Pun Salad

David Harsanyi reacts to recent scolding from the ex-President: Obama Is in No Position to Lecture Us About Decency.

To be fair, our current President is mighty "progressive" in that area. Still, Saint Barry should not be excused.

Also of note:

• She's probably wrong about lots of other stuff, too. But Robby Soave hits the top three: Helen Andrews is wrong about Asians, admissions, and affirmative action.

  Has the effort to end race-based admissions in higher education—a major goal of conservative and libertarian institutions for years—resulted in significant harms to mostly white applicants? That is the provocative claim of Helen Andrews in a new article for Compact magazine that seeks to undermine support for race-neutrality and meritocracy in American institutions.

  Andrews wields this claim as part of a broader invective against Asian immigration, which she has maligned on X in recent days. In Andrews' view, we should start to worry about Asian overrepresentation in the upper echelons of American society, in particular because of Asian "grind culture" and what she views as pervasive "cheating" among Asian students on tests. The idea that this is a uniquely Asian problem is quite absurd, though Andrews is quite fond of stereotyping various identity groups.

  For the record, I was somewhat favorably disposed to an essay Ms. Andrews wrote for Compact ("The Great Feminization") back in October 2025. But a few days ago, I agreed with Gerry Tan that her dismissal of hard-working, smart Asian kids' "grind culture" was kinda odious. Be better, Helen!

• An obvious observation leading to a modest proposal. Here's the obvious bit, from Jeff Jacoby: Belichick wasn't snubbed at taxpayer expense.

  THE PRO Football Hall of Fame's recent snub of Patriots owner Robert Kraft and former coach Bill Belichick unleashed howls of outrage across New England. When the Globe's Dan Shaughnessy described the Hall's rebuff of Belichick as a "ridiculous ... petty, embarrassing, unprecedented, stupid, and preposterous" farce, he unquestionably spoke for scores of thousands of football fans. Ditto his colleague Ben Volin, the Globe's senior NFL writer, to whom the rejection of Belichick was proof that the Hall of Fame needs to "blow up" its voting process and "start from scratch."

  Yet amid all the indignation, no one suggested that the government ought to step in, take over that voting process, and make taxpayers underwrite the cost of running it. After all, the Pro Football Hall of Fame is a private organization. It sets its own rules. It decides who gets to vote. It determines the threshold for election. And it pays the bills.

  Jeff goes on to propose, logically enough, that we extend this sensible policy to political primaries. Let the Reps and Dems (and Libs and Greens) set up their own procedures for nominee-picking. And pay the bills. Jeff's bottom line:

  For most of American history, parties didn't use primaries at all. They relied on conventions, caucuses, and negotiations among party leaders. Those methods may offend modern sensibilities, but they underscore an important point: There is nothing constitutionally sacred about the primary system. It is a tool parties adopted for their own purposes.

  If a party chooses to pick its candidates via statewide ballot, that's its prerogative. But it should run those ballots the way other private organizations run theirs — on their own dime. The Pro Football Hall of Fame didn't ask taxpayers to cover the cost of snubbing Belichick. The Democratic and Republican parties shouldn't ask them to cover the cost of choosing nominees, either.

  It's a great idea, and almost certainly won't happen. Because of those darn "modern sensibilities"! Not the first time they've led us astray.

• Your periodic reminder about upcoming fiscal doom. Veronique de Rugy calls attention to The CBO's Latest Report and the Choice Between Reform and Disorder.

  Despite what progressives have been arguing lately, the United States does not have a tax problem. Federal revenues, even after last year's extension of the Trump tax cuts, are running above their historical average as a share of GDP. What America has is a spending problem so large that the Congressional Budget Office's latest 10-year outlook reads less like a fiscal forecast than a warning label.

  Between now and 2036, the CBO projects $94.6 trillion in federal spending against $70.2 trillion in revenue, a decadelong deficit of $24.4 trillion. Outlays reached 23.1% of GDP in 2025, nearly two full percentage points above the 50-year average, meaning annual spending growth is outpacing the economy itself. Debt held by the public is projected to hit 101% of GDP this year, which will surpass the post-WWII record of 106% by 2030, and climb to 120% by 2036.

  The Trump administration says it wants to cut the deficit to 3% of GDP by the end of this presidential term, roughly half the current trajectory. The CBO's numbers show how far that ambition is from reality.

  You can read the CBO report here.

  Note that the "Congressional Budget Office" is a more or less independent offshoot of Congress. Congress is pretty shameless about spending despite the CBO's warnings.

• If the Trump Administration was capable of embarrassment… They would be red-faced by The Embarrassing Truth About Tariffs, as listed by the WSJ editorialists. (WSJ gifted link)

  The White House this week opened a new front in its war on the Federal Reserve: a fight about Fed research on the consequences of President Trump’s tariffs. If the tariffs are such an unambiguous economic and political winner, why is the Administration so defensive about them?

  The flap concerns the analysis we told you about last week by four economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. They found that American households and businesses are bearing nearly 90% of the cost of the Trump tariffs, contrary to Mr. Trump’s claim that foreigners will pay.

  Clearly the White House is worried that voters might conclude this research aligns with their own experience. Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, took to CNBC Wednesday to pan the New York Fed research as “the worst paper I’ve ever seen in the history of the Federal Reserve System” and suggested the people who wrote and published it should be “disciplined.” Disciplined how? Put in stocks? For a tariff paper?

  I linked to the referenced WSJ editoria last Monday, with the classic advice to "Look around the poker table; if you can’t see the sucker, you’re it." Kevin Hassett is desperately hoping voters don't look around the poker table.