9, 12, 10, 28, 2, 23.

This is Deep State Radio, coming to you direct from our super secret studio in the third sub-basement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington, D.C., and from other undisclosed locations across America and around the world.

Hello, and welcome to DSR's words matter.

I'm David Rothkoff, your host, and your interlocutor, the person who connects you to the

Oracle of Ornstein, Norm Ornstein.

We should call this the Oracle of Ornstein.

And we have never needed to talk to Norm more than we do now when we're at one of those moments where we've hit maximum dysfunction.

You know, even as I say those words, Norm, I think I'm inviting to say that it's they always find a way for there

to be more dysfunction. As the maximum dysfunction is is a, you know, a term that recedes in the

distance of the, I almost think we approach it. But here we are. We have a

shutdown. The president of the United States this morning, he's taking this very seriously,

put out a social media post, in which via AI, he is rendered into the grim reaper, and he's

ringing about saying the reaper is coming. And I, you know, this is tied to

his threats to turn this shutdown, unlike any other shutdown we've had in the past, into a

political assault on his opponents. So he's cutting funding to projects in blue states, energy projects, infrastructure

projects. He's threatening big cuts in personnel in the government, but they're approaching

that a little more cautiously because apparently they feel that that may produce some backlash.

But there is backlash because the majority of people in the country blame this on the Republicans,

as they should. And the Democrats have been semi-on message on this thing. They've shown a little

discipline around the health care issue.

They want to put at the center of it. And I just want your assessment of where we are in this particular

shutdown that is unlike any other shutdown. So, David, I want to move beyond dysfunction to use three I words. Indecent, illegal, incompetent.

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