Night at the Museum

Everyone knows that the feds are already insolvent, with spending commitments eight times as much as their revenues. But if you can’t spend money you don’t have on war, what can you spend it on?

Sketch of Lion, by Rembrandt, Source: Getty Imags

Monday, April 6th, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Baltimore, Maryland

---

‘Open the F**king Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH!...Praise be to Allah.’

—Donald J. Trump

The weekend began on the edge of our chair. A US pilot was being pursued by both US and Iranian forces...each racing to get to him before the other.

Iran has been beaten to a bloody pulp by US and Israeli forces...or so we were told. It is helpless...defenseless...its radar, air force, navy, artillery — all decimated.

Yet, on Friday, it was somehow still able to get off two lucky shots. It downed America’s ultra-sophisticated and very expensive aircraft — the F15E -- and an A-10 ‘Warthog.’

This happened, apparently, while the US was busy targeting civilian infrastructure (a war crime, sayeth the media). SAN:

US destroys 3 of Iran’s main bridges as Trump follows through with threat to hit ‘extremely hard’

The Iran War because it is beginning to look like a banana peel on a museum’s marble floor. Someone’s likely to slip up and fall hard...and in all the excitement, no one will notice the Rembrandt walking out the door. CBS News:

Trump’s 2027 budget asks Congress for $1.5 trillion in defense spending, with 10% cuts elsewhere

President Trump’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2027 asks Congress for $1.5 trillion in defense spending — a 42% increase — while cutting nondefense spending by $73 billion, or 10%.

Everybody knows that the firepower industry is going to get more money. War costs money. And everybody who’s spent time in Washington knows that non-defense spending won’t go down.

And everyone who has been following the news also knows that the feds are already insolvent, with spending commitments eight times as much as their revenues.

But if you can’t spend money you don’t have on war...what can you spend it on? And with so much drama going on, who’s watching the cash?

Meanwhile, the headlines recalled the last hostage crisis in Iran.

To bring less hoary readers up to speed, the US/CIA had derailed Iran’s fledgling democracy in 1953 by putting the ‘Shah’ back on the throne. Then, in 1979, the Shah went to New York for cancer treatment.

Allowing the Shah into the US was bound to cause trouble. Everyone knew it. But the policymakers had a quaint sense of loyalty to him.

Hendrik Hertzberg, President Carter’s chief speechwriter explained that “This guy was a sh*t, but he was our sh*t for all these years.”

Students — not the government itself — then seized the American embassy. This was a huge affront to diplomatic tradition and international law. But it went over well in Iran, boosting the popularity of the new government.

It paid to have friends. Six US embassy employees escaped and were taken in by Canadian and Swedish diplomats. They left the country with false passports, pretending to be members of a film crew.

But the administration of Jimmy Carter, who had real military experience, and perhaps a fresh recollection of trying to bomb Vietnam “back to the Stone Age,” was remarkably restrained. It did, however, attempt a military rescue. That effort was both extremely inept and unlucky. It resulted in the accidental deaths of eight US soldiers...and the extraction of zero hostages.

Otherwise, Carter’s approach was wise. It cost almost nothing. Except for the aforementioned accidental deaths, it involved no incendiaries, no jackass threats, and left no dead bodies. And the hostages were released after 444 days. Carter had sacrificed (it turned out) his own re-election ambition to get the hostages back safely.

Fortunately, the downed Airman was recovered safely on Saturday night. Donald Trump didn’t have to face the same problem.

Regards,

Bill Bonner