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Plunder, pillage and piracy are popular in Washington, as this latest Trump post illustrates. Donald Trump and Scott Bessent understand debt and currency destruction extremely well, even if they cannot define the word “gift.”

Immediately upon the kidnapping of Mr. and Mrs. Maduro and the “new” US relationship with Delcy Rodriguez, Trump issued Executive Order 14373 “Safeguarding Venezuelan Oil Revenue For The Good Of The American And Venezuelan People.” This order starts with the declaration of a “national emergency” to “threat of attachment or imposition of judicial process” on the Venezuelan funds held in the US Foreign Government Deposit Funds account to be “a threat to the United States.”

This executive order is similar to the George W. Bush EO 13303 of May 22, 2003. That order also declares a national emergency, and establishes the Iraq Development Fund, directing all Iraqi oil revenues into a USA Federal Bank account in NYC. This order meshes nicely with the March 20, 2003 EO whereby the US outlines the policy of “Confiscating and Vesting Certain Iraqi Property.”

I asked Grok to compare these two orders, one confiscating Iraq oil, the other setting the stage for the current “arrangement” regarding Venezuelan oil. Grok determined that they are close cousins, with the bottom line:

[both establish an] IEEPA emergency used to put oil revenue beyond the reach of judgment creditors so the executive branch can use that revenue for a foreign-policy project. The Iraq order is a wide asset shield around a reconstruction fund and Iraqi oil in U.S. reach, backed by UN authority and older wartime sanctions. The Venezuela order is a narrow account shield around money already in Treasury’s hands, with extra findings about ownership, custody, non-commercial use, and non-waiver of immunity, plus State Department control over disbursement and an express override of prior Venezuela sanctions orders.

Trump is presenting this Venezuelan oil arrangement as US ownership of Venezuelan oil reserves, much as he does with the fundamental booty Trump still hopes to extract from Iran. Trump fantasizes about owning the Strait of Hormuz and extracting both Iranian oil as his property, and charging many times more fees and profits than the Persian Gulf Strait Authority could ever envision. He has cartoonishly claimed to own not only the Strait and Venezuela, but Canada and Greenland. Trump recently directed the “Department of Justice” to legalize physical confiscation of energy and other “US forbidden” shipments directly from ships on the high seas, requiring a novel interpretation of “Prize Law.”

Americans of various political persuasions alternatively ridicule and praise Trump in his gleeful promotion of an America that most of us sense is in slow motion collapse. Beyond the entertainment factor, we all see an explosion in domestic unconstitutionality and a cold, clear agenda of direct theft via military-backed or “legalized” plunder, and the pursuit of dollar denomination everywhere.

The US unilaterally issues trade, travel or transport sanctions and prohibitions, direct and indirect, primary and secondary. Then, in the name of enforcing its own Washington, DC mandates, the US government via its military and policing forces, including the State Department. Treasury and the FBI, unilaterally takes what it wants. Many Americans have no problem with this utilization of “national power.” But when other countries do the same, or more commonly, respond to these American presumptions, we whine, cry, scream and beat our chests in rage as if some major shared value system has been violated.

None of this should be surprising, because it is not new. The whole world is familiar with colonial practices, not just in the Western colonial era, but throughout history. This behavior from dominant or dominant-hopeful military powers is expected. Even Americans, many of whom have limited visibility into world history, US history, or how their government actually operates today, are beginning to notice.

The state insatiably takes what it can – overseas as well as domestically – using legal construct, lies, and force. Controlling productive assets, rather than creating value, defines our current national economic trend, a trend marked by drastically reduced purchasing power of the US dollar, and increasing reluctance of international and domestic to buy risky US debt. The Federal Reserve by design is a bottomless well of dinero from which the federal government network of politicians and cronies draw, for enormous short term benefits – and subsequent private asset accumulation using US paper.

Bottomless wells are imaginary, and those who believe in such things eventually hit a very disappointing wall.

Donald Trump and his supra-party elitist ilk have long embraced a world where imaginary bottomless wells will make you rich and powerful. Spending other people’s money for sparkly casinos that rely on the patronage of the poor and working classes to survive, and overstating asset values in order to access credit is fine in commercial real estate. I’m not sure a nation can be managed like this for much longer. So long alienated from its original promise of liberty and limited government, what we call America is long past due for a reset.

The ruling class is planning, and some would say implementing, such a reset now. They intend to salvage and retain assets, get paid first, retain a super-centralized financial system using stablecoin and programmable money. More importantly, the ruling class has prepared and fueled a surveillance state designed to monitor the national temperature and predict trouble-spots – but not to anticipate growth or decline, health or safety, to satisfy emerging needs of Americans, or even to predict and prepare for the American future. The surveillance state is entirely, and always, focused on the survival of the state, amidst a diverse and growing set of enemies, foreign and domestic.

We already have a vivid ongoing example of what eternal subsidies to a ruling class, government rejection of natural rights and popular adoration of state-granted permissions posing as “the law,” and no Constitution does to an imperial government – that of Israel. After three years of a largely one-sided war against Hamas, the conflict has evolved beyond a planned genocide for land and gas fields, into impoverishment and national Israeli panic. The top Israeli military commander just issued orders to kill Gazan children who dare to fly kites. The IDF will follow that order, much as the many militarized and policing departments of the federal government will do when similar orders are given here at home.

Many of us are just beginning to imagine the coming state of play in the US. The dollar desperados and thieves in and around Washington have been thinking about it for decades.

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There is a price for genocide: in lives, dead and dying children and whole generations ended, the mass demolition of buildings great and small, elimination of historic sites and newly constructed apartments, the crushed landscape, water and plumbing systems below the horizon and wasted industry and unrecoverable agricultural lands above it. We’ve watched it in Gaza for nearly three years, it’s live in Lebanon now, and growing in the West Bank. Genocide is paid for in non-standard debt, non-transferrable mortgages, bringing not only moral bankruptcy, but financial as well.

The US Government – yoked to the Israeli thugacracy for 70 years – uses a different kind of appraiser; a niche service provider no American would hire, and no 21^st century American would understand. Our appraisers share with us the greatest value for our homes, businesses, lands and human potential: for the US Government and Israel, the appraiser’s eye seeks only vacant rubble, poisoned land, leveled hills and artificial berms, life vaporized and skeletons ground to dust.

It should have been so easy. Instead of decades of slow starvation and economic strangulation punctuated by air and tank assaults to “mow the grass” in Gaza, Israel would “save money” by ending Gaza as a Palestinian enclave and open air concentration camp by murdering all the people in one operation. October 7^th, 2023 as Charlie Kirk and a billion other people on the planet suspected at the time, was a calculated arrangement, a false flag operation, to create a pretense of Hamas viciousness so egregious that the population would back a full blown war – in this case a carefully engineered genocide of an occupied people, a land steal as permanent solution to a security problem that strangely, continues to mystify most Israelis and their Washingtonian vassals.

While the rapes and beheadings conducted on the fly by Hamas on hang gliders were Israeli fantasy, the air attacks of the IDF on their own people were unfortunately not. This operational cost, alongside that of Netanyahu’s purposeful failure to retrieve the Israeli prisoners of war, are just a small part of the war ignited on October 7th.

Israel is awakening to the budgetary and security cost of the genocide. Gaza operations alone over the past three years consumed over $136 billion, adding $130 billion to the Israel national debt. For perspective, for 55 years (between 1970 and 2025) the Israeli government spent an average of $39 billion a year. This average shockingly includes the first 18 months of Gaza genocide expenses as well as the many wars since 1970 – the Yom Kippur War (1973), war with Lebanon (1971 to 2000), first and second Intifadas (1987-1993 and 2000-2005), Israel-Hezbollah War (2006), wars on Gaza in 2008, 2012, and 2014, and bombing campaigns against Lebanon, Syria and Iran in 2024 and 2025. It includes the cost of unending settlement expansion, and general defense.

Against this backdrop of state spending, the 2025 budget was nearly four times above average, at over $150 billion. The cost of never-ending war does fall on Israelis despite massive US taxpayer gifts to Israel of $21.7 billion in military aid since October 7^th, 2023, and US local governments and pensions buying nearly $2 billion in Israeli state bonds. Understandably, budget issues and the cost of genocide are topics of debate in the ongoing campaigns to control the Knesset.

Are there ways to save money and still erase the Gazans, occupy South Lebanon and destroy the West Bank? This is the big question for the Israeli government, and one they are trying hard to answer. For example, what is the cost of starving them and leaving them unsheltered and unaided for the third winter in a row? Almost 18 months ago, Dr Marc Perlmutter observed how this works: “Leaving Gaza, [Perlmutter] ...saw a line of aid trucks stretching roughly 31 miles, eight abreast, with food rotting inside as Israel blocked them from entering...That is enough to surround Gaza three to five times with trucks of supplies that Israel was not letting in.”

31 miles of aid trucks, 8 trucks wide, held back from entering Gaza. Economic blockades, while acts of war, can be cost effective if the focus of the blockade is limited and geographically controllable – and no one fights back or evades. Israel’s long blockage of food and supplies into Gaza is well established, for decades, and while murderous and immoral, siege warfare, aka war of attrition, often works until it is broken, collapses, or the target of the siege gives up.

Israel has preferred wars of attrition, from a position of relative wealth, unquestioned aid from the United States and Britain, and a well-developed war footing. Preferring, however, is not the same as preparing: Israel has drained its ammunition, equipment, defensive capability and its soldiers with apparently little forethought. Netanyahu’s platform of “genocide everywhere” is damaged goods. Increasingly, his coalition is becoming the face of Israeli failure, and everyone, from the neighbors to the Israeli taxpayers, seems to agree.

The debt is real. The murderous destruction of Gaza, and now southern Lebanon, is real, and the costs to maintain that destruction, prevent recovery – or outlandishly, rebuild as an Israeli paradise, is unimaginable. Oxfam puts forth a rebuilding cost at $71 Billion with Gazans included, which clearly defeats the purpose of the genocide. More honestly, the Trump Gaza Riviera plan, envisioning Gazans emigrated, dead, or in concentration camps to be used for cheap labor, will cost $100 Billion, with a Nazi-esque note that each Gazan (man, woman or child) who leaves (or dies) saves the US and Israel another $23 million.

Each luxury trip to Washington by Netanyahu funded by 17 dead Gazans. How long can this math work?

$23 million per snuffed civilian may help us understand the persistent shooting and bombing of noncombatants and children by IDF soldiers and US contractors, beyond sheer psychopathy and perversion.

“Saving $23 million” per corpse is no investment plan. But it is eerily similar to the rhetoric we hear from our global overlords, regarding useless eaters. Clearly, the unsound math of mass death is of interest to certain sectors of society.

Israel’s example reveals it is not so cheap and easy to destroy life and land. Regardless of the level of scientific objectivity and mathematical calculations exercised to guarantee success, the proof is in the pudding. Israel’s security, economy and military is weaker than ever before, its dependence on America greater, and its prospects for peace massively diminished. Having gambled its future on ever-expanding genocide, and working up a lather in the language of civilizational destruction – theirs and that of their enemies – Zionist Israel is in a pickle.

The Israeli project in Palestine is failing before our eyes. Animalistic greed and panic has driven Israel into a box canyon, and there is no way out. Israelis have been contaminated spiritually and intellectually by their past choices, by generations of carefully cultivated racism and arrogance, and they are no longer able to live beside, or with, anyone in the region.

It is for this reason I expect that Israel will reformulate itself, and move on to more receptive climates in Patagonia and Peru, in Canada and the US, leaving a smaller population of financially insolvent tribalists to make their last stand in Palestine, and to eventually live as a tiny despicable minority under a Palestinian state.

The open investment in death, and the permanent intentional destruction of the land and environment by a tiny population of politically divided and deranged Israelis conveys to many observers that Israelis, 75% of whom are not Semitic, and 66% are allergic to olive trees, really don’t intend to stay. For now, they behave like dogs in mangers, because they can. Shitting where you eat is not a national security strategy, and Israel’s state weapon of genocide looks more and more like a boomerang.

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Polymarket predicts Democrats taking both houses of Congress this November. Instead of a more typical election year focus on hearth and home, economy and peace, Trump devotedly pursues deep state continuity and endless war. His administration is rallying what is left of our military to vainly extend the life of a dying petrodollar. Trump’s Israel obsession, and Israel’s amoral maximalism, is producing global chaos designed to advance Israel’s interests as it consumes American bone and sinew, much as the US is consuming Ukraine’s in the proxy war with Russia.

As Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qadhafi found out last century, one must never reject the US dollar. Washington is the heart and soul of 21^st century colonialism, enforcing its will militarily, technologically and economically around the world. It interferes in elections, even selecting the leaders of dozens of nations, including this ridiculous example of downward directed global democracy.

The Trump presidency is drowning, but not in a valiant struggle against the deep state in the DC swamp. Instead, it is choking on its own grift, overwhelmed by outlandish lies and ever shifting “objectives,” and deluged with fear at the highest levels. The lies and the grift are well accepted by Americans and not unique to this administration. But we are noticing the institutional fear seeping from the swamp, from the administration, from the deep state.

The US debt clock is nearing $40 trillion, and the great Dave Collum has a small prize for whomever gets the screen shot of a spectacular $40,000,000,000,000 rollover. Trump’s tariffs were supposed to close deficits and make American industry stronger, but as real economists predicted, Trump’s random, reactionary and punitive tariffs did nothing to address the trade balance, and funneled even more taxpayer dollars into government coffers. The Tax Policy Center’s evaluation of tariff costs shows regressive tax effects, extracting more earnings from lower tier taxpayers than those in higher brackets.

If war is the bulk of the US economy, Trump is certainly pimping the machine, but a dollar spent on the military industrial complex is both unauditable, and ineffective in creating significant jobs or national industrial capacity. Look no further than this broad ranging discussion between Danny Davis and Larry Johnson on what the MIC has done to our capabilities. An example of what the MIC does best is General Dynamics’ Mesquite, Texas ammo plant dumpster fire. For the past 70 years we have experienced and critiqued similar design, production or acquisition disasters that broke taxpayer backs, provided no measurable defense advantage, and yet were remarkably profitable to the MIC. The list grows by the minute, with the 2026 saga of the USS Gerald Ford, or the Littoral Combat Ship, or the overheating, non-stealthy, struggling to reach a 25% FMC rate, enormously expensive F-35, using 2000’s technology.

In his dotage, Donald Trump demonstrates his own late stage executive madness, with an utterly mind-blowing pretense of knowledge. When confronted with man and machine literally falling apart on the USS Abe Lincoln, he says, “Nine months at sea isn’t long enough!” China has already mastered electromagnetic catapult systems using direct current instead of alternating current, and holds hundreds of catapult patents. The All-Knowing Trump, confronted with the failing and very expensive electromagnetic catapult system on the new USS Gerald Ford, demands – as a king might call for a favorite dish at a banquet – a return to steam, just like mommy used to make it.

The unification of the presidency and the state, the rise of an executive state, the soft totalitarianism of a permanent bureaucracy, whatever you want to call it, has today fully subsumed the presidency and converted this important part of the Constitutional “balance of power” into little more than a mole on the face of unsentient statism. We are transfixed by our uniquely ineffectual presidency, and cannot take our eyes off it.

Trump’s presidency, like the mole on the face of the “Mole” in Austin Powers’ Goldmember, focuses our gaze and disrupts our understanding of the real issues of war and the state, a coming US governmental bankruptcy, accelerating wealth transfer from the people to political lackeys, oligarchies, and bureaucracies and the collateralization of everything.

We demand “No Kings” and deplore the unitary executive, and this makes some sense. Yet staring at the unbelievable and hypnotic presidential drama in DC, we are witnessing in real time – not the metastasizing emperor or all powerful don – but the disappearing presidency. How easy it was for Trump, like Obama before him, to promise they would be a savior, a wise and understanding father figure, to gain the popular blessing and to stimulate hope. They ran for an office that does not actually exist anymore, and one that may be filled by the most amoral and incompetent among us to a never-ending applause track.

Trump’s recent misadventure out of Ankara illustrates the insignificance of Trump’s presidency amidst his own personal cowardice and moral vacancy, and the fake world he inhabits. Phil Giraldi sums it up, and Trump’s own explanation is that he, the most powerful man in the world, listens to whoever scares him the most that day, and follows without question the instructions of the corrupt cops who guard him, and may have tried to kill him previously. Yet he obeys without question, a cardboard man who – if he truly believed the false threat against him – would have calculatedly watched most of his staff, several cabinet members, media and crew murdered in midair, without the decency of a maggot, without warning his friends, or giving them the option to follow his frightened and idiotic example.

None of this is to say any of his recent predecessors – or competitors for the office – would have done anything even remotely differently. Clinton seeking a diversion from a civil suit/pending impeachment for taking advantage of his position with a youthful female employee (or being seduced by a Mossad agent – it really doesn’t matter) launched the “Monica Missiles,” a fresh and unwarranted attack on Iraq in 1998, spending billions of dollars, pointlessly adding to the despair of Iraqis, creating more contempt for the US government. Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney or John McCain, Biden and Harris – who can imagine more venal candidates for this fading appendage of the Constitution?

The executive branch is itself massive, outweighing the other two branches of the republic – but it isn’t led or controlled by an elected president. That office is disappearing apace, as we watch its aging and confused occupant struggle to understand why he’s losing his sanity.

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DC consistently does the easy thing, choosing immediate pleasantries over its peasants, preferring to borrow for wars and nice drapes over building for the next generation. Your willing sacrifice to the state is a precious curiosity, because the state itself sacrifices nothing and has no concept of the greater good.

As Kim Dotcom recently explained to Tucker Carlson, we have a government that spies, lies, propagandizes its population, constantly seeks to enrich itself, and is wasting its last breath fighting a losing battle to retain the label of global superpower while being crushed by $40 Trillion of unpayable debt. When that house of cards falls down, the whole world with be harmed, and what’s worse, the chance of the US using a nuclear weapon in lieu of paying back debt or preventing its collection is far higher than many people assume.

How we might mitigate a sudden or violent collapse of the empire, preserve what we value, reshape a new government, and survive the state? Are these things even possible, given this state of imperial decline? Probably not. In the book Deep Survival, Laurence Gonzales examines real world survival situations and tries to make sense of who lives and who dies. A key factor for survival is recognizing early on that you are in a situation where you are not going to be rescued, and you are going to die. Accepting and understanding reality somehow quiets the panic and sets the stage for rational, as well as experimental, thinking. Responsibility is owned, blame is forgotten, and the survivor is able to strategize effectively and solve the problems at hand.

Gonzales’ exploration of who lives, who dies and why is revealing and useful. However, if there is time or desire to reforge a republic from the ravages of empire, if we are graced with a controlled landing, given what we have to work with – here’s three things we might do now:

Repeal the 17^th Amendment. Why? Congressman Keith Self representing the Texas 3^rd District offers a resolution to just that, to ensure Senators speak for their states, not the highest bidder in Washington, which is usually AIPAC, Big Pharma or the MIC. We’ve repealed one bad Constitutional Amendment before, when Prohibition ended. The state’s interest in more tax revenue as well as a sharp national sense of hypocrisy both played a part in prohibitions repeal. Ken Burns points out that the 18^th Amendment prohibiting the alcohol trade was the only one that limited our liberty rather than expanded it. Not so fast, Ken! Given the outcome of the 17^th Amendment – extreme federal debt borrowed on the various states’ assets and the enormous level of hypocrisy at the federal level – we could do worse than another repeal of a Progressive Era amendment. Today, Senators serve long past competency – and in the case of Senator McConnell, past death – finally expiring in office. This has impinged on our rights to representation. The 17^th Amendment has limited our liberty to choose, and more than that, denied states their lawful Constitutional advocate and voice in Washington. We have only to look at the sudden death of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a war whore of the finest kind, and the quick Presidential phone call to the SC Governor requesting that Mr. McMaster appoint Lindsey’s sister to the Senate. There is no federalism where the legislative branch is castrated, severed from its natural source of testosterone and raw courage. Repeal the 17^th – states may again choose their two Senate voices, and ensure that they serve 50 capitols, and 50 unique sets of interests rather than genuflect to the whims of Washington.

Rarely Assemble the Congress. The Constitution requires the Congress assemble on the first Monday of December, once annually. While we the people have become accustomed to thinking that the US Congress “does the work of the people,” nothing could be further from the truth. Most of its constitutional duties relate to oversight of the executive branch in peace and war, and confirming treaties. The last time the Congress declared war was on 8 December 1941, when requested by FDR after the executive branch had done everything possible to invite a Japanese attack. That trick worked once, and the Congress has yet to declare another war, even as the US has engaged in nonstop war and military intervention ever since. The US habitually violates its agreements, and dishonors its treaties. What is left for the Senate, and the House to do, but rubber stamp executive pet programs, and those of major lobbies and funders? Instead of complaining that the Congress takes too many recesses and breaks, we should applaud them, and demand our Congressmen and women spend 90% of their time in their districts, and our Senators return to their state capitols – in both cases to get to know their real bosses. One consequence will be the development of regional – not party – alliances as neighboring states face similar challenges, and have similar opportunities. Another will be the difficulty for DC based lobbyists to effectively exercise our representatives, compromise them, or efficiently bribe them. Instead, we the people will find a more level playing field, and can more easily touch those we have elected, and assess their true value to us. Seeing closeup the sheer incompetence and fraud afflicting most of our elected class will inspire their betters to challenge them, directly on issues, and also via election.

Become Part of the Decentralizing Universe. Catherine Austin Fitts has an interesting new post where she defines two types of people by where they are intellectually, morally and economically. The Centralizing Universe is the state, corrupting because it has to be to remain in control, to consume ever more resources. Most of us unfortunately have at least one foot in this “CU.” On the other hand, the Decentralizing Universe consists of those “embracing individual freedom and economic activities that are fundamentally productive. Ideally, they have found a way to support themselves independent of large corporations, governments, and foundations.” It sounds simple, and good, and positive and optimistic and it is all these things. It is also an alliance, an intellectual militia, a creative economic machine, and a deep well of courage from which all may drink. Let us all quietly stand apart from the government kudzu, and help slash the vines holding our friends and neighbors hostage and fearful. Lean into the DU in a thousand ways. We are not fleeing empire, but nimbly avoiding its fallout as we build new community.

We sometimes see highway signs for “Fallen Rock” and “Falling Rock.” Technically these are two different things, and we are advised to avoid both. Our collapsing empire offers us the same signs, and we must travel accordingly. What links the three suggestions above is a “moving away” from the center of state power, and the establishment of new kinds of commonality that are not directed, leveraged, or controlled by the state.

A few folks we know have the same idea. If nothing else, we ought to step up our mental game for what is coming. Confucius explained “The beginning of wisdom is the ability to call things by their right names.” The state has proven incapable of leading us wisely, and our growing recognition of that cold fact is amazingly liberating.

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Trump’s war against Iran, started for Israel and funded by the American people without the slightest bit of Congressional debate or constitutional adherence, has been lost.

Initiating this war, designed by neoconservatives and Israeli talking heads, conducted by a group of real estate bros and a former FOXNews commentator, and executed by not-the-good-looking-actor Bradley Cooper was Trump’s peculiar genius, his 5D chess. He knows exactly who to blame, fire, and throw under the bus. Maybe that’s how he “planned” it (wink, wink).

Allow me to speak directly. Sir, just between us, you most certainly won the presidency all three times. Winning is what you do.

This Iran thing is another situation, and as you recognized 24 hours too late, that MOU you signed at Versailles made the golden palace home to not one, but two famous surrenders.

It should have ended the war, and opened the strait, but that 9^th (or is it the tenth?) peace you made was sabotaged by the same political class who opposed you in 2016 and 2020 and grudgingly went along with you in 2024. Not the democrats, but the uniparty DC neocons that persist like some kind of horrible skin disease. Oh, and I’m sorry about Lindsey, but getting his sister to stand in and run, again, genius, Mr. President.

You threw everything we had against Iran, and now the only real battle is between General Dan Caine and Admiral Brad Cooper. While they debate over silly things like logistics, inventory, American loss of life, and whether US fighting capacity is more strategically lacking, or more tactically deficient, you are right to be bored with this war.

Bibi plays a role and you’ve noticed he’s a loser in the eyes of the world, and in his own country. He might win re-election in Israel, but that might also break Israeli politics and society apart. His own military (soon to be fused with the Pentagon) is seeing their tactics foiled and their strategies ridiculed. And after 17 of our Gulf region military bases were rendered partially or fully INOP drove us to concentrate forces in Israel, he had the gall to complain about it. Wasn’t this war his idea?

So, the roadmap for you, Mr. President, entails declaring victory, kind of like “W” did May 1^st, 2003 from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, except bigger! The 70% of Americans who oppose this war will celebrate with you! This is MAGA, and you promised, and that’s the way I would present this. I promised and I delivered.

However, this is a big deal for Americans, as the costs have been high, excepting your own personal and family investments, and those of your closest 1000 friends. The American people will want to see some heads roll, and you are just the man to roll them.

You seem to be upholding the robo-signed absolution of Dr Fauci for his many COVID crimes, which kind of makes people think you lied about wanting to punish rogue career government employees and CIA cutouts, and drain the swamp, and well, everything. No worries though. This off ramp for the Iran War delivers things the MAGA crowd and the TDS-afflicted will both cheer, in five easy steps:

Step 1: Direct Admiral Cooper to stand down, gather his notes, and come see you. When he does, take his notes and fire him. Ask Raisin’ Cain who he suggests as his replacement, and tell him to slow walk it. You won’t be needing CENTCOM for much longer.

Step 2: SoW Pete Hegseth, quintessential silk purse from a pig’s ear, will come with Cooper, and you know what to say. Bridge Colby can hold down the fort – by no means allow Steve Feinberg to assume the Secretary position: it would defeat the purpose of clearing the air with the American public that this failed war with Iran was all about fluffing the MIC, kneeling to Israel, and enriching your New York investor and tech friends. At least with Bridge you can get back to the whole China first, Russia second, or was it vice versa? I can never remember. But it’s not happening now anyway because we shot our wad in West Asia. Sorry sir, you know what I mean.

Step 3: When you explain all of this to the American people, it’s important to cast blame far and wide, and to let them know you were trying to do the work of the people from deep within a bubble of lies. But that’s over now, thus the firings and the new direction. In this address, you will share with the American people that you made a personal call to Mojtaba Al Khamenei and he said you were a great and honorable man (it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t use a phone because the Israelis and CENTCOM are both still trying to assassinate him, or that he would never say that). Americans will eat it up, because we want this war over. Just think about how it was with COVID lockdowns and six feet spacing and four year olds wearing masks so they wouldn’t kill Grandma. It’s the same with ending this war, except instead of “ending” COVID with government cover-ups, corruption, profiteering, and mass murder, ending our war with Iran is actually about trying to do the right thing. Trust me, they’ll buy anything.

Step 4: You need a plan for neocon whining, military industrial complex hedging and nervousness, and Israeli threats against your life and the lives of your family members. Whispers of peace infuriate them, so this will drive them bat-shit crazy. Here’s the moment to use the F word freely, followed by “you” and “off.” It’s a legitimate call, in the name of US sovereignty and the sovereignty of the US taxpayer who has been abused and is now left holding the bag for a wasted and unworkable military ecosystem, and the coming global depression.

Step 5: Set up three Independent Presidential commissions for a golden American future. They are:

The Forty Years of American Imperial War and How it Ended in 2026 Presidential Commission

Presidential Commission on What a True US Defense Capability Looks Like, and How Can We Have It for Under $500M a Year Starting Now

Presidential Commission on the Executive Branch Supernova: Can It be Safely Reversed, and Would the US Constitution Be Helpful?

These Commissions, like most Presidential Commissions, have the outcomes devised before the very first meeting, as you can deduce from the titles. Allow the agencies and thinktanks most impacted and “most expert” to recommend Commission members, and then use those lists as your Definitely Do Not Call list. Instead, look to some of the independent think tanks and institutes and publications that have already done great work on these topics. When choosing military members, dig down to the senior NCOs and the Field Grade level. Colonel MacGregor, a former hand of yours, would be of excellent service here. Former Command USAF Chief Master Sergeant Dennis Fritz would be a great commission member. Former Marine Brian Berletic and Army LTC Daniel Davis would also add value. I’m not sure we need billionaires on these commissions, at least not ones who made their billions via federal contracts.

The aims of these three commissions are revolutionary, and the country needs your revolutionariness now, Mr President. The spectacular loss experienced by the US in West Asia this year is a culmination of many decades of convoluted elite-driven and neo-colonial imperial objectives posing as the spread of democracy – you could say the deep state is to blame. You know, like you did when you were campaigning. This is not your loss, that’s on previous presidents! It is, however, your opportunity to be remembered as the greatest of them all.

Well, sir, if you take my advice you get to publicly humiliate a whole lot of people in DC and you will get your mojo back. As you have long suspected, you’re still going to hell, but you’ll see many friends there, and I think this project of yours, if you do it right, will guarantee the peace-hating Devil gives you the top spot. As always, you deserve it!

Long ago, great Senators existed. Resolute and accountable, they represented their governors and state legislatures and asserted those interests in Washington. They aspired to conduct themselves as statesmen; we the people expected statesmanship. We the people also hoped they would be better than we could be, while we agreed with the fundamental truth of Colonel Ludlow in Legends of the Fall.

No longer. A regal Senate with a bold populist House of Representatives do not exist. What we call Senate and House do not make federal law, nor do they perform the small number of defined duties described in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. The making of law has become the work of lobbyists and the regulatory bureaucracy, while other Constitutional duties have become entirely too frightening to even consider, much less perform. The hydra-headed executive branch has become the permanent ruler, the center of state power, poisonous and deadly. The Senate would need 100 Hercules to behead the beast, and the House 500 loyal and brave nephews to cauterize the wounds to prevent two more heads from emerging from every wound.

The United States has been in a constant state of Congressionally-undeclared war for over 60 years, war that enriches those connected to imperial policies and resources, and is paid for by lives wasted, currency debased, morals eroded, and our economy perpetually unbalanced, warped, and sclerotic. Election after election, voters support the candidate they see as less likely to take us to war and destruction, and in our repeated disappointment, we too become economically unbalanced, morally warped and politically sclerotic.

This is what Elon Musk was talking about a year ago, when he said government is unfixable. This is what Tom Woods was talking about when he quipped “No matter who you vote for, you get John McCain.” Continuity of government is not a disaster plan, it’s the only plan. Our role in this plan is both unrepublican and undemocratic: it is to obey, to fund, and to die for the state.

Lindsey Graham was aggressive and brave when far from the battlefield, obsequious and submissive to Benjamin Netanyahu as he carried the water for a foreign nation and the traitorous military industrial complex. As noted by Jack Hunter, writing in Responsible Statecraft, South Carolina has done far better in its recent past, recalling Graham’s predecessor Senator Fritz Hollings;

After his retirement, Hollings contended that the Iraq war killed more people than the U.S. supposedly tried to liberate, creating more terrorists and helping to lionize al-Qaeda leader and 9/11 architect Osama Bin Laden in parts of the Middle East.

Hollings’ controversial column suggesting the U.S. fought in Iraq for Israel’s security was published on May 10, 2004. He was inevitably, and swiftly, accused of anti-semitism. He did not back down.

The executive branch hydra moved immediately to ensure that South Carolina voters will not deliver a better advocate. Instead, with a phone call to the governor, and a quick, unholy Trump endorsement, Lindsey’s sister is flattered to be asked to serve the [executive] state. Her qualifications are dubious, but her tribe is solid.

Not one Hercules is allowed, as we saw with the $30 million dollar House Primary race to unseat Thomas Massie. The “winner” was a guy who dodged every debate, and promised to bring back the draft to the good people of northeastern Kentucky. His name is unimportant; it is his abject inability to represent the peaceful and independent principles of the 4^th District that matters.

Upon Graham’s sudden death at 71, the nation does not grieve. Graham’s service was not to the nation, but to empire, war, and the dark arts of politics. In 2026, a gay Republican is not subject to blackmail, nor held in ridicule. Log Cabin Republicans proudly recall and celebrate the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, based on Lincoln’s well-advertised philosophy of liberty and equality, and his intense friendships. A inverted valuation of privacy has today normalized the sexual affairs – and the financial profiteering – of elected officials. Those seeking to leverage a politician today must find – or manufacture – more frightening crimes like rape, pedophilia and manslaughter. Luckily for them, this is apparently not difficult.

The ceremonies in Washington for Graham were both solemn and cheerful. The deep state enters the Washington National Cathedral as if it owns the place, confident in continuity. It does, and it is.

A state funeral can demonstrate transition, and mark a public loss. It can unify a nation, and mobilize them, as we saw recently with in Iran and around the world, as the religious leader of Iran, and global Shia Islam, was finally laid to rest after the US government assassinated him five months ago. It can also demonstrate the coalescence and the creed of a state system that is disconnected from its people, and its laws. The hydra was captured in video at Graham’s funeral, as Netanyahu forcefully issued his latest orders to Rubio and Hegseth.

Elections will not save the United States, only the ending of executive-directed and imperially profitable wars and the parasitic crony class that feeds off the state, ourselves, and our children. The state is busy adopting the murderous and deceitful practices of our “best” ally; perhaps we could follow in the recent footsteps of some members of the IDF, as they conducted a small mass defection from the notorious Israeli prison in Sde Teiman.

To bury what ails the United States requires understanding, then courage, and only then, a Herculean American effort to kill the hydra and cauterize its thousand sprouting heads. If we the people evaluate what killing the hydra requires, as one in three members of our founding generation did, and decide to do our individual parts toward that end, we just might be able to have a state funeral worth attending.

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The US President recently wasted a half hour of national airtime struggling through his complaints about the voting system that delivers our Senators, Congressmen, governors and mayors. He might have spoken of his efforts to create a peaceful off-ramp for Washington’s Middle East obsession, including his widely unpopular advocacy for Israel’s genocidaires and warmongers. Instead he introduced another war at home, against the states, and in particular their Constitutional role to manage state elections, and for that matter, to name their substitute Senators and to allocate their presidential electors.

Some viewers may have put off by Trump’s direct lies regarding the health of the US economy; others by his pointed disregard for the cost of and damage done by his repeated illegal wars on Iran, extended proxy war in Ukraine, regime changes, and attempted regime changes via electoral manipulation. The Macro Butler summed it up perfectly, as he always does,

the Manipulator-in-Chief devoted 25 minutes to relitigating the 2020 election, stoking doubts about the upcoming midterms, and presenting declassified intelligence reports so heavily redacted, years old, and evidentially thin that the most damning claim about noncitizen voters arrived as a one-page press release with no underlying evidence.

Who gets to vote is a state issue, and a relatively modern one. If states themselves cannot be accountable to their own populations, for their own benefit, what chance does the whole US population have when the feds run everything and the control grid is mature? Is Trump proposing a national database of voters, and federal control over state elections for “better representation” for the MAGA crowd? Or is it for easier manipulation and data control, like the kind the CIA and USAID has done in overseas elections for decades?

Trump seems to think his personal credibility shares the qualities he assumes of his Patriot PAC-3 interceptors, Tomahawks, US manufactured drones, and US soldiers and Marines: unlimited and invincible. He seems to be wasting all of these assets in a way that makes a citizen wonder what Trump’s clown-like role really is, vis a vis the deep state.

Whether his problem is a lack of information, his inability to logically process the information he is exposed to, or a personality or age-related defect related to his narcissism may be debated. Most people recognize that US presidents selected or elected since 1963 are truly captured elements of the deep state, a neocolonial entity that requires war and resource confiscation abroad – and at home – to sustain itself. Targets and regions ripe for pillage are increasingly in short supply, running dry, and fighting back. Individuals, groups, nations, and regions opposed to the “deep state” and its theft, murder, and destruction of markets, see Washington, and her affiliates and associated Ponzi schemers throughout the world, as not only an enemy, but as an existential enemy. The war against this state is not only a war of tactics and strategies, but a spiritual and moral war.

43 million Iranians and others around the region and the world massed for the final farewell to Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenai. They, and the millions more who wished to be there, all understood their leader was assassinated, along with members of his family and thousands of other Iranians, by the US government and its ally, proxy and controller state of Israel. For Iranians, and most of the world, actions speak louder than words, and this seems to be a lesson Trump in particular has failed to grasp.

Trump, alerted the nation this week that elections are vulnerable, yet ignored US vulnerabilities in the oil and sovereignty wars he has initiated. He didn’t speak of America’s flailing and collapsing empire, or the US destruction of global demand that started with Trump’s tariff-driven approach to American autarky and is being expedited by US actions in and around the Strait of Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb, and beyond.

Why would Trump want to drive prices up for oil, fertilizer, helium and other commodities, beyond the strategic placement of Monday morning shorts? Part of the answer may be found in the pattern of Trump’s military “assisted” CIA coup in Caracas, and his demanded emplacement of Iraq’s latest prime minister. These and other deep state projects all follow the same game plan. Ask the Ukrainians.

In the case of Iraq, Executive Order 13303 on May 22^nd, 2003, confiscated all Iraq oil revenue, and placed it in a US-controlled account at the Federal Reserve. Every subsequent President has renewed this order, for no other reason than to steal from Iraq, and leverage its government. Iraq oil sales are paid to the US, and later a politically managed portion of that revenue is returned to the Iraqi government to prop up Baghdad, and ensure US controls the political corruption. This process played out recently when the USG directed that al-Zaidi be named prime minister by the Iraqi parliament as “... al-Maliki … originally nominated by the framework in January… faced strong opposition from President Donald Trump, who threatened to cut off US support for Iraq if he returned to office.” Well – Trump didn’t just threaten to cut off support. It was not until two weeks ago, after the US pick was sworn in, did the US release months of withheld oil revenues from NY. That said, al-Zaidi is really, really, really, ridiculously good-looking, according to Trump.

In Caracas, the same operation is in play, this time via Trump’s Executive Order 14737 of January 9^th, 2026, entitled “Safeguarding Venezuelan Oil Revenue for the Good of the American And Venezuelan People” and well explained here. The production revenue and all major decisions regarding the largest oil fields in the world, is in US hands, and in a US government funds account.

These accomplishments, and the US-encouraged departure of the UAE from OPEC may extend the usable life of the US dollar, and ameliorate some of the $40 Trillion in unpayable current debt and the coming explosion of US entitlement debt pushing past an unthinkable $250 Trillion. Establishing a new US-owned “OPEC” to back US debt by controlling the production decisions and resources of six and maybe seven (if you count Libya) significant oil producers satisfies a deep state need – one increasingly exposed by global decentralization and the multipolar world.

Because the deep state gets what it needs, though war and corruption, and increasing centralized control of America and her lackeys, Trump’s personal credibility is just not a factor. Like a warm-up band, his performance may set the tone, or it may flop, but either way the main attraction will deliver. What the deep state delivers is the exercise of military and other coercive power, and the leverage of the discredited world of US-led international agreements and the “rules-based order.”

An example of this is the use of international organizations to aid deep state wars. UN manipulation by the US is well known: attacks on the ICC are ramping up; use of non-political agencies like the International Maritime Organization to interfere with Oman; and US pressure on various internet security certificate authorities to silence Iranian news and communications are only a few examples.

It’s not Trump’s “credibility” nor Trump’s constant falsehoods that the deep state requires. The deep state requires simply that he appear to be lighting fires and putting them out frenetically enough so that Americans lose sight of what is real, what is fake, what is moral and what is immoral, what is good for the American people, and what is good for the deep state.

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