It’s hard to know where to start. House Republicans are moving towards impeaching President Biden for something-or-other, but they don’t seem to be moving towards funding the government, which looks increasingly likely to shut down in two weeks. The Justice Department indicted Hunter Biden, but apparently that just proves that it’s not independent, because Republicans hold that it’s not indicting Hunter for the right things — the things that implicate his father, and which they have no evidence to support.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is back in office, having escaped his impeachment trial without being removed. NBC gave Trump a major platform to spew his lies, and demonstrated the complete helplessness of Cronkite-era interviewing tactics when confronting a subject who can’t be shamed.
Mitt Romney is retiring, and getting in a bunch of parting shots at his party before he goes. He’s being lauded for his courage, but I can’t help thinking that a truly courageous man wouldn’t wait until he had nothing to lose before telling the truth. And while we’re talking about character, there’s Lauren Boebert and Kristi Noem. But other than just salacious gossip, those would be stories about hypocrisy, which no one is ashamed of any more.
And then there are natural disasters: a hurricane affecting New England, an earthquake in Libya. The auto workers are striking.
You know: Just another week.
In the featured post, I take a step back from the Biden impeachment effort and look at a thought pattern we’ll undoubtedly see a lot of if it proceeds: connecting the dots. Connecting the dots is about telling a story that weaves together a collection of plot points your audience already believes or wants to believe. A true investigation would begin by drilling down on the dots themselves, to see if they’re real. Only after the dots are solidly established would the investigator begin turning them into a story.
But connecting the dots flips things around. The overall appeal of the story — the “stolen election”, the QAnon “storm”, the “Biden crime family”, the worldwide plot to unleash Covid on us and then trick us into taking vaccines that do something nefarious to our bodies or souls — is what establishes that the dots must be true.
So the featured post “Don’t just connect the dots” should post around 10 EDT. The weekly summary will be out somewhere around noon.
The Weekly Sift 
Comments
Government does not shut down – there is enough cash flow to keep functioning just other planned spending by Biden stops.
We need a balanced budget by our White House regardless who is president only war engagements outside budget.
Government does shut down except for parts that are essential. Whether the Government does or does not have cash is irrelevant; money cannot legally be paid out if the spending legislation has not been passed.
And no, we don’t need a balanced budget. We need a budget that makes aggregate demand (Government spending + private spending) equal to productive capacity. That is the only budget condition that doesn’t lead to either unemployment or inflation.
Any sound economy has to balance as immoral using resources of future generations by putting country in debt
A country that creates it’s own money, as we do, is constrained in what it can do by the availability of real resources; labor, materials, infrastructure, technical know how. Money is not a limited resource for the Federal Government and is never a constraint on what it can do. We create our own money, future generations will create theirs. We aren’t using any of the real resources (their labor, for example) that future generations will need to create their own wealth and prosperity.
Beautiful!
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div dir=”ltr”>Erik