Glenn Reynolds suggests defaulting on the federal debt as a way to balance the budget

Reynolds will probably claim he was joking, but he seems to forget that a lot of people these days aren’t getting the joke.

I have a vague memory of some Werner Herzog film set in Wisconsin in the winter, in which a couple of developmentally disabled fellows are sold a Winnebago RV even though they have no money. It’s repossessed and sold at an auction during an incredibly bleak midwinter afternoon. In the course of the auction one of them turns to the other and says something like, “You know, I thought we might have to pay for that thing one day.”

UPDATE [SL]: His response is actually worse than Paul guessed. Needless to say, it contains no defense of his idiotic idea on the merits, but does claim that Obama is “trying to turn the United States into Zimbabwe.” (This is even more hilarious when you remeber that Reynolds calls Bartlett’s substantive response “intemperate.”) Let’s leave aside the problems with comparing a program that would leave the United States with a smaller state than such failed states as Canada, the UK and Germany to Zimbabwe. If running deficits makes you Robert Mugabe what does that make Reynolds, who favors upper-class tax cuts (they allowed him to buy a six-burner grill, so they must be good public policy!), many more ruinously expensive wars, and as far as I can tell no non-trivial specific spending cuts?