DT of the 1st (of Many) Myrmidion Brigade:

Czaro di tutti Czari,

In your latest missive you write that now we have to make drastic cuts or we’ll collapse waiting for results. You write as if a responsible government could sweep in, cut massive social programs with the gleaming sword of truth, and we’ll then be able to get on with business.

Isn’t a more likely result that someone will start to make big (or, more likely, tiny) cuts in some services, and the suckers of the public teat will take to the streets in protest. The next election would sweep the libs back in on a promise to restore (and increase) those very services. The national debt bubbles (because of our position in the world, people would ignore the aneurisms forming), and finally pops. Civilization collapses and we end up fighting anti-Semitic sedavacantists in an arena to please to please Tina Turner.

Or have I forgotten to carry the one somewhere? Enlighten me, oh Czar!

Your Loyal Minion,

D.T.

p.s.: The Myrmidon brigades are coming together well. That is, we’ve held a vote, and finally settled on our uniforms, and soon hope to begin training in earnest.

Well, not exactly right nor wrong.

Our point of course is that the time to buck up has arrived. Politicians cannot pretend that we can find a new way to pay for it. Whether you tax it, call it a fee, or stick and ad on it, stuff costs too much. Okay, we all get that.

The problem indeed is that most liberals, who in Congress consist of damn near all the entire Democratic party, have conclusively proven they cannot find a way to pay for this. Raising taxes does not work. Bilking the rich never works because The Rich (at least as liberals imagine them) do not exist. Of course, you can go after the comfortably wealthy, but sadly a good portion of them are liberals themselves who do not wish to cough up the tax money. They have tried everything else, from tacking on surcharges, fees, administrative costs, or whatever way you can hide a tax by renaming it. These are bringing in pennies to the dollar, only.

This leaves only one way out: cutting spending by ending entitlement programs of all kinds. Will they do it? Dunno, DT. But Europe, who is as glacially slow at cleaning up their own messes (they still hate each other for provincial battles between medieval towns that no longer even exist, for crap’s sake), well, they’re getting the message.

The inevitability of cutting is not debateable. So we might as well do it now, because it continues to get worse. Even the liberals are starting to catch on. Watch as incumbent Democrats suddenly become “fiscal hawks” in the next year!

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.