Friday roundup

Tomi Lahren may be easy on the eyes, but when she opens that potty mouth of hers, that fact takes a back seat - no, make that a place in the trunk - to the reality that she's a fever-swamper.

Please, please, please read Robert Tracinski's latest piece at The Federalist. It points out that Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome doesn't just afflict those on Capitol Hill. He has to call out some respected think-tank people and pundits, including his own boss at The Federalist, Ben Domenech, for succumbing to RGS in a particular instance:

Last week, Kristin Shapiro and Andrew Biggs (of the American Enterprise Institute) made an original new proposal in the Wall Street Journal for how the federal government could provide generous paid “family leave” for new parents. Here’s the basic idea.

Offer new parents the opportunity to collect early Social Security benefits for a period—say, 12 weeks—after the arrival of their child. To offset the cost, parents would agree to delay collecting Social Security retirement benefits, probably for only about six weeks.

We estimate that to make the Social Security program financially whole, a parent who claimed 12 weeks of benefits would need to delay claiming retirement benefits by only around six weeks. The cost is low because parental-leave benefits claimed early in life would be low relative to retirement benefits claimed later, as earnings typically rise considerably from one’s 20s to one’s early 60s…. Consider an average woman, who enters the workforce at 21 and has her first child at 26. At 25 she would have a salary of about $31,100, according to Social Security Administration data. Using the same formula used to calculate Social Security disability benefits, she would be eligible for a Social Security parental-leave benefit of $1,175 a month, equal to 45% of her earnings at 25…. Because of Social Security’s progressive benefit formula, lower-income workers would receive a higher benefit relative to their earnings.

The idea has also been taken up in the New York Times by The Federalist’s own Ben Domenech, as advice on “How Trump Can Be More Trumpian,” as if that were a good thing.

At the urging of the White House, this idea has already been taken up by some Republicans in the Senate, who have been briefed on the concept and are on the cusp of drafting legislation. It is receiving early support from both conservative and moderate members of the Republican conference, and Ivanka Trump has discussed it at length with at least one—Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Support from Mr. Lee, one of the most conservative members of the party, would be crucial to passing a bill.

As Republicans work to make traditional conservatism and populist Trumpism coexist harmoniously inside their party, creativity is required to achieve compromises on policy goals. By making paid family leave a signature issue for 2018, President Trump would be embracing an idea at the heart of his 2016 success: that he is the one Republican willing to break with party norms to help working- and middle-class Americans.

Now, I like Ben and respect Ben, and I’m not just saying that because he can fire me. (Please don’t fire me, Ben.) A number of the people involved in this proposal are people who I otherwise regard as allies in the cause of liberty. But I feel like I’ve seen this movie before.

He points out the saddening sentiment on which the idea is predicated:

the idea that the most basic tasks humans have been doing for thousands of years—such as parents caring for their children—suddenly can’t be done unless the government subsidizes us to do them.

It's also saddening, but necessary, that he has to go over the most glaringly basic fact about Social Security: It's a direct redistribution arrangement. There is no locked box into which your contributions have been going. The program's finances are already on shaky ground, and imposing yet another way to dole out benefits in the present tense is only going to exacerbate that.

Great writing, crystal-clear thinking.

Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal  lays out for us one of the present moment's clearest examples of the phenomenon of two things being true at once. The Left is existing on fumes of pure rage against the fact that Trump is president, and if such venom and vitriol is all they have to offer as we inch toward the November midterms, and if the economy continues to boom, they could be in for an unpleasant surprise. On the other hand, the Very Stable Genius's base is not adequately taking into consideration that Mueller will probably issue his investigation's findings before them, and they will no doubt, as Noonan puts it, "harpoon" him. They run the danger of still claiming that the VSG is playing 5-D chess, and he'll no doubt encourage their delusion with more petty lashing out, at Mueller's team as well as "fake news" outlets. He could wind up looking "embittered and vengeful" like Nixon when he reached the point of no return.

Remember a while back when the Boy Scouts of America said it was going to stat accepting girls? What part of the country has embraced this gender-bending move most heartily? Northern California. Surprised?