HOW IS IT POSSIBLE FOR A STATE, WHICH CHARTERED ITS OWN BANKS, THEN TO DECLARE ITSELF BANKRUPT? WOULD THIS NOT OF NECESSITY REQUIRE CLOSURE OF THE ALL THAT STATE'S BANKS AS A CONSEQUENCE OF BEING THE CHARTERING INSTITUTION'S BANKRUPTCY? IF, THEN, THE BANKS ARE VALUED AT ZERO (RESULT OF THE PEOPLE ADMITTING THEY'VE BECOME INADEQUATE, WORTHLESS, PENNILESS, FINANCIALLY INEPT, ETC.) ALONG WITH THE STATE AND ITS PEOPLE, PROPERTY, AND ENTERPRISES, DOES THIS MEAN WE'VE ABANDONED OUR STATE'S (AND PERSONAL)RIGHTS? IF SO, CAN THE STATE BE GIVEN UP TO THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM FOR DISPOSAL/SALE TO FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS THUS LEGALLY SURRENDERING OUR NATION & GOVERNMENT TO OTHERS WITHOUT A SHOT BEING FIRED....HMMM? SERIOUS QUESTION - ANY THOUGHTS/ANSWERS?

---

Yeah, OK, Listen:

So, I was coming up to check in with Leeks about a thing with my check (A couple weeks back I helped move some boxes into a different room so that the cheetah could have some more space. Turns out you can't, like, just sell a cheetah in the state of Michigan, and also it turns out that, like, we are zoned agricultural up here on the 74th floor of the Renaissance Center, so we can have the cheetah . . . like, high five to the lawyers and shit . . . anyway, Leeks said we should write it all up as contract work, they pay me, it all gets dealt with on the taxes or some shit).

Anyway, I come up into the lab and there is no fucking soul in sight, but there is a question in the queue next to the tank, blinking, fresh.

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE FOR A STATE, WHICH CHARTERED ITS OWN BANKS, THEN TODECLARE ITSELF BANKRUPT? WOULD THIS NOT OF NECESSITY REQUIRE CLOSURE OFTHE ALL THAT STATE'S BANKS AS A CONSEQUENCE OF . . . blah blah blah . . . ANY THOUGHTS/ANSWERS?

I read this fucking question, and I am all like: "Man, IP address for the submitter geolocates to Detroit. Is he referring to the Hamtramck bankruptcy? Did we charter our own banks in Michigan?"

I got no clue what this guy is on about.

But anyway, I been seeing this girl.

Total surprise music here, yeah? Robert Elijah Miller—Lord A.'s occasional fucking lab assistant and all-around worthy bud—is seeing a girl.

I just blew your fucking mind. You thought this shit was gonna be about a fucking cheetah, or, like, state and federal credit ratings as they affect the international bond market and shit.

But then I drop the fucking bomb!

And you're all like, "I am a random internet denizen who dropped on this site by accident, I have no clue who is writing this shit, fuck everyone, I am leaving."

Or, you're like, "I read this squid thing fucking religiously, and I remember Sang for fuck sake. I knew these characters inside and out, and shit, Rob doesn't 'see' girls. Rob slams-uglies with chicks, if he can fit them into his crazy-ass schedule of being awesome at BIOSHOCK! This 'seeing a girl' shit is blowing my fucking mind!"

And here is where I say, "Mind triple blown, oh faithful reader! There are two of you, one in Macau and the other in Cincinnati, and this motherfucker is actually going to be about credit policy."

Except to say, I am seeing this girl. For real. She's from Kalamazoo, and I am not talking about it, except that she has this fucking uncle, and she is totally cool, and I guess I can get used to this guy, but he is all Tea Partying and Goldbugging my ass into submission. I get forwarded forwards from fucking forwardland until I had to fucking abandon an email account! RobRulz@aol.com is some classic shit, acquired by my Da' for me in 1994! Can you even imagine a fucking AOL email address without a number? It will make your eyes melt from the beauty. And I fucking had to abandon that shit because of the OBAMACARE WILL EAT YOUR BABY UNLESS WE PAY FOR EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE WITH GOLD INGOTS LIKE JESUS INTENDED bullshit that I get from this guy.

I love this girl, I do. But this guy makes me, ME, want to cry.

So, anyway, I see the above question for Lord A. waiting to be answered. And I see that the lab is empty. And this is, like, a Saturday and I got shit to do except play BIOSHOCK and then pick up my girl. (No more details. You don't even know where I am picking her up from, do you? Is she at work? Is she at school? Maybe she is a fucking Universalist Minister getting finished consecrating the beautiful but illegal marriage of some hot lesbos from Ann Arbor—It's a fucking mystery, is what I am saying, and it is totally staying that way. Suck it, Macau!).

What I am saying is that I got time, and I got a fucking dead AOL account stuck in my craw, so I got something to say.

1. It is RobRulz! Not RobRulz679, not 1256RobRulz. Just plain, simple, RobRulz. It's like a religious miracle, man. It's a fucking sacred relic. Why you gotta be hating me, Tea Fucking Party!

2. Here is the shit that I have to say, which may or may not be on point:

(I am totally writing this shit from memory, like a motherfucking professor! C+ for my half-semester of high school Michigan History, but that shit stuck.)

The State of Michigan was founded during a Detroit area banking scandal. Our first governor, The Boy Governor Stevens T Mason, was run out of office for restructuring the state's territorial debt in the 1830s (specifically, he was trying to finance some important internal transportation improvements to extend the reach of the Erie Canal system deeper into the state), which was a sensible thing to do, except that Andrew Jackson paid off the national debt in order to collapse the US Bank (the pre-federal reserve national bank, which Jackson had a crazy hard-on to crush 'cause of basically all the same half-baked shit that the Tea Partiers are serving). When Jackson collapsed the national bank, there was a mad-ass bank panic, all of the banks collapsed and somehow that queered Mason's basically more-or-less reasonable infrastructure thingy.

Everybody is all, Oh, Andrew Jackson I fucking love you, but the fucking Jacksonian period, by the way, was essentially government by Tea Partier. Jackson didn't understand how the government actually worked, and from his perspective that was the government's problem, not his. His main ideas for reform was to make the government simple so that he could understand it. The only reason the US didn't collapse was because of perpetual westward expansion. People didn't have to think long term about the consequences of their policies, there was always more land to steal from the Indians, Mexicans, and Chinese dudes.

Case in Point: The Boy Governor got his job because his father, who was the actual secretary of the territory, was a total short-con schemer and couldn't stay put for more than, like, two years. He went from toll-road schemes in Virginia to mining schemes in Kentucky and then up for a federal posting in Michigan as the Territorial Secretary. But then he left part-way through his term to chase recently freed up cattle lands in Texas, or some shit, leaving his seventeen-year-old son to manage things. For reals. I did not make this shit up. Stevens became acting Secretary, the actual territorial governor died before he arrived in the state, Stevens became acting acting Governor, and then made the best of his situation. He was like the son of an alcoholic who is hyper-competent and mature to make up for his scattered dad (I totally imagine that when I have a kid, he will be like this. Motherfucker.) Stevens T. Keepitthefucktogether pushed through statehood, ran and won as the first governor, and made some conservative deals in the territorial banks.

And then the other proverbial drunk father in the equation, Jackson, blows the load. (Jackson, incidentally, slept on the Mason's couch for a week while campaigning in Kentucky. The families were close, so he really was a kind of father figure. Honest. If I made a reality show of this shit, everyone would bitch about it being too scripted. This is Michigan fucking history, yo.)

Stevens gets run out of the state by Jacksonians, and by the Whigs (which are like crazyass pre-Republicans), ends up with his in-laws in New York where he and his wife rent a little apartment while he studies for the bar exam. He dies of pneumonia a few winters after leaving Michigan, barely forty, still not yet a lawyer.

Incidentally. Jackson is the only President who ever paid off the national debt. And he also insisted that all of the payments to the federal government be paid in fucking GOLD INGOTS. And guess fucking what:

You know how the US celebrated its glorious debt free, gold-based simple-to-understand government?

With a fucking Depression that lasted seven years. At the end, the national debt was ten time as much as when Jackson took office.

World's fucking complicated, is what I'm saying. Can't be simplified so that a sixth-grade education is sufficient to keep it all in your head. If government makes your head hurt, most of the time that's your problem, not government's problem. Quit trying to make the rest of us live in your cartoon-clear la-la land. If you pay off the debt, the banks collapse and we are all dying of fucking pneumonia, hungry and poor.

Anyway, I don't know what bullshit the Mr. All-Caps the Letter-Writer was ranting on, really. But that shit sounds like a Tea Party rant in there somewhere. And my point ain't National Debt good. The point here is I Don't Fucking Understand The National Debt, or State Credit Ratings, Or How Our Fucking Government Works At All. But I do know enough about history to know that shit is more often than not:

A) Counter-fucking-intuitive

and

B) Best left to the fucking experts

As far as I can fucking tell, most of these state governments are going bankrupt because Democracy works and a bunch of idiots insisted that government give them everything they wanted so long as nobody had to pay for fucking anything. But I am a former drug addict who suffers from a bizarre form of Tourette's. Just because I sound sensible—ESPECIALLY BECAUSE I SOUND SENSIBLE—don't fucking trust me or vote for me, for the very love of fucking All that Might Be Something.

Trust Barack Obama. That motherfucker has an education, a work ethic, a goddamn hook shot that'll bust your chops, and a sweet ass wife.

What I am learning these days is, man who can find a good woman and keep her, that fucking guy is Wise as fucking Solomon. Stick with that fucking guy. Follow a leader with wisdom, all you motherfuckers. And stop worrying if it doesn't all make sense to you. It ain't your fucking job to understand everything.

And man, why you gotta burn that fucking email account down, man? That shit is just sad.

Now, I gotta split. Chelsea been working all day, and the lady likes a nice salad in the evening. A salad on Saturday, and then we spend an hour reading, and then I ain't saying another fucking word.

Peace out.

Rob