In today's news, Mystic Distillers, a local (Durham, NC) producer of bourbon and such, has decided to send their product into space. Teaming up with SpaceX, they plan to send 5 casks of bourbon into space in 2024 to age for a year. Upon recovery, the casks will yield 1,500 750ml bottles of product, of which 1,000 will be sold. It's not clear what will become of the remaining 500 bottles, however, buyers will also receive a 50ml shot of the liquor so they can taste it without having to open the original bottle.
The price tag? That's the kicker. Buyers will be issued an NFT (remember those?) for their investment of a mere - drumroll - $75,000 a bottle.
Words fail me. Bottles are expected to be available after some further time on ground, probably 2028.
In other news, the debt ceiling is upon us once again, and some nitwits in Congress are going to try to hold raising the limit hostage to, oh, I dunno, exterminating all newborn Democrats at birth, or something similar. Other wits (less nit, more wit) have pointed to a law that allows the Treasury to mint any kind of collectable coin it should so choose, and to make said coins legal tender. All the Pres has to do is have Treasury mint a trillion-dollar coin, and use that legal tender to pay off debts. Presto! The expectation is that at some point rational minds will prevail (when did this ever happen?) and the coin spending can be replaced with "normal debt," whatever that is.
There's more to this all than meets they eye. Congress passed a spending bill back in December that requires the President and executive branch to "operate the government at specific spending levels through the end of the fiscal year . . .".* The failure to raise the debt ceiling exchanges one illegal act for another. Actually, it appears there's a legal way out of this bind - ignore the debt ceiling, and take the matter to SCOTUS. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution states in part “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law … shall not be questioned.” Scholars will debate whether "questioned" means "thwarted," and in the newspeak of the current Supreme Court it probably doesn't, but it's worth a try.
*January 18, 2023, at https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/avoid-debt-limit-biden-learn-love-platinum-coin-rcna66316
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