classified documents from the National Archives, for which he got a serious wrist-slapping.

Also of note:

• I had no choice but to link to this. Sabine Hossenfelder's headline could be slightly misleading: Neuroscience’s Case Against Free Will Is Falling Apart. Her video explains:

  I think the neuroscience stuff doesn't say much about free will in the first place. But I just blogged about that a few weeks ago (and embedded another of Sabine's videos) so I won't repeat myself.

• But let's not forget the Steak-umm Hypothesis. Somehow I missed this important contribution to the debate back in May:

  proof that free will exists pic.twitter.com/7x4YFSlj5R

  — Steak-umm (@steak_umm) May 11, 2026

  The science is settled! Credit where due: Jeff Maurer brought it to my attention, with the headline query Is the Steak-Umm Twitter Account the Standout Philosopher of Our Time? And does Betteridge's Law of Headlines apply here? You make the call!

  It’s easy to feel unmoored these days. Lies are everywhere, and wisdom is rare. The touchstones that used to perform quality control on our dialogue have been degraded, while opportunistic know-nothings abound. People yearn for a voice with knowledge and insight, but that voice is hard to find.

  But what if I told you that a sage capable of matching wits with the great thinkers of any age walks among us? And what if I told you that that philosopher is whoever runs the Twitter account for America’s #1 flash-frozen chipped beef meat product? I speak of the Steak-Umm Twitter feed, which any reasonable observer will agree provides better commentary on life, culture, and the human condition than 99.999% of the chattering class.

  I've followed Steak-umm, but I am shamefully late to the game.

• I will not be able to hold my nose hard enough to vote for this guy. Eric Boehm tweets, and don't miss the "readers added context":

  JD Vance sitting in front of TV cameras and trying to defend this nonsense speaks volumes about his character and seriousness as a political figure https://t.co/c8MJqmIwab

  — Eric Boehm (@EricBoehm87) September 10, 2026

  Charlie Cooke is also pretty disgusted: Trump Breaks Glass, Joins Socialists, Embraces Bribery. (NR gifted link)

  Painfully aware that, once the midterms are over, he risks being gradually consigned to irrelevance, President Trump has hit once again upon a Hail Mary plan for political success. That plan is bribery. Last night, after vocally condemning the rise of socialism in the United States, Trump pledged some of his own. “If the Republicans win,” he told a crowd in Dallas, “I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.”

  No, no, no, no, no.

  Did I mention “no”?

  The Democrats who have condemned this idea are, of course, ridiculous, for in trying to trade votes for cash, Trump is merely adopting their approach without the middlemen or the euphemisms. But that is not a defense of the move — which is, in every sense possible, catastrophic.

  "Spouting arrant bullshit" is probably not an impeachable offense. But if it was, it would be pretty easy to convict both Trump and Vance.

And Mr. Ramirez pictures (um, metaphorically) what trade protectionism looks like:

Eric Boehm takes a look at the latest volley: Trump bans Canadian beer, wine, motorcycles, and more.

Unfortunately, that lady Mr. Ramirez pictures looks like she could use a couple shots of Canadian Club. Sorry, dearie, President Trump says no.

On a related note, Audrey Fahlberg looks at (a) Trump's earnest hope and (b) other Republicans' greatest fear: ‘Pretend I’m on the Ballot’ Is Trump’s Midterm Strategy.

I will probably vote a straight Republican ticket in November, but I will have to remind myself that Trump's not on the ballot, just some of his sycophants.

Also of note:

• Well, that didn't take as long as I thought it would. 'Twas just a few weeks back, that I wrote about Massachusetts explicitly legalizing abortion up until birth. And I wrote: "Apparently the Massachusetts government (and probably a good fraction of the citizenry) believes that the event of "birth" is a bit of biological magic that transforms a legal "medical procedure" into a heinous crime."

  I didn't see Lindsay Clancy coming. It appears that infanticide is no longer so heinous down there. David Strong writes at Hot Air: Mothers Aren't Just Embracing Lindsay Clancy'; They Are Embracing Clancyism.

  For most of us, the fact that Clancy clearly was having trouble with her mental health may help explain how she decided to kill her children, but for nobody I know does that excuse the fact that she chose to respond to her despair by killing her own children.

  I can understand, at some level, the feeling of empathy for Clancy's struggles; I cannot and will never understand turning her into a hero. There is nothing heroic about killing children, especially one's own. It ranks up there as the most, or at least one of the most, horrific betrayals a person can make.

  Women have contributed over a million dollars to Clancy's parents to help fund her defense, lined roadways to cheer her on, and even concocted bizarre conspiracy theories to explain why everything is her husband's fault, despite Clancy never having denied strangling her own children.

  It's demonic.

  It's looking to be a tough time for kids, especially down in Massachusetts.

• Or not. Task was boring. Kimberley A. Strassel takes to the WSJ to urge us: Make Mark Ruffalo Great Again. (WSJ gifted link)

  Republicans are fighting for their midterm lives, so it’s something to watch the president finally rally them together with a plan to lock down the Hollywood academy and California’s liberal political class.

  And the Oscar for Most Self-Defeating Politics goes to . . .

  “I am going to suggest that Republicans and Democrats get together, and immediately craft Legislation to save the Movie, Television, and Entertainment Business in America. Congress should approve, immediately, a Federal Production Incentive to create Entertainment Jobs in America,” Donald Trump enthused on Truth Social Monday. This was followed by a Tuesday post praising the “great bipartisan response” to his great Hollywood bailout, then by yet another, of the president thumbs-upping it with his Hollywood ambassador, Jon Voight.

  Geez, what an awful idea. Another reason for Republicans to fervently hope that their voters not pretend that Trump is on the ballot in November.

• And here's one more reason. Veronique de Rugy looks at yet another Bad Idea: A Convoluted Scheme to Pay Parents to Stay at Home.

  Vice President JD Vance wants to pay married parents to stay home with their children, and he wants to do it with money Congress appropriated to help low-income families afford day care. Whatever one thinks of the goal, which may prove popular, the proposal fails every test we should apply to government subsidies.

  That's because the proposal corrects no market failure. It pays people for choices they're already making. It adds a new claimant class to a budget that cannot carry the ones already promised something. And it does all of this without a workable plan to pay for it.

  Under a draft rule now circulating at the Department of Health and Human Services, married couples in which one spouse works at least 35 hours a week and the other stays home would become eligible for the federal child care subsidy — about $9,000 per child, per year — as payment for "parent-based childcare." The money would come from the Child Care and Development Fund, a $12 billion block grant created in the 1990s to help low-income parents pay for care while working or finishing school.

  At times, the only thing you can do is shake your head in despair.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that, overall, politicians score several sigma off the mean on numerous (um) personality traits. E.g., narcissism, psychopathy, machiavellianism…; you can look it up!

So Jim Geraghty's headline should be understood on a relative scale: Republicans’ Midterm Hopes Rest on the Insanity of Their Opponents. Or: "Republicans hope they're running against Democrats crazier than they are." Jim has entertaining examples:

Alas, here in New Hampshire, our politicians are nuts in more "respectable" ways. In our primary yesterday:

• Governor Ayotte (R) cruised to an easy win, and conventional wisdom says she'll probably win in November, beating Cinde Warmington (D).

• For the U.S. Senate seat that Jeanne Shaheen is vacating, both John E. Sununu (R) and (my current CongressCritter) Chris Pappas (D) scored pretty easy wins. Most polls score (sigh) Pappas as a slight favorite for November.

• The most interesting race was for the House seat Chris Pappas is leaving. Anthony DiLorenzo (R) beat his nearest opponent (Hollie Noveletsky) by 25 percentage points. But the D-side contest turned into a three way, with Jeanne Shaheen's daughter, Stefany, winning with only 37.3% of the vote, just 2.3 percentage points ahead of Maura Sullivan (35%). The leftiest candidate, Carleigh Beriont, gathered 21.8%.

Polls say Stefany has (probably) the better shot at being my next CongressCritter. I've long been a non-fan. My first look at her was an old-fashioned fisking of her 2023 pro-gun contol op-ed in my lousy local newspaper, Foster's Daily Democrat. At the time, she was (I am not making this up) chair of the Portsmouth Police Commission.

Among other actions, she advocated "Banning the sale of semi-automatic weapons" and a "mandatory assault weapon buyback program." You can click over if you want, to read my snarky rejoinders.

But that was then, reader. Gun control was vitally important to Stefany back in 2023. Now, in 2026, you can peruse her campaign website's "Priorities" page and discover … nothing at all about guns. (At least I can't find anything, and neither can Google. Let me know if you can.)

Hm. Into the memory hole! How… Machiavellian!

Some other Pun Salad history:

• My reaction to Stefany's entry to the race last year: Gun-grabbing Ditz Enters the Ring.

• I noted her "rambling, difficult to follow" answer to a query about guys on women's sports teams here.

• A little mother-vs-daughter dustup about the government shutdown-ending vote explored here.

• Her avoidance (via a pastry-wielding staffer) of answering questiions about Graham Platner here

• Her anti-semitic pander here.

• And her sudden discovery that she (a) supports Bernie's "Medicare for All" proposal, but (b) disfavors aid to Israel here

Recently on the movie blog:

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A weird little movie, but I was intrigued by the trailer I ran across at Facebook. And I've been strangely intrigued by Katie Holmes' occasional crooked grin.

Katie plays Miss Meadows, and trailer-level/movie poster spoiler: she shoots first and asks questions… never, because she tends to leave no survivors. Arguably, she's only delivering rough vigilante justice.

But that's not quite right; she doesn't go out looking for bad guys, like Batman. She just finds herself in situations where it's appropriate for her to pull the cute chrome-plated semi-auto .25 from her purse.

She's an oddball in other ways, too, thanks to being emotionally scarred by a traumatic childhood incident, only revealed near the end of the movie. She takes up with the local sheriff who's charged with investigating some of her shootings. (That's James Badge Dale, who played a very bad guy in Iron Man 3.)

The movie is unrated by the MPA, but it's pretty intense in some spots; see IMDB's parental guidance page.

I toyed with headlining "Instapundit is Garbage", but I'm not there yet. However, this post Ed Driscoll put up yesterday afternoon, MOVE ALONG CITIZEN, NOTHING TO SEE HERE:, is certainly disheartening. It consists only of an embedded tweet:

A Microsoft engineer found that a smart thermostat in a tabulation room in the Georgia 2020 election was talking to a tabulation server, reporting the votes back to China.

As technology gets more and more advanced, our elections will become more and more unsecure. Paper ballots… pic.twitter.com/awqN8tGl68

— The SCIF (@TheSCIF) September 7, 2026

The X-truncated sentence at the end: "Paper ballots are the only way."

What's wrong with this? Merely that rudimentary Googling reveals that it is, in fact, utter bullshit.

• It's presented as something that's just been uncovered. In fact, this particular claim (with the same video) was first promulgated in December 2020, about a month after the election. (Example.)

• And it was near-immediately debunked back then.

• The "Microsoft engineer" was never named, and perhaps never existed.

• The Savannah "tabulation room" where this allegedly occurred was never identified. (Chatham County Georgia currently has 83 voting locations.)

• No supporting evidence was ever put forth. Server logs, IP addresses, dates and times? Fuhgeddaboutit!

• Oh, and although the tweet implies otherwise, Georgia did have paper ballots in the 2020 election. There were a couple of recounts. Vote changes were small. Biden still won.

• Going into much more detail on this is Timothy Noah in the New Republic (July 2022): What Comic Genius Gave Us the Nest Thermostat Election Conspiracy?. He identifies the guy in the video as Russell Ramsland. Noah's article is full of partisan snark, but also full of fun facts, e.g.:

  Ramsland (who told the Post he had never spoken to Trump) is a piece of work. He is, for instance, on record saying the following: “George Soros [who was born in 1930] helped form the ‘Deep State’ in Nazi Germany in the 1930s along with George H.W. Bush’s father [Prescott Bush], the Muslim brotherhood, and ‘leftists.’” (At the risk of being pedantic: Soros is Jewish, the Nazi party was created 10 years before Soros was born, and Hitler came to power when Soros was 3.)

• For (even) more on Ramsland, there's a May 2021 article in the WaPo: The making of a myth.

I came this close (imagine my thumb and index finger about 2 millimeters apart) to commenting at Instapundit. But dealing with election conspiracy advocates is pointless; they are poster children for confirmation bias. Example: see the comment thread on a January 2021 Granite Grok article on a different Georgia allegation: SHOCKING PROOF!!! CHINA CAUGHT Hacked Into Fulton County, GA Voting Machine. Rebuttal on these matters is treated as if it's a turd dropped into a punchbowl.

So I just blog about it here. And you'll notice I don't have a commenting feature.

And for the record:

• Yes, paper ballots are a good idea; I plan to fill one out later today down at the American Legion Hall.
• And (also yes), requiring voter ID is another good idea. It's already required in New Hampshire.

And now on to the usual hodgepodge...

• $14 for a matinee ticket after my senior discount?! I'm with Kyle Smith: Hollywood, Heal Thyself.

  It’s nice to get paid more than you’re worth, but it isn’t so nice when your labor union is so strong that it creates an untenable cost structure for your employer. Management might be forced to shut down in the face of international competition, or move jobs overseas to avoid union costs.

  Everyone knows this is the way the U.S. economy runs, which is why only 5.9% of private-sector jobs are still unionized. Government, which can’t be outsourced, is heavily unionized at all levels.

  Hollywood is one of the most union-intensive businesses in America. Practically everybody on the set of a film, from the makeup lady to the centimillionaire titans like Ryan Reynolds and James Cameron, is a union member. But grim “Jurassic Park”-style rumblings of doom started to be heard in Southern California over the past 10 years. So what did the unions do? They went on strike for even higher wages.

  Kyle goes on to (convincingly) demonstrate that government bailouts/subsidies/incentives to the movie guys are a waste.

  And there's always the small detail that AI is gonna destroy traditional film-making. If it hasn't already. (Depends on when you're reading this.)

• I love Lan Lam. But Elizabeth Nolan Brown goes a different way: RFK Jr.'s 'Real Food Show' is government propaganda but I kind of love it.

  We're now three episodes into The Real Food Show, a YouTube cooking class hosted by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And I'm hooked.

  Don't get me wrong: In principle, I hate it. The government has no place being in the business of making cooking shows. And this one is rife with propaganda, including thanking President Donald Trump for the new U.S. dietary guidelines and casual mentions of things like fisheries regulation or an executive order on regenerative agriculture. Even if you can put aside the ick-factor of HHS trying to sneak political content to viewers like some parents might hide broccoli in muffins, this just makes it a worse show. As a cultural or entertainment product, it would be better off without random references to the likes of the Magnuson-Stevenson Act.

  Besides, the presence of RFK Jr., who hosts each episode alongside a popular chef, doesn't add much. He spends most of each episode whisking eggs or doing some other sort of kitchen-helper task while the guest chef talks. Then he periodically bursts in with some propaganda while elbow-deep in chickpea salad.

  Puzzled by this item's header? Well: When I get the urge, I watch Lan Lam's Techniquely episodes on Netflix. They're short, interesting, occasionally funny, and she doesn't yammer about seed oils. Even though I'm unlikely to ever make anything she cooks up, it all looks delicious, and she's a lot easier on the eyes than RFKJr.

• And now a word from the Plundercrats. Two of them, Austin Clemens and David Mitchell, take to the Hill with a headline that is only reassuring if you don't notice the word "wealth": Don’t panic about the national debt — the US has the wealth to handle it. They start out OK:

  The U.S. national debt recently passed $40 trillion, hitting this monstrous milestone months ahead of Congressional Budget Office projections, in part due to tariff refunds increasing the total deficit.

  In March, the federal debt held by the public reached the size of U.S. annual gross domestic product, nearing its all-time peak from more than 80 years ago, when we were paying off World War II.

  These headlines have renewed calls for austerity, but the truth is, America is nowhere near broke. On the contrary, the nation holds a staggering amount of wealth — far more than the debt it owes. The real question is not whether we have the resources to manage the debt, but whether we have the will to use them.

  Yes, it's a plea to tax wealth. Eventually, they start rattling off the possibilities:

  If the U.S> [sic] is willing to look at what it owns, versus only at what it earns, it would open up a new set of options for paying down the debt: taxes on wealth and property, and reforms to how inheritances and capital gains are taxed, among them. Of course, people will disagree about which, if any, to use. But ultimately, that is a debate about priorities and political will, not about whether we have the ability to pay off our debt. Because we do.

  Note the game-playing with the pronouns I've bolded. For example. the U.S. should look at what "it" owns. Smuggling in the idea that "it" owns all that wealth instead of … well, the people who actually own it. And "we" are entitled to as much of that wealth as "we" feel like expropriating.

  Well, the arguments against wealth taxation are well known, I've made a lot of them here, and I probably don't need to repeat them. But I will deploy that evergreen Bastiat quote:

  When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

  Folks, Austin and David are exactly who Bastiat was talking about back in 1848.

Power Line points us to our Eye Candy du Jour:

That's from WalletHub's ranking the Hardest-Working States in America in 2026. Boy, New Hampshire really stands out there in the Northeast, doesn't it? (I have to admit, being retired for over ten years: I'm not doing my part.)

My other Eye Candidate was from Mr. Ramirez: AI wishes you a happy Labor Day. But (caveat clicker) I disclaim any responsibility for any nightmares you experience as a result.

Also of note:

• Sounds like a plan! A totally demented plan, but what are you gonna do? The WaPo editorialists discuss President Trump's latest unhinged rant: Trump’s new plan to lower interest rates? Extort the Fed. (WaPo gifted link)

  President Donald Trump’s preferred monetary policy is simple. Is the economy sluggish? Cut interest rates. Is it heating up? Also cut interest rates. Now there’s a new addendum: If his handpicked Federal Reserve chair won’t play ball, hold the economy hostage.

  At least, that’s what Trump threatened on Friday on Truth Social. He wrote that if the Fed doesn’t “get smart” and lower rates, he will halt trade entirely with any country that maintains a trade deficit with the United States. That would include China, Mexico, Canada, Vietnam, South Korea and dozens of others — in short, many of America’s top trade partners.

  Perhaps related is Frank Miele's speculation at Real Clear Politics Does Trump Really Want To Win the Midterms? It would explain a lot of his actions if the answer is "no".

• It's "direct action", James. Mr. Lileks looks into the leftist snakepits, and wonders: Is There Any Capitalist’s Murder That ‘Isn’t’ Justified? (NR gifted link)

  The stabbing death of a New York mother and Bank of America vice president by a mentally unstable woman has brought out the absolute finest in revolutionary commentary. From a Palestinian-American filmmaker who tweeted out a bat signal with Luigi Mangione’s face instead of America’s favorite gravel-voiced vigilante, to various commie-kids on X justifying the murder because the victim was involved in (waves hands) all the capitalism, we see how ethically wretched political systems corrupt the humanity of people who believe them.

  The fact that she was a VP at a bank was reason enough to spit on the corpse, because her job surely consisted of meeting with poor hopeful people who sat across the desk twisting their caps in their calloused hands, begging the bank not to foreclose on their lean-to. She looked at them with a glacial expression and said no and then refused to validate parking for their pack mule. She did this all day. Her job title was probably Vice President in Charge of Maintaining Structural Poverty, so yes, those are precisely the people whose demise Luigi would have nodded with Che-like sagacity. Also, the Bank of America has ties to Israel, which means that when you deposit your check there, it’s instantly converted into a bomb designed to strew tetanus-infected nails in a Gaza preschool. Also, Bank of AMERICA. Say no more.

  That's a free link, so all you participants in capitalistic enterprises will want to check out the imagined interview with the "young DSA woman who lives in a $1.7 million townhouse" setting out the guidelines for justifiable homicide.

  (I note that the Wikipedia entry for direct action waits until the second paragraph to admit "Direct action may include activities that can be either violent or nonviolent …")

• "Where we're going we don't need roads." At USA Today, Ilya Somin observes: Democratic socialists and MAGA share a dangerous flaw.

  Democratic socialism is a terrible ideology. If implemented, its agenda would cause grave harm and imperil democracy itself. And in seeking massive state control of the economy, today's socialists ironically have much in common with the MAGA nationalists they claim to oppose.

  Both promote government control over the economy, and both paths undermine liberty, prosperity and democracy. Socialists do not control the Democratic Party in the way MAGA largely dominates the Republicans. But their influence is growing.

  Yes, it's "bothsidesism". But … isn't it appropriate when (metaphorically) both sides are fighting over the steering wheel of a car careening down the Read to Serfdom?

• Won't be missed. Becket Adams sees little reason to mourn, anyway: The Professional Fact-Check Is Dead.

  The crisis of professional “fact-checking” is not new. For more than 15 years, observers have watched with alarm as the genre degraded itself to serve partisan politics.

  Yet little has been written about the discipline in its present state. Its original raison d’être long discarded, it lingers now as a zombie, ambling aimlessly in pursuit of mindless satiation.

  Take Snopes, that relic of the early web that once existed to dismantle viral myths and spare the public from conspiracies, humorous hoaxes, and harmful falsehoods. Recently, it sought to calm concerns that the late Dolly Parton might have done something nice for Jews.

  “Did Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library donate books to children in Israel?” asked a Snopes headline. The subhead reassured readers: “PJ Library, which provides free books to Jewish children, was inspired by Parton’s organization. But the two have no formal relationship.”

  Phew! That was close! (This episode is funnier when one discovers that the article’s author, Nur Ibrahim, “started her career as an associate producer with Al Jazeera English” — because of course she did.)

  Becket provides plenty more examples from Politifact, FactCheck.org, the WaPo, USA Today, the AP, and NBC. A diverse field of partisanship disguised as "fact".

  And he doesn't even mention Wikipedia!

It's on X, used to be Twitter:

I repeat: the two great lessons of the 20th century—taught to us through buckets of blood, human misery, and pointless cruelty—were that we need a better grasp of economics, and that ideology is how you turn IQ points against themselves, good people into monsters, and rich…

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) September 5, 2026

Continues:

Easy prediction: We'll be seeing plenty of examples of the kind of thing Greg's talking about over the next few weeks and years.

And… Maybe even today:

• We could also use a better grasp on that whole "checks and balances" thing. Eric Boehm points out that Trump is expanding executive power. Democrats are already eyeing the new tools.

  President Donald Trump has greatly—and, in many cases, quite recklessly—expanded the executive branch's power over private businesses.

  The Trump administration has invoked claims of "national security" to levy higher tariffs on everything from steel to musical instruments. It has used the same argument to seize equity shares in more than two dozen private companies, including a so-called "golden share" in U.S. Steel that grants the president the authority to veto future attempts to relocate headquarters or make changes to its production facilities.

  And if you think a future Democratic administration will try to stuff those executive powers back into their proper, constitutional boxes, well…don't hold your breath.

  Further down in the article, J.D. Vance is quoted: "We cannot be afraid to do something because the left might do it in the future." Or that classic second-grade taunt: Come on, don't be a scaredy cat!

  A mere couple days ago I pointed to Daniel Hannan's observation: JD Vance declares war on economics. He's also declaring war on our country's Constitutional structure.

  "We cannot be afraid"? J.D., with people like you running the country, why the hell not?!

• Continuing our theme du jour… At the Dispatch, Matthew Mitchell & Steven Globerman look at Socialism: The Newest Old Idea That Won’t Work. And guess who's one of their bad examples?

  “It is characteristic of the unlearned,” observed Calvin Coolidge in 1919, “that they are forever proposing something which is old, and because it has recently come to their own attention, supposing it to be new.”

  “I think what is so unique and refreshing about Donald Trump’s economic policies,” says Vice President J.D. Vance in 2026, “is that it is not the same old economic ideas that you would have heard 30, 40 years ago.”

  Vance is right to a point. It’s hard to imagine Bill Clinton directing the federal government to take ownership stakes—totaling $26.7 billion—in 30 private companies. Or Ronald Reagan hiking the average U.S. tariff rate to Sudanese levels, thereby imposing thousands of dollars of additional taxes on American families. George H.W. Bush would have never claimed a “golden share” in U.S. Steel, gaining a say in a private company’s board membership, factory locations, capital investment, employment, worker pay, and naming rights. And, it is safe to say that no past president would direct the Pentagon to go into the oil business with an accused money launderer and an unelected Venezuelan socialist.

  Ironically, the tweet linked in the second paragraph above is sourced from Fox News, and Fox's chyron says "GOP FIGHTS BACK AGAINST SOCIALISM".

  Fox, I wish!

• Good question. And Jeff Maurer asks it: Does the U.S. Already Have Universal Health Insurance?

  In lefty circles, “Medicare for All” is often treated as a synonym for “universal health insurance”. But the phrases are different; M4A is one type of universal coverage, and conflating the two is like saying “Ferrari” when you mean “micropenis compensation device”. Contrary to what some people think, there is not one health insurance system used by every advanced country except the US; other countries achieve close-to-universal coverage through various combinations of public insurance, private insurance, regulation, and Dutchness.

  About eight percent of Americans don’t have health insurance. Obamacare cut the number of uninsured almost in half, but the eight percent figure has held remarkably steady for several years. According to Twitter accounts with a red rose and a Palestinian flag next to their name — my #1 source of news — the existence of that eight percent represents a profound failure of the American system. And there’s some agreement here: I would like 100 percent of Americans to have health insurance. If I were in charge, I’d make big changes, and only most of them would involve getting other people to bankroll my shit. But even while acknowledging that it would be better if more American had health insurance, a closer look at the eight percent of uninsured Americans reveals that not every uninsured person is a destitute peasant being ground to dust by capitalism. In fact, you could argue that we kinda, sorta already have something close to universal coverage.

  Jeff does a super-wonkish job at crunching the statistics, and (my take, not his) you'll get an appreciation for how far down the Road to Serfdom we are already.

• Learn from this history: Thomas W. Hazlett explains how it came to be that "freedom of the press" doesn't extend to ABC vs. Trump and the Broadcasters’ Free-Speech Sellout. (WSJ gifted link)

  While most media operate in a laissez-faire regime, terrestrial radio and television broadcasting are licensed, and their airwave access has sometimes been deemed a privilege, not a right. Harvard Law’s Laurence Tribe traces the anomaly to a technical error: “a profound fallacy about spectrum scarcity.” Or as comedian George Carlin put it, “radio and television [are] the only two parts of American life not protected by the free speech provisions of the First Amendment to the Constitution. I’d like to repeat that because it sounds vaguely important.”

  Whose cockamamie idea was this? Why, the broadcasters’ own.

  The 1927 Radio Act’s “public interest” language was written by the National Association of Broadcasters, as the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Clarence C. Dill (D., Wash.), explained in his 1938 book, “Radio Law.” From the start, Dill saw that “the ‘twilight zone’ between censorship and the refusal to renew a station license because of the service rendered, is undetermined.”

  The broadcasters traded freedom for free licenses and a lucrative, protected market. Upstart rivals—the DuMont Television Network in the 1940s and ’50s, then cable TV and satellite in the 1960s—were suppressed, while only a handful of viable stations were assigned to more than 80 TV channels. In return, regulators gained clout over an industry and influence over content.

  Which has led to a long history of threats and abuse. Think of the broadcasters as battered wives who are learning that their spouses are inherent, unreformable, short-fused bullies.

• But maybe Nellie will cheer us up? Nope, sorry. Her TGIF column, written before the mistrial was declared, is pretty bleak, especially if you're a kid.

  → Lindsay Clancy jury deadlocked: I know the Lindsay Clancy trial is not technically the most consequential story of the week, but in my circles (moms) it is The Only Conversation, so bear with me. The jurors are deadlocked. Twice they have gone to the judge to say the jury cannot come to a decision. If they cannot reach a verdict, the judge could declare a mistrial. There are some clues as to what may be happening. For example, at least three of the female jurors were spotted curiously wearing pink, the color worn by Clancy supporters who think she is the victim of pharmacology and maternal stress and believe that—after a stint in a healthcare facility where she will be declared no longer a danger, which, by the way she has already been declared—she should go free. The deeper idea being proposed here seems to be that moms should kind of be able to kill their kids. Like, if they’re really, really stressed. In Canada, that’s the law already. If a parent kills a kid under the age of 1, it’s a maximum five-year sentence. We’re now going to see a movement to bring that to the U.S., and also to expand it to older kids. Death cults will death cult.

  Here’s the CBC this week. They called up criminal law expert Isabel Grant, a professor at the University of British Columbia, to say how this is a perfect example of how the infanticide law should expand to older kids.

  Technically, in Canada, Clancy could have raised infanticide as a defense for the murder of Callan, who was eight months old, said Grant, the criminal law professor at UBC. But the killing of Clancy’s older children could not be defended as infanticide even if she hadn’t recovered from the birth of the youngest child when she killed them, she added. “That is a shortcoming in the Canadian law.”

  A shortcoming in the law, says the law professor, is that a mom might be in jail longer than five years if she kills a bunch of kindergartners since the postpartum might not carry over to each killing. Maybe postpartum should last until the kid’s 18, right? Maybe moms—if they’re under a lot of pressure and like, super, super stressed and changing Zoloft dosages and can’t figure out the Snoo—should be able to kill her offspring at any age? It’s pro-choice taken to the nth degree. My moderate take on “pro-choice until the second trimester” will soon be seen as the radical right position. New battle lines: Are you pro-choice till 1, 5, or 18 years old? The new moderate is saying you draw the line at a 5-year-old. A psychologist will be like, after 5, the children have too many neurons and are, in fact, not fair game.

  I assume beating your kids is still illegal in Canada? Just killing them seems like an easy out.

It's Andrew Heaton, so: watch, learn, and laugh.

You'll learn stuff. About data centers, sure. But also how to fill in the blank: "The best thing you can do with an almond is              ."

The answer might surprise you!

Also of note:

• Another reason for Washington State taxpayers to be peeved. The state's university got caught violating one of their instructors' civil rights: Washington professor who parodied university ‘land acknowledgment’ wins $600K settlement. FIRE has the story:

  The University of Washington paid $600,000 after punishing Professor Stuart Reges for parodying a university-approved “land acknowledgment” in his syllabus.

  The payout comes after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held administrators liable under the First Amendment for retaliation and viewpoint discrimination.

  Today’s settlement concludes the legal battle that began with a 2022 lawsuit by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression on Reges’s behalf. Besides the monetary settlement, the agreement stipulates that the university cannot take any further action against Reges. While Reges’s appeal was pending, UW also rescinded and replaced the vague antiharassment policy used to punish the professor for his speech.

  “I am deeply grateful to FIRE for this legal victory which will remind public universities that they are obligated to respect the First Amendment rights of their students, faculty, and staff,” said Reges. “More importantly, I hope that my protest can help reverse a decade-long trend towards ideological conformity in academia and help to convince them that instead of ‘protecting’ students from controversial ideas, they should be helping them to learn how to cope with disagreement. Only then can we heal the deep divisions that confront us today.”

  So, good for Stuart, and good for FIRE. I first blogged about him back in 2018, when UWash was pissed about an article he wrote at Quillette: Why Women Don't Code.

• 

  Darn. Noah Smith has a long and thoughtful review of Where Is My Flying Car? by J. Storrs Hall. Unfortunately, Noah's headline is discouraging: Why you won’t get a flying car.

  In 2011, Peter Thiel famously said: “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” When I first saw that quote, I chuckled, because for my entire life, we’ve had flying buses. And again and again, as I sit on a flying bus and marvel at the thrill of takeoff, and reflect on how amazing it is that man has conquered the air, I look around and see my fellow passengers with their window shades drawn, their noses buried in a book or staring at a phone.

  If we had flying cars, we’d enjoy the thrill for a few weeks, and then we’d be back to tweeting on our phones and wondering when the trip would be over.

  I’ve noticed a loose collection of beliefs and attitudes that I’ve decided to call “engineerism”, because I see it most often among engineers. I coined the term when I was in college, when I noticed that the engineering majors in my physics classes tended to think differently about the world than the physics majors like myself did. Later, I recognized “engineerism” in various sci-fi novels — Lucifer’s Hammer and Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, The Peace War by Vernor Vinge, and so on.

  When I say “engineerism”, I am not talking about Friedrich Hayek’s “engineering mentality” — the belief that society can be designed and optimized like a machine.2 Nor am I referring to Evgeny Morozov’s “technological solutionism”, which is the idea that social problems can be fixed with technology. If I had to define what I call “engineerism” in succinct, simple terms, it would be something like: “The idea that if a technology can be built, we ought to build it.” Simply put, engineers like to engineer things, and they become disgruntled when society does not give them the resources to do this.

  I reported on Where Is My Flying Car? back in 2022, but Noah's review is better.

• Actual trickle-down economics at work. Our state's outgoing senior senator, Jeanne Shaheen, made Commie Radio New Hampshire Public Radio notice her turn at the pork barrel: Shaheen requests $5M to study 'sailor campus' at old Portsmouth Naval Prison.

  A feasibility study on the future of the former Portsmouth Naval Shipyard building, long ago abandoned by the Navy, may be on the horizon.

  This spring, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, requested $5 million in federal funding in the fiscal year 2027 appropriations legislation for a planning study. The funds would be used to determine whether “The Alcatraz of the East” could be given new life and reutilized as a “sailor campus" over a phased process, according to Shaheen’s request.

  (Originally an article at the Portsmouth Herald, where it is paywalled.)

  Now $5 million, while it might be a lot of money to you or me, is a very small drop in the very large bucket of federal spending.

  But I can't help but wonder into whose pockets that money will eventually go. Like any good Democrat, Jeanne has long been a foe of "trickle-down economics", which is how they refer to any proposal that lets people keep more of their own money.

  But when it comes to doling out millions for a "study"… well, good luck on tracking down the cui bono there.

• On the LFOD watch. Louis Cannon writes at the Pagosa Daily Post (the "online community magazine for Pagosa Springs, Colorado") and my Google News Alert rang for his recent article, READY, FIRE, AIM: Live Free or… You Know… Like, Die. Yes, it concerns New Hampshire's motto. And it's not awful; he talks about George Maynard's effort in the 1970s to not display it on his car's license plate, which eventually went to SCOTUS.

  I did want to mention where Louis goes badly wrong, in discussing the state quarter released in the year 2000:

  The coin also includes an image of ‘The Old Man of the Mountain’ — a peculiar rock formation which happens to be one of the few tourist attractions in New Hampshire.

  Well, practically anyone coulda told Louis that he shoulda put that in past tense: the Old Man's face fell off Cannon Mountain back in 2003.

  Also: tourism is, in fact, New Hampshires second-largest economic sector. (Mainly we get a lot of folks stopping on US3, wondering "So where's the Old Man?")

  And, for the record: Colorado's official state motto is Nil Sine Numine, which is Latin for "Nothing without Providence" or (perhaps) "Nothing without the Deity". There is no danger of it ever appearing on Colorado license plates.

Recently on the book blog (finally):

I'm pretty old now, but back in the 1960s, as a teenager, I checked out Frank Meyer's book, In Defense of Freedom, from the Omaha Public Library. Even then, I was impressed by his argument. I would occasionally get creeped out by some of the other National Review writers. But it seemed to me back then that Meyer got it pretty much right. And that belief has (more or less) continued for sixty years or so.

Although Meyer didn't care much for the term, the political philosophy he argued for came to be known as "fusionism". What's being fused? The two ideals of liberty and virtue. Meyer argued for a compromise between those conservative factions, noting that neither was a credible standalone position: over-reliance on virtue could easily slide over into state tyranny, and libertarian absolutism could devolve into anarchistic squalor.

Against the virtucrats, Meyer argued that a virtue enforced by state coercion wasn't true virtue; it must be a freely-chosen position. And to the out-there libertarians, his position was remarkably similar to that promulgated by the American founders. (E.g., James Madison: "To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea." You could look it up.)

So I was gratified to hear about Stephanie Slade's book. Fusionism has long been an interest of hers. Here is her article in Reason's March 2021 issue, which asks: Is There a Future for Fusionism?) And more recently, in the July 2026 Reason: What is fusionism? America blends liberalism and religion.

I ordered the book pretty much as soon as I heard about it. It's an impressive combination of history, political philosophy, and shoe-leather journalism. Slade looks at the contentious history of conservatism and libertarianism, concentrating on Meyer's intellectual odyssey. (He started out as an actual Communist. But he got better.) But plenty of other folks are examined, with careful detail and sometimes surprising insights. (I thought I knew the intellectual history relatively well, but Slade kept digging out details of which I was unaware.)

Slade notes, accurately, that fusionism's greatest electoral success was in the 1980s, typified by the landslide victories of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984. He wasn't perfect, but at his best he could be a passionate advocate of fusionist ideas. (Here's Slade again, in the July 2025 Reason: The fusionist politics of Ronald Reagan.)

Slade notes that since then, things have gotten worse (to put it mildly) on the GOP/right-wing side of things. Trump has shown little respect for fusionist ideals of limited government and free-market economics, preferring "pitchfork populism". Trump's heir apparent, J.D. Vance, is even worse. Most of the Republican Party seems to docilely follow along. And, out there on the fringes, there are some really scary folks: "theocons, natcons, and neoreactionaries", all calling for grabbing the reins of government power to impose their frightening visions.

In short, Slade has written an excellent book, and I recommend it to anyone interested in where we've been poltically, and where we might be going.

Of course, our Amazon Eye Candy du Jour provides one possible choice. But Christian Schneider's headline in NR is pretty good too: There's No Problem Government Creates That It Can’t Make Worse. His current example:

It would probably make the motto too long, but I'd add the infuriating punchline: "… while insisting at every step it was doing you a favor."

But speaking of government-created problems, here's Gabriel R. Llanes at the Federalist describing another one: The Wealth Gap Is Real, And Washington Created It.

I'm not a fan of the class-warfare implications—it's not the fault of the wealthy that they're in position to take advantage of monetary policy, and they don't deserve to be punished for it. Still…

Coincidentally, Bryan Caplan has a number of insightful Reflections on Americans’ Net Worth. Those reflections are based on the Federal Reserve's "Survey of Consumer Finances". And, as Bryan says, they demonstrate "the chasm between populist pessimism and actual data on Americans’ net worth."

Bryan has 20 of them. Here are the first three:

… and I recommend you check out numbers 4-20.

Also of note:

• Unfortunately, we're all collateral damage. Daniel Hannan notes bellicosity: JD Vance declares war on economics.

  JD Vance is the latest postliberal to embrace what is now, for all intents and purposes, an anti-growth position.

  In his latest book, Communion, Vance inveighs against those perennial straw men, the GDP-obsessed economists. We keep hearing about these mysterious figures, cold-hearted calculators who believe that GDP is the only measure that counts. Oddly, despite running the world’s foremost classical liberal think tank, I have yet to meet one.

  Vance, though, is convinced that people who “struggle to put a value on anything that can’t be specifically measured” not only exist, but run America. The country is governed, he tells us, “by numbers on a spreadsheet and the people who built those spreadsheets.”

  Also in the running for Pun Salad Official Motto: "Beware politicians who claim to know what would make you truly happy."

• Good question. And the WaPo editorial board asks it: State control over oil broke Venezuela. Why is Trump doubling down? (WaPo gifted link)

  President Donald Trump’s removal of socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro in January offered a generational opportunity to counteract the failures of Venezuela’s socialist policies. A pro-America opposition appeared ready to usher in a free market and end the state’s suffocating grip on oil production. Eight months later, the White House’s deal with Maduro’s former vice president risks entrenching the people and policies that tanked the country’s economy in the first place.

  Under the sketchy terms of an agreement Trump unveiled this week with Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, the Pentagon receives a 35 percent stake in North American Blue Energy Partners, which has just been granted 100-year concessions to drill in 17 oil fields that contain an estimated 65 billion barrels. The State Department receives rights to buy 20 percent of the output at cost and gets first dibs on purchasing the remainder. The Venezuelan government would purportedly receive $200 billion in tax and royalty payments over the next 25 years.

  The Trump administration has earned a bad reputation for crony capitalism by taking equity stakes in at least 30 private companies, including Intel and Westinghouse. But a deal of this magnitude makes the U.S. government, at least on paper, one of the world’s largest corporate holders of oil. State control of the industry was an original sin of Chavismo, named for left-wing populist strongman Hugo Chávez, whose despotic rule from 1999 to 2013 included a nationalization drive that kicked off Venezuela’s economic death spiral.

  Also in the running for Pun Salad Official Motto: "Beware politicians who think they can run businesses."

• And finally: do not vote for any pol who babbles about "genocide". And don't believe what you read in the New York Times, either: Because, as David Harsanyi documents: The 'Gaza Genocide' Is a Hoax.

  In May 2025, Tom Fletcher, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, went on BBC Radio and told the audience that 14,000 babies in Gaza were going to die "in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them."

  According to UNICEF, there are around 20,000 babies in the entirety of Gaza. Which means 70% of all infants were in danger of dying in mere hours. An "utterly chilling" figure, Fletcher stressed.

  The New York Times, along with numerous other establishment media outlets, relayed Fletcher's allegation to its credulous audience without any skepticism. The usual experts were summoned to discuss this unfolding famine on cable news. And the antisemites across social media amplified the claim.

  No matter how far-fetched a story is about Israel, including preposterous evidence-free accusations that it trains dogs to rape Palestinians, papers such as The New York Times will spread it to feed the perception that the Jewish state operates as a genocidal entity. And no matter how often the claims are debunked, they keep at it.

  David lays out the facts. His bottom line: "There is no genocide. And there was no famine. There was a war. And the bad guys lost."

Recently on the book blog:

I have an embarrassing number of bought-but-never-read books on my shelves. This is yet another of those, purchased sometime in the 1970s. In case you haven't heard: it's about rabbits in England. In the book's universe, they can talk to each other, with occasional specialized vocabulary. (Fortunately, there's a "Lapine Glossary" in the back of the book for unfamiliar rabbit words.) The rabbits can also converse in a limited way with other species, but not people.

In the peaceful (but somewhat regimented) rabbit warren in Sandleford, there is trouble a'brewing. A small rabbit named Fiver, with soothsaying abilities, knows there's bad danger afoot. (And we readers know it too, as there's a sign announcing the imminent construction of "high class modern residences".) And that construction will involve the destruction of the rabbit habitat.

Fiver is convincing enough to get a small group of rabbits to abandon Sandleford and start looking for a new home. (Just in time, as it turns out.) Their travels are danger-filled. And there's another issue: they have no lady rabbits in their group, which (even rabbits know) doesn't auger well for their community's long-term survival. Their efforts to gain some females cause them to run afoul of an extremely militaristic warren. Our bunnies are no match for them in brawn; can they out-think them?

Spoiler: yes. But it's a close-run thing. If you're thinking about reading this to the kids: there's a lot of (rabbit) violence and even some PG elements of rabbit sex.

James Freeman notes an embarrassing vote in the House of Representatives: Handful of House Democrats Vote to Denounce Murderous Marxism. (WSJ gifted link)

"Embarrassing" in the sense that the GOP designed it to embarrass Dems. But there's a local angle for Granite Staters:

For those not plugged into New Hampshire politics, the democratic socialist running against Pappas in the primary next week is Karishma Manzur. Her latest allegation is described by Michael Graham in NHJournal: Manzur: I’m the ‘Real Democrat,’ Pappas Is the Sellout.

Pappas was one of 22 Democrats voting to censure Tlaib. This was back in 2023, before his spine gelatinized.

Tomorrow I plan to blog David Harsanyi's column, but here's a sneak preview link: The 'Gaza Genocide' Is a Hoax.

I'm torn about whether I want Manzur to beat Pappas in the primary. She'd be a weak candidate against her probable opponent in November, John E. Sununu. On the other hand, I'd like to think New Hampshire Democrat voters weren't buying the socialist shtick.

Also of note:

• 

  More from Slade. I promise that I will report on my reading of Stephanie Slade's great book, Fusionism, Real Soon Now. Just not today. But to further whet your appetite, here's an "adapted-from" article at the WSJ: Meet the ‘Bronze Age’ Young Men of the New American Right. (WSJ gifted link)

  When the Supreme Court this summer upheld the constitutionality of birthright citizenship, the right-wing internet erupted with rage. Prime among its targets were the four female justices who had signed on to the majority opinion. In one representative post on X, the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh declared that “the worst Supreme Court Justices of all time have all been women. That’s just a fact. Republican presidents should take the hint.”

  The outburst was in keeping with a strain of rhetoric popular among a subset of very online young men. It holds that women are too emotional to occupy positions of influence in society; that female suffrage was a mistake; and that the fairer sex’s purpose in life is to look good, make babies, and serve a husband’s every need.

  To understand where all of this is bubbling up from, it helps to be acquainted with the “vitalists,” a certifiably weird subculture led by internet personalities with pseudonyms like “Bronze Age Pervert” (real name: Costin Alamariu) and “Raw Egg Nationalist” (real name: Charles Cornish-Dale), who look back longingly to a time when white men were in charge and other groups submitted humbly to rule by their betters.

  And of course, you can always use the Amazon link at your right.

  I'd like to think that Slade's just "nut-picking", and the "vitalist" influence is negligible compared to (say) the DSA's influence on the Democrats. But I dunno for sure.

• And ego. Don't forget his ego. Jacob Sullum notes that we'll soon have a Trump Monument in DC. Specifically: Trump’s White House ballroom is a monument to his lawlessness.

  After President Theodore Roosevelt began building the East Wing of the White House in 1902, he thanked Congress for approving the project and appropriating the necessary funds. When President Donald Trump demolished the East Wing last fall, by contrast, he acted without permission from Congress, which the Constitution empowers to control federal property.

  That difference is unlikely to matter in practice, thanks to a stay the Supreme Court issued on Monday, which allows Trump to continue work on the huge ballroom he is building on the site of the East Wing. But Trump's insistence on acting unilaterally will make his vanity project a monument to his disregard for the rule of law and the separation of powers.

  But that's not all…

• Are there no limits to this guy's narcissism? On a related matter, Noah Rothman looks at yet another example of Trump's Petty Caesarism, as exhibited by…

  Available for purchase today at 12PM ET: 2026 President Donald J. Trump $1 Coin. These coins are also in circulation, so check your pocket change. Collect them today! #CoinCollecting #America250https://t.co/g4eJes21ER pic.twitter.com/4OqkQ2sa9W

  — United States Mint (@usmint) September 2, 2026

  Donald Trump’s visage is already circulating on these gold-finished brass coins. Some have taken exception to the “controversial move” of putting a sitting president’s face on legal tender, but their objections are unreasonable.

  Sure, this hasn’t been done in 100 years, and the last person to do it was arguably the least imperial president in that century: Calvin Coolidge. Never mind that his face was partially eclipsed by George Washington’s. And like the 1926 coin, this one will cost a lot more than it’s worth.

  “The rolls of $1 coins (25 to a roll) go for $61. A bag of 100 coins goes for $154.50,” ABC News reported. Likewise, back in 1926, “few people cared to part with the required $1 to purchase a commemorative half dollar,” the historian David Bowers observed. “When all was said and done, the staggering quantity of 859,408 half dollars went back to the Mint to be melted!” Perhaps the same fate is in store for Trump’s coins.

  "Gold-finished brass"? Kinda cheesy, Don.

Recently on the book blog:

I'm not proud of this, but I'll admit it: I've been inordinately attracted now and then to the "celebrity memoir" genre. Written by musicians and actors I like, mostly. I tell myself that they'll provide me with some insight into the wellsprings of their creative talents. And I am invariably disappointed; these guys (yes, mostly guys) don't seem to have any eye-opening revelations on the matter. Hard work, good luck, singular focus… that's about it.

But I was enticed into reading Peter Wolf's memoir by this review in the WSJ.

Wolf is no exception on the creativity score. But—holy cow!—he really makes up for it on another score: this book is full of stories about the people he's encountered over the course of his career, most famous, many surprising. And those stories are great: some hilarious, some poignant, some even tragic. But all of them well told. (If you're looking for hilarity, for example, skip ahead to his story about making this classic music video.)

In the unlikely event that a celebrity is reading this: If you're thinking about writing a memoir, read Peter Wolf first. Go and do thou likewise.

He starts out with a biggie: In 1956, his parents take ten-year-old Peter to a movie, an artsy-fartsy French flick. In comes another couple: an older guy and a mink-coated, sunglassed blonde. And the blonde sits next to Peter. Eventually (since it's an artsy-fartsy French flick) the blonde nods off, with her head falling on Pete's shoulder.

Punchline: the guy is Arthur Miller, and the blonde is Marilyn Monroe.

I wasn't a huge fan of the J. Geils Band, although I really liked their 1974 single, "Must of Got Lost" well enough to buy the album it was on ("Nightmares...and Other Tales from the Vinyl Jungle"). But our musical tastes diverged as time went on. I don't think that was Wolf's fault, though.

On the "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" score: the drug of choice is alcohol, and prodigous amounts of it. I think Pete could drink you. me, and the entire defensive line of the New England Patriots under the table. And the sex is never prurient. Although (you might not know) he was married to Faye Dunaway, and he was a little miffed about her extramarital dalliances.

I put this in my get-at-library list back in 2023, thanks to its inclusion on the WSJ's best mysteries list for that year. As a bonus, it's set in New Hampshire! (A heavily fictionalized New Hampshire, but what are you gonna do?)

The first-person narrator is Bodie Kane In a stylistic twist, Bodie's narration is addressed to another character—the "you" in the title—as if Bodie's writing/speaking to them. That choice comes into focus as the book proceeds.

Bodie is returning to the boarding school whence she graduated a couple decades back. She's been invited to teach a couple of mini-courses in an interim few weeks between semesters. Bodie's time at the school was unhappy, and marred by the murder of her onetime roommate, Thalia. Omar, an African-American athletic manager, was arrested and convicted for the crime (after confessing, then quickly recanting). But…

One of Bodie's courses is about podcast production, and one of her students wants to craft her podcast to revisit the crime. The student believes a miscarriage of justice occurred, and someone else did Thalia in. Bodie gets drawn into the student's investigation, and down the rabbit hole they go. Eventually, troubling facts emerge.

It's billed as a "literary" mystery, which (as near as I can tell) means a lot of discursive, flowery language. And anything that could be described as "action" is minimal. Bodie's narration involves plenty of navel-gazing, deep reflections on her life. She's estranged from her husband, who, in a sideshow to the main plot, is being fingered for a sexual harassment incident. She has a sorta-lover down in Boston, but he seems strangely unenthusiastic about coming up to see her while she's in the area. And there are a lot of other characters introduced, a bunch in the present, and a bunch from the past, and everyone seems dysfunctional in their own special ways. And there's occasional commentary in the "believe all women" vein, which probably seemed less quaint back then.

And (caveat lector) you may find the ending unsatisfying. I thought it was OK, but…

My brilliant idea to rename 'Lake Erie' as 'Lake Inferior' doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Also of note:

• Well-deserved but futile and stupid. Social Security is going broke, the overall economy is shaky due to massive deficit spending, but instead it appears we're in for (according to Jim Geraghty) The Inevitable Impeachment Rerun.

  Democrats are quite likely to win back control of the U.S. House of Representatives and appear to have a decent shot at winning the Senate. And then, apparently some Democrats fervently believe that finally, this time, for real, they’re going to get him.

  The “him,” of course, is Donald Trump, a man who has already survived two impeachments the way a cockroach survives a nuclear test, and who has almost cheerfully dared Democrats to try a third. As the president put it to Will Cain back in January, his Democratic foes will “find something,” because that’s simply what “very nasty people” with “bad policy” do.

  As far as more pressing problems go, I didn't mention "health care is unaffordable" and "our roads and bridges are crumbling" above, because Jim notes as an aside:

  (Hey, remember the Affordable Care Act? Remember when the Obama administration insisted, “President Obama promised that he would make quality, affordable health care not a privilege, but a right. After nearly 100 years of talk and decades of trying by presidents of both parties, that’s exactly what he did.” Here we are, 16 years after its passage, and ten years after that declaration of a promise kept, and Democrats are still running for office saying that health care is unaffordable. It’s like “crumbling roads and bridges.” No matter how many massive, big-spending infrastructure bills get passed, lawmakers come back a short while later and argue we need to pass another one, because of our “crumbling roads and bridges.” Whatever the U.S. government has spent in recent years, some candidate out there will insist this vital priority is desperately underfunded.)

  I think that the infrastructure spending is likely to deliver roads and bridges pre-crumbled.

• I'm still trying to figure out why that darned caged bird is singing. Kevin D. Williamson says he knows Why Everybody Hates Capitalism. (Dispatch gifted link)

  I have written many versions of this sentence, and I’ll repeat myself here: Pretty much everybody in the rich world would be enthusiastically pro-capitalism if not for their experiences with a handful of firms concentrated in financial services and telecommunications: insurance companies (especially health), banks and credit card issuers, collections firms, streaming and (especially) cable services (there is a reason that fewer than 1 in 3 U.S households subscribes to cable today, down from a peak of 90 percent or so), mobile providers, things like that. The problem seems to be nearly exclusive to providers of intangibles, whereas providers of physical goods have a relatively good reputation. However overpriced their goods may seem, nobody hates Gucci or Cartier the way some people hate their banks or insurance companies—UnitedHealth’s profit margins run around 3 percent vs. 22 percent for luxury-goods giant LVMH, but you will not win any votes calling for the nationalization of Louis Vuitton or Moët & Chandon. It is true that luxury goods occupy a special cultural position, but you could make much the same case about Adidas or Dell or Black & Decker.

  But don't worry: KDW is a capitalism fan, like me.

  Two Cheers for Capitalism, Irving Kristol advised in his famous book of that title. Two, two and a half, maybe two and three quarters.

  Or: Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.

• 

  Slade, you magnificent writer, I read your book! Specifically, I finished Fusionism yesterday. I will report on it over on the book blog Real Soon Now. But until then you should read Stephanie Slade: J.D. Vance and the post-liberal right’s politics of victimhood, adapted from the book.

  In September 2021, when he was still a long-shot candidate for the Republican Senate nomination in Ohio, J.D. Vance made an appearance on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight. At the time, it was widely understood that Vance's chances were limited in the bright-red state by his earlier refusal to support Donald Trump for president.

  "My god what an idiot," he had tweeted of Trump in 2016. "I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us," he posted the same month. In the wake of Trump's infamous "grab 'em by the pussy" Access Hollywood tape, Vance implored his "fellow Christians" to realize that "everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man."

  By the time of his Senate race, those comments had become a political liability. He deleted them and began an apology tour. "I've been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them," he told Fox News. "I regret being wrong about the guy."

  Slade (I call her Slade, apparently that's how she's known around the Reason offices) calls Vance's transformation "a head-spinning reversal in tone and policy alike." I didn't fully appreciate that before.

• But for more Slade… Freedom Conservatism is also cheering the book's appearance, calling it a Lit fuse. Their article is a compendium of well-deserved praise, full of links. If you're on the fence about getting a copy, it should push you over.

• Thinking long-term. At Ars Technica, Eric Berger has a jaw-dropper: Private group wants to launch "cheapest possible" mission to Alpha Centauri.

  There are, by various estimates, several trillion planets within what is known as the Local Group of galaxies—our closest galaxy neighbors, including our own Milky Way. Many of these planets are within the habitable zone of their stars. So if life finds a way, where are the alien civilizations?

  This is the crux of what is known as the Fermi paradox, which posits that if life is fairly common in the Universe, humans should have collected credible evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations by now. People who think about this paradox believe there may be some “filter” that limits or entirely prevents an advanced civilization from sending out probes or even life-bearing spacecraft to nearby stars.

  But what about that mission?

  On Tuesday, [entrepreneur Philip Johnston and a handful of other entrepreneurs announced the “Fermi Explorer” mission. In concept, it is simple. They seek to raise $15 million to build a small spacecraft, carrying a 1 kg payload, and launch it to Alpha Centauri such that it reaches that system in fewer than 80,000 years. Why? In conversations about the Fermi paradox, Johnston realized such a mission would knock two “filters” off the list: Species won’t want to send spacecraft beyond their home star, or species will find that interstellar transit is too difficult.

  When they say "fewer than 80,000 years", unfortunately they don't mean five or six.

  There's a website, of course.

Recently on the movie blog:

As sometimes happens—probably more often than it should—I go looking for a big dumb violence-laden movie on the streaming services. Google's more than willing to help out. I settled on this one from 2020. It stars Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth; he made it in between Marvel movies.

It's set in Bangladesh, where a drug cartel has (violently) kidnapped the young son of the head of a different drug cartel. A private mercenary force is enlisted to go rescue the kid. Nearly-immediate carnage and betrayal results, with pretty much the only survivor being Tyler Rake (Hemsworth), left alone with the near-impossible task of getting the boy out of Bangladesh, across a bridge leading to (relatively) safe Indian territory.

We know from the first few minutes (so this isn't really a spoiler) that Tyler winds up on that bridge, badly wounded, barely able to crawl. Most of the rest of the movie shows us how he got there: by shooting, and getting shot at by, a nearly unlimited supply of bad guys. Fortunately, they all took their marksmanship training from the Imperial Stormtrooper Academy from Star Wars. And Tyler has a near-infinite supply of ammo and (just to mix it up a bit) knives and explosives.

The action scenes are intense and non-stop, and I stayed awake. Extraction 2 is also available on Netflix, and I will probably check that out someday.

Of course, having a doddering old fool in charge of the Executive had its downsides too.

Oh, wait, now we just have a different doddering old fool.

Also of note:

• Another day, another demand to desecrate the Constitution. One of the headlines in Mr. Ramirez's cartoon refers to this matter: Trump tells FCC to punish journalist for calling his election results "mixed"

  President Trump [Sunday] demanded that the Federal Communications Commission punish or rebuke an NBC journalist for saying he has “mixed results” in his election endorsements. In the latest example of how Trump is using the FCC to harass reporters and news organizations that he dislikes, he said Meet the Press host Kristen Welker “will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment” for what he claimed was a “purposeful inaccuracy.”

  “Kristen Welker, the Unpopular ‘Hostess’ of the once great Meet the Press, now considered Meet the Fake Press, just stated that Donald Trump has ‘mixed results’ on his Endorsements of Candidates, when the recent WINS of Darline Graham and Mike Mazzei, stand at 100% for the U.S. Senate, and 98% for the U.S. House, recently and over the longterm. How can anyone be allowed to say this, working for freely given Public Airwaves? Results are attached. Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

  The Ars Technica article goes on to observe:

  Poynter Senior Media Writer Tom Jones writes, “What Welker said about Trump’s endorsements having mixed results was true. Trump just didn’t like it.” While Trump praised himself for his successful endorsements, he didn’t mention primary losses by Republican gubernatorial candidates Burt Jones in Georgia and Randy Feenstra in Iowa and the failed re-election bid by Rep. Cory Mills (R-Florida).

  It's true enough that Ars Technica leans left. That doesn't excuse Trump for taking yet another dump on the First Amendment.

• "Worse than Biden" is a high bar. But Trump has been doing his best to clear it. The WaPo editorialists take a look at the numbers, and find … Trump’s tariffs aren’t reducing the trade deficit. (WaPo gifted link)

  The trade deficit doesn’t matter, but even if it did, tariffs aren’t an effective way to reduce it.

  In July, the monthly trade deficit in goods hit its highest level since March 2025, the Commerce Department revealed on Thursday. That was the month before President Donald Trump’s announcement last year of massive tariffs on products from nearly every country in the world.

  The Supreme Court’s February ruling against Trump struck down only tariffs he imposed under one law. He has imposed import duties under other laws before and after that ruling. They remain in effect. The average tariff rate is currently about 11 percent, which is more than four times higher than it was when Trump started his second term.

  I also liked their last paragraph:

  The trade deficit is a number, nothing more. It is primarily determined by differences in saving and investment patterns between countries, not by trade policy. Trying to control it with tariffs is like trying to change the score of a football game by yelling from the bleachers.

  Metaphorically "yelling from the bleachers" seems to be Trump's preferred tactic in many areas.

• Oh well, enough about Trump. As I've previously pointed out, I have to choose among eight GOP candidates for US Senator on my primary ballot next week. If I were to choose the one with the coolest name, that would be: Sky Danley.

  The link goes to his campaign website, and … gosh, he says a lot of things I agree with. E.g.:

  Our current subservient legislatures, beholden to the legalized payola of special interests, shirk their constitutional duties because, on both sides of the aisle, they’re more interested in protecting their individual office holdings and associated monetary power than in promoting the general welfare.

  And thus, in all three branches, we have a wanton abandonment of civic virtue, an abandoning of the common good in favor of perpetual, self-serving interests.

  James Madison, the father of our Constitution, warned that without civic virtue, a republic cannot survive. One can easily conclude that our republic may already be gone, existing in name only and no longer in function. If so, the goal must be to get it back, to restore the last best hope.

  He also says some things I disagree with; I think he's too hard on the current SCOTUS, for example. (He has an associated term-limit scheme for SCOTUS that he insists is not court-packing.)

  But another thing I like: he claims (I haven't checked) to be the only candidate who's answered all 34 questions on the Citizens Count questionnaire.

  But another thing I don't like: he favors a partial repeal of the First Amendment to "absolutely get the corrupting money out of politics."

  Sorry, Sky. Red flag there.

• 

  Still available from Amazon! James Freeman notes that the proud winner of my state's four electoral votes in 2024 (by 50.65% to 47.87%) is weighing in on our state's D-side primary: Kamala to the Rescue! (WSJ gifted link)

  Remember when Democrats nominated a presidential candidate in 2024 who had endorsed positions so progressively wacky that not even her friends in the media could believe they were real? Such is the speed of the Democratic party’s continuing leftward lurch that believe it or not former Vice President Kamala Harris now appears to be a relative moderate as she intervenes in a key Senate race against a democratic socialist.

  Last week this column noted that Democrats’ dreams of a U.S. Senate majority have been complicated by rising difficulty in New Hampshire, where Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is retiring and her expected replacement, Rep. Chris Pappas, suddenly appears to be struggling. A recent Granite State Poll from the University of New Hampshire found the relatively unknown socialist Karishma Manzur surging against Mr. Pappas just ahead of next week’s Democratic primary.

  To remind us of our "choice" back in 2024, check out Charles C.W. Cooke's take at that time, agreeing with our Amazon Eye Candy du Jour: Kamala Harris Is an Idiot.

• Turns out it was terrorism after all! Shocker! National Review notes a small bit of recovered sanity in the Great White North: CBC Reverses Course, Will Describe 9/11 Attacks as Terrorism After Backlash.

  After directing staff not to refer to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as acts of terrorism, the Canadian Broadcasting Company has reversed course and published new guidance acknowledging that the term is in fact accurate.

  Basem Boshra, the senior director of journalistic standards and public trust at CBC News, issued a memo earlier this month, first reported by the Toronto Sun, instructing staff not to refer to the events of 9/11 as terror attacks in accordance with the network’s “longstanding language guidance.” Boshra rescinded that guidance last week following significant backlash.

  "And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for that significant backlash!"