Pun Salad

A recent example:

The Washington Post editorial page made a public pivot to "personal liberties and free markets," and then you go to the comments, and the readers are obviously BlueSky types leftover from the woke era. Not sure if this will work -- it feels like Antiques Roadshow pivoting to…

— Jeff Maurer (@JeffMightBWrong) July 13, 2026

The tweet-embedder clips off Jeff's final words: "… being a kickboxing tournament."

I hope it works. For today's example of the WaPo editorialists kickboxing a bad policy, see: Tariffs are (still) taxes on Americans. (WaPo gifted link)

I assume the "BlueSky type" commenters will go easier than usual on the editorialists for this take, since it's Trump-critical.

Also of note:

• My diagnosis: they take John Lennon's "Imagine" way too seriously. Kevin D. Williamson thinks The Socialists Don’t Really Want Socialism. (archive.today link)

  George Orwell was a man of the left who was clear-eyed about socialism and its practitioners: “One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England,” he wrote. In the U.S. context, he’d have had to have added “Jew-hating weirdos” and a few other categories.

  The Democratic Socialists of America, which has a foothold in the Democratic Party and is earnestly—and, at the moment, successfully—working to take it over, offers one of the all-time great motte-and-bailey propositions: When it is time to talk to normie voters, it’s all: “Oh, pish-posh, ‘socialism’ just means things like public roads and public schools, and those right-wingers who say that we’re a front for a bunch of communists kowtowing to Mao are just trying to scare you.” That’s the motte; the bailey is ... well, here is a screenshot of the homepage of the DSA’s “liberation caucus” you probably heard Jonah Goldberg talking about:

  [screenshot elided]

  Not every member of the DSA is a confessing Maoist or Leninist. All of them make common cause with confessing Maoists and Leninists, and with other advocates of a political movement that killed some 100 million people in the 20^th century. That isn’t the same thing as admiring Denmark or enjoying public libraries.

  If everything government does from sidewalks to national security is socialism, then socialism does not really mean anything. Happily, we do not have to entertain seriously that canard. Allow me to revisit some territory that will be familiar to longtime readers but maybe new to a few of you. The work of education is never completed.

  

  KDW goes into the econ-textbook description of "public goods", and how a lot of people get it wrong.

  Not that it matters, but I'm currently finishing up reading a Hayek bio (Amazon link at your right.) It only goes up to 1950, but covers the origin of the Mont Pelerin Society, designed to defend free markets and personal liberty (see above) against the attractions of post-WW2 socialism. One of the tales associated with the society's first meeting involved Ludwig von Mises stomping out of the room, declaring "You're all a bunch of socialists!"

• Will you guess correctly? Matt Welch makes a pretty obvious choice in his article, headlined The most corrupt presidency in American history. You might remember Bill Clinton's pardon of Mark Rich; Matt does and describes its sordidness well. But…

  You have likely never heard the name Trevor Milton, yet in a couple of key respects his 2025 pardon by President Donald Trump was worse. The founding CEO of the electric vehicle manufacturer Nikola Corporation, Milton in 2022 was convicted on three counts of investor fraud that could have brought him four years in prison and a staggering $676 million worth of mandated restitution to shareholders. Among his more notorious stunts was a 2018 promotional video of a supposedly functional prototype Nikola truck that was not in fact operational but had instead been rolled down a desert hill. Milton, represented in court by the brother of then–Attorney General Pam Bondi, was still awaiting final sentencing when he got the call from Trump announcing an unconditional pardon, no restitution (or remorse) required. When asked about the clemency, the president said: "They say the thing that he did wrong was he was one of the first people that supported a gentleman named Donald Trump for president….He supported Trump. He liked Trump." Milton and his wife, The Wall Street Journal reported, had donated "at least $3.2 million to Trump's 2024 election and to political groups and people in Trump's orbit." The couple had not previously demonstrated a financial interest in politics.

  `

  Milton's family paid more in political donations than Rich's. He had exponentially more in fines and restitutions taken off the table, and he has spent his post-clemency life not in humiliated exile but in lavish Washington excess, hobnobbing with the president and Cabinet members at investment conferences and black-tie events to gin up interest in his latest schemes. Such is the rule, not the exception: When it comes to plausibly pay-for-play pardons, Trump in his second term makes Bill Clinton and every other president look like pikers.

  Just one more item to add to next year's articles of impeachment. And Matt has more.

• A little less carnage. Randal O'Toole, the Antiplanner, summarizes Highway Accidents Killed 36,640 People in 2025.

  In April, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that motor vehicle accidents killed 36,640 people in 2025, a 6.7 percent decrease from 2024. Last week, the agency released a breakdown of 2025 fatality data for various categories. For example, urban freeway fatalities were down 10 percent; urban arterials down 12 percent; pedestrians down 8 percent; but bicycle fatalities were up 4 percent.

  A further fun fact:

  Although fewer people died in each of the years between 2009 and 2015 than in 2025, 2025’s fatality rate per billion vehicle-miles of travel is almost the lowest it has ever been. While more than 100 people died per billion miles of travel in every year from 1900 to 1945, only 11.0 people died per billion in 2025. Out of the 125 years for which records have been kept, the only year that was lower was 2014, when 10.8 people died per billion vehicle-miles.

  Amazingly counter-intuitive: judged by fatality rate, Massachusetts is one of the safer states to drive in: 5.7 fatalities per billion vehicle-miles. New Hampshire is blood-soaked in comparison, with 9.9 fatalities per billion vehicle miles. (The worst state: New Mexico, 15.9.)

• Mister, we could use some painters like Church and Cole again. Megan Pidcock writes in the WSJ's "Free Expression" newsletter: Up the Hudson and Into the Heart of America.

  The Hudson River School, widely recognized as America’s first major artistic movement, holds a special place in my heart. Growing up, I often visited the movement’s collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art. I was drawn to the intricate landscapes and gorgeous skies painted carefully by human hands, as in “The View of Schroon Mountain” by the movement’s founder, Thomas Cole. It depicts the vastness of the Adirondacks with a burst of fall colors and detailed foliage. A group of Native Americans blends into the foreground and, if you squint, a canoe rests on the water at the mountain’s base. Though I traveled somewhere a few hours north (and a few months off) of this particular scene, it was thrilling to see scenery so similar to one of my favorite paintings in the world.

  The Hudson River School started in 1825 when Cole traveled to Catskill, N.Y., from New York City. After dabbling in portraiture, he wanted to make it as a landscape artist. Cole’s student, Frederic Edwin Church, carried on the tradition after Cole’s death in 1848. The style peaked in popularity in the 1850s and 1860s, capturing America’s fascination with nature untouched by man at a time when Romanticism was in its prime and “Manifest Destiny” reigned.

  I had my jaw-dropping intro to the Hudson River School when meandering through the Smithsonian's National Gallery of Art back in the 1970's, and perused The Voyage of Life, Thomas Cole's four paintings showing… well, the voyage of life. As my friend Emden Gansner asked, as I stared: "Where are you today?"

  I'm also a fan of Cole's less allegorical Notch of the White Mountains, an 1839 painting of Crawford Notch, viewed from the north. And driving on US 302, you can see what it looks like today.

  Crawford Notch was also the scene of the avalanche that killed the Willey family in 1826. By utter coincidence, the street on which Pun Salad Manor sits is named after them.