money, politics, and a nation in crisis
Pete Hegseth has exactly one. So does everybody else in the room. Pete Hegseth runs the largest organization in the United States. About three million people, in uniform and out, answer to him. So does a budget near a trillion dollars. So
Essays, reporting, arguments, and observations from the archive.
Today is the day the country finds out whether it still works. Vote like the warranty expired.
Nauseously Optimistic Joe Zeigler, Burnt Ground, Sunday, November 1, 2026 The Sunday post on Burnt Ground is paid. Not this one. This is not the week to charge
This is about A.I. spending. I owe you a couple of posts. My back took them. It picked a fight last week, won, and put me in
Come With Us We spent the summer, six months of the year, on the road in our RV, driving between our home in Florida and Santa Cruz, California,
The governor of Texas will not show you his emails with Elon Musk because they are "intimate and embarrassing." That is not my phrase. It is
and the trouble begins- Salvation or disaster, and the people who get to decide have been told they can go to prison for deciding. Two weeks until the
Zelensky said it carefully. Moscow said it proudly. We can say it plainly. Volodymyr Zelensky sat across from Piers Morgan on Wednesday and said the quiet part in
Look at your pay stub. The line says FICA. The F is for Federal, the I is for Insurance. The program it funds carries the word in its
I am not depressed. I don't do depressed. What I am is tired, worn down to the edge of despair. That is why the essays have
Fifteen Hours On Friday, October 9, Donald Trump got on the phone with Vladimir Putin. When he hung up, the United States was buying diesel from Russia. He
No essay today. We're casting off for the east today; next stop, Tucumcari. Then to Dallas to visit a friend. He has to be a very
Every superpower in history needed an enemy to finish it. We are the first to volunteer for the job. Rome took centuries and a parade of invaders. Spain
The fine print did it. In January 2024, Donald Trump posted a campaign ad to Truth Social. Black and white. Trump walks a long hallway while his own
The Instrument It is easy to believe the clown show. The media prints it, clicks it, mocks it. They watch the theater. The vanity, the public feuds, the
Seven excuses, one destination, 37 days to go. Read these in order. The Chinese are rigging the election. The voting machines can't be trusted. We can&
Canada will not join the European Union. That anyone asked tells you what the United States broke. Canada will not join the European Union. The treaty admits only
I was born in Selma, Alabama, and lived there six months. Then my father, a Navy officer and pilot, took us into the strange, enclosed world of the
A fire has two flanks. The Supreme Court knocked down one of them, and the head is still running. Joe Zeigler, Burnt Ground The Supreme Court told Donald
Robert Reich wants a ranking. In his Office Hours column, he lists the four existential threats people keep naming to him—climate change, artificial intelligence, authoritarianism, and war—
I Voted Against the Other Ones: A Composite. Foreword My sword stuck in its cane. Forty years it slid free clean, and then one afternoon it seized in
Note: Yes, I'm late today. Sorry, to much fun. The air conditioner in my motorhome no longer keeps up. Nothing is broken. It runs. It cycles.
Krugman asks why the right empowered Trump. The answer was poured before him, and it will hold after he’s gone. The 35% was always there. In 2016
Rachael | Burnt Ground The ring cost 11 dollars at a folding table in the church basement, and it came in a small white box with a hinge that
Drought and the climate change "hoax" are rapidly depleting the water supply. The Colorado River is running out of water, and Arizona is first on the
My friends cheer every cut to the IRS budget. They cheer because they cheat. Not on a grand scale. A little consulting income that never meets a 1099.
Venezuela holds the largest proven crude reserves on Earth and drills them with two rigs. The announcement moved faster than anything else in this deal ever will. At
Lincoln was 28 when he said it out loud. January 27, 1838, Springfield, Illinois, a room of young men at the Lyceum, under a title dull enough to
The debt is only an emergency when the other guy is holding the pen. The Treasury posts the number every business day the way a hospital posts visiting
And the two men who were not tired are off the air Ten years. I have run out of ways to say it. He has not run out
Nice People Everywhere We spent a month in California and pulled out last Saturday. One of the days we drove Route One, a winding two-lane highway along
You Go Where You Look Old flight instructors had a blunt way of teaching target fixation. You go where you look. A pilot rolls in on a locomotive.
He knows more about ISIS than the generals. More about taxes than accountants, more about drones than pilots, more about trade than economists. More about infrastructure, borders, banking,
The message arrives in the dark, and by morning it is a fact. On June 22, 2026, The Defense News tells you a machine broke the fortress. Its
Two oil tankers took fire in the Strait of Hormuz on Friday morning. In an ordinary week, one hundred and thirty commercial vessels make the transit. This week
Effective Immediately On the second of April, in the middle of a shooting war with Iran, the Secretary of War fired the Army's top general. The
Moscow Spent Ten Years Trying. The Kremlin paid $43,000 to talk the West out of its own medicine and collected almost nothing. Then Washington shut the office
By Rachael There is a piece of paper in the back of a drawer in my house, behind the passports and the warranty for a stove I no
The Road Under the Road Summary for the Time-Constrained Reader Route 66 got a birthday and a death certificate. The federal board numbered it on November 11,
Prepared remarks of Wendell Pryor, Chairman of the Presidential Commission on Electoral Continuity, before the Joint Committee on Rules and Administration. I did not seek this assignment. I
By Rachael There is a video I have been thinking about, which I have not seen and which almost no one has seen, though it has now been
I learned to program on machines that made you wait. You submitted your code and you sat with a printout and a pencil, sometimes for an hour, sometimes
