the state of the union show proceeded about as anticipated with some variations;

I didn’t watch the State of the Union last night. I knew it would be lies and impossible promises from start to finish.

However, our friend Col. Douglas Macgregor did. Col. Macgregor has been a guest on the Tom Woods Show, and of course was senior adviser to the Secretary of Defense under Donald Trump.

I will note, first of all, that at the link above I asked Col. Macgregor about Trump’s weird deviations from his own stated foreign-policy principles, and Macgregor replied, as politely as possible, that he respects him but that Trump is unfortunately being influenced by bad people.

At any rate, it’s at least something to hear someone with Col. Macgregor’s profile say things like this:

The current administration claims the gross domestic product is booming, but much of it comes from government spending and employment. The government share of gross domestic product in the United States today is 42%, including federal, state and local spending. This outrageous share is similar to what it was in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, before the collapse….

Today, the government employs an estimated 2.87 million people. If we include federal contractors, this number balloons to between 12 and 25 million. All of these events occur against the backdrop of a national sovereign debt that has skyrocketed to 34 trillion. Even worse, we are currently adding another trillion dollars to national debt, roughly every three months. It is impossible to drain the swamp with unsound money and a colossal debt that we cannot sustain.......more.......