Author: Redactor

“We’ve got major fiscal problems and a completely unsustainable fiscal trajectory. I haven’t heard anyone, Democrat or Republican, witness or member, that [sic] doesn’t accept that fact,” Reason magazine quotes Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), chairman of the House Budget Committee. “We won’t know when the dominoes fall on us in a sovereign debt crisis, it’s going to be difficult to put the pieces back together and maintain our global leadership.”

Eric Boehm, the Reason author, relays the gist of last week’s committee hearing. He also acknowledges the limits of the committee’s wherewithal: “While there is little disagreement about the seriousness of America’s fiscal problems, the committee hearing also inadvertently highlighted the immense difficulty of solving them.”

Which is why many people have yearned for something like a constitutional balanced budget amendment:

Of course, lawmakers don’t need a constitutional constraint to prevent them from borrowing too much. They could simply pass a budget that doesn’t depend on trillions of dollars in annual borrowing.

Yes, yes, it’s okay to laugh. But that is the thing that must happen. 

Which brings us to DOGE, the “Department of Government Efficiency,” Trump’s brain trust on reducing government spending, headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Which Ron Paul has advised.

And now, so has David Stockman.

In a long piece on Substack, the former Reagan era budget bulldog offers “Memo To Musk & Ramaswamy: How To Cut $2 Trillion of Fat, Muscle And Bone—The Complete Plan.” It’s comprehensive and daring, but we’ll quote only the setup, where Stockman paints the picture of the challenge America faces:

On Thursday, Paul Jacob addressed the wave of UFOs over the North American east coast and elsewhere, mostly thinking of them as drones. At that point, ufologists had not taken up the story in a big way, and it was local and national news sources that had been covering the story.

But UFO historians, enthusiasts, and theorizers have discussed them, to some extent, both before and since. On her “Earthfiles” channel, on Wednesday, Linda Moulton Howe chatted with a very speculative Whitley “Communion” Strieber about the issue. And on Friday, Richard Dolan, author of a multi-volume history, UFOs and the National Security State: Chronology of a Coverup, looked at the subject with some care:

Meanwhile, the fascinating YouTube channel “Earth Watchman” by “MrMBB333” presented extended plane-controller conversations about truly outré UFOs over Oregon. These are not propeller-driven drones, but classic “woo-woo” UFOs. The New York Post covers this story too:

“You are cleared to maneuver as necessary left and right to avoid the UFO out there.”

The LifeFlight pilot, 37-year-old Joe Buley, told KGW he and two medics onboard the fixed-wing aircraft reported flying from Aurora, Colorado, to North Bend, Washington, when they saw the orange lights.

“The biggest thing that stood out was it was changing direction. Usually, things don’t change directions unless it’s an aircraft,” Buley told KGW Thursday.

So the subject just gets stranger and stranger. While much of the east-coast phenomena seems drone-like, if breathtakingly advanced, simultaneous encounters elsewhere suggest more traditional “alien” interpretations.

An interesting part of the human reaction was noted by Mr. Dolan: “You get a real local-national divide here.” The federal level is not helping locals deal with what looks like an invasion of sorts.

Meanwhile, The New York Times dutifully feeds readers the official nothing-to-see-here-folks line:

Federal authorities investigating the sightings have provided few answers about what the objects are or their origin, leaving residents unsettled and local leaders frustrated.

U.S. officials on Thursday said that they had been unable to corroborate the reported drone sightings, and suggested that many of the objects might in fact be manned aircraft, such as airplanes or helicopters.

That latter suggestion from officials seems extremely dubious regarding the New Jersey sightings, and preposterous regarding the “above Oregon” ones — though the debunking interpretations of those Oregon encounters finger Starlink satellites, no matter how dissonant that explanation is with the pilots’ descriptions of maneuverings.

The east-coast/west-coast differences have not been lost on the Post, which mentions the breadth of speculation, as well:

The strange sightings on the West Coast come as residents in New Jersey have been reporting mysterious drones hovering over their skies — with no explanation offered from White House officials.

“They don’t change directions. If they do, not rapidly. Not at this rate of speed,” [Buley] told KGW.

Speculation over the origin of the drones ranges from the US military testing out new, secret technology to an Iranian “mothership” sitting in the ocean deploying the objects over the Garden State.

NOTE: UFO illustration at top is not representative of any recent report, is placed there for aesthetic (?) reasons alone.