waiting for…

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A country road. Grass. A tree.

Vladimir sitting in the grass on the side of the road, wearing a single boot, looking forlornly at a boot in his hand.

Enter Miss Elizabeth Bennett

VLADIMIR: Nothing to be done.

MISS BENNETT: Surely, Mr. Putin, something can be done, if only you put your mind to it.

VLADIMIR: My mind, or my boot? I should put something to it.

MISS BENNETT: It is an exceedingly disreputable boot, sir, but we are on business that cannot be delayed; we have not an instant to lose. Pray put on your boot, sir.

VLADIMIR: The boot. It’s not the boot, it’s the bones. Everything here is bones or looks like bones.

MISS BENNETT: Still, should we not leave? Otherwise I fear we must be very late indeed.

VLADIMIR: We can’t leave. We can’t be late. We have to wait.

MISS BENNETT: You are certain, are you not, it was here?

VLADIMIR: Here?

MISS BENNETT: Where we were to wait.

VLADIMIR: He said to wait in the grass.

MISS BENNETT: My dear Mr. Putin, we are in the countryside. Grass is as common as needles. It would be astonishing not to be in the grass.

VLADIMIR: We should leave? Where would we go?

MISS BENNETT: Some place more agreeable.

VLADIMIR: Agreeable. Is there such a place?

MISS BENNETT: It will do you a world of good to consider the possibility.

VLADIMIR: What if he comes and we’re not here?

MISS BENNETT: You prefer, then, to wait.

VLADIMIR: We must wait. We can’t wait. Everything here is bones or looks like bones.

MISS BENNETT: Very well, we shall wait.

MISS BENNETT: Shhh. Did you hear that?

VLADIMIR: Hear what?

MISS BENNETT: That!

VLADIMIR: Is it him?

MISS BENNETT: Who?

VLADIMIR: You’ve forgotten. Already you’ve forgotten.

MISS BENNETT: In polite society, a good memory is unpardonable. Indeed, this is the last time I shall ever remember it myself.

VLADIMIR: I congratulate you.

MISS BENNETT: You are being ever so amiable. I did not think you capable of such congeniality.

(Vladimir shrugs.)

VLADIMIR: It’s not him.

(Miss Bennett looks around.)

MISS BENNETT: No. I fear it is not.

VLADIMIR: Bones. Nothing but bones and things that look like bones.

(Vladimir starts stand.)

VLADIMIR: We should go.

MISS BENNETT: You are the most contrary person. I begin to think you incapable of even the least flirtation with consistency.

VLADIMIR: We should go.

MISS BENNETT: Very well, if you feel so keenly about it. Let us go.

(Vladimir resumes sitting. Looks at the boot in his hand.)

VLADIMIR: Nothing to be done about it.

MISS BENNETT: Your boot?”

VLADIMIR: What about my boot?

MISS BENNETT: Your disreputable boot may go hang itself, for all I care, and cursed be its bones.

VLADIMIR: Bones and things that look like bones. We may as well stay.

MISS BENNETT: There is to be a ball in Meryton on Tuesday fortnight, and I am to have the first dance with…

VLADIMIR: A ball?

MISS BENNETT: A ball.

(Vladimir looks at the boot in his hand.)

VLADIMIR: A ball. There will be dancing.

MISS BENNETT: There is nothing quite in the world like dancing. I consider it the first refinement of polished society.

VLADIMIR: Will he be there, do you think?

MISS BENNETT: I should think so. Everyone will be there.

VLADIMIR: I won’t be there.

MISS BENNETT: You’ll still be waiting, then?

(Vladimir looks as if he’s about to cry.)

MISS BENNETT: Oh, do put on your boot. Or remove the other. How can you be so very silly?

VLADIMIR: How can it all be bones? And things that look like bones?

VLADIMIR: Does he take us for fools? Why do we wait? We are fools.

MISS BENNETT: I may flatter myself, but I think I am not so uncommonly foolish as my younger sisters.

VLADIMIR: We should go. There will be dancing.

MISS BENNETT: Although I dare say I have, in my way, been ever so headstrong and foolish.

VLADIMIR: We should go.

(Vladimir puts on his boot, stands.)

(Miss Bennett sits in the grass. Removes a buckled shoe.)

MISS BENNETT: Nothing to be done.

VLADIMIR: We should go.

MISS BENNETT: We should go. We must go. We can’t go.

VLADIMIR: Miss Bennett, it looks a hopeless business.

He moves away from Miss Bennett.

VLADIMIR: I sometimes wonder if we wouldn’t have been better off alone, each one for himself. We weren’t made for the same road.

MISS BENNETT: It looks very much like bones. Mr. Putin. Bones and things that look like bones.

VLADIMIR: We should go. There will be dancing.

(Vladimir sits.)

ask the questions, get the answers

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Here’s what I think (at this particular moment) will happen: the current case Comrade Trump is facing–the documents case–won’t go to trial. I suspect his lawyers will convince him to try to work out some sort of plea arrangement.

I say that because…wait. Just to be clear, I am NOT a lawyer. I’ve banged around the US criminal justice system for many years and I’ve seen a lot of legal/criminal stuff, but I haven’t been to law school and there’s a LOT of stuff I don’t understand.

Okay, that’s out of the way. I say this case won’t go to trial for a very simple reason: I don’t see any defense to the charges. You can read the indictment yourself, but in very simple terms, Comrade Trump is accused of a) hanging on to documents he wasn’t legally allowed to have in his possession, b) lying about having those documents, c) hiding those documents from the people looking for them, d) getting other folks to lie about those documents, and e) getting other folks to help hide them.

If the facts are against you, bang on the law. If the law is against you, bang on the facts. If the facts and the law are against you, bang on the table.

So the case comes down to some pretty simple questions and answers. So let’s ask the questions and get the answers.

  1. Was Trump authorized to have possession of those documents? Nope.
  2. Did he have possession of them? Yep.
  3. Did he have reason to believe those documents ‘could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation’? Yep.
  4. Was he asked to return them? Yep.
  5. Did he return them? Yes, some of them. And he hasn’t been charged in regard to those particular documents.
  6. Did he return all of them? Nope.
  7. Did he lie about returning all of them? Yep.
  8. Did he get other folks to lie about returning all of them? Yep.
  9. Did he hide them from the folks who were trying to find them? Yep.
  10. Did he get other folks to help him hide them? Yep

The only question that MIGHT be in dispute is that first one. Comrade Trump claims the Presidential Records Act authorized him to keep those documents. Does it? Nope. This is what the Act says:

Upon the conclusion of a President’s term of office, or if a President serves consecutive terms upon the conclusion of the last term, the Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records of that President.

The moment Trump ceased to be POTUS and President Uncle Joe took over, Trump lost custody and control of his presidential authority over the records. Claiming the Presidential Records Act can be interpreted differently is a weak argument, but Trump’s lawyers apparently intend to offer it in court–and with Judge Cannon presiding, it may be allowed.

But will it work? Will a jury buy it? Highly unlikely. Why? Because the National Archives repeatedly TOLD Trump IN WRITING about his legal obligation to surrender control over his records. They repeatedly asked him to return documents he’d retained illegally, and gave him multiple opportunities to do so. The fact that he DID return some but still chose NOT to return others is evidence that he understood what the National Archives repeatedly told him–that he wasn’t authorized to keep those fucking documents.

But he kept them anyway.

So as far as I can see (and, again, I’m NOT a lawyer), Comrade Trump’s ONLY defense is that he was too fucking stupid to understand the repeated warnings given to him and his lawyers about returning classified documents EVEN THOUGH he understood it enough to return some of them.

If that’s the only defense he’s got, Trump’s choices are limited. Either go to trial and hope like hell for a MAGA-infected juror who’ll vote to acquit despite the evidence OR come to some sort of plea arrangement. He might offer to plead guilty to a lesser offense in exchange for…something. No prison time, probably. Maybe in exchange for not being indicted on a Seditious Conspiracy charge in the January 6th insurrection.

I’m not saying I LIKE this as a result. I’m just saying I think this is what’s going to happen.

Obviously, Trump won’t enter into a plea negotiation soon. He’ll delay it as long as possible, as long as he can continue to raise funds off his pending trial. But eventually, in my opinion, he and his lawyers will start talking about a plea arrangement. The case against him is just too strong.

equal justice under the law

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Harold T. Martin was commissioned as a Surface Warfare Officer in the US Navy; he served from 1987 to 2000, and was deployed during Operation Desert Storm. After being honorably discharged from active duty, he obtained a Master’s degree in Information Services. His education and military service allowed him to move into the defense industry, and he worked for a variety of defense contractor corporations.

As a naval officer, Martin had been cleared to access classified information and he retained his clearance as he worked his way through the defense industry. Each successive position granted him access to even more classified information. By 2012, Martin was working with the elite Tailored Access Operations unit of the National Security Agency (NSA). That unit was designed to create ways to secretly hack into computer systems (rather than individual units).

Harold T. Martin’s mugshot

At some point in his career, Martin began to acquire sensitive secret information, which he brought home with him. He took materials from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the United States Cyber Command, the Department of Defense, and the National Reconnaissance Office. He kept the material in an unsecured shed on his property.

Martin was arrested in 2016 and charged with Willful Retention of National Defense Information under the Espionage Act. According to prosecutors, Martin apparently never did anything with the information he stole; he didn’t offer them for sale, he didn’t show them to anybody. In fact, prosecutors believed he’d never even accessed any of the files he stole from government facilities. He simply hoarded them. It was, apparently, compulsive behavior.

In 2019, Martin was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Today Comrade Former President Donald Trump is being arraigned in federal court. Like Martin, Trump is accused of multiple counts of Willful Retention of National Defense Information. Like Martin, he took information he wasn’t allowed to take from multiple security services. Unlike Martin, Trump avoided military service. Unlike Martin, Trump allegedly showed classified information to people who weren’t classified to see it. Unlike Martin, who was incarcerated for three years before his trial, Trump has been free on his own recognizance.

It remains to be seen if Trump, like Martin, will be held accountable for his crimes.

it’s worse than it appears

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A few more semi-quick thoughts about the Comrade Trump indictments. First, I’m a criminal defense guy. I spent several years as a private investigator specializing in criminal defense work. So I’m in the habit of looking at criminal cases brought by the State and trying to find weaknesses. This may be the most solid indictment I’ve ever seen, largely because Trump is such a reckless, unthinking criminal.

Second, there’s a discrepancy between the number of classified documents seized during the search of Mar-a-Lago and the number of documents listed in the indictment. There are at least a dozen documents identified as top secret that were seized but not included in the indictment. The assumption is that the information in those documents was too sensitive to even be mentioned in passing in a public trial. That suggests Trump’s crimes were even worse than those included in the indictment.

Third, what isn’t being discussed (or at least isn’t being discussed enough) is the actual harm brought by Trump’s crimes. This isn’t just a matter of Trump taking classified documents he had no right to take, and lying about them, and hiding them from the FBI. It’s an actual matter of national security AND of human lives.

Having seen how cavalier Trump was with highly sensitive information provided to the US by the intelligence agencies of our allies, those allies have NO reason to ever trust us with sensitive information again. That’s especially true if Trump isn’t held accountable for this. Our credibility in the international intelligence community has turned to shit.

Beyond that, there’s the very real risk to the intelligence agents and/or assets who have risked their liberty, safety, and lives to gather and collect the information contained in those documents. We KNOW that some of the Mar-a-Lago material was classified as HCS (HUMINT Control Systems). We’re talking clandestine human intelligence, serious spy stuff–the activities, capabilities, techniques, processes, and procedures spies use. If our enemies know WHAT information we have, they can start figuring out WHERE that information came from, and WHO provided it.

We also KNOW that a few months after Trump took that material to Mar-a-Lago, there was a ‘covcom’ breach. Covcom refers to the classified covert communications systems used by the CIA. The breach exposed a number of agency assets, especially in China and Iran. A number of informants had to be extracted; others were reportedly captured and executed. US counterintelligence officials warned every CIA station about the breach. Back in October of 2021, the London Times reported the suspicion that there was a ‘super mole’ in the US government betraying CIA assets. We have no way of knowing if that ‘covcom’ breach was a result of Trump’s egregiously lackadaisical treatment of classified material. But it’s possible.

The thing is, this scandal is far worse than it appears in news coverage. The actual harm to our intelligence community is severe and will be long-lasting. The damage will be even worse if Trump isn’t held accountable.

Also? Why is there a fucking chandelier in that bathroom? I mean…why?

pick a side

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We all knew this was coming. I wrote about it back in August of last year. Now it’s official. Comrade Trump has been indicted, formally accused of violating the national security laws he was sworn to protect.

There’s already a fuck-ton of bullshit being hurled at great force into various social media and news outlets. Some of that bullshit is important; most isn’t. Even though the indictments are sealed at present, we can make a fairly accurate guess at what’s in them. Here’s the thing: down at the bone, this is a pretty simple criminal case.

I’m going to make a terribly flawed analogy here. I’m telling you up front that it’s a flawed analogy, so don’t wast time telling me it’s a flawed analogy. It’s flawed, but it’s still pretty accurate. Right, here we go.

Let’s say you got fired from your job as a…I don’t know, a warehouse worker. You got fired, so when he left on your last day, you also decided to take the forklift you drove at the warehouse. The warehouse manager calls you, says, “Dude, that wasn’t your forklift. We need that forklift back.” You say, “Forklift? What forklift?” The manager says, “You were seen driving away in the forklift and hey, it’s parked outside your garage right now. It’s got the warehouse logo on it. We want it back, please.” You remove the logo from the forklift, park the forklift inside the garage, and send the manager the logo with a note saying, “There you go.” The manager says, “Yeah, no. We want the whole forklift. C’mon, dude.” You say, “It’s my forklift; we bonded during the months we worked together.” The manager says, “Just give us the goddamn forklift. We don’t want to send the cops.” You say, “Okay, I’ll give you the forklift.” You don’t give them the forklift. The manager loses patience and sends the cops. The cops find the forklift in your garage; parts of it are missing. You claim you have no idea how the forklift got into your garage and no idea what happened to those missing parts.

Then you ask to be rehired for your job at the warehouse.

It’s a flawed analogy, but it’s still basically accurate. Trump took shit that didn’t belong to him — shit that put our national security at risk, shit that has very likely caused intelligence agents and assets in China and Iran to flee or, in some cases, to be captured and killed. He refused to return that shit when asked. He eventually gave some shit back, but kept other shit. He lied about having that other shit, both to the government and even to his own lawyers. Later he claimed the shit belonged to him. Now some of that shit is missing.

Again, the basic facts are simple and easy to understand. The implications, however, are neither simple nor easily understood. I’m talking about the political implications, and the social implications, and the national security implications.

There’s a thing called graymail. It’s like blackmail for spies. How does the government accuse somebody of illegally handling secret documents when the documents are secret? Graymail involves a person accused of mishandling (or stealing) secret information threatening to reveal the contents of those secrets in open court if they’re brought to trial.

You know Trump will try to graymail his way out of this. And he’ll succeed, at least in part. We’ll never hear about the very worst things he’s probably done, because it would reveal national security issues.

But there’s good news — or something like good news. Some of the secret material Trump stole will be low level intel that the government is willing to burn in order to get a conviction. The punishment for mishandling a low level secret document is the same as mishandling a really critically important document.

At this point, some 12-14 hours after we learned about the indictments, we’re mostly operating on assumptions. We’re told there will be seven indictments and we assume that’s true. We can make some intelligent guesses about the actual crimes Trump is being charged with, but we don’t actually know. We have no idea how many counts of each indictment–how many separate acts are being charged.

All we have at the moment are broad outlines based on widely reported facts. But we do know this: The indictments will be labeled The United States of America v. Donald J. Trump.

And there it is. The United States versus Trump. Pick a side.

asshole alert at the farmers’ market

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It’s really really really hard to pick the worst thing about Trumpism, but certainly one of the top five worst things is Entitled Aggressive Assholism.

Yesterday morning at the farmers’ market…wait. First, let me say that one of the many things I love about both my small local farmers’ market and the larger Des Moines Downtown Farmers’ Market is that they bring so many different communities together. There are Amish farmers selling rye bread next to some Salvadoran immigrants selling pupusas and some second generation Laotian-Americans selling sien savanh. There’s a young Black man with orange hair playing an acoustic guitar and singing old Beatles songs and just down the street is an old white guy with a ridiculously small electric organ playing Muzak versions of Bob Marley tunes. There are young couples with kids, old folks with walkers, dozens of breeds of dogs (and by the way, I’m always worried about the small dogs; I’m afraid they’re going to get stepped on in the crowds), gay couples holding hands, teens wearing Future Farmers of America t-shirts, cyclists in their helmets and spandex, suburban goth eye-shadow junkie kids, folks handing out flyers letting us know Jesus forgives us or that pollinators are at risk because of chemicals or reminding us that one of the voice actors from Pokemon will be signing autographs at the event center where the comic-con is taking place.

What I’m saying is that the farmers market is all about different folks coming together and getting along. And then there’s the guy wearing a t-shirt that says Transgenderism is a Mental Disorder. My phone was in my pocket, so I didn’t have time to get a photograph of him. But he was a classic Entitled Aggressive Asshole, a prime example of asshole culture.

The ONLY reason to wear a t-shirt like that in public is to provoke a reaction. This asshole deliberately set out to offend others, knowing he was unlikely to be seriously challenged about it. Unlikely to be challenged because those of us who are offended also believe in the right to free speech, and the right to believe in things others find objectionable, and the right to move around freely in public without somebody knocking you flat on your ass for being a colossal dick.

One of the worst things Trump released on the world is the fierce joy bullies and cowards find in the freedom to punch down without consequence. Right now, trans folks and drag artists have become primary targets of that twisted joy. I see articles complaining that Link (from the Legend of Zelda games) is trans-friendly, I see drag shows under attack by asshole politicians, I see concentrated efforts to prevent trans kids from getting the medical care they need. A year or two ago, none of this was much of an issue. Trans-hate has been largely manufactured for political purposes (and, of course, as another conservative grift).

My guess (and I have no actual evidence of this) is that a year ago, that asshole at the farmers’ market probably didn’t give a moment of thought to trans folks. But now that they’ve become a popular MAGA-target, he 1) found a vendor who was happy to make and sell the objectionable t-shirt, 2) spent his money to buy one so that he could 3) wear it in public in a place that encourages diversity in order to 4) offend the fuck out of people who are 5) too decent to knock him on his ass.

To be clear, I’m NOT an advocate of knocking people on their ass simply because they’re assholes (even if they deserve it–although I’d consider buying a t-shirt that says Vertical assholes deserve to be horizontal). And I’m not suggesting folks accept that asshole’s challenge and confront him in public. I mean, these assholes LIKE pretending they’re victims.

What I am saying is that it’s no longer enough for us to be silent allies. I suspect most of the folks who’ll read this have taken a relatively laissez faire approach to trans folks. Trans folks exist, not a big deal, end of story. But the movement to prevent trans folks from existing, that IS a big deal. Trans folks can’t afford for us to maintain a laissez faire approach. We need to stand up, speak up, and keep it up. We can do that without being assholes ourselves.

EDITORIAL NOTE: We really need to burn the patriarchy. Burn it from stalk to stem, then gather the ashes, grind them into dust, dig a hole and chuck in the dust, piss on the dust, cover the hole, and salt the earth over the hole. Then have tea and some nice cookies.

silent sentinel

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In the late 19th century, there was a rush to memorialize the American Civil War. There were still a lot of living Civil War veterans around, but enough time had passed that the emotional trauma of that awful war was being scarred over by sentiment. There was a national desire–maybe even a national need–to attempt to ennoble the killing and the dying, to transform the horrific mass slaughter into something virtuous.

Communities did this by erecting monuments and memorials to the fallen soldiers. It’s important to distinguish between these commonplace memorials and the statues of the leaders of the armies. The statues of Civil War generals–Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Stonewall Jackson, William T. Sherman–were created to celebrate both the individuals and the cause they fought for. Every statue of a Confederate general is also a statue defending a war to protect slavery; every statue of Union general is a statue defending the notion of a united nation.

Civil War memorial, Hanson, Massachusetts

But the vast majority of Civil War memorials and monuments–the ones you’ll find in parks and standing in front of courthouses in small towns–are dedicated to the people who did most of the fighting and dying. They’re actually memorials to the grunts, the men who went where they were told to go, who shot at the people they were told to shoot at, and who died because that’s what grunts do. Grunts don’t die for vaguely defined moral or political concepts; they die because somebody in a suit decided those concepts were worth somebody–somebody else–dying for.

For small towns that wanted to memorialize the common soldiers who died in the Civil War, the cost of marble or granite statues was prohibitive. However, there were a small number of New England monument companies that specialized in casting bronze or zinc cemetery statues. The Monumental Bronze Co. of Bridgeport, Connecticut produced a model known as the Silent Sentinel. It was a life-size statue of a generic soldier standing at parade rest and sold for an affordable US$450 (an 8-foot-6-inch version could be had for $750). For Northern markets, the belt buckle of the Silent Sentinel was stamped with US; for Southern markets, it was stamped with CS. Other than that, the statues were exactly the same. The same longcoat, the same rifle, the same knapsack, the same forage cap.

Civil War memorial, New Market, Virginia

Eventually, Southern markets caught on to the fact that they were paying Yankee industrialists for statues of Yankee soldiers passing as Confederate soldiers. They began to insist on changes to their statues–a shorter jacket, a bedroll instead of a knapsack, a different style forage cap. But the fact remains, that many of the Civil War memorials you’ll find in town squares from New England to the Midwest to the Deep South depict the same generic soldier.

That’s appropriate, especially on Memorial Day, when we’re meant to honor the troops who died in military service to their nation. The leaders–the generals, the politicians, the industrialists who profit from the weapons of war–fuck those guys. But all those poor indistinguishable bastards who put on a uniform and went to war because they were told there was a good reason for them to risk death and kill strangers, those people deserve our compassion. They earned those memorials.

the behan school of economic theory

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Let me admit up front that I understand economic theory about as well as I understand quantum field theory. I have, at best, a vague grasp of some of the concepts. This is one of the reasons I belong to the Brendan Behan School of Economic Theory. It may be simple but I find it easy to understand and support. I advocate:

“…that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.”

That’s a solid foundation; start right there and build on it. We should…no, wait. I meant to write about the debt ceiling bullshit. How’d I get distracted this quickly? Okay, rewind. Hit ‘start’.

I find all of this fuss about the debt ceiling to be simultaneously offensive and boring as fuck. It’s perfectly obvious to everybody that the Republican Party is threatening to fuck up the US economy–and the global economy to some extent–unless President Uncle Joe agrees to their demands. What’s less obvious is the astonishing fact that the GOP can’t even agree amongst themselves what their demands are. They’re basically saying, “We’ll shoot your dog unless you agree to do a thing and we’ll let you know what that thing is after you agree to it.”

I’m hoping President Uncle Joe has a secret plan up his sleeve. Or tucked away in a hidden pocket. Or under his hat. He’s been pretty good at teasing the GOP along, then quietly kicking them in the nuts. So it’s a real possibility that he’s openly cooperating with the House Republicans, knowing they’ll never come up with a workable solution, at which point he can say, “I tried to be reasonable” and then just kick them in the nuts.

Personally, I’d prefer it if he just told them to go fuck themselves. He should just tell the Treasury Department to mint the platinum trillion dollar coin and deposit it in the US’s savings account. This idea has been floating in the econoverse for a few decades. Is it legal? Who knows? Do it anyway. Let the Republicans legally challenge it and take it to SCOTUS. That’ll take some time, during which the debts will be paid by the coin and the global economy will continue to totter on.

“Your Honor, justice DEMANDS that we be allowed to fuck up the world’s economy!”

And what happens if SCOTUS says, “Uncle Joe, my dude, you just can’t mint a coin and spend it like that”? Fine, at that point Uncle Joe should just issue an executive order saying the notion of a debt ceiling violates the 14th Amendment. Let the Republicans legally challenge that and take it to SCOTUS. That’ll take more time, during which the debts will be paid and the global economy will continue to totter on.

And if SCOTUS says, “Sorry Uncle Joe, but dude you’ve interpreted the 14th Amendment incorrectly”? Fine, at that point Uncle Joe should just issue an executive order saying the debt ceiling violates the Contracts Clause of the US Constitution. Let the Republicans legally challenge that as well, and take it to SCOTUS. That’ll take still more time, during which the debts will be paid and the global economy will continue to totter on.

And if SCOTUS says, “Uncle Joe, c’mon, that’s not how the Contracts Clause works”? Fine, at that point Uncle Joe should just issue coupon free bonds. I don’t have a clue what a coupon free bond is, but I’ve heard the idea offered as a wonky solution to the debt ceiling. It might be complete bullshit. I don’t care. Whatever it is, let the GOP legally challenge it and take it to SCOTUS. That’ll once again take more time, during which the debts will be paid and the global economy will yada yada yada.

You get the point. If the GOP keeps fucking with the national debt, POTUSUJ should keep fucking with the GOP. He should keep making the Republican Party AND/OR the Republican Party’s SCOTUS responsible for trying to NOT pay the debt. Keep that stupid shit up until it’s time for the 2024 election. Campaign on the GOP (and the sociopath they choose as their nominee) trying desperately to ruin the US economy.

I’ll admit, that’s a shitty way to govern a nation. But the GOP has been enshittifying the US for decades. They’ve succeeded in making the US a fairly shitty nation. But shitty is as shitty does. It’s time we make the Republican Party eat its own sociopathy.

EDITORIAL NOTE: None of this is well thought out. It’s not really a plan. This is just me on a Saturday morning rant while I’m drinking coffee. You’d have to be an idiot to take me serious when I’m talking about economics.

ADDENDUM: Well, who’d a thunk it? Less than a day later, President Uncle Joe and the Squeaker of the House have reached what they call a ‘tentative’ agreement. It fits nicely inside my earlier comment about POTUSUJ “teasing the GOP along, then quietly kicking them in the nuts” except that it appears Uncle Joe has arranged for the GOP to kick themselves in the nuts.

Biden has conceded almost nothing. McCarthy, on the other hand, obtained some small largely symbolic concessions that will make the MAGA wing (can you call it a ‘wing’ when its the majority?) of his party furious, and will likely set the House GOP fighting amongst themselves like rabid wolverines on meth.