Rescuing Clarity From 'Perfect'

Miss Manners fields a question about perfect, the latest word to get beaten to death from over-/misuse as a synonym for okay.

I found the wording of the question unclear, but the situation made sense: The questioner, being in charge of bookings for a client, ended up double-booking because the way many people use perfect could mean book it or okay, thanks in such a context.

I appreciate Miss Manners's commiseration, especially as I, too found amazing and awesome annoying in their heydays, but I have long taken to the practical solution offered by the first commenter:

No matter what waffling around is done on their part, you need to pin them down before the conversation ends: "So you would like to book for Oct. 13 at 9? I'll put you down for that, then." Leave no room for misunderstanding.

I did this myself just a few days ago when I was hiring movers for some heavy objects we need to move up- and downstairs at home.

My contact may have been puzzled by my need to clarify, but I now know I won't be waiting around on the day, wondering what some guy who said perfect on the phone actually meant.

-- CAV

Populist Tariffs Very UNpopular

Writing for the Washington Post, Cato's Scott Lincicome reviews polling data about Donald Trump's favorite economic and foreign policy cure-all, and finds that Americans don't care for tariffs.

These responses show that many voters willing to support tariffs in the abstract oppose them when asked to pay less than they're actually paying today. Republicans are no exception: Their support dropped from 70 percent to just 39 percent when asked to pay $1,000 per year to fund their guy's signature policy.

The Cato survey's results are hardly outliers. In nearly every major poll over the past year, tariffs drew 55 to 65 percent opposition or disapproval. Even more respondents, 70 to 75 percent, believed that tariffs raised prices. State battleground polls showed similar findings. This month, CBS-YouGov found that likely voters preferred a congressional candidate who opposed the president's tariff approach by a 26-point margin. And, per a September Fox News poll, GOP support for tariffs has declined 21 points since "Liberation Day" last year, with only "MAGA Republicans" still saying the measures help the economy. [links omitted, bold added]

It is reassuring to know that most adults have enough on the ball to want to put a stop to this policy, and it sounds like it is affecting congressional races. Lincicome quotes the Democrat in Iowa's toss-up Senate race as promising an "end [of] the chaotic tariffs that are sending farms toward a 1980s-style farm crisis."

Uh-oh.

Lincicome draws three lessons from the polling data, which I summarize as follows:

1. Trump's running on the economy and embracing tariffs was a colossal blunder;
2. Policies that sound good to voters in the abstract get rejected when their negative consequences become so apparent; and
3. The conventional wisdom that tariffs are popular and electorally necessary is wrong.

Lincicome ends with a rhetorical question about when the President and Congress will "catch up."

By the sound of it, the Democrats, of all people will help them do so some time after November.

-- CAV

Senate to Miss Regulatory Slam-Dunks?

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Senate has a rapidly-closing time window to pass what it aptly calls "The Save America From California Act," thereby preventing some onerous climate regulations from that state from hamstringing the rest of the country:

California's regulations have national scope since manufacturers typically design products to meet the state's standards. Other states can adopt California's standards, as many have its electric-vehicle mandate and quota regime. Cue the [Congressional Review Act (CRA)], which lets lawmakers overturn a regulation with a simple majority vote of both chambers and the President's signature.

As a bonus, the law also prohibits agencies in the future from promulgating rules that are substantially similar to those that are overturned. Republicans last year used the CRA to potent effect by overturning California's electric-vehicle and truck mandates as well as some 20 other Biden rules.

Now they have a narrowing window of opportunity to use the CRA to kill permanently the California rules blessed by the Biden EPA that require "zero emission" commercial vessels and small off-road engines, lawn mowers and so on. House Republicans passed a CRA resolution overturning the commercial vessel rule this month, and now the Senate can finish the job.

The clock is ticking down on chances to repeal another few other awful rules, as well.

Perhaps they could take a short break from freaking out about "furries" and pass this before they lose their majority, thanks to being dragged down this November by the loon they chose to keep around, instead of removing from office.

-- CAV

No. You Aren't Eating a Credit Card Per Week.

I will admit that I tend to tune out claims from certain quarters to the effect of Something you've been doing for decades is an imminent danger to your health!

Nevertheless, I am aware of at least a dull drumbeat about microplastics and their potential to cause biological harm. I see the subject as one worthy of further study, but not as one worthy of such measures as banning single-use plastics, a favorite cause of many leftists.

Plastic -- and individual freedom for that matter -- are so valuable that any such ban would require extraordinary, conclusive evidence as to the harm of plastic that, for example, its careless use would pose a negligent or reckless threat to other individuals. (And even then, banning it might still be the wrong anwer.)

Ridiculous claims about the amount of plastic we allegedly take in from our environment or the harm that it causes do not foster a careful consideration of the scientific facts or of what (if anything) to do about them.

Faye Flam debunked two such ridiculous claims about microplastics in a piece titled, "The Real Microplastics Problem Isn't in Your Brain."

My favorite was the way-too-easy-to-remember canard to the effect that we're eating the equivalent of a credit card's worth of plastic every week:

Before the plastic spoon image, there was another alarming statistic: that the average person ingests enough plastic each week to make up a credit card. That claim was based on a 2019 study that used several models to estimate that the average person consumes either a tenth of a gram, three-tenths of a gram, or 5 grams (the credit card amount) per week.

[Chemist Mark] Jones noted that other scientists questioned the assumptions in that model, and a couple of studies found that the 5-gram figure was about a factor of a million too high, meaning it would take roughly 23,000 years to consume the amount of plastic in a credit card. Nevertheless, the credit card estimate continues to be propagated in popular media, policy circles and other studies. [bold added]

I like to imagine that some of these other scientists started off from the same thought I did when I first heard that: "I think I'd notice if I ate that much plastic."

Joking aside, Flam asks the same question that too many fail to ask in similar circumstances:

Is it OK for scientists, science journals and journalists to be less rigorous or critical of extraordinary results if they raise awareness of serious problems or otherwise contribute to the greater good?

Flam doesn't directly answer, but she does allude to a cautionary real-life tale:

Mark Jones, a retired chemist who has independently studied microplastics, drew my attention to the Nature follow-up, which the journal did not publicize as heavily as it had promoted the initial findings with a splashy press release. Jones said he's deeply concerned about scientists and journals failing to maintain high standards of evidence. He is worried about eroding public trust, as evidenced by the rising resistance to essential vaccines. [bold added]

Good. Too many scientists and public figures whose advocacy depends on science have been happy to sow panic rather than appeal to reason. It is good to see that some are beginning to understand the value of credibility.

The public may not be as scientifically literate as we would like, but that does not mean they are stupid -- or that they will not notice they are being treated that way, forever.

-- CAV

Four Wins

A Friday Hodgepodge

Whenever possible, I list three wins at the end of each day. Here are a few from a recent review of my planner.

***

1. A few weeks ago, I suddenly became unable to back up my blog with a script I've used for that purpose for over a decade. My suspicion was that something had changed on Google's end, and that I might need to change the script.

But then I asked ChatGPT about what I was seeing and it raised another possibility: A change at Google caused a bug in the wget utility I relied upon to surface. A bit of digging around showed that I was indeed running an older version of wget that had the problem which manifested in my script failing.

Since the end of support for that version of Linux was coming up in April, anyway. I installed the latest version on an old laptop and voilà, the unchanged script worked again.

Hooray! AI saved me time figuring out what the problem was, and helped me realize I should go ahead and upgrade.

2. In an attempt to move my desktop to a newer OS, I had all kinds of trouble, including at one point having trouble installing even a very simplified version. (And, after I did, I wasn't able to use the machine for very long.)

AI really helped here, again. This time, it saved me time and research by finding log entries that indicated possible causes.

After performing some diagnostics, I concluded that a component integrated with the motherboard had failed and was corrupting data.

Ultimately, AI helped me identify a hardware problem that required me to replace my desktop, and guided me in finding a solid, inexpensive replacement.

3. I like using certain web pages like stand-alone applications -- Google Calendar and a weather site I like for example. The --app option for Google Chrome is a great way to get this effect with a display that omits the browser's UI elements.

It's been around for a while, but I migrated away from the browser I had been using for that purpose, so I was unaware.

4. Three cheers for antilock brakes! I was driving my son home on a rainy day when an incompetent driver swerved in front of me and came to an abrupt stop for a yellow light.

I am sure I would have rear-ended him without the help of that technology.

-- CAV

'It's really hard to leave your kids.'

At Ask a Manager, Alison Green pays tribute to her mother on the second anniversary of her medically-assisted death.

I recommend reading the whole thing because it's about an important issue, but perhaps in a private setting, because it is touching, especially if you have experienced or are experiencing a similar situation.

For now, I leave you with two excerpts, the first of which makes it clear that this was a very good person:

My mom had always lived life on her own terms, so it wasn't surprising to anyone who knew her that she was determined to die on her own terms too. From the time my sister and I were very young, she always taught us that you should think for yourself and choose a life path without concern for what other people thought, as long as you felt your choices were ethical ones.

She also taught us that when something is wrong in the world, you speak up about it...

The second is a clarion call:

When I think about how differently her final months would have gone if she didn't have the right to make her own medical choices, I'm so angry that she could have been forced to suffer. She had terminal cancer; it was always going to end with her dying, no matter what anyone did. Whose interests would have been served by forcing her to linger in pain for a few extra months?

She viewed her ability to minimize her own suffering as a great gift, one that brought her immense comfort, and so it brought us comfort too.

I hate that she is gone, but I love that she got to die exactly the way she lived: saying, "This is not right, and I'm going to work to change it" and making her own decisions right up until the end.

In honor of my mom's memory, I hope you will push your legislators to give terminally ill adults legal access to medical aid in dying, no matter where they live.

Having lost our own father to terminal illness, my brothers and I all support legalizing medical assistance in death, and as I grow older, and wonder if I will succumb to my grandmother's Alzheimer's, I would like to be able to exercise that option myself.

Our lives are our own. It is evil to force anyone to endure great pain or anything else they find intolerable ahead of the end of their lives, and it is a shame that the law does not already universally recognize that aspect of one's right to life.

-- CAV

Socialist Sees Truth -- for 17 Seconds

John Stossel reports that rent control -- a cause leftists embrace as steadfastly and baselessly as Trump does tariffs -- recently experienced a setback in St. Paul, Minnesota:

So what's happening now in St. Paul, four years after its clueless politicians imposed strict rent control?

There was so little new construction that the politicians rolled most rent control back.

This follows as the predictable climax to the earlier part of his column, where Stossel recounts why rent control fails.

Based on how many times this "experiment" has been run with unambiguous results and the simplicity of the economic laws at play, one would imagine that rent control does not work would fall into the realm of common sense.

Except that -- as Stossel demonstrates in amusing fashion even if he doesn't make the point explicit -- altruism unfortunately (albeit wrongly) holds that position and displaces the plain truth in the event of a conflict:

At least St. Paul has a "Twin City," Minneapolis, so frustrated builders could move just a few blocks and build something there. They did just that. Construction increased there.

Minneapolis politicians had also voted for rent control, but they were wary about imposing it. That was smart, since new housing collapsed in St. Paul.

But Minneapolis City Council member Aisha Chughtai was unconvinced. She wants more rent control, telling me, "You don't have a city" if people "can't afford to live there."

I pushed back: "The way you have a city is if people build apartments and houses. That's what eventually brings the price down ... Builders still build in Minneapolis -- building permits were up ... But in St. Paul, they're down 60% because of rent control! You're not going to get more apartments by pushing this."

Her response was something new for me after 50 years interviewing people: 17 seconds of silence! Finally, she said: "Guaranteeing housing for people and making sure that they can stay in their homes matters more than anything else."

Ayn Rand, who argued both that altruism is immoral and that capitalism is a moral system, would have felt vindicated by the socialist stopping dead in her tracks at that moment of clarity, and then reaching for what she viewed as a get-out-of-jail-free card -- namely that a profession of concern for others is a moral trump card that supersedes any concern with facts.

Until Rand's identification of the nature of capitalism and its moral defense become much more widely known, politicians like Chughtai will feel free to ignore obvious economic truths in the service of their immoral and impractical causes.

-- CAV

Lobbying the Quacks

Is a story a nothingburger if mystery meat is involved?

Based on a story about the corporate sponsorships behind the MAHA Summit in Washington next week, we're about to find out.

Politico reports (HT: Jasmine Nisar):

Walmart, America's biggest retailer and a leading purveyor of the ultraprocessed [sic] foods MAHA decries, is among the sponsors. So are two artificial intelligence giants, OpenAI and Anthropic, whose chief executives recently asked Washington to regulate them in order to prevent their tools from wiping out humanity.

In exchange, they'll get to attend a private dinner with summit speakers, which include Health and Human Services Department officials. Other sponsors are less well known, but also have interests before Kennedy's health department, including makers of psychedelic drugs, diagnostics technologies and peptides that need government approval.

We can borrow a phrase from Faye Flam to reflect the conventional view of the above as tainted by the influence of ... industr[y].

The conventional view is half-wrong and half-right, but everything bad about lobbying is a direct result of the government improperly interfering with markets via regulation.

First, here's where Flam and many, many others go wrong:

Honest companies facing government regulation sometimes have no choice but to lobby just to survive, as Ayn Rand once argued of the railroads:

The best illustration of the general confusion on the subject of business and government can be found in [Stewart] Holbrook's The Story of American Railroads. On page 231, Mr. Holbrook writes:

Almost from the first, too, the railroads had to undergo the harassments of politicians and their catchpoles, or to pay blackmail in one way or another. The method was almost sure-fire; the politico, usually a member of a state legislature, thought up some law or regulation that would be costly or awkward to the railroads in his state. He then put this into the form of a bill, talked loudly about it, about how it must pass if the sovereign people were to be protected against the monster railroad, and then waited for some hireling of the railroad to dissuade him by a method as old as man. There is record of as many as thirty-five bills that would harass railroads being introduced at one sitting of one legislature.

And the same Mr. Holbrook in the same book just four pages later (pages 235-236) writes:

In short, by 1870, to pick an arbitrary date, railroads had become, as only too many orators of the day pointed out, a law unto themselves. They had bought United States senators and congressmen, just as they bought rails and locomotives -- with cash. They owned whole legislatures, and often the state courts .... To call the roads of 1870 corrupt is none too strong a term.

The connection between these two statements and the conclusion to be drawn from them has, apparently, never occurred to Mr. Holbrook. It is the railroads that he blames and calls "corrupt." Yet what could the railroads do, except try to "own whole legislatures," if these legislatures held the power of life or death over them? What could the railroads do, except resort to bribery, if they wished to exist at all? Who was to blame and who was "corrupt" -- the businessmen who had to pay "protection money" for the right to remain in business -- or the politicians who held the power to sell that right? (from "Notes on the History of American Free Enterprise," in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand) [bold added]

It is wrong to tar a business for lobbying, completely devoid of context.

And when is it right? (And where is the conventional wisdom half-right?)

Any dishonest enterprise hoping to gain the appearance of legitimacy by obtaining a government imprimatur via lobbying does deserve the blame, from those that wish to sell nostrums -- like many sponsors at this "summit" obviously hope to do -- all the way up to regulatory capture.

As the sponsorship of Walmart indicates, there will be mixed cases. This is also unsurprising. So many American businessmen are pragmatists that they will not turn down the opportunity to make money off of fools if it is legal to do so.

None of the above is particularly newsworthy, but there is an interesting wrinkle: Until a crank was appointed head of the Department of Health and Human Services, a huckster had to hope for some kind of workaround to being held up to scientific standards. That is, he needed the government to help him pass as a legitimate actor. Now, those standards are being actively undermined. For a time, "peptide" pushers may well gain an unearned patina of legitimacy by courting the likes of Bobby Kennedy, Jr.

But just as professional medical associations are calling into question recent changes in the CDC's vaccine recommendations, so will others notice what is going on, and, unless sound standards return (or the government forces people to accept its garbage -- See the field of nutrition.) the value of lobbying the government in that area may well decline.

-- CAV

Yes. I Still Ignore Gov't. Dietary Advice.

Back in January, Faye Flam wrote one of the better assessments of the latest round of government dietary advice: a mess [but] still better.

What I like about this assessment is that it neither hinges on the alleged credibility of the crank who serves as Secretary of Health and Human Services, nor ignores the issue altogether.

Flam acknowledges that nutrition is a contentious field and that such guidelines are distorted by politics -- while also doing a good job of putting the change in a full historic and scientific context:

The new US dietary guidelines are distorted by politics and tainted by the influence of the meat and dairy industries -- but they may still improve Americans' health because they reverse previous nutrition standards that were themselves politicized and unduly influenced by the sugar industry.

The biggest change is a clear-cut recommendation to avoid added sugar and junk food. While nutrition is a contentious field, there's a rare consensus that eating too much sugar is harmful to our health.

And, in another tectonic shift, it's now recommended that Americans eat "full-fat" dairy products instead of fat-free versions. That recommendation is more controversial, but it's consistent with the results of recent studies showing that full-fat dairy may benefit some people by cutting the risk of diabetes and helping with weight control. [bold added]

That's the good news, such as it is, and we aren't just taking the word of Bobby Kennedy, Jr. or one of his lackeys.

This is good, not just because Kennedy has no relevant training, but also because he is dishonest:

[Pediatric endocrinologist Robert] Lustig was initially part of the advisory panel behind the new recommendations but quit after two days, he told me, because Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to cherry-pick which papers the panel was allowed to consider. Despite his concern about political meddling, Lustig agreed with the recommendation to limit sugar and highly processed foods and endorsed full-fat dairy products over fat-free ones. [bold added]

In other words, unlike the case with vaccination, affected Americans are somewhat fortunate that Kennedy happens to favor less-bad advice than before. That fact notwithstanding, there is no reason whatsoever to look to government guidelines if one wants nutritional advice, particularly today.

-- CAV

P.S. An interesting thing I learned about from Flam's piece is a phenomenon called healthy user bias:

Today, scientists know much more about food chemistry, but the field is still hampered by what researchers call healthy user bias. If you tell people not to eat full-fat cheese, meat or eggs, those most likely to follow that advice are also more likely to abstain from smoking, be more affluent, and have better access to health care. As a result, rule followers may appear healthier not because of the rules but in spite of them. [link in original, bold added]

It's part of the answer to the implicit challenge of how can you argue with someone so ripped that Kennedy's flaunting of his physique seems to raise -- or to anyone else peddling kookiness who seems to have "results."

Four Neat Things

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. Alison Green asked readers for examples of how their jobs followed them home recently and posted her favorites at Ask a Manager. Best of the bunch for me is the following example:

Back in the 90s, I volunteered at a zoo and I still scramble eggs the way the raven preferred them. [bold added]

Yes. I searched the comments in vain for how the raven preferred scrambled eggs, but only found a cute short poem in the style of "The Raven."

2. For fans of my "smart" car updates, I have found two lists that might come in handy the next time you need to buy a car. Both "Things That Annoy Me About Cars in 2026" and the "EV Stupidity Checklist" surprised even me with the ridiculous stunts automakers are pulling these days.

My favorite bit comes from the former, and reminds me of my annoyance with all the cute (but stupid) takes on the humble shower controller I encounter seemingly every time I stay in a hotel:

These door handle designs got so bad and unsafe in emergencies, that the Chinese government is mandating "the outside of every passenger door except the boot, to have a recessed space measuring no smaller than 6cm (2 in) by 2cm by 2.5cm to allow access to the handle" as of Jan 1st 2027.

Not only are these unconventional door handles awkward to use for passengers who are unfamiliar with your car - I got very tired of explaining how to open the door to anyone that got into my Tesla when I owned one - they are difficult for people with wrist, finger or other hand issues compared to a classic door handle.

We solved door handles 60 years ago, why are we fucking around with them!? [bold added]

Amen.

3. Hacker News gem of the day: the Wikipedia entry on wax motors, which use the expansion of wax during melting to do work. Here's an excerpt on one application:

Greenhouse Vents

Wax motors are widely used to operate the temperature regulating vents of greenhouses.

In this application, as the ambient temperature within the greenhouse increases, the wax melts, activating the plunger and opening the vents. When the greenhouse temperature has cooled sufficiently, the wax cools and solidifies, allowing the vents to close again.

The technology seems to be under a century old, albeit common in applications most people -- myself included until now -- are unaware of. The embedded video below is a time lapse of greenhouse vents opening via such a motor.

4. I don't play tennis, and you don't need to, either to be able to enjoy the creativity in design and setting on display in this pictorial of "The 30 Most Beautiful Tennis Courts Around the World at Architectural Digest"

-- CAV

Taking the Guessing out of Etiquette

Aside from the good advice, one of the things I like best about Miss Manners is how well she cuts through the fog to identify an issue, and then communicates that issue and the attendant etiquette effectively.

A good example of this is her reply to a self-proclaimed "accent nerd" who wonders if there is a polite way to ask someone Where are you from?

(I can both cringe and imagine a younger version of myself doing something like this.)

There are, of course, numerous contexts within an existing conversation in which that sort of question is a natural and good part of the flow. But also, in today's ridiculous, politics-saturated culture, it could be easy to get sidetracked. Both facts make this a tricky question, but Miss Manners explains quite well why it's a bad lead for the questioner, concluding as follows:

There are less intrusive ways to get to know people, but you have led Miss Manners to believe that friendship, or even acquaintanceship, is not your objective; rather, it is playing your little guessing game. Please stop.

Ouch!

She builds up to this well, but the sting will serve the good purpose here of advising how best to treat other people like human beings, and alerting the innocent of how easy it can be to send the wrong message about themselves.

-- CAV

GOP Stands by While Trump Sabotages Them

At The Hill, an alarmed Republican bemoans Trump's latest unforced error: His ridiculous trade war with Canada.

Surprisingly enough (for Trump, at least), slapping huge import taxes on the biggest international trading partner of many "red" states is harming their economies in ways voters will probably notice, and correctly blame on Trump and his party:

A recent assessment by the Visual Capitalist highlights 23 states that get most of their imports from Canada. Among the states with closely watched elections are Maine, which gets 68.7 percent of it imports from Canada, Alaska (40.7 percent), Minnesota (33.5 percent), Iowa (26.6 percent), and Ohio (18.7 percent).

But trade is a two-way street. It's not just the increased costs -- up to 50 percent more -- U.S. companies, small businesses (like farms) and consumers must pay for Canadian imports. There are also U.S.-made products and services that Canadians may decide not to buy from the United States because the of the tariffs Canada, in response, imposed on imports from the United States. The Visual Capitalist's newly released map outlines the states hardest hit.

The biggest state exporters to Canada are Ohio (exporting $2.3 billion a year) and Pennsylvania ($1.8 billion). Are there important elections in those states that could make the difference in whether Republicans retain the House of Representatives and the Senate? [bold added]

The piece will make gory reading for those of Trump's partisans who don't just assume Trump is playing 4-D chess, and understand why tariffs are a Bad Idea and why swing voters whose livelihoods are affected are going to live up to their name and swing away from their party.

But what the author takes to be the icing on the cake is the following paragraph:

The most puzzling part is that if Trump were determined to pick a trade fight with Canada, he could have easily waited until after November. He chose to do it weeks away from a critical election, which makes you wonder if the conspiracy theorists are right. [bold added]

Yes, the President who still, somehow, commands so much loyalty is a real idiot: Wouldn't it be nice if someone did something about it before the voters do?

And that question -- my question -- as an independent voter fuming about the Trump Party -- is the real icing on the cake.

I seem to recall that Congress could reassert its own constitutional authority over tariffs. Why hasn't it? And if I'm wrong, or there isn't time to do this ahead of the midterms, why not run an the premise of ending this mad effing around with everyone's costs, while insulting their intelligence?

I don't have an answer, but while this column doesn't fall into the disgusting line of sycophantic puff pieces so many conservatives are guilty of these days, it still fails to hold Trump's enablers in the party accountable.

Trump is: obsessed with tariffs, old and set in his ways, insane for all practical purposes, and floating about in an amniotic sac of constant praise and insulation from things he really needs to know.

The people who built that little bubble -- by letting him have his way all the time, and appointing crackpot "advisors" instead of rational adults to his cabinet -- will have reaped what they sowed if the scenario outlined by Merrill Matthews pans out.

And, unless they change course, by starting to restrain this lunatic, they will have deserved an electoral bloodbath and helped the Democrats win Congress.

-- CAV

The American Spectator: High on Its Own Supply?

One of the most eye-opening and disappointing aspects of the rise of Donald Trump has been the apparent decline of conservative journalism.

I say apparent because I have to allow for the possibility that, until that john came along, I just wasn't good at recognizing prostitutes when I saw them. That could, in a way, speak well of me, but all blindness has a price.

Case in point: A recent puff piece in The American Spectator, a publication that a quick search of my archives shows I have referenced at least 16 times over the years.

Its title? "RFK Jr. Wows the GOP Like Jeane Kirkpatrick Did in 1984" (The equally embarrassing subtitle doubles down: "In Dallas, Kennedy reprises a 1984 convention theme: a lifelong Democrat explaining why he crossed the aisle.")

I understand that the founder of this conservative organ is Catholic, and that, accordingly, it espouses social conservative positions I don't agree with, such as opposition to abortion.

I can respect such a stand in the sense that, if an unborn fetus really is human, then abortion should be outlawed as murder.

This post isn't about abortion, but the fact that they hold such a position is important.

Back to the piece...

I was young, and not that engaged in politics during the Reagan Administration. Beyond anti-communist, I don't have a solid grasp of Jeane Kirkpatrick's foreign policy positions, but I suspect they were at least okay for the time, and that her heart was in the right place.

I estimate that she left her party for basically the right reason and did what the Overton Window at the time -- nudged by Reagan -- allowed her to do to stand up to the Soviet Union.

However fair my estimate, she was no turncoat, and her adopted party didn't whitewash anything from her past.

How times have changed!

Get a load of this opening:

Thursday evening at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Texas, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeatedly brought the GOP midterm convention audience to their feet with a speech reminiscent of Jeane Kirkpatrick's speech at the 1984 Republican National Convention. Like Kirkpatrick, RFK Jr. noted his Democratic Party roots. Like Kirkpatrick, RFK Jr. emphasized the differences between the modern Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of a bygone era. RFK Jr. was a Democrat chosen by Republican President Donald Trump to "make America healthy again," while in 1981, Kirkpatrick was a Democrat chosen by Republican President Ronald Reagan to help him win the Cold War.

RFK Jr. stated that neither his father (Robert F. Kennedy) nor his uncle (John F. Kennedy) would recognize today's Democrats. Jeane Kirkpatrick in 1984 noted that neither Harry Truman, JFK, nor Lyndon Johnson would recognize the Democrats who gathered that year in San Francisco, whom she labeled the "blame America first crowd." [bold added]

I'll skip the gooey, pus-like filler of this disgusting piece of sycophancy, but go for it if you're into spiritual masochism...

The conclusion is rich:

Just as Ronald Reagan was in 1984, according to Kirkpatrick, making America safer and more secure, so Donald Trump today is, according to RFK Jr., making America healthy again and needs a Republican-controlled Congress to complete this important work. [bold added]

This is all being said about a person well-known as an anti-vaccine crank, among a group of people who -- until five minutes ago -- saw vaccination as common sense, and regarded anti-vaxxers as dumb hippies who belonged in California.

Kennedy must have enjoyed speaking of people not recognizing their own parties, because I am sure Reagan wouldn't have recognized the one he was speaking to.

Bobby Kennedy is an anti-vaccine crank who deserves to be known as a baby killer, especially after his 2019 exploits in Samoa, which led to a measles outbreak that killed 85, most of whom were children under five.

This piece of refuse is whom Republicans and The Spectator lionize? That rag has an entire section of supposedly "pro-life" writing. Have they changed their minds about the value of human life, however they define it? Or is that profession of concern about human life as hollow a show of "virtue-signalling" as Kennedy's professed concern for our health?

-- CAV

The Cost of Turning Away Talent

Back in July, Veronique de Rugy of the Cato Institute considered the costs of Trump's anti-immigration agenda, and finds them exorbitant.

The gist of this well-argued and alarming piece:

...STEM students who stay in the U.S. after graduation "patent new inventions at four times the rate of typical college graduates and are responsible for around 10 percent of all new inventions patented in the United States. They found high-growth startup companies at six times the rate of US-born graduates."

That means we can dispense with the idea that if a foreign engineer gets a job, an American engineer must have lost one. Protectionism applied to human capital relies on the same economic fallacy that underlies other forms of protectionism: the belief that the economy is like one pie, and hence, allowing foreign interests to take a seat hurts those already at the table.

Economies don't work that way. Talented people don't merely fill existing jobs. They create them by inventing products, starting companies, conducting research, and making the people around them more productive. In the process, they create opportunities for other people that otherwise wouldn't exist.

Giving a cold shoulder to foreign students is particularly absurd when you consider Washington's obsession with competing against China. Politicians insist that America is engaged in an existential technological race. They spend billions of dollars subsidizing semiconductors and other favored industries. They develop elaborate industrial policies intended to make America dominant in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and advanced manufacturing.

Then, when a potentially brilliant young scientist from India, China, or anywhere else earns an advanced degree at an American university and wants to stay and contribute to the American economy, our government says perhaps they should leave.

You can throw billions of taxpayer dollars at a semiconductor factory in Arizona. You cannot manufacture genius through an appropriations bill. [bold added]

Economists have managed to put the cost in dollar terms:

[D]iscouraging just one-third of international STEM graduates could leave the American economy 0.7 percent to 1.3 percent smaller, or roughly $200 billion to $400 billion in GDP over a decade -- equivalent to losing the entire economy of Utah or South Carolina.

This is bad enough, but de Rugy correctly warns of higher, intangible costs that American patriots should appreciate.

I think the piece does a good job of both demolishing the ludicrous "fixed pie" view of the economy protectionism is based on and offering positive arguments in favor of making immigration safer, legal, and more common.

I would recommend it to anyone genuinely curious about whether immigration is a good thing -- a question many people can be forgiven for asking these days, thanks to the full-court press of nativists of late.

-- CAV

Blog Roundup

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. "9/11 -- 25 Years Later: Objectivism, Islamic Totalitarianism, and America's Crisis of Ideas," by Elan Journo, Onkar Ghate, and Yaron Brook (New Ideal):

September 11, 2001 -- and America's response to it -- shaped the 21st century. Confidence in America's ability to win wars cracked, trust in leadership and experts went down, and, in response, populism, nihilism, and conspiracism raised their ugly heads. From day one, the Ayn Rand Institute's experts grasped the meaning of the attacks and the significance of a proper response. They called for war with Iran and opposed Bush's altruistic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their advice was not followed, but their predictions held.

In this special livestream marking the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Yaron Brook, Elan Journo, and Onkar Ghate -- the Institute's three leading experts on the attacks -- trace what went wrong in its lead-up and aftermath, and how Ayn Rand's philosophy let them foresee what most people still struggle to understand.

2.25 hour podcast

2. "After 9/11, What Went Wrong? ," by Elan Journo (New Ideal):

Since September 11, 2001, the Ayn Rand Institute has commented extensively (via articles, books, interviews, lectures, and podcasts) on why the 9/11 attacks happened, how America should have responded, and why -- 25 years and three wars later -- the United States still fails to confront Islamic totalitarianism.

ARI's analysis of 9/11 and its aftermath has proven tragically accurate. To mark 25 years since the attacks, we are pleased to announce the publication of the third, expanded edition of Failing to Confront Islamic Totalitarianism, which includes short essays on October 7 and the war in Iran, and we invite you to join us for two special events.

1820 words/6 minutes

3. "Election Fraud: Information vs. Propaganda," by Peter Schwartz (Peter Schwartz):

If someone says to you "7 times 3 equals 21," you can judge that statement as true. Which means that it is a successful effort at cognition, a successful attempt to grasp reality. But if you hear those same words being uttered by a parrot, you cannot judge them as either true or false. The squawking of a parrot is outside the realm of cognition. The parrot is not trying to name a truth. It is just emitting sounds.

The same applies to Trump's statements about election fraud. He does not care whether his assertions are actually true. So one's initial response should not be to grant his arbitrary claims a cognitive status, any more than one would to the parrot's squawkings. Rather, one should ask: What is Trump's purpose?

600 words/2 minutes

4. "Died Of, Died With, Died in a Vacuum," by Amesh Adalja (Tracking Zebra):

If I were teaching public health communication, I would use this week as the case study in how not to do it. It is an unforced error, and it is much better to be transparent than to spend the week trying to score points against Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

My stake in this is not abstract. I am an infectious disease, emergency medicine, and critical care physician who takes care of patients in Pittsburgh and Butler County hospitals, and I spend a large part of every week explaining this virus -- to reporters, to audiences, and to people who are not ideologues but are genuinely unsure what to believe. This week made every part of that job harder. The anti-vaccine movement is emboldened, and it did not have to earn it. Pennsylvania's health officials now look to a substantial portion of the public like people who were being either dishonest or manipulative, which is corrosive in a way that outlasts this outbreak by years. And the person who was merely hesitant last month has now watched a governor, a coroner, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services contradict each other about whether two people died, which is precisely the kind of spectacle that converts hesitancy into conviction. That conviction does not stay in the exam room. It becomes unvaccinated kindergarteners, and unvaccinated kindergarteners become measles cases, and measles cases eventually become the thing everyone this week has been arguing about whether we actually had.

1950 words/6 minutes

-- CAV

'Asses in (Car) Seats' vs. Management

Consultant Gleb Tsipursky recently examined the latest iteration of what I like to call the "Asses in Seats" method of management: Using the commutes of the people one should be managing as proof-of-work.

Tipursky's analysis is quite thoughtful. For example, he considers gains in productivity seen with working from home during the pandemic and the more recent use of artificial intelligence, and offers, for example, that good use of AI requires focus -- which is often superior at home and away from the distractions of an office.

At the same time, Tipursky recommends judicious use of in-office "anchor days" for those things, like mentoring or collaboration, that work better in person.

Overall, he makes a good case for a more active evaluation of output and how different environments affect different kinds of work.

As if the positive motivation of having a choice of work environments at one's disposal weren't enough, Tipursky cautions against the movement towards full-time office work because subordiantes are hardly powerless:

[Fully onsite] policies may fit some cultures and business constraints. But executives should admit they are making a bet, not simply following settled science.

The labor-market effects make the bet riskier. Employees often value flexible work because it returns time, reduces commute friction, and lets people handle life logistics with less daily stress. In Bloom's Trip.com trial, the reduction in quits was especially visible among women, non-managers and long commuters. That should get the attention of every leader facing skill shortages, retention problems or rising compensation demands. A hard office mandate can quietly convert a productivity question into a talent leakage problem. [bold added]

I found his arguments compelling and hope the "hybrid model built around results instead of rituals" he advocates catches on.

-- CAV

A Rogues' Gallery of 'Net Zero' Apostates

"This is just the pure religious nature of the climate catastrophist movement. It has one commandment: 'thou shalt not impact nature.' They just think that everything good is a happy climate god and everything bad is a vengeful climate god." -- Alex Epstein

***

According to John Stossel, world leaders and corporations who once backed Net Zero are "ditching" that foolhardy and dangerous policy, some more quietly than others:

Now, countries like Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom are walking back their net-zero push.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz now says rules must "better align climate targets, market realities, companies and jobs."

He also said, "It was quite simply a strategic mistake to phase out nuclear energy."

No kidding.

And here in America, I hear less climate fearmongering.

The Washington Post reports, "analysis of lawmakers' appearances and posts on social media show they are going quiet on climate."

"It's very surprising to many people," says [author Alex] Epstein, "how unserious the climate catastrophists were about net zero, and the way you can see this is what's happened with the rise of AI."

Tech companies now report increases in emissions, even though "five years ago, they were all telling us: 'climate change, existential crisis, got to go net zero!'" Epstein laughs. [bold added]

I was glad Stossel interviewed Alex Epstein for this piece, since the good news he delivers deserves good analysis. Epstein holds that we're in a better intellectual environment, but is quick to point out the fact that so many people who once pushed Net Zero seem to have memory-holed their past actions.

I wouldn't say climate catastrophism is dead, but it is in a real retreat worldwide, rather than just superficially looking that way in the United States because the current President has slightly hindered it, and tends to suck all of the oxygen away from other news.

-- CAV

Midterms: Peril for Trump, Senate in Play

Michael Tomasky of The New Republic predicts a "tidal wave" against Trump in this fall's midterms.

I am skeptical of a tidal wave: Gerrymandering will mute the bloodbath Trump deserves, and might save his party in one or both chambers of Congress, but Tomasky has successfully defied the conventional wisdom in the past:

... I've also been right before. In 1998, for example, everybody -- I mean everybody -- was saying that Bill Clinton's Democrats were going to lose umpteen seats in that year's midterms, because the elections took place in the wake of the revelations that Clinton had had a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and all the smart people knew that the voters were going to rise in fury to smite him and the louche Democrats who were defending him. The Republicans, in the majority already, were surely going to pick up another 20, 30 seats.

Not so fast, said I. Because the polls were showing clearly, to anyone who bothered to study them, that the public was more disgusted with House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his morality police -- Gingrich's mistress at the time, by the way, is now my and your official American representative to the Holy See in the Vatican -- than with Clinton and his very human, if gross, weaknesses.

I just sniffed the zeitgeist and sensed the conventional wisdom was dead wrong (in the end, the Democrats gained five House seats that year). This year, that same olfactory sense is telling me, dare I write it, that November 3 may be even worse for the Republicans than the conventional wisdom now predicts. There are three groups of voters who matter in this election, and each of them is going to punish Trump severely. [bold added]

Tomasky is, of course, a leftist, so you'll get the obligatory psychological projection and condescension towards voters to the right of Stalin as part of "MAGA-land" -- and you will get to mark your bingo card slot for data centers bad.

That said, I think Tomasky's got a point about each of the three groups he sees in the polls, even if his grasp of their motivations is a little suspect.

Were I to recast what he came up with:

1. Anyone who never liked Trump will feel particularly motivated to show up and vote.
2. Swing voters who believed that Trump could be good for the economy will vote heavily against his party.
3. Racists and other MAGA-adjacent voters will be disenchanted, and so much less likely to turn out than they were for the presidential election.

I think Tomasky is right about (1) and mostly so about (2). He may underestimate Trump's ability to get a tune out of the groups in (3), though.

(The alarming prominence of democratic socialists in the Democratic Party will play right into Trump's hands. That said, I'd be a fan of Trump if I were a "progressive:" Trump is doing some of their dirty work and setting them up to win in 2028.)

The rest of Tomasky's piece consists of (1) his explanation for why he doubts Trump can reframe things in time to save his party, and (2) comments about a few races that wouldn't be as interesting as they are if only a normal person went to the White House back in '24.

Oh, and Tomasky isn't the only one talking about unexpectedly tight races in red states.

-- CAV

Vote Early and in Person

Donald Trump's looniness about elections is both red meat for his base and a pretext for doing whatever he thinks he can get away with to "find the votes" he wants in the next election. Accordingly, his legislative efforts at "reform" should serve as a shot across the bow.

It does not nelp at all to hear that DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin is now offering the kind of "reassurance" that sounds like a threat. Namely, he says that ICE agents might show up at polling places on Election Day -- but just to address "threats" to said polling places, or to serve warrants.

Knowing Trump's hostility to voting by people who look like they might be foreign, and to voting by mail, it might be worth considering how to hedge one's bets this November.

Fortunately, Washington Monthly has put out some guidance. Here are its main points, which the article elaborates upon:

• Vote early in person.
• Encourage your friends and neighbors to vote. Help people get to the polls.
• Record and report.

The advice concerning recording voter intimidation is particularly valuable, as it includes how to spot intimidation, how to comport oneself, and what to do with any evidence. The piece also wisely cautions against "do[ing] the administration's work" by panicking or overhyping the risk.

-- CAV

Blog Roundup

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. "One Contradiction in the Fear of Laissez-Faire," by Harry Binswanger (Value for Value):

The operative image of economic regulation is that of a huge truck without steering or brakes. "We have to have those instruments of control, or the truck will go careening off the side of a cliff."

The truth is that government regulation is precisely the cutting of the brake lines and the seizing up of the steering column.

790 words/3 minutes

2. "Is Capitalism Scary?," by Jaana Woiceshyn (How to Be Profitable and Moral):

Productive work also yields savings that can be invested to provide extra cushioning against life's vicissitudes. Taking private insurance against accidents, illness and disability adds extra protection. (Those who are truly unable to support themselves, save, and afford insurance, must rely on private charity -- that historical evidence has shown to flourish in the conditions of freedom and the absence of government welfare programs).

850 words/3 minutes

3. "Trump, Iran and Moral Discriminations," by Peter Schwartz (Peter Schwartz):

An effective foreign policy must make moral discriminations. It must identify the nature of a country that is an enemy, and the nature of a country that is a friend. Merely looking at a country's weaponry cannot guide us. Nuclear bombs in the hands of Iran or North Korea are very different from nuclear bombs in the hands of England or France. Just as the guns possessed by criminals call for a very different evaluation than do guns possessed by the police.

440 words/1 minute

4. "The Thinker Identity (Part 1)," by Jean Moroney (Thinking Directions):

The Thinker is the person who makes full use of the power of his mind. He takes theory and applies it in practice. He observes practice and conceptualizes his observations into new theory. He has an active mind in that he is always observing the world around him, always integrating new knowledge with the old, always looking for the root causes that explain the results he sees. He does this in every area of his life, managing his mind by exploiting his volition, his values, and his knowledge.

This identity does not require a particular degree of intelligence or level of education. Rather, it ensures that you will continually increase your functional intelligence and become self-educated in every area that matters to you.

1130 words/4 minutes

-- CAV