Joe, with degrees in engineering and economics, raced motorcycles, founded 3 software companies, and launched one of the first computer store chains. Now he writes novels and Ghost essays while traveling with his wife, Lanying, and their cat, Cat.
The Department of Government Efficiency. Say it out loud. Let it roll around in your head for a moment. Sounds like something out of a satire, doesn’t it? A name so flat, so cheerless, so perfectly bureaucratic that it practically begs for suspicion. But that’s the point. That’
It was supposed to stop Trump, not crown him. We’re not a democracy. Never were. The Founders didn’t trust regular people that much. They trusted landowners. Men of means. People like themselves. The idea of direct popular elections made them twitchy—and for good reason. They’d just
Jun 24, 2025 It’s tempting to reduce them to numbers. Polls say 41% of Americans approve of him. Around 90% of Republicans still back him. Nearly half the country would consider voting for him again. But none of that answers the question that haunts the rest of us: Who
as are we Jun 20, 2025 The Founders Built Impenetrable Firewalls. They Didn’t Plan for Bulldozers. The Founders weren’t naïve. They knew the danger of charismatic strongmen and a fervent bloc of populist voters—and they designed a system to resist them. Deliberately slow, jammed with friction, and
I don't mean to bury you in emails. I know this is my second one today, and I get it—nobody needs more noise in their inbox. But we're living through something here. Something that doesn't wait for publishing schedules or polite timing. We&
bad? Jun 16, 2025 It’s funny how fast the conversation changes when you use the word socialism. Mention it at a dinner with Republican friends and watch the air get stiff. Eyebrows rise. Forks pause. Suddenly, you’re a threat to the Republic because you dared to suggest that
TrumpPardonstheUnpardonable0:00/245.615171× Cold Open Trump didn’t just pardon criminals—he put justice on the auction block. January 20, 2025, was proof: if you were loyal, useful, or rich enough to buy a seat at his table, your record was wiped clean. No contrition, no justice—just the
Dead Economist, Live Ammo: Milton Friedman’s Ideas Are Still Killing Us Eighteen years dead, Milton Friedman still signs the checks. Every tax cut, every gutted regulation, every excuse for inequality has his fingerprints on it. His ideas are still killing us. The University of Chicago economist didn’t predict
Listen0:00/602.1016551× They're not unhappy. They're ecstatic. They won. They elected a man who shits in a golden toilet to fight for the working class. If that's not dark comedy, I don't know what is. I'm in a
Trump’s return to office isn’t politics as usual—it’s something colder, faster, and far more dangerous. What we’re watching isn’t just policy change. It’s a controlled demolition of the American state, carried out with a grin and a bulldozer. The civil service is the
76 years of losing to Israel, banned dog-walking at home, and a state that fears happiness more than war. I’ve spent a long time trying to discover what they want—and still haven’t found anything that makes sense to me or my cat. Not the people. The people
Jun 27, 2025 It’s Hard Not to Write About PrumpTutin I’ve tried. God knows I’ve tried. I sit down to write about anything else—climate collapse, AI, the price of eggs—and there he is again. Not relevant. Not interesting. Just there. Like mold on bread, you