Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
Good heavens the economic bad news is piling up like a bad car wreck so let’s do some serious rubberknecking, folks, because there is a lot of fucked up shit to watch, just don’t step in it, okay?
We begin with widepsread reports of large institutional investors (hedge funds, investment banks, boutique investment firms) selling off services stocks like leisure, luxury, hotels, and some retail outlets, like Home Depot. That’s a lot of cash leaving equities. But for what safe harbor? It certainly isn’t private credit, like Blackrock which lost 100% on one investment. UBS also lost 100% on another private credit deal. Now, Blackrock lost $150 million on the deal, which for Blackrock is naught but a silly little rounding error, but as they say, $150 million here, a $150 million there and pretty soon you’re talking real money. That cash won’t go to US treasuries, that’s for damn sure. Seriously, who’d invest in US dollars? I wouldn’t fuck a US treasury with Magic Johnson’s dick.
Yeah, I said it. It needed to be said.
Want news even more ominous: JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and my alma mater (for full disclosure) Morgan Stanley were the lead underwriters of a $1 billion increase in AI firm Coreweave’s $2.5 billion revolving credit facility. The term sheet expands the maturity date from 2028 to 2029. Just a year? Did they attempt any due dililgence on Coreweave’s burn rate? It’s gotta be a fuckton fast–see, Americans can do metrics. FTW!
But really, you know that kind of high-tech equipment becomes obsolete and depreciates faster than that loan reaches maturity. There is zero, zilch, nada, niente, nyet, nein, no way Coreweave’s earning increase that rapidly. To quote Yoda, “Coreweave, Apple certainly not you are.”
Apple’s so profitable it prints money.
I mean, seriosuly, Christ on a popsicle stick: where’s the due diligence? Do investment firms even have compliance departments any more? Where are the regulators?
Yeah, yeah, I know, I know.
But it gets worse: On Nov. 4, Meta agreed to an off-balance sheet $27 billion loan (also known as a Special Purpose Entity, henceforth SPE) from Blue Owl Capital (OBCD). This is financial shenanigans and identical to the accounting legerdemain that led to Enron’s ruin. Pay attention people. This is getting ugly. Enron butt-hurt ugly is how bad this is starting to look. Let me break this down for you, in case you forgot. An SPE is off-balance sheet. That means the company is under no obligation to report it on its SEC required filings. Get it now? Investors have absolutely no way of knowing how much off-balance sheet debt a particular company has. SPEs=bad ju-ju.
To wit: Oracle has a debt-to-equity ratio approaching 500% and that’s just what’s on the their balance sheet. Has Oracle borrowed any money where the debt is accounted for in an SPE?
Guess what, folks? There is literally no way to know if Oracle has any SPE loans outstanding.
My bet: they do.
Speaking of shit credit, or is it credit shit?
Whatever. Moving on.
JP Morgan notes AI linked debt now accounts for 14% of its investment grade corporate index (CGI IG), surpassing US commercial banks as the dominant sector. Who the fuck knew US commercial banks have turned into stingy mozafukas? Can haz dolerz, puleeze?
“What does it mean,” you query, doing your best to ignore my increasingly insulting expletives.
“I know I’m right about the housing market,” he says. Repeating it like a mantra.
Well, it means not only are AI firms taking on loads of traditionally financed debt, but they are bulking up with the anabolic steroid equivalent of debt: unknowable and NON-REPORTABLE SPE debt. They pump this iron to finance AI hyper-scaling. No wonder the main character of the (mostly) true movie, The Big Short, Michael Burry, is closing his fund. Dude shorted Palntir and Nvidia and got caught with his pants down. Sadly, Burry forgot John Maynard Keynes keen paroemia (from the ancient Greek meaning maxim or proverb), when he lost all his money in the 1929 crash: “markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”
Also: beware neologisms created on Wall Street. Today’s new phrase is ‘data center credit.’ Sounds positive, aye? It ain’t. It’s a bullshit phrase referring to debt financed for the AI sector by private credit shops. Tons and tons of bullshit, yes?
“Ha-ha, he said stupid, stupid!”
There is also news that insurers are placing more than 50% of assets needed to guarantee/backstop annuities and life insurance policies into private credit shops. This is a terrible idea. Annuities are insurance policies designed to pay out in the event you live too long. Life insurance is, well, insurance against not living long enough. This is stupid. Epic stupid and civilization-ending risky. It’s like giving the nuclear football to Beevis and Butthead stupid.
Oil prices are soft/down to flat. Texas rig counts are down again this month, rig counts are considered a leading economic indicator.
Now to news out of the Big Apple tonight that absolutely shrivels me testes–say it with me like a pirate! As my little sister used to say to me, “you are so not fun.”
Anywho: the head of the NY Fed convened an emergency meeting of bank heads to discuss one of the Fed’s key lending facilities. I’m almost certain this is in response to the rising private credit loses and how they resemble Bear Stearns blowing up two subprime hedge-funds in 2007, the precise moment the 2008 financial crisis began.
Most distressing is today’s down volume high. It’s one like we’ve never seen before. The downward volume and amount of stocks closing on the downside blew out a 35 year high. This screams louder than Rob Halford singing ‘Victim of Changes’ live at the US Festival in 1983. It’s also an indicator of deeper stresses affecting equity markets.
This is what we now call, in the algorithm-trade dominated age, a mechanical sell-off. All of Wall Street’s proprietary algorithms saw red and initiated the mother of all sell offs. This already spectacularly terrifyingly narrow advance is getting narrower. And it is growing more brittle by the day. Why worry? Are markets worried about private credit shops lending to off-balance sheet AI SPEs? Is liquidity getting tighter? Risk limits getting ripped to shreds? Doesn’t really matter. It’s a big signal that should overpower the noise. But it won’t.
Wall Streets useful idiots will do their duty and cheer until the real crisis begins to unravel. Sooner now, than later. You can bank on that. Just don’t do it in US dollars. That would be dumb. Epic-like dumb.
Piling the shit higher and higher: Sallie Mae offloaded $6bn worth of student loans to KKR recently. How better to clean up a balance sheet than selling debt with a 10% non-performing rate? Makes sense to me, but I’m just some guy in pajamas.
More great economic news: large corporate bankruptcy filings, as of mid-November, rise to 15 year high. That’s higher than the COVID-19 crisis. To date 655 public companies have filed for bankruptcy. Good times, aye?
Finally, a postitive thought, in a manner of speaking. The only thing the equity markets have going in their favor right now is this: the almost impossible to prevent or deny Christmas rally. It’s damn near as reliable as the Monsoons.
So, if the econ shit does hit the fan, it’ll happen after January 1.
Let’s lay out the big picture for LLM style AI.
It is is statistical prediction of what should be the next word or symbol. That is why it required so much data to train and why, even if we had the tech, we couldn’t have created it 20 years ago: not enough data in digital format. It is not intelligent. It is not conscious. It is just an algo trained with a TON of data and which used massive amounts of processing power (and thus electricity) to produce results. Hallucinations are part of the tech, they cannot be eliminated, which means that LLM “AI” will always make mistakes and many will almost certainly be the sort of mistakes trained humans rarely make.
The current build-out in the US involves only a few companies, all in a huge circle jerk, and they make up 40% of the entire public stock market’s value. Neither Open AI nor Anthropic actually make a profit, and it costs more to do a query than is made even from paying customers, let alone all the free ones. There is absolutely no question in my mind that they are in a bubble.
The maximalist claim for “AI” is that it will become so smart it can replace at least 40% of jobs. (Or smart enough.) The more realistic claim is that it’s good for some things and can replace some workers by making those who remain more efficient. Plus, after all, most tech companies don’t care if their products are shit as long as they make money. See Google for “who cares what you think, it’s us or no one. You’ll use our product no matter how shit it is.” (Ironically, Search is one of the few things AI is better at than incumbents.)
So here’s the thing: no matter whether AI is a real tech or not, it’s in a bubble. (The internet was real, it had a bubble.) No one actually knows who’s going to make money from AI. The big internet winners (Amazon, Facebook, Google) came after the dot-com bust. The Feds may backstop and/or bailout, if they do, it will hurt everyone not involved.
If I am wrong about AI and the maximalist claims are true then what will happen is a massive replacement of tens of millions of workers. Since those people will now have almost no income, that will lead to a classic demand depression. A great depression like the one in the 1930s. The only way out would be a massive guaranteed annual income. Given our rulers and ideology, we’d probably have food riots long before they realized they were risking their own throats.
If it is a real tech, but not that big a deal, it will lead to a shittier economy where even more mistakes are made, and it’s even harder to find a human being to fix anything. Which is what tech wants: they want everything automated and certainly they don’t want to have real customer service.
And, if it is a real tech, as I have noted before, China is actually going to win. Their models are 20 to 30 times cheaper to run, and are open source. If your business uses AI you will use open source if you have half a brain, because with open source one of two major providers (Anthropic/Open AI) can’t just raise prices or change the model. To use closed source would be so stupid that even most American CEOs will not do it. Certainly no one with sense outside American vassal swarm will be so stupid.
So:
- Maximal AI leads to a great depression.
- Moderate AI leads to a shittier economy and shittier projects.
- There’s a bubble either way
- At the end of it China’s AI models will be used far more than American ones anyway. The US has already “lost” the AI race and can’t even see that. (Why? Fundamentally because they’re greedy and want to become billionaires of trillionaires. Genuine open source AI won’t print nearly as many rich people.
America can’t win at anything that matters any more, because the people who lead America are stupid, liars and so greedy they can’t think of anything but money. (See Trump, who is the avatar of all these vices.)
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I mean…
Laura Ingraham: “Well, then why are people saying they’re anxious about the economy? Why are they saying that?”
President Trump: “I don’t know that they are saying that. I think polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we’ve ever had.” pic.twitter.com/QDrM3Q4olu
— RedWave Press (@RedWave_Press) November 11, 2025
Not to mention firing BLS workers because he didn’t like the stats, which even Biden didn’t do. Given how dubious most BLS stats relating to inflation already are, that’s some impressive cope.
The fact is that prices keep going up, and if you aren’t in the golden ponzi scheme of AI, the economy sucks.
Rosenberg Research did some analysis:
If they aren’t in expansion, they’re in contraction. Also known as a recession, even if they didn’t shade it.
Some further supporting data:
Sure doesn’t look like those tariffs are causing manufacturing to flood back into America, does it? Data centers and power station building are both AI related, and as for hospitals: a protected oligopoly, or it was until the ACA subsidies were cut. That’s not likely to be good for the health “industry”, which would be wonderful except that people will die and suffer as a result. “Get rid of part of the shitty way we provide health care now without replacing it with something else.”
Anyway, unless you’re in a monopoly/oligopoly, and have some control, or you’re connected to the AI spigot, the economy is ass. And remember, major tech companies are engage in mass layoffs, so just working for tech companies won’t protect you: the reverse is true. Unless you’re actively working on AI, you’re first to the gallows, since their workers are where they’re starting with the replacements.
For decades I warned coders, “engineers”, that their days of being king shit of turd island, pretending their skills were super special, would eventually come to an end. The moment senior management could figure out how to replace them, it would. And unless you’re truly at the very top of your field, you’re always replaceable—mediocre isn’t as good as average, but it’s usually a LOT cheaper.
Anyway, the end days are nigh. There isn’t much left of the middle class in America, with little left for the rich to steal. The US either changes its politics radically (and Trump was always a billionaire whose policies are good for billionaires} or America continues its descent to unutterable shithole for about 80% of its population.
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Some stories are too difficult to tell in the hours, days or weeks after you experience them. Over time, however, they fester; begging to be told; becoming more insistent as the months and years pass. Some even begin to haunt a writer more and more, day by day until the tale must be told. Last night’s nightmare compels me to relate my tale now.
In late November of 2008 my bus from Vietnam to Siem Reap developed issues and required a stopover in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. It had been a sleeper bus so we were told we’d have a full day in the capital and the bus would leave the next day. Traveling plans like war plans rarely survive contact with the road. Growing ever more patient with detours, I inspected my guidebook, back when using Lonely Planet’s was a thing, and planned my day.
Let me be clear: I am no fan of war or atrocity porn, but I do understand its allure, although I am, thankfully, largely immune to it. On the other hand and possibly more importantly, I also recognize and empathize with the need to preserve places where truly reprehensible atrocities of human history occurred. They are to be preserved that future generations witness, feel, and have the opportunity to comprehend even the smallest portion of the enormity that took place underfoot. Maybe, just maybe, such lessons might be passed on to others who will never be able, or be allowed, to experience such hallowed ground.
Many practicing and secular Jews make pilgrimages to sites where the Shoah occurred. I’ve inquired why and each query has been answered universally. They describe a compulsion to bear witness, to honor the fallen, that they remain alive in living memory. Hard to argue with. Because the Armenian genocide occurred in a more dispersed manner Armenian pilgrims face much more significant hurdles. But, when possible Armenians likewise honor their ancestors. I cannot speak to what happened in Rwanda in 1994. I am aware of such places in Guatemala, heard in faint whispers where no gringos are welcome, nor visit, quite understandably.
How to explain how my choices that day were made? I may have only been 13 years-old but the 1984 movie ‘the Killing Fields’ left me with a powerful impression. An impression I recalled that November day and I felt oddly, inexplicably, duty-bound to see what I did not want to see. The killing fields were not my first stop that day however. That honor (poor word choice, I know) fell to the former interrogation and torture center of the Pol Pot Regime’s perceived enemies Tuol Sleng. Here I endured, what I can only describe as a feeling of almost unbearable witness to sickening crimes.
Two, and only two, examples need suffice.
First, in one room of the prison sat a metal frame bed where regime “enemies” were restrained. Once restrained, electrical leads were attached to the frame. Most expired for no reason at all. Sometimes the guards just left the room to have a smoke. At others they left to eat lunch. But most often the guards let them die because they knew no questions they might ask would be satisfactorily answered. They knew they were killing regular people, completely innocent.
The second example is this photo, a photo that haunts me to this day. The walls of Tuol Sleng are papered with them, all of them innocent and to this day they go unnamed. If you cannot feel the fear radiating from this photo you are devoid of the empathy gene.
In all I spent about two hours wandering through Tuol Sleng. I will never return.
But, my day was far from over. After walking out of Tuol Sleng I hailed a tuk-tuk and asked him to take me to the killing fields, which are about two kilometers outside of Phnom Penh. What I recall most vividly about this horrifying place was the care I had to take where I walked. (NOTE: click on the following links at your own risk.) The ground was uneven and I was told at the entrance to stay on the high ground, as the sunken spaces were mass graves. Christ, I shudder visualizing it even now. Then there were what I can only describe as large glass cases, best suited as terrariums for large pythons or boa constrictors. Each case was filled with one of the following: femurs of the dead, human ulnae and radii, and hip bones. Piling Pelion on top of Ossa, mason jars filled with human teeth sat atop each glass case. Finally, the Cambodians being Buddhists made a four story glass stupa—a Buddhist reliquary—filled with human skulls.
Towards the end of my increasingly heavy-hearted meanderings I noted crimson rays filling the sky. I hailed a cab to my hotel, shambled up to my room, slouched off my backpack and sank onto the bed, sighing deeply from emotional exhaustion. I didn’t know what I felt—except despair. I walked downstairs and asked where the nearest bar was. Now, I am not one to drink alone; but, I confess that I was incapable of dealing with what I was feeling at the time. So, I sat down, alone and in silence and got drunk. Not tipsy, but drunk. I barely recall making it back to my room, but I did. The last thing I recall thinking before I passed out was, “I’m going to be haunted by this for a long time.”
The next morning after dreamless sleep, no ghosts woke me up. All that greeted me were overcast skies, a wicked hangover and my noon bus ticket to Seam Reap.
These two charts tell a story. First, the top .1%.
Next, the top 1%. This chart is only to 2023.
Now what you’ll notice is that the top .1% holds about half the wealth of the top 1%.
It’s like this all thru the economy. Everything is flowing to the top, because that’s how the economy is set up. This is sheer insanity, among other things, especially when combined with AI sucking up jobs, its likely to lead to a demand depression. Most rich people don’t get, but a few are waking up.
CEO BRADLEY TUSK supports Zohran even though he’ll raise his taxes, warns fellow millionaires: ‘If we’re not careful, we’ll end up with Elon and 25 trillionaires and unemployment at 19% – that just means the French Revolution.” pic.twitter.com/VeZCCgTRiD
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) November 6, 2025
Meanwhile Trump just went to the Supreme Court to not pay for SNAP food aid. “Starve, peons!” History tells us that food riots are the greatest danger to rulers and it doesn’t take long for them to happen.
As I said before, there is only ONE issue now. Cost of living. People keep telling me Zohran style policies can’t win outside of NYC. Well…
And the Republicans have a shutdown going to make health care even more unaffordable.
Crazed.
Things are going to start changing politically now, and over the next few years. This is the change, which I said decades ago would start in the mid 2020s. Again, it’s here now, though there’s a lot of slogging to go. It’s not a sure win, of course. Neoliberals or fascists may win (more likely fascists), but really the two main options are left wing populism or right (fake) wing populism. The generational pivot is here, and the “we can’t take it any more, you’ve destroyed the middle and working class” is here.
Oh, and one more pretty chart: the effect of our AI overlords on electricity bills:
What can’t go on, doesn’t. There’s not enough middle class wealth left to steal. The US either un-develops or there is a radical change in politics. Either way, politics is going to get a lot more turbulent. There’s a reason why most Trump’s cabinet lives (hides) on military bases now. They know how much they’re hated.
by Tony Wikrent
Trump not violating any law
‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’
Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]
Bannon Tells GOP: ‘Seize the Institutions’ of Government Now or We’re ‘Going to Prison’ After 2028
Jon Queally, Nov 07, 2025 [CommonDreams]
It’s Dick Cheney’s World, We’re Just Living In It
[Talking Points Memo 11-08-2025]
Neither side would ever admit it, but MAGA’s ongoing authoritarian takeover is the heir of one man: Dick Cheney, the former Vice President who died this week.
Trump and his movement tried to distinguish themselves by loudly abandoning the Iraq War as a legacy of the Bush administration. During one debate in 2016, Trump pointed out to Jeb Bush that 9/11 wasn’t exactly an example of his brother having kept the country safe. Before the 2024 election, Cheney called Trump the biggest individual “threat to our republic” that the country has ever seen.
Now, now. It’s a shame they couldn’t get along, after all, they had so much in common.
Starting in the late 1980s, Cheney developed and implemented the dictator-like theory of executive power in which we all now live. The roots here lie in the long-held bitterness among many on the right over President Nixon’s resignation in the aftermath of Watergate, but, as NYT reporter Charlie Savage noted, Cheney expressed the idea fully as the Iran-Contra scandal wound to a close. That was a critique of what Cheney described as a “more assertive Congress that no longer honors the traditions” of executive power, but really a vision of a president who, when invoking national security concerns, could do whatever he or she wanted with backing by the full federal government.
At one point, in 2002, Cheney told Cokie Roberts that there had been an “erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job,” citing both the War Powers Act and the Anti-Impoundment Act…..
The Trump Doctrine: If We Don’t Like Ya We’ll Kill Ya
Mark Wauck [via Naked Capitalism11-02-2025],
‘At What Point Does This Cross a Line Into International Criminality?’
[Politico, via Naked Capitalism 11-02-2025]
[The Column, via Naked Capitalism 11-06-2025]
Trump throws himself a Great Gatsby party while people can’t even afford ketchup
Dean Obeidallah, Nov 02, 2025
Are You on Trump’s List of Domestic Terrorists? There’s No Way to Know.
Nick Turse [via Naked Capitalism 11-06-2025]
Former Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney, the human manifestation of the US Deep State, died four days ago.
Good riddance.
The man was a war criminal. He is also the man singularly responsible for America’s accelerating international decline. His policies effected the death of thousands of American soldiers and Marines, and the death of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of innocents. Just a few days ago Col. Larry Wilkerson, Gen. Colin Powell’s outspoken chief of staff, in a video all should watch, unequivocally called him a war criminal.
If there is a hell, he’s there.
If there is such a thing as reincarnation he’ll soon return as a cockroach. But I’m not here to discuss his afterlife.
It’s the evolution of his ideology that I want to consider.
Cheney was President Ford’s Chief of Staff from 1975-77. While Chief of Staff he engineered Donald Rumsfeld’s appointment as the youngest SecDef ever. He did so on the basis that Rumsfeld would act as a successful counterweight to Kissinger, whose power and whose influence over President Ford was almost total in the foreign policy realm. All his life Rumsfeld cultivated a persona of intelligence and wisdom, but ultimately he was an incompetent boob, losing himself in detail and missing the big picture, always. Sure, his comment about known-unknowns was actually insightful, it was deriviative of a better thinker than he.
Rumsfeld’s two tenures as SecDef were both failures. But back in the 70s he and Cheney stood no chance against Kissinger. They lost virtually all their foreign policy battles with the maestro. While National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State Kissinger dominated American foreign policy-making like no other Secretary of State since John Quincy Adams and like no other since. Kissinger was a briliant man, cunning bureaucratic infighter and skilled leaker. He was also an extremely self-serving memoirist.
But, like Kissinger or not, when in office he co-created a diplomatic framework with Nixon and Chou Enlai that lasts in many respects to this day. They built something few men ever accomplish and it deserves respect and an urgent reappraisal. Kissinger promoted detente, linkage, triangular diplomacy and most importantly prudence in the conduct of US foreign policy. Yes, I realize the irony of using prudence to describe Kissingerian foreign policy, but it’s true. Taking the long view it’s hard to deny, especially when comparing his diplomacy with every SecState that came after him. Try to deny it. You can’t.
The world order Kissinger and Nixon created between 1969-74, endured for decades. But, as Nixon said, “in politics, nothing lasts.” Their order lasted until it was wrecked by a resentful Dick Cheney and his neocon acolytes during the presidency of Bush II. While Kissinger and Nixon engineered a time of great global stability, whatever you think of their politics or their actions while in office, they laid the foundations for the end of the Cold War, not to mention an era of relative peace between Israel and its enemies that endured until the assassination of Yitzakh Rabin in 1994. Cheney and Rumsfeld on the other hand inaugurated the era of the Empire of Chaos. When and where American power has been used since Dick Cheney’s rise, the result has been chaos. Name me a single American intervention since Cheney’s ascension as Vice President and after that has resulted in success. You can’t do it. Every single one is a master-class in the creation of chaos. We don’t nation-build; we manufacture failed states.
Ford’s loss to Carter in 1976 imbued Cheney and Rumsfeld with a lifetime resentment of Kissingerian diplomacy. Cheney and Rumsfeld took different paths, but had the same ultimate policy goal for America: ‘Machtpolitik’. The use of maximal American power to preserve the pax Americana for as long as possible. Rumsfeld went into the private sector and got rich. Cheney got himself elected to the House of Representatives, where as a ten-year backbencher he never saw a defense program he didn’t vote for.
Then Cheney got appointed SecDef by Bush I. The Gulf War happened. He’s incensed US forces didn’t go to Baghdad and topple Saddam, so was his protege Wolfowitz. When Clinton beat Poppie Bush, Wolfowitz left DoD for thinktank land and Cheney, like Rumsfeld before him, took a lucrative business sinecure. While out of power, Cheney and his acolytes spread their neoconservative ideology like a virus. They built the think tank Project for a New American Century with the central goal of promoting its ‘clean break’ policy prescriptions. PNAC ideas soon became the sole driver of America’s post-Cold War foreign policy, especially when President Clinton adopted them, damn near wholesale.
This is a crucial point. Clinton adopted regime change in Iraq as a policy goal. He beefed up the no-fly zones over Iraq, as well. Indeed, Clinton’s foreign policy was totally incompetent. Seriously, we still have troops in the Balkans. And don’t forget the illegal partition of Kosovo from Serbia, which opened up the nasty can of worms affecting us even now. The main point here is WE DID IT FIRST. The USA. Not China. Not Russia. The indispensable nation created the precedent. At the time the partition was vehemently opposed by the Russians. Russia was so incensed, and mostly impotent at the time, that they sent troops to occupy Pristina’s airport. US forces were ordered to overpower them. US Gen. Mike Jackson, to my eternal gratitude, defied the order saying, “I’m not having my soldiers responsible for starting World War III.”
I recount this episode of Bubba’s presidency because it represents what international relations scholars and historians call a ‘revolutionary diplomatic moment.’ Spoiler: this is a big fucking deal. The partition of Kosovo was the exact moment when the US went from being a status quo power, defending the pre-existing order, adhering to the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign nations (a principle established in 1648, by the way), to a revolutionary power, engaging in regime change and the conduct of illegal aggressive war: neoconservatism in action. Action that results in a straight line from Kosovo to the war in the Ukraine. Bubba ain’t blameless by any stretch of the imagination. But Cheney represents ‘Boss Level’ culpability.
Cheney’s final acts were many and deleterious, directly causing the decline he sought to avoid by abusing American power. First, he got himself appointed to Bush II’s veep selection committee. He then chose himself. The rest of the story is a tragic recital of ignored intelligence, spilled blood, criminal invasions, vast American fortunes pissed away in the sands of Iraq and Afghanistan and the senseless death of millions of innocents. All this because he got his feefees hurt by Henry Kissinger.
He may be dead but his influence persists like a zombie and I have no idea when it will finally be killed.