The Producers at the Muny in 2008. Photo by Meetmeatthemuny. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Here we go again. It’s time for another performance of American politicians’ favorite off-Broadway play, “Shutdown Panic.”

“Congress only has a few weeks to avoid a government shutdown,” Mitchell Hill reports at WTOP, “but leaders of both parties are still a long way from agreeing on a stopgap spending bill to keep federal workers on the job.”

The cast changes but slowly. The plot gets tweaked but little.

Act One: “There’s a government shutdown coming if we don’t pass a spending bill!”

Act Two: “Let’s fight about it!”

(The most common plot tweak comes in here with the occasional insertion of a short supposed “shutdown”)

Act Three: “SURPRISE! We made a deal!”

Act Three always closes with a set change: A road, and cast members kicking a can down it.

Curtain call — the cast takes its bows. They’ve once again saved the day by borrowing and spending more money than ever before. Please clap.

At this point, I pause to check two numbers. The “National Debt Clock” tells me that the play’s producers owe nearly $37.5 trillion to their backers and that 2025’s expenses stand at nearly $2 trillion more than box office receipts.

It’s Max Bialystock’s and Leo Bloom’s wildest dream: “Springtime for Hitler” isn’t just a money-making (for them, but nobody else) flop, it’s history’s longest-running such flop!

The last time US politicians actually (and very temporarily) paid off their ever-growing debt was 190 years ago in 1835. The last time they even managed to theoretically balance one year’s budget was 24 years ago in 2001.

And, let me emphasize: It’s THEIR debt, not YOUR debt.

The organization they run (“the US government”), not you, borrowed the money.

They love to talk about a “national” debt and shake their heads in amazement at how much each American “owes” (about $110,000), but your signature isn’t on any of those loan documents. In fact, if you hold the US government’s bonds, you’re actually among their unlucky creditors.

Let’s throw in two more numbers: 123.8% and 70.

The former is the ratio of the politicians’ debt to the country’s Gross Domestic Product; the latter is the IQ cut-off point separating those who believe the debt will ever be paid off from those who know it won’t.

In May, Moody’s lowered the US government’s “sovereign credit rating” from Aaa (“highest rating, representing minimum credit risk”) to Aa1 (“high-grade”).  In reality, that rating should be Ca (“highly speculative, or near default”) or C (“little prospect for recovery of principal or interest”).

At some point, the producers of a commercially unsuccessful play default and the play’s run comes to an end.

That’s going to happen with the US government. And the longer it takes to happen the uglier things will get.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On September 2, the US government claimed that military operators acting on its behalf murdered 11 foreign nationals aboard a boat in international waters off the coast of Venezuela.

I say “claimed” because Venezuelan communications minister Freddy Ñáñez suggests that a video of the murders released by the US government is an AI-generated “deepfake.” Regimes lie, and it’s not obvious which regime is lying in this particular instance.

But let’s assume that US regime officials, including US secretary of defense Pete Hegseth and US secretary of state Marco Rubio, were truthful in their claims.

If so, it’s reasonable to also assume they’re truthful when they claim that these 11 murders are just the start of a “campaign,” and that the US government intends to “blow up and get rid of” (per Rubio) even more victims.

When someone credibly confesses to murder, announces an intent to commit further murders, and clearly possesses the means to do so, it seems to me that whatever law applies should be brought to bear.

Under 18 U.S. Code § 1111, “Within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, Whoever is guilty of murder in the first degree shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for life; Whoever is guilty of murder in the second degree, shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life.”

Said jurisdiction is defined in 18 U.S. Code § 7. It includes any vessel or aircraft belonging in whole or in part to the United States, meaning that the military personnel involved in the murder mission are themselves criminals … IF the law is applied.

Similarly, the entire chain of command, all the way up to US president Donald Trump (who has publicly admitted to approving the crime) are clearly on the hook for “conspiracy to murder” under 18 U.S. Code § 1117 … IF the law is applied.

Unfortunately, the US Supreme Court ruled last year that presidents enjoy immunity for all “official acts,” even illegal ones like, say, ordering 11 murders. So Trump himself is as unlikely to be held accountable for this atrocity as for other crimes he’s ordered, such as the murder of eight-year-old American girl Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki in 2017.

But what about Hegseth, Rubio, and the various military officers who must have been involved in planning and directing the operation?

Holding them legally culpable may be as unlikely as bringing Trump himself to justice, but it’s theoretically possible. So far as I can tell there’s nothing to prevent a grand jury from indicting some or all of them.

The biggest hurdle to get over is that the US Department of Justice answers to Trump and likely won’t ASK a grand jury to do any such thing.

So, once again, the US government will get away with murdering anyone it announces is a “terrorist,” “drug smuggler,” etc., without having to prove the charges.

The only unique aspect of this particular mass murder is that its sole purpose seems to have been to distract us from the matter of Donald Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Did it work?

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Man carrying child’s body in Gaza. Fars Media Corporation.  Attribution 4.0 International license.

The Israeli regime has lost its multi-front war in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Yes, really. It may not look like it, but the defeat is real and  baked into Israel’s future.

Let me first make the case for Israeli “victory”:

Since its 2023 invasion of Gaza, the Israeli Defence Forces report fewer than 800 troops killed, while in turn killing tens — maybe hundreds — of thousands of mostly civilian Palestinian Arabs (and 250 or more inconvenient journalists).

Since the beginning, they’ve established their ability to attack any point in Gaza at will, driving a displaced, hungry population back and forth over piles of bodies, while seizing more land in the West Bank and Syria, liquidating Hezbollah’s Lebanese strongholds, trading missile strikes with Yemen’s Houthis, and even emerging relatively unscathed, if not particularly successful, in an intermittent war with Iran.

Top Israeli regime officials confidently assert that the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and annexation of the West Bank are inevitable.

Yes, that sounds rather like multiple “victories,” accomplished and pending.

But those victories didn’t come from nowhere. They were enabled by decades of massive financial, military, and diplomatic support from the United States.

Yes, other regimes too, but most of those “allies” are moving in the other direction already — cutting off arms sales, recognizing a Palestinian state, and sanctioning Israeli war criminals.

It’s quickly coming down to the “no daylight between us” US/Israel relationship under which the former annually shovels billions of dollars, and when requested direct military assistance, at the latter, no questions asked (US law “guarantees” Israel a “Qualitative Military Edge”), while using its own sanctions power and veto on the UN Security Council to protect Benjamin Netanyahu and Friends from the consequences of their actions.

That relationship is nearing its end.

In late August, a Quinnipiac poll found that 50% of Americans now classify Israel’s operations in Gaza as genocidal, and that 60% — 37% of Republicans, 75% of Democrats, and 66% of independents — oppose continued military aid to Israel, at least while the genocide continues.

The effects of changing American attitudes toward Israel may not make themselves felt immediately, but the outcome is more “inevitable” than the fantasies of expansionist Israeli politicians.

In domestic politics, Social Security is sometimes called a political “third rail” — you touch it, you die.

The “special relationship” with Israel enjoyed the same status in foreign affairs for decades due to a well-funded lobby. American politicians who didn’t want to lose their re-election primaries to lobby-funded opponents dutifully voted for every Israeli aid demand (usually after ritual photo opportunities at occupied Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall).

That third rail is losing voltage, fast. President Donald Trump may remain bought off by the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on his behalf by Israeli interests, but sitting and future members of Congress are beginning to grok that a loyalty oath to a foreign power is no longer the absolute requirement it used to be.

And without Big Bully unquestioningly backing its every play, Little Bully’s expansionist plans will quickly come to naught.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY