VDH on "the Epstein List"

Sounds plausible--but obviously there are other explanations.

I haven't really been that interested in this, and so haven't been following it closely or thinking much about it. But I'd already been wondering whether maybe the people visiting Epstein's island and riding on his plane weren't really involved in his perversions and sex crimes. That is, that maybe his sexual obsessions and his pursuit of famous acquaintances weren't largely--though perhaps not entirely--separate.

   One argument on the right is: if there are no clients, then why is Maxwell in jail?

   That seemed initially plausible to me...but, again, I didn't follow the case closely. When I looked it up, the argument lost its plausibility: Maxwell is in jail for abusing girls and trafficking them. Another cursory search seemed to indicate that trafficking is transporting. So was Maxwell convicted of transporting girls to be exploited by her and Epstein? If so, no clients are necessary.

   Anyway, I hadn't thought about the blackmail hypothesis...but that does seem plausible.

   Also anyway: many on the right seem to think that this is obviously a coverup--that there obviously were/are clients and almost certainly a list. And anyone who doesn't see that is just being stupidly naive.

   But I don't see it.

   I don't have any special knowledge or insight here. But that seems to be the position most of us are in most of the time with respect to these big, marquee questions/issues. Suspension of judgment seems to be my only real option here...well...other than actually learning something about the case...which honestly probably isn't going to happen.

Tariffs Again

I'm still not convinced by the adamantly anti-tariff position...but Trump's shenanigans on this front do seem pretty nutty. Maybe he's right--he often is. But I'm concerned--and, of course, confused.

David Ditch: One Big, Beautiful and Historic Welfare Reform

Big if true.

NRO: Trump's Reckless New Tariffs

"President's should not behave this way, and they can't."

Seems like a fair summary to me...but, again, I don't understand this stuff.

But this is the kind of loose-cannon-y behavior we (or I at least) fear from Trump.

WSJ: The Economic Drain of Mass Deportation

Ok. The main objections to waves of illegal immigration aren't economic.

And every policy has advantages and disadvantages.

And, of course, I have little reason to believe these numbers...but they don't seem prima facie crazy.

Anyway, like many Americans, I'm willing to take some economic hit to preserve the, y'know, nation...

And let's be realistic: the administration isn't going to deport 20-30 million illegal aliens.

My guess is that they're cranking out so much sound and fury to encourage "self-deportations."

I certainly agree that what we need is a sliding scale here. Criminals and welfare leaches need to be kicked out post haste. It'd be good to deport those who flooded in during the Biden years... But those who have been here for, say, 30 years and have been valuable residents of the USA? Look, nobody is in a rush to get rid of such people. There is, actually no way the administration is ever going to get that far down on the list. Nobody wants it to happen, and it isn't going to happen. The administration will be lucky to get rid of the very most egregious offenders. 

Epstein Apparently Killed Himself After All

I've never cared that much about this, and I've generally thought that he probably did kill himself. I mean, he seems to have been a scumbag, and so it was good that he got busted. It's just not a drama that captured my attention. There's plenty of looniness and there are plenty of puzzles. All I'm saying is that, if you'd forced me to bet on it, I'd have bet on the suicide hypothesis. I've jokingly echoed the MAGA mantra "Epstein didn't kill himself"...but, then, I've occasionally also said--also tongue in cheek--that jet fuel can't melt steel beams. I mean...no joking matters...but who can resist every now and then?

Anyway. I'm not all bent out of shape about this one like some people are.

Jason Riley: Trump is on a Roll, But Shouldn't Get Overconfident

Agreed, unsurprisingly.

   Though I disagree with Riley about one thing: it's common for people to say that Trump was elected primarily for economic reasons. I, of course, voted for him (somewhat reluctantly) because of the non-economic (some people say "cultural," but that's not quite right) issues. Some of the headliners: gender ideology and transanity, illegal immigration, DEI, etc.

   Of course I may not be representative of the average Trump voter.

   One more thing: this seems like just the sort of situation Trump could screw up, e.g. with some stupid pronouncements or dopey tweets...

   But his staff may be helping to keep him out of such trouble this time.

   What's really amazing is that he's got so much support despite the titanic, unhinged propaganda effort conducted by the mainstream media and the rest of the big blue machine. It's hard to figure how popular he'd be in the absence of that massive brainwashing initiative.

$200 Tax Stamp on Suppressors Reduced to $0

Woohoo!

Gonna get me one...or...several...now!

Musk's New Political Party

I mean, ok, but I doubt this has much chance of changing anything significantly.

He doesn't seem to have thought this out, IMO.

Then, of course, there's the unseemly feud between Trump and Musk. They've both done great things for the country, but they're also both spazzes who don't seem to be able to control their mouths or their thumbs. Neither has the right temperament to be setting the tone of the debate.

   The more substantive question is: is the OBBB good or bad? Or, rather: is it good enough? Or, rather: is it more-or-less the best we can reasonably expect to get under prevailing circumstances?

   If Musk is right, and it's a catastrophe, then, of course, he's justified in saying so and pushing against it.

   Once again, though, I have no idea.

NEJM, the Medicalization of Everything, and the Political Corruption of Expertise

This is a good example of the kind of crackpottery we find on the elite left.

   Find some way in which some policy or other affects medical care / health. Then find some doctors or medical researchers willing to represent themselves as experts on these grounds. Then assert or suggest that the original policy is, therefore, in effect a medical matter--ergo the docs are experts who get to pronounce the policy good or bad.

   And--surprise--the progressive position is always the position supported by medical science--"the science" relevant to the matter at hand.

   This is the same kind of argument we get from progressive medical types concerning firearms: firearms affect people's health, doctors (and medical researchers) are the experts on health, ergo doctors (etc.) get to determine what firearm policy should be.

   Oh and, of course, there is the de rigueur conflation of legal with illegal immigration. Even I'm surprised at how resolutely dishonest the left is on this point. You'd think that the steadfast refusal to acknowledge a crucial distinction in a debate would eventually cause the public to simply discount the pronouncements of the offending faction. And maybe it has, outside the True Believer class. But the left has demonstrated its almost preternatural ability to ignore politically incorrect or otherwise inconvenient facts...

   Anyway, in this case, the position of the authors seems pretty much immediately contradictory. It seems to be: we can't run the health-care system without (illegal?) immigrants, because they are willing to accept unfairly-low wages... Now, normally the left stops here, suspending its histrionic obsession with "social justice"...  But the NEJM authors go on to say: And we've got to raise these wages. So...we can't run the system without illegal immigrants who accept low wages...but we've got to raise their wages because--etc. 

   Do these people every listen to themselves? Or read their own articles?

The Big, Beautiful Bill: "Jet Fuel for the Economy," or Literally the Holocaust of "Structural Racism"?

Mike Johnson: probably somewhere in the vicinity of the truth, I'd guess.

Carmen James Randolph: LOL

It's the same old bullshit from the Democrats every single time anymore. Like half of progressivism comes down to That's racist...

   But note that it's not just racist...it's "structural racism at its most deadly" [my emphasis] Wow! You'd have thought maybe the middle passage or the Holocaust...but I guess you'd have been wrong. Bigot.

   Anyway, I don't even pay any attention to such bullshit anymore. When the answer is the same every time...and it's always wrong...eventually you have to start doing logical triage... 

   And as for Planned Parenthood: if they want funding, they need to stop transing kids and whatnot. I'm generally a libertarian about abortion, but the left's torrid love affair with it is just too damn weird for me.

   Anyway, as for the particulars Randolph is on about: could be, I guess. But I'm skeptical.

WSJ: GOP Gambles on Trump Accounts; Dems Could Turn Them into UBI

link

   Universal Basic Income, IMO, should be regarded as the ultimate nanny-state boondoggle. Or, well, a boondoggle, as I understand it, is just an unproductive undertaking, a waste of money. UBI is the kind of thing likely to wreck lives and nations. It's an empirical question, of course...but I don't want the experiment run here. Let Minnesota wreck itself. That's kinda what the laboratories of democracy are for... 

   What no one should disagree with--but many progressives will, of course--is that [a] proponents of UBI must carry a very heavy burden of proof, and [b] the idea must be extensively tested before nationwide implementation is even considered. That is: conservatism must regulate any serious consideration of UBI. But this is almost just a characterization of the difference between conservatives and progressives (and, I must regretfully add: liberals). The left errs, in large part, by advocating for ceaseless, radical change based on ill-considered and largely untested hypotheses. They never stop pushing for likely-to-be-catastrophic change... This is why slippery slope arguments so often turn out to be sound when directed against the left. There's no doubt that the Editors are right--if Democrats see an opportunity to move these "Trump accounts" in the direction of UBI, they're likely to take it.

   But, furthermore, my own rather watery conservatism in this domain basically amounts to the thought--a radical departure from my view even a decade ago--that we're better off keeping the tax codes simple. There are all sorts of tweaks and fancy policies that might work if not for the law of unintended consequences... But, in fact, are likely to be a wash at best.

   Of course I don't know anything about any of this, so that's a relevant factor here if you're a stickler for that kind of thing...

Julian Epstein: How Trump Became Washington's Unlikeliest Centrist

link

I don't see why it's unlikely.

To repeat myself repeating myself:

The left has radicalized to such an extent that it's ceded the center to the Republicans.

   The hysterical, fiction-based TDS of the left has been more durable than I might have thought. Most people I know are academicians or in the penumbra of intellectuals/pseudo-intellectuals that have academia as their center of gravity. They hate / are horrified by Trump, and will never change their minds. Arguing with them is a waste of your breath. It is just about exactly like arguing with a Christian about Jesus. If you think you're going to move someone out of the wagon-ruts worn into the terrain of their thought over decades of life...well, uh, you're wrong. To think that Trump is anything less than Hitlerian, they would have to renounce all their previous, impassioned, public declarations, admit they've been wrong about fundamental things their entire lives, accept ostracism from their tribe...and resign themselves to being seen as, basically, an evil person by their entire social group. It's a lot easier to just turn a blind eye to the evidence and remain in the comfortable embrace of warm, blue fantasies...

   Anyway: yes, Trump's basically a centrist. As others have noted, he's damn close to being a mid-'90s Democrat. He was a mid-90's Democrat. But 2008 Obama is too conservative for 2020s Democrats...

   Well, nothing new here.

   Just saying that it's not as surprising as this op-ed makes it out to be.

Democrats Re: Independence Day

It's becoming more and more difficult to distinguish progressivism from mental illness.

NSFW:

Susan Crabtree: OMB Says States Use Education Grants for Radical Left-Wing Agenda

[1] This is undoubtedly true.

[2] Only a very few cases are cited in the article, however.

[3] As to the legal question of whether the administration can stop payment after Congress has allocated the funds...no idea. But I'm skeptical.

But look: K-12 and universities could end this kind of dispute right now by doing one simple thing:

Ending their leftist indoctrination and other misuse of public fund for leftist activism.

That is: live up to their public and pedagogical responsibilities.

It would be easy: just stop cheating.

Their argument seems to be:

It's bad for the government to bust us for misusing government funds, violating the public's trust and abusing students...because its efforts to stop us from doing those things might undermine some legitimate programs, too...

It's not like we're talking close calls here. Just stop using tax money on your loony political bullshit.

Though, again: the examples given in this piece aren't as outrageous as one might think. The most outrageous one seems to be hearsay.

WSJ: No One is Gutting the Safety Net

Big if true.

Who understands this stuff, anyway?

Not me, that's for sure.

I spend way too much time reading about it, and I have no idea who's right.

   I think we tend to fall back on our general political worldviews in such cases. And currently I'm inclined to think that the Republicans are more reasonable about...just about everything. The monstrous spike in Medicaid expenditures since '19 seems unlikely to be explained by a spike in genuine need...or so I guess.

   The Dems have repeatedly shown themselves to be driven by excess and misplaced sympathy--sympathy for illegal aliens despite the costs to the nation and its citizens; sympathy with "trans" "kids" despite the costs to girls' athletics, non-"trans" children swept up in the hysteria, and society at large; sympathy with criminals despite the cost to law-abiding citizens... We know that their general orientation disposes them to prefer giving out unwarranted benefits rather than to drawing lines and saying no sometimes.

   Anyway, I suppose I think: let's try it the Republicans' way for awhile.

   See what happens.