Fiscal Health, Mental Health

At least one side of the great federal budget debate has clearly gone stark raving mad. It might be us, a possibility one should always acknowledge, but we’re pretty sure it’s the Democrats.

Back in the dark days of the Bush administration the Democrats would become downright apoplectic about the half-trillion dollar deficits that the Republicans were racking up, with Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama going so far as to call it “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic,” but ever since they’ve been noticeably more insouciant about the trillion-dollar-plus deficits that have annually accrued. Lip service would still paid to notions of fiscal responsibility, always accompanied by a principled insistence on a “balanced” approach of mythical spending cuts and actual tax hikes, but without the same sense of urgency. There was reason to suspect that the Democrats believed the national debt wasn’t much of a problem at all, and wouldn’t be at almost any amount, but because they had simply dispensed with the budget process altogether it was never necessary for them to come right out and say so.

Democrats in the Senate have lately felt compelled to offer a detailed budget proposal for the first time in four years, however, and the document is jarringly candid even if the claims being made for it by the authors are not. The Democrats’ plan would never a balance any budget for the next 10 years, increase spending by 62 percent over that time, and add another $7 trillion to the national debt even as it raises taxes by $1.5 trillion. Those eye-popping numbers are almost certainly over-optimistic, too, as they are based on an assumption the nation’s gross domestic product will expand from 3.8 percent to 6.6 percent every year for a decade. Such robust growth exceeds the average performance of the American economy, and seems especially unlikely when another 62 percent of regulatory bureaucracy is added to the private sector and another $1.5 trillion is sucked out. Some Democratic Senators have been touting the budget’s spending cuts, which are mostly of the phony-baloney Washington accounting variety, but their own documents show they are fare outpaced by the added spending.

The president hasn’t yet submitted his budget proposal, being far too busy with international crises and golf to have met the legally-mandated February deadline, but that is of little matter considering that none of his previous budget proposals have yet to win a single vote in either chamber of Congress. Those past Obama budgets all included seas of red ink, and an interview with the ABC newsman George Stephanopolous the president signaled that the next one would do the same. Obama that “My goal is not to chase a balanced budget just for the sake of balance. My goal is how do we grow the economy, put people back to work, and if we do that we are going to be bringing in more revenue,” and the reliably friendly former Clinton staffer did not challenge the point. He might have noted that financial solvency is not something that is desired merely for its own sake, or asked how higher taxes and further government intrusion into the private sector is going to grow the economy and put people back to work, or why anyone should believe that the government wouldn’t spend beyond any additional revenue even if it did occur, but such questions never seem to occur to Democrats.

Obama warned that “We’re not gonna balance the budget in ten years” because the Republican plan to do so proposed Rep. Paul Ryan includes such horrors as medical vouchers for seniors and a tax hike on the middle class. The vouchers are only horrible because they offer citizens a choice, and the middle class tax hikes aren’t in the Ryan plan at all, but Obama nonetheless echoes the constant Democratic chorus that the Republican’s budget is a demented documented favored only by the most extreme right-wing radicals. To hear the Democrats and their media allies tell it, the Ryan would unleash such horrors on the poor and downtrodden that not even Charles Dickens could do them justice. Others are aghast that Ryan would even be so rude as to propose anything, given that he was on a losing presidential ticket and that the country clearly chose another decade or so massive borrowing.

Extreme right-wing radicals such as ourselves find Ryan’s budget a rather modest proposal, however, and are grousing for far sterner stuff. The plan includes such attractive features as a repeal of the budget-busting, job-killing bureaucratic nightmare that is Obamacare, but it also continues the recent Obama tax hike on the rich, takes ten years to reach a balance budget without making a debt in the existing debt, and despite its supposedly draconian cuts allows for 3 percent annual growth in federal spending. A more thorough downsizing of the federal behemoth would be much preferred, but at least the Ryan plan acknowledges the reality that the government needs remain financially solvent for than “it’s own sake.”

On the other hand, maybe a government can just borrow another trillion dollars every nine months for ever and ever. Perhaps governmental micro-management will produce an economic boom for the first time in history, and the Democratic politicians elected by a grateful public won’t spend all the money that comes in and then borrow even more. Maybe we should rack up some debt of our own, and not worry about avoiding bankruptcy merely for its own sake. It’s possible that we’re being crazy to try and stay in the black, but we doubt it.

— Bud Norman

Crying for Argentina

The Catholic church on Wednesday chose Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as its new leader, henceforth to be known as Pope Francis, and one immediate consequence is that San Antonio Spurs shooting guard Manu Ginobili is no longer the world’s most famous Argentine. The 76-year-old pope probably can’t drive the lane with the same acrobatic derring-do as his celebrated countryman, especially in those long robes favored by the Catholic clergy, but we’re sure he’ll bring other valuable skills to the job and we wish him well.

With Argentina enjoying a rare moment in the international news, it seems a good time to take note of a few other stories emanating from that troubled and often overlooked land.

One is the nation’s recent decision to stiff American bond holders out of about $1.3 billion of sovereign debt. A United States court has ordered the Argentine government to pony up the money, but its lawyer told the panel of judges last month that it doesn’t much care what a United States courts says. The move has left international financial markets worried about the possibility of a massive government default, which would be the heavily-indebted country’s second in the past 11 years, but the Argentine government is also unconcerned with the financial markets have to say.

Nor is the government concerned with the opinions of the Spaniards, who are vigorously protesting the Argentine government’s recent nationalization of the Spanish oil company YPF. Argentina paid a bargain basement price of no money at all for the company, which is the largest business in the country, and plans to run it as a state-owned corporation. Given the government’s notorious record of inefficiently running its many state-owned corporations, one can expect that the oil company will soon be worth what the country paid for it.

In a related development, the Argentine economy is in a shambles. The country has boasted of some impressive increases in its gross domestic product the past several years, mostly on the strength of rising commodity prices, but no one really believes the government’s boasts. Particularly dubious is the government’s claim of a 10 percent annual inflation rate, which sounds awful enough but is well below the 26 percent that more objective observers are reporting. The International Monetary Fund has grown impatient with the government’s statistical legerdemain and threatened to expel Argentina, but once again the Argentines don’t seem to care.

Firmly in charge of all this mess is President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, a more comely version of the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. The widow of a past president and the current heir to the party of Juan and Eva Peron, which is somehow the only explicitly fascist party in the world that still enjoys the approval of the international left, Kirchner has cracked down on political dissent and anyone who questions the government’s economic statistics. Like all Latin American leftists she has also clashed with the Catholic church, which has an annoying habit of insisting that government is not the highest power over individuals, as she has sought to make contraception a universal entitlement and legalized same-sex marriages.

All of which might explain why the Obama administration has been taking such a painstakingly neutral stance on Kirchner’s saber-rattling threats to take the Falkland Islands away from the British. The tiny specks of land off the Argentine coast have been under British rule for 180 years, are almost entirely populated by English-speaking people of British descent, and by a landslide margin of 1,518 to three the country recently voted to remain a part of the British empire. These facts and a “special relationship” with Britain were sufficient for the Reagan administration to offer all its help to Margaret Thatcher when she had to tack the islands back from the Argentines in 1982, but the Obama administration has been so careful not to back Britain that in its statements of neutrality refers to the territory by its Argentine name. This has not played well in Britain, but neither Obama nor Kirchner cares about that, and any debt-ridden, numbers-fudging, dissent-quashing government that wants the Catholic church to help dispense birth control is unlikely to take a strong stand against another.

The new pope was reportedly a staunch critic of Kirchner during his years as Argentina’s bishop, which bodes well for his papacy. If he can drain the occasional three-pointer, he might go down in history as one of Argentina’s greatest men.

— Bud Norman

Voting for the Catholic

Is the pope Catholic? The question is sometimes asked rhetorically, a colloquial way to emphasize the obviousness of an affirmative reply, but apparently many people would prefer that the answer were “no.” At they very least, they’d rather have a pope who’s not so exceedingly Catholic as those of the past couple of millennia.

As the College of Cardinals convenes in Rome to elect a successor to the recently retired Pope Benedict XVI, many Catholics and non-Catholics alike are offering plenty of advice. Some are asking for a pope that will take a permissive view of homosexuality, others are calling for a pope from the third world, and some are doing both despite the more theologically and sexually conservative nature of third world Catholicism. A group of women recently bared their breasts in St. Peter’s Square to draw attention to their demand for a more feminist sort of pope, which seems an odd tactic despite its undoubted effectiveness, and we expect that their view is shared by many of the church’s more modest women. According to a poll the majority of American Catholics favor a pope friendlier to contraception, and we suspect an even larger majority of the country’s non-Catholics would agree. The general consensus of the chattering classes seems to be that the Catholic church requires a hipper, more up-to-date pope that the kids can relate to.

So long as everyone is offering opinions, we’ll toss in our own hope that the Cardinals choose a Catholic to be pope. Although we are not at all Catholic, and in fact choose to worship with a very Protestant congregation at the opposite end of the High Church-Low Church spectrum, we nonetheless take a rooting interest in its continued existence. In addition to our shared faith in the basic tenets of Christianity, which can only be sustained in times like these by a collective effort, we also have an affinity for the western civilization that Catholicism has done so much to shape and an aversion for the pervasive modernity that the church has thus far admirably resisted. There is much to be said for traditions rooted in eternal truths which have stood the test of time, and institutions should be careful not to cast them aside for the sake of passing fashion and political correctness.

Whatever its faults, and as an institution comprised of humans it is bound to have a number of them, the Catholic church is one of the last lines of defense against the constant menace of the latest thing. Pope John Paul II played a crucial role in defeating communism, Pope Benedict XVI offered much needed support to the fight against Islamism, and throughout the centuries the church has offered brave resistance to all manner of governmental bullying. Even in the United States the church has been forced to fight in the courts for its right to practice what it preaches about contraceptives, and the effort is of the utmost importance to the religious freedom of all people of faith. The Catholic church’s teachings, especially those that strike the modern sensibility as odd or out of date, challenge an all-too-common belief in sexual nihilism, moral relativism, and the unbound power of man over the individual.

No wonder, then, that the so many are hoping for the first post-Catholic pope.

— Bud Norman

The Right to Bear Flabby Arms

Sooner or later the do-gooders were going to get around to the fat people. Picking on the smokers, tokers, gun-toters, and taxpayers was never going to sate their lust for lovingly-applied power, and fat people make such an inviting target for even the most well-meaning bullies.

The crusade suffered a setback on Monday when a court threw out New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ban on “sugary drinks” larger than 16 ounces at restaurants, but that surely won’t be the end of it. Bloomberg, a media magnate-turned-municipal nanny who seems intent on proving the old Wallis Simpson adage that you can never be too rich or too thin, has already vowed an appeal. Having already prevailed in his war on smokers and gotten away such heavy-handed anti-heaviness tactics as his ban on trans-fats and salt shakers, Bloomberg has every reason to expect that he’ll prevail yet again.

We had hoped that the court would find a citizen’s right to order any size soda he damn well chooses somewhere within all those penumbras and whatnots where they found a right to abortion, but instead they found the ban merely “arbitrary and capricious” because it was enacted by the mayor’s health board rather than the city council and applied only to restaurants and not convenience stores or other purveyors of jumbo-sized pop. This means that the mayor need only ram it through an equally self-righteous majority of councilmen and then make it even more far-reaching, so we expect that the beautiful people of New York City will soon be spared the unsightly spectacle of their heftier fellow citizens waddling around sucking up caffeinated calories from bucket-sized cups. The meddlesome mayor has graciously announced that he “probably” won’t mandate gym memberships and no-pain-no-gain workouts, and thus far his assaults on too-loud earphone use are only rhetorical, but by the time Bloomberg is finished even the most fashionable New Yorkers will likely be pining for the decadent freedom of a small prairie town.

Whatever the fate of Bloomberg’s soda ban he can count on the continued assistance of Michelle Obama, the famously buff First Lady who has made fat kids her favorite cause. Obama’s latest effort against childhood obesity came in a speech at George Washington University, where she suggested that “product placement” in grocery stores could create a world in which “kids are begging and throwing tantrums to get you to buy more fruits, vegetables and whole grains.” Setting aside the question of whether Madison Avenue’s most sophisticated techniques could ever cure a normal child of his sweet tooth, there’s something slightly discomfiting about the notion of the government compelling private enterprises to employ shrewd marketing techniques to promote its own notions of what individuals should do in their private lives. This sort of thing is sometimes called fascism, at least when Republicans do it, and good intentions make it no more palatable.

Those of you who don’t smoke, stay trim, and keep your earphones turned to a Carpenters level of volume should be congratulated on your virtuous lifestyles but should not feel immune from the nosiness of the nanny state. You’re doing something they don’t like, and after they get all those fat people whipped into shape they’ll sooner or later get around to you.

— Bud Norman

People who advocate the right to bear arms are often described as “gun nuts,” and in a few cases we know of the description is probably apt, but there’s a far more rampant nuttiness among the anti-gun contingent.

There has been a slew of news stories lately, for instance, about teachers and school administrators punishing students for possessing perfectly harmless items that vaguely resemble guns. In one case a 6-year-old was suspended for extending his index finger and cocking his thumb as if it were a trigger, and in another a student was suspended for eating his toaster pastry into the shape of a gun. Such instances have become common enough that a Maryland legislator felt the need to introduce a bill that would prohibit similar acts of zealousness by anti-gun educators.

Although we have no strong affinity for firearms, neither can we understand anti-gun nuts’ squeamishness about the things. Playing cops-and-robbers with a hand folded in the form of a gun should surely be the constitutional right of every 6-year-old, and we have seen pastries eaten into far more disturbing shapes than that of a mere pistol. There’s a certain nuttiness about attributing an inherent evil to a firearm, which can just as easily be used for harmless recreation or self-protection as for murder or mayhem, but making the same attribution to anything even resembling a gun takes it another step further.

One can readily imagine the high-minded reasons those educators would offer for their heavy-handed methods, and they no doubt envision a better world that is free of guns and violence and even friendly competition. They’re not preparing the children for the world they’ll actually live in, though, as an instinct for self-preservation will almost certainly be required there. The lessons in governmental bullying might come in handy, at least.

— Bud Norman

Dinner With the President

President Barack Obama treated a group of Republican senators to dinner at a posh Washington restaurant on Wednesday, prompting much speculation among the chattering classes. Some speculated that the president’s invitation signals a shift away from partisan rhetoric and toward a more conciliatory relationship with Congress, others speculated how the Republicans might respond to such an unexpected tactic, and everyone seemed to be speculating about what was said at the high-powered repast.

Such speculation is no longer necessary, however, as we have a reliable source who by happenstance was seated within eavesdropping distance of the conversation. For the benefit of those readers who are oblivious to satire we will emphasize that our source is entirely fictional and his information completely made-up by us, but contemporary media standards being what they are we felt his account worth passing along nonetheless.

The president arrived nearly 15 minutes after all of his guests had been seated, apologetically explaining the difficulty of finding parking for his motorcade of 20 limousines, sports utility vehicles, and armed drones. A young man in a crisply starched white shirt and black bow tie arrived at the table moments later, identifying himself as “Justin” and stating that he would be the group’s waiter for the evening. After confirming that the president would be picking up the tab, each of the Republican senators ordered a Dalmore 62 single Highland malt Scotch whisky. Obama opted for what our source calls “some kind of Hawaiian girly drink with an umbrella.”

Sports talk dominated most of the early conversation, our source said, with each senator extolling the virtues of his state’s most prominent team. The president spoke at length about the time he scored 42 points against the Philadelphia 76ers to win the decisive sixth game of the 1980 National Basketball Association championship series, apparently confusing himself with Los Angeles Lakers guard Earvin “Magic” Johnson, and every Senator offered hearty congratulations for the feat. The waiter then brought another round of drinks and offered to take dinner orders, and the president seemed to make a point of repeatedly calling the young man “Jason” while the Republicans consistently addressed him as “Bud,” “Mac,” “you,” “kid,” or “boy.” Our source was unable to overhear every order, but he did note that Obama had the risotto sweetened with Maryland crab and a froth of crab stock cream for an appetizer and lobster thermidor as a main course, Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire chose the veal chops with mustard-punched jus and marble-size poached apples alternating with crisp potato croquettes, and Sen. Mike Johanns of Nebraska requested a chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and fried okra.

Although Obama was seen wincing when Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee drenched his jon dory a la nage, grilled asparagus, and bordelaise reduction in ketchup, and then rolling his eyes when Sen. John McCain of Arizona inquired about an “early bird special,” our source describes the conversation as cordial even as it turned to political matters. As a third round of drinks arrived, Obama opened the discussion by grimly noting the severe pain and hardship that the recent “sequester” budget cuts had inflicted on his public approval ratings. The president mentioned that he had even been forced to eliminate White House tours for schoolchildren, and although he admitted that “it’s nice not to have the little snot-nosed bastards running around the place” he said the situation was nonetheless unacceptable because of its “bad optics.” The senators seemed sympathetic to the president’s plight, and unanimously recommended another round of drinks.

After the fresh libations arrived, Obama modestly sought the senators’ counsel by asking if he should next cut funding for the poor kids or the disabled kids. The Republicans conceded that it was a difficult choice, as they could not decide which group they hated more, and inquired if it would be possible to target the cuts more specifically to affect only children who are both poor and disabled. The president then asked if the senators would please raise income tax rates on the wealthy even further, leading to much laughter and calls for another round.

Fortified by the fifth girly drink, Obama asked with apparent curiosity why the Republicans loved rich people so much. The senators insisted that it wasn’t that they loved rich people, really, just that they hated the poor. Obama then asked if they would pretty pretty pretty please with sugar on top raise the taxes on the rich just an itsy-bitsy bit, and the Republicans responded that they appreciated the food and drinks but that they would sooner burn in hell than betray their fat cat buddies. There was much cackling and moustache-twirling during this exchange, our source tell us, and then cries of “one for the road, boy.”

As the sixth round was consumed the conversation returned to sports, with Obama recalling the time he swished a buzzer-beating jumper over the outstretched arms of Craig Ehlo to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers and propel the Chicago Bulls into the second round of the NBA playoffs. One of the Republicans rudely suggested that the president was thinking of Michael Jordan, and Obama humbly admitted that it was so, remarking “Damn, that brother could play some ball.” There was a broad bi-partisan consensus that one more round wouldn’t do any harm, seeing how none of them had to drive, after which the president was heard telling the senators that he really loved them, man.

The bill reportedly came to $3,500, or $3,505 with tip, and all involved described the meeting as “productive.” No ideas about how to cut the nation’s $16 trillion debt were agreed upon, but the country can be assured that the parties are partying together.

— Bud Norman

An Oratorical Drone Strike

As we write this Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is still talking on the Senate floor, waging a filibuster against the confirmation of Paul Brennan as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

All the press reports have dubbed Paul’s effort an “old-fashioned” filibuster to distinguish it from the modern easy-to-use variety, which is any procedural maneuver to block a simple majority, and some could not resist a reference to the climactic scene of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” The marathon speech-making was intended as a protest against the Obama administration’s drone policies, which claim broad powers to strike against Americans without due process, but the tactic might have garnered more attention than the point it was making.

Which is a shame, because the drone policy deserves careful public scrutiny. In testimony before a Senate committee on Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder offered an assurance that “the government has no intention” of carrying out drone strikes in America but nonetheless insisted it has a right to do so in an “extraordinary circumstance.” Holder cited the attack on Pearl Harbor and the terrorism of Sept. 11, 2001, as examples, but questioning by Texas’ Sen. Ted Cruz revealed that more ordinary circumstances also suffice. Cruz asked “If an individual sitting quietly at a café in the United States, in your legal judgment, does the Constitution allow a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil to be killed by a drone?” A discomfiting amount of hemming and hawing followed before Holder replied that he did “not think that that would be an appropriate use of lethal force.” Only when pressed further by Cruz, who noted that he had asked about the legality rather than the propriety of such an attack, did Holder concede that there might be constitutional issues involved.

Such an expansive view of government power seems odd coming from Holder, who had been an outspoken critic of the previous administration’s harsh interrogation techniques, formerly insisted on civilian trials for such terrorists at Halide Sheik Mohammad, and whose law firm had noisily represented several of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, but none of the senators bothered to question him about the consistency of his views. Many critics of the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism protocols have undergone similar conversions since Obama took office, so perhaps the senators felt it wasn’t remarkable enough to warrant comment.

Some will contend that Obama’s critics are guilty of the same hypocrisy, and there probably are a few conservatives out there who would have felt quite comfortable with the new drone policies under the old administration, but Paul comes from strictly libertarian wing of the Republican and has been opposed to the war on terror’s expansion of government powers since the beginning. Although we have our doubts about Paul’s isolationist tendencies, they serve him well in this instance.

— Bud Norman

Meanwhile, In the Rest of the World

The rest of the world has been back in the news lately, reminding Americans what a dangerous place it is.

Iran’s mad mullahs continue their quest to acquire nuclear weapons, a most dire possibility given the openly apocalyptic yearnings of the regime, and are now close enough that even the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Obama administration has taken alarmed notice. Vice President Joe Biden offered the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee a characteristically mangled assurance that “as long as I and he are president and vice president of the United States” Obama will be committed to the security of Israel, and Secretary of State John Kerry took to the airwaves to do some uncharacteristic saber-rattling, going so far as to say that “If they keep pushing the limits and not coming with a serious set of proposals or prepared to actually resolve this, obviously the risks get higher and confrontation becomes more possible.” It is hoped that Iran’s theocratic rulers will take these statements more seriously than we do, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has issued far more explicit threats, which will not be doubted by anyone, and some sort of “confrontation” now seems inevitable.

Whatever the Iranian government decides to do it will have to be without the assistance of longtime friend Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan dictator who went to his final reward on Tuesday despite the best efforts of Cuba’s vaunted medical system. One is not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but surely in Chavez’ case an exception should be made. The fat twerp impoverished his citizens and trampled on their rights, fomented socialist troublemaking and allied himself with totalitarian thugs around the world, and racked up a sizeable personal fortune as he posed as a protector of the downtrodden common man. Such a resume gave Chavez a radical chic cachet among some progressives, from movie stars to congressmen to a particularly ditzy young woman of our acquaintance, but we think it says it all that his death prompted yet another police state crackdown in his unfortunate land.

The already nuclear-armed North Korean regime, a reliable pal to Chavez and Iran’s mullahs, was also grabbing its share of headlines. Not so much for it’s recent nuclear tests or its threat to end the decades-old cease-fire in the Korean War, but rather because of a recent state visit by Dennis Rodman. For those of you fortunate enough to have forgotten, Rodman was a professional basketball player who contributed tenacious defense, strong rebounding, and few points to some championship Detroit Pistons and Chicago Bulls squads back in the short-shorts days, then parlayed that meager accomplishment and a penchant for cross-dressing, garish tattoos, and outrageous pronouncements into a brief career as a B-list celebrity. Although Rodman’s status has been downgraded several notches in the meantime he was treated as a sort of royalty during his visit to Pyongyang, hanging with the dictator at sporting events and soaking up more media attention than he’s received in years, and he repaid the favor by talking up the virtues of the world’s worst state. Rodman was so inarticulate in the effort that he made Biden seem eloquent by comparison, but as best as we can decipher he seemed to suggest that America’s gulags are just as bad as North Korea’s and that the dictator and Obama share a love of basketball that should serve as the basis for a lasting peace.

Suddenly the domestic news, which has lately been dominated by stories about the disastrous consequences of a $44 billion cut from the growth of a $3.8 trillion budget, seems almost reassuring. The rest of the world can be very intrusive, however, and we can’t keep it at bay with manufactured budget crises forever. We not that the rest of the world even seems to want to meddle in the marijuana laws of Americans states, and there’s no telling what other mischief it might have in mind.

— Bud Norman

Running With the Bulls

As much as we hate to be the gloomy sort who find dark clouds within every silver lining, we just can’t shake an unsettling feeling that there’s something fishy about this bullish stock market.

By the time you read this the Dow Jones Industrial Average might well have surpassed its all-time high, in which case the usual media cheerleaders will be singing “Happy Days Are Here Again” and claiming vindication for Obamanomics. Such gloating is understandable, as the stock indices provide a pleasant diversion from more depressing numbers, but those more depressing numbers make it all seem rather unaccountable.

The reigning record of 14,164 was set back in Oct. 9, 2007, in the dark days of the Bush administration when the economy was suffering through 4.9 percent growth in gross domestic product and a 4.7 percent unemployment rate, with personal income rising four-tenths of a percentage that quarter. In the Golden Age of Obama the Dow is back within shouting distance of that closing figure, but unemployment is at 7.9 percent, the latest quarterly GDP growth has recently been revised from a contraction of 0.1 percent to a slightly more robust gain of 0.1 percent, and personal incomes are dropping by 3.6 percent. Throw in another $7 trillion of national debt, a few credit downgrades for the federal government, higher taxes, a weakened global economy, and assorted international crises, and the current bull run becomes very hard to explain.

Bullish types will always find reasons to buy, and even such bearish types as ourselves must concede they can usually find them, but it’s currently hard to see any compelling reasons for a new record. The CNBC news service quotes a giddy analyst who is heartened by signs of an improving housing market and “good reports” from Priceline and The Dollar Tree, but the housing prices aren’t rising at the overly rapid rate they were back in ’07 — a soon-to-burst bubble caused by the government-created subprime mortgage boondoggle — and Priceline and The Dollar Tree are hardly drivers of the American economy. We’re not even sure what either company does, although we believe that Priceline is the company that William Shatner pitches and has something to do with the internet, and judging by the “Dollar” in its name we presume the Dollar Tree caters to budget-conscious shoppers trying to get by on incomes recently diminished by 3.6 percent.

The same analyst assures CNBC’s readers that the current state of the stock market is due to “more than soothing words from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke,” but we suspect that the Bearded One is mostly responsible. Bernanke has quantitatively eased a few gazillion dollars into the money supply during his time at the Fed, and with bonds yielding laughably low rates and new ventures smothered by reams of new regulations those dollars have nowhere to go but the stock market. So long as Bernanke keeps the printing presses running, the stock market should do fine.

Until it stops, as all things do. When it does, we hope to be safely invested in something very tangible. The bigger the bubble, the bigger the burst.

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– Bud Norman

Fight Fiercely, Harvard

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Of all the nasty names that one might hurl at a political opponent, none is quite so annoying as “anti-intellectual.” The term implies hostility to the intellectual process itself, evoking an image of rubes in John Deere ball caps pulling suspenders away from their beer bellies as they spit tobacco and rail against those pointy-headed perfessers back east, but it usually means nothing more than dissent from the consensus of elite academic opinion. Any true intellectual would concede that over the centuries the consensus of elite academic opinion has often proved catastrophically wrong, while history has just as fr equently vindicated the views of the beer-bellied and tobacco-spitting rubes, but for some reason “anti-intellectual” remains a term of opprobrium.

The point was brought to mind by a recent editorial in Harvard University’s student newspaper, The Crimson, in which the authors take two Harvard-educated Republican politicians and a social conservative news commentator to task for daring to criticize their alma mater. Attributed to “the staff,” the editorial damns the trio as apostates, class traitors, and of course “anti-intellectual.” Anyone unwilling to toe the Harvard Line for the rest of their days, the editorialists say, should matriculate elsewhere.

Although we are not regular readers of The Crimson, the editorial was so widely ridiculed in the conservative media that we could not resist taking a look at it for ourselves. Sure enough, it’s quite ridiculous. The authors ooze self-righteous condescension, lamenting that they could not have met a “young, wide-eyed Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, or Bill O’Reilly” and shown them the error of their error of their narrow-minded ways, and they adhere to the stereotype of Ivy League snootiness so faithfully that their work reads more like a parody from the Harvard Lampoon than an earnest editorial. Despite their archly ironic tone, the writers charge that conservatives are intolerant and thus not be tolerated on the Harvard campus, and they argue that anyone who independently reaches conclusions that differ from what he has been taught by his supposed betters is anti-intellectual, and they don’t seem to notice any irony there.

The editorialists are presumably undergraduates at Harvard, and perhaps should therefore be forgiven the characteristic arrogance of youth, but too many of the people who are graduated from the elite colleges and universities carry the same presumption of intellectual superiority through public life. Such hubris always brings about a downfall, just as the Greek philosophers warned, but apparently today’s Harvard students are spending their time on more modern texts such as the Marxist clap-trap that the editorialists seem to seem to cherish. There’s no reason that more sensible sorts should be cowed by the ivy-covered credentials of such snot-nosed brats, though, and if these are the intellectuals there is no shame in being against them.

— Bud Norman