{"id":89311,"date":"2025-02-28T04:59:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T10:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=89311"},"modified":"2025-02-28T08:53:10","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T14:53:10","slug":"battlespace-prep-part-v","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=89311","title":{"rendered":"Battlespace Prep, Part V"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, snuck one in after the putative (ahem) finale yesterday:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>When I claim Trump must shut down the government to force Congress to slash spending because the United States is bankrupt, I get angry push-back.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>We can&#8217;t be bankrupt! That&#8217;s ridiculous.&nbsp; This is the greatest nation in history.&nbsp; How can we be bankrupt?<\/em>&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How can you tell if someone is bankrupt?&nbsp; One classic test is being unable to meet obligations they come due. That certainly is the USA.&nbsp; We have to borrow more every minute to keep paying the bills. The hole never stops getting deeper.&nbsp; Look at The National Debt Clock website.&nbsp; Another class test is whether the person&#8217;s debts exceed their assets.&nbsp; Ours certainly do.&nbsp;<br><br><em>But we have all the gold in Fort Knox and all the national parks and stuff!&nbsp;&nbsp; That&#8217;s worth a ton of money!<\/em>&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes. But we owe a ton and whole lot more.&nbsp; Look, 147 million ounces of gold in Fort Knox at the current price of $3,000 per ounce gives us $450 Billion worth of gold (billion with a B).&nbsp; But the national debt is $37 Trillion (trillion with a T).&nbsp; All the gold in Fort Knox won&#8217;t cover two percent of our national debt.&nbsp; And that&#8217;s if the gold is all there at stated purity (what, you never heard of debasement, clipping or plugging? Look them up. Wouldn&#8217;t be the first time United States money was debased by our own government. Silver dollars began as pure silver but were reduced to half in the 1830s and after 1964, contain no silver at all.&nbsp; The fact Trump was concerned enough to ask for a look at the gold reserve concerns me, but the fact nobody was allowed to weigh a bar or melt one one down to assay its purity sends my paranoia into overdrive.&nbsp; You think Biden wouldn&#8217;t countenance stealing from it so long as he got 10% for the Big Guy?)<br><br><em>Yes, but Fort Knox isn&#8217;t the only gold!&nbsp; We have other gold, and gold rights, and gold leases and options, none of which has been audited but Biden assured us it was there.&nbsp; 8,000 METRIC TONS of gold.&nbsp; That&#8217;s $775 Billion worth of gold! And we have other assets, too, like Yellowstone and the White House!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If all that gold is there, sure, that&#8217;ll cover nearly 3% of the national debt.&nbsp; As for all the land the federal government owns and mineral rights and navy bases, how do you determine the market value of the White House and who are you going to sell it to?&nbsp; China?&nbsp; Do you really want to go there?<br><br>That&#8217;s why Trump sicced Elon on finding fraud and waste, so they could drum up public support to slash the budget, so they could force Congress to stop digging the hole deeper and maybe, if we get really, really lucky, force Congress to start paying down the debt before the creditors come knocking and the United States is compelled to publicly admit we are bankrupt.&nbsp; Because when that happens, nobody has money in the bank, nobody gets paid, nobody&#8217;s 401k is worth a damn, nobody gets Social Security, nobody gets welfare, nobody can fix it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s not too late.&nbsp; Demand that your Congress-critter get with Trump&#8217;s program.&nbsp; Before it IS too late.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe Doakes<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Passing the &#8220;big beautiful bill&#8221; earlier this week was a start.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, snuck one in after the putative (ahem) finale yesterday: Passing the &#8220;big beautiful bill&#8221; earlier this week was a start.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89311"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89319,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89311\/revisions\/89319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}