American elections are like herpes - they just keep on giving!
Not that you particularly want any. Since Tuesday, the news sites of every persuasion have been flooded with noise that's not so much analysis as it's just rationalizations of what the authors want.
Like all the "progressives" celebrating how Christie won with bipartisanship and charisma and whatever. News flash for all you pseudointellectual post-irony hipsters - Chris Christie is as crooked as any other corporate suck-puppet. He'll even veto a bill that passes the New Jersey legislature by 91% if it means he can score a few votes in Iowa in 2016. His bipartisanship is a means to an end, which is his wide end planted in the oval office. He's ambition unclouded by any sort of principle and just because he doesn't look like the screaming crazies currently in the House doesn't mean he's your Great White Hope.
And on the subject of governors, let's take a look at the Commonwealth. I have yet to see any pundit acknowledge the demographic split that drove McAuliffe to victory. They all want to give the credit to the shutdown, or deny the credit to the shutdown, or entertain the Tea Party persecution complex.
Here's the thing about Virginia - the shutdown was viscerally important to one demographic and totally foreign to another. And you can see that in any district map. Northern Virginia - where all the money is federal money - went decisively for McAuliffe. My birthplace of Fairfax, not exactly a liberal hippie commune, swung blue by 72%! And the second most populous area, Charlottesville and surrounding Albermarle county, also voted Democrat. Because UVa is there and you'd best believe the Wahoos didn't want four years under the witch-finder general.
Now C-Ville may be dominated by university liberals but Northern Virginia has been strongly Republican since I can remember. Old-school, old money Republican. The kind who tolerate the anti-sex hicks who swoon over Cuccinelli if it gets them the good contracts and tax cuts. They rallied against Clinton, rallied behind Bush, supported McCain and Romeny... but they also voted for Tim Kain and Jim Webb. Because they don't give a shit about all that "liberty" and "constitution" and "islamo-commie" blather. They don't like the Democrats but they want the damn government to at least function.
And if the Tea Party has made one thing abundantly clear, it is that it will break the whole system. No matter what. If they don't get their way, smash it all. If they do, smash it all anyway. Cuccinelli demonstrated his commitment to that nihilistic jihad, pursuing one deluded cause after another as attorney general. Blocking Obamacare, criminalizing sex - if it was in the Tea Party pamphlet he did it.
That endeared him to the same mean and stupid hicks who always vote Republican anyway. I lived in central Virginia for seven years so I know these people in my goddamn blood - they are just mean and stupid. They will vote for whoever flatters their craven vanities while promising to do the most harm to coloreds and queers. This is the same third of Americans who supported Bush in 2007 when every other Republican with a career was jumping ship. The same who bought into every one of Glenn Beck's Saturday morning conspiracy theories. The same who honestly expected Romeny to win because they have as much contact with reality as the island of the lotus eaters. And they account for all of Virginia, save for little islands of blue like Arlington and Albermarle.
The only real lesson of 2013 is the one nobody will admit - for Democrats to win, campaign hard among urban non-whites and leave the hicks to stew in resentment. And if you think Virginia is somehow an aberration, just take a look at the NYC election map. American elections are now the billionaires and the hicks versus everyone else. The rest ain't even commentary.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Friday, November 8, 2013
Fiend Friday: New Paperback Available!
My novel Fiend 2.0 is finally available in paperback! Look for it at these fine internet retailers and get your fang on!
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Create Space
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Create Space
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| The more money I make from this, the more time I can spend pissing off libertarians for your amusement! |
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
When Elections Don't Matter
The grand contest between Bill de Blasio and Joe Lhota for mayor of New York City wasn't so much "sound and fury... signifying nothing" as it was a big sucking hole of a non-issue. Not just in the staggering lead de Blasio held over Lhota but in how every issue supposedly framing the election was not something the mayor of this crooked city could or would ever change.
Taxes
New Yorkers pay the highest taxes of anyone in the country and for increasingly little return. Bill de Blasio campaigned on getting Wall Street pinheads to pay more, earning him the admiration of everyone scraping by - so about 99% - and a hilarious front page meltdown over at the New York Post.
But lost in all this noise was the fact that the mayor cannot raise taxes beyond a certain level. And that's a state law, not city. Not to mention the asshole bankers pulling down the big fraud bucks all either reside in Connecticut or list their primary residence as their vacation home in Aruba. Hell, there are people down in Mill Basin puling that second trick! It's a lot like Greece, where raising taxes on the wealthy doesn't even begin to get around the central problem of the wealthy refusing to pay taxes at all.
Stop and Frisk
This was the big one. Even bigger than the red-baiting and fake tax talk. And nothing will come of it. As Anthony "No Balls" Bologna should have taught everyone two years ago, the NYPD is already a straight-up fascist operation. Doing away with a tactic won't change their essential character - they'll continue to terrorize black men and pepper spray unarmed women as long as they exist.
And make no mistake, the NYPD budget is as sacrosanct as the DOD. New York City has more armed men in uniform than most third world dictatorships and for the exact same reason - the powers that be in this city are absolutely terrified of the peasants. Whoever is mayor has to see to the interests of those powers first, so even if de Blasio orders the cops to stop touching black men's junk they'll still have the broader mandate to keep everyone terrified.
The Subway Kittens
About a month ago, there was a huge delay in the subway system when kittens were found on the tracks. Everything shut down so they could be rescued, causing a lot of people to be late but come on! Kittens!
Except Joe Lhota came out and argued that the trains should have been allowed to run anyway. So that's the one upside to this election - the kitten-hating asshole lost.
Taxes
New Yorkers pay the highest taxes of anyone in the country and for increasingly little return. Bill de Blasio campaigned on getting Wall Street pinheads to pay more, earning him the admiration of everyone scraping by - so about 99% - and a hilarious front page meltdown over at the New York Post.
But lost in all this noise was the fact that the mayor cannot raise taxes beyond a certain level. And that's a state law, not city. Not to mention the asshole bankers pulling down the big fraud bucks all either reside in Connecticut or list their primary residence as their vacation home in Aruba. Hell, there are people down in Mill Basin puling that second trick! It's a lot like Greece, where raising taxes on the wealthy doesn't even begin to get around the central problem of the wealthy refusing to pay taxes at all.
Stop and Frisk
This was the big one. Even bigger than the red-baiting and fake tax talk. And nothing will come of it. As Anthony "No Balls" Bologna should have taught everyone two years ago, the NYPD is already a straight-up fascist operation. Doing away with a tactic won't change their essential character - they'll continue to terrorize black men and pepper spray unarmed women as long as they exist.
And make no mistake, the NYPD budget is as sacrosanct as the DOD. New York City has more armed men in uniform than most third world dictatorships and for the exact same reason - the powers that be in this city are absolutely terrified of the peasants. Whoever is mayor has to see to the interests of those powers first, so even if de Blasio orders the cops to stop touching black men's junk they'll still have the broader mandate to keep everyone terrified.
The Subway Kittens
About a month ago, there was a huge delay in the subway system when kittens were found on the tracks. Everything shut down so they could be rescued, causing a lot of people to be late but come on! Kittens!
Except Joe Lhota came out and argued that the trains should have been allowed to run anyway. So that's the one upside to this election - the kitten-hating asshole lost.
Monday, November 4, 2013
Game Over
I didn't go see Ender's Game this weekend but I did once read the book. So here's a review that'll hopefully score me some more blag traffic!
The one thing that always confused me about Ender's Game was how everyone insisted the titular Ender Wiggins was some sort of tactical genius. Yeah, I know there's supposed to be some stuff about loyalty and friendship and the horrors of war and blah blah blah... But all I ever heard from sci-fi nerds is how clever the main character was.
So I read the book and his brilliant battle tactic? More dakka. Really. No feints, no deftly timed maneuvers, just "Ender smash!" Threw me a bit...
In fairness, while zero-g training, Wiggums figures out that his team can use their own legs as a shield for the opposing team's fire. Because it's just lazer tag and differentiates between vital organs and extremities. But this doesn't change the essential plan of four yards and a cloud of bullets. And he sticks to the same kill 'em all style all the way through, until he's vaporized the alien homeworld while thinking the whole thing was still just training. And the character bits in between all the shooting in a white room... it's thoroughly forgettable.
In fact, that's a good way to sum up the entire book. Not bad, at least not enough for me to work up a good rant. It just kinda sits there, like mayonnaise. Which shouldn't be surprising, being a Mormon's attempt at grafting Starship Troopers to The Forever War.
So then why is Endgame so popular in nerd circles? I propose it has nothing to do with the story or the prose style - which is godawful, though still not enough for a proper hate-down. No, Eddie Wiggles is a popular genre character because he is the embodiment of the common Waffentwerp fantasy - the smart dork triumphing violently over everyone and everything.
It's a distinctly teenage boy mentality. It's always the put upon dweeb and the triumph is always of some violent or martial sort. Luke Skywalker, Paul Atreides, that goon from The Last Starfighter - all nobodies who redefine themselves through violence and all beloved by the real losers out there. In Paul's case, he goes on to seriously question what his killing name has wrought on the universe but the fandom doesn't usually dwell on that as it gets in the way of giggling over all the badass wormriders. Badass is the whole raison d'etre of these characters - and Ender - as far as the geek hordes are concerned because being badass - wreaking tremendous, righteous violence - elevates one from the loserdom that is the common American male's everyday existence.
And finally, it's a fantasy because it supposes that "genius" in war is even a factor. Ulysses S. Grant, a truly great general, saved most of his genius for logistics while Robert E. Lee was off doing the romantic tactician stuff. Grant won. Napoleon packed the Grand Armee with as much cannon as it could hold, like the battalions of Gustavus two centuries earlier -
Okay, so More Dakka is a highly effective strategy. But it doesn't take a whole lot of thought. The stuff that does - insurgency, counter-terrorism - takes a little more smarts but then only a little. You'd think twelve years of irregular, asymetric warfare would have taught people this stuff. Osama bin Laden scored one heck of a tactical victory on 9/11, but he also believed in Allah. Not a Mensa candidate is what I'm sayin'...
But there's nothing badass about any of that. So rather than a film treatment of the long grind and moral ambiguity of warfare, we get Indiana Ford and Ass Butter acting out the power fantasies of a Mormon milquetoast. Go read up on the Thirty Years War or the Battle of Rivoli if you wanna know what military genius looks like. If you wanna see Ender's genius, do a Zerg rush in Starcraft.
So I read the book and his brilliant battle tactic? More dakka. Really. No feints, no deftly timed maneuvers, just "Ender smash!" Threw me a bit...
In fairness, while zero-g training, Wiggums figures out that his team can use their own legs as a shield for the opposing team's fire. Because it's just lazer tag and differentiates between vital organs and extremities. But this doesn't change the essential plan of four yards and a cloud of bullets. And he sticks to the same kill 'em all style all the way through, until he's vaporized the alien homeworld while thinking the whole thing was still just training. And the character bits in between all the shooting in a white room... it's thoroughly forgettable.
In fact, that's a good way to sum up the entire book. Not bad, at least not enough for me to work up a good rant. It just kinda sits there, like mayonnaise. Which shouldn't be surprising, being a Mormon's attempt at grafting Starship Troopers to The Forever War.
So then why is Endgame so popular in nerd circles? I propose it has nothing to do with the story or the prose style - which is godawful, though still not enough for a proper hate-down. No, Eddie Wiggles is a popular genre character because he is the embodiment of the common Waffentwerp fantasy - the smart dork triumphing violently over everyone and everything.
It's a distinctly teenage boy mentality. It's always the put upon dweeb and the triumph is always of some violent or martial sort. Luke Skywalker, Paul Atreides, that goon from The Last Starfighter - all nobodies who redefine themselves through violence and all beloved by the real losers out there. In Paul's case, he goes on to seriously question what his killing name has wrought on the universe but the fandom doesn't usually dwell on that as it gets in the way of giggling over all the badass wormriders. Badass is the whole raison d'etre of these characters - and Ender - as far as the geek hordes are concerned because being badass - wreaking tremendous, righteous violence - elevates one from the loserdom that is the common American male's everyday existence.
And finally, it's a fantasy because it supposes that "genius" in war is even a factor. Ulysses S. Grant, a truly great general, saved most of his genius for logistics while Robert E. Lee was off doing the romantic tactician stuff. Grant won. Napoleon packed the Grand Armee with as much cannon as it could hold, like the battalions of Gustavus two centuries earlier -
Okay, so More Dakka is a highly effective strategy. But it doesn't take a whole lot of thought. The stuff that does - insurgency, counter-terrorism - takes a little more smarts but then only a little. You'd think twelve years of irregular, asymetric warfare would have taught people this stuff. Osama bin Laden scored one heck of a tactical victory on 9/11, but he also believed in Allah. Not a Mensa candidate is what I'm sayin'...
But there's nothing badass about any of that. So rather than a film treatment of the long grind and moral ambiguity of warfare, we get Indiana Ford and Ass Butter acting out the power fantasies of a Mormon milquetoast. Go read up on the Thirty Years War or the Battle of Rivoli if you wanna know what military genius looks like. If you wanna see Ender's genius, do a Zerg rush in Starcraft.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Vampires Don't Suck: An Anti-Rant
It's Halloween! Rejoice, fuckers!
Well, technically the day before Halloween.The eve of All Hallow's Eve. But if I have to look at Christmas decorations going up already, ya'll get to suffer through a premature Halloween.
And what better way to suffer than with that most abused of folkloric monsters, the vampire? Ever since Anne Rice struck it rich with her yaoi fantasies, vampires have been getting squeezed through one cornball work of girl porn after another. It's a shame because the vampire retains plenty of good horror uses - in the hands of a competent writer.
So here it is, your Halloween 2013 guide to vampire fiction that doesn't suck!
Let the Right One In
Leave it to a Scandinavian to do a grim, uncompromising exploration of childhood. Protagonist Oskar has little to fear from blood-sucking Eli, at least when compared to the bullies at his school. And rather than turn into some stoic Protestant masochist, he seeks to strike back at the world that abuses him. And as it fits her own utterly selfish interests, Eli is happy to help...
Lost Souls
Anne Rice ain't the only one who can do gay vampires - Poppy Z. Brite's little dip into the genre is all the gothy homoeroticism you gals out there crave. But unlike Rice, she crafts a very un-romantic coming of age story out of it all. Her modern vampires travel the back roads of the south in a busted up van, drinking blood and booze in equal measure, and wreaking horrible life-destroying violence on anyone who crosses their path. They're the Near Dark crew after an extended stay in New Orleans, goth meets southern gothic. And there's not a moment of pity for anyone!
Carmilla
Before Vlad Tepes took the ladies of London by storm, Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu gave literature an equally sexual predator. Except his is another girl in one of - if not the! - earliest lesbian romances. The titular Carmilla has a sweet scam going, ingratiating herself into a noble family and slowly bleeding their impressionable daughter, in every sense of the word... It's a bit melodramatic compared to the rest of this list but it's also the shortest. And I know what really matters to you all.
I Am Legend
No book has been adapted to screen so poorly so many times. From Charleton Heston to Will Smith, Hollywoood keeps trying to focus on the man and not the monster. Matheson not only wrote the definitive post-apocalypse survival tale, but turned the entire vampire genre on its head in a way that no other work has managed to deal with since. I won't just say it, as I'd be giving away a big part of the ending, but what do you think when you hear about a guy who wanders around while you're asleep, murdering all your friends and neighbors?
So there ya go! The vampire books you can really sink your teeth into. And there's one more, but you'll have to wait until midnight...
Update:
Fiend has been revamped - har har - and re-released, now on the ereader of your choice!
And for all you luddites, check back here for details on a spankin' new Fiend paperback!
Well, technically the day before Halloween.The eve of All Hallow's Eve. But if I have to look at Christmas decorations going up already, ya'll get to suffer through a premature Halloween.
And what better way to suffer than with that most abused of folkloric monsters, the vampire? Ever since Anne Rice struck it rich with her yaoi fantasies, vampires have been getting squeezed through one cornball work of girl porn after another. It's a shame because the vampire retains plenty of good horror uses - in the hands of a competent writer.
So here it is, your Halloween 2013 guide to vampire fiction that doesn't suck!
Leave it to a Scandinavian to do a grim, uncompromising exploration of childhood. Protagonist Oskar has little to fear from blood-sucking Eli, at least when compared to the bullies at his school. And rather than turn into some stoic Protestant masochist, he seeks to strike back at the world that abuses him. And as it fits her own utterly selfish interests, Eli is happy to help...
Lost Souls
Before Vlad Tepes took the ladies of London by storm, Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu gave literature an equally sexual predator. Except his is another girl in one of - if not the! - earliest lesbian romances. The titular Carmilla has a sweet scam going, ingratiating herself into a noble family and slowly bleeding their impressionable daughter, in every sense of the word... It's a bit melodramatic compared to the rest of this list but it's also the shortest. And I know what really matters to you all.
Salem's Lot
When you write as many books as Stephen King, a few of them are bound to be decent. This not so little tale about Old World vampires descending on the New England town of Jerusalem's Lot is one such book - and in so many ways! On the surface, you've got a solid little horror tale full of vampires that are actually scary. But as you dig deeper, you see that King is a serious craftsman - the inversion of the Superstition versus Science theme that dominated the original Dracula, the misery and petty malice endemic to small town America, all conveyed in a style at once literary and familiar.
No book has been adapted to screen so poorly so many times. From Charleton Heston to Will Smith, Hollywoood keeps trying to focus on the man and not the monster. Matheson not only wrote the definitive post-apocalypse survival tale, but turned the entire vampire genre on its head in a way that no other work has managed to deal with since. I won't just say it, as I'd be giving away a big part of the ending, but what do you think when you hear about a guy who wanders around while you're asleep, murdering all your friends and neighbors?
Sunglasses After Dark
Okay, this is a purely personal indulgence. The vamp slayin', face stompin' heroine of Nancy A. Collins ain't gonna be made into a movie anytime soon. It's not just too raw but too cosmologically confusing - Sonja Blue inhabits a world full of much more than vampires, slipping unnoticed among humanity in a manner Joss Whedon ripped off shamelessly. And neutered. But the Blue woman's breakout adventure is a rollicking good time of revenge, unapologetic monsters, and I swear to God a cameo by John Constantine!
So there ya go! The vampire books you can really sink your teeth into. And there's one more, but you'll have to wait until midnight...
Update:
Fiend has been revamped - har har - and re-released, now on the ereader of your choice!
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| So come get your fang on! |
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
The Revolution Will Not Be [KERNEL PANIC]
I went back to Windows recently and the most shocking thing? I missed it. I missed being able to install things with just a double click. I missed making full use of the hardware on my machine. I really missed access to all those mods...
But most of all, I missed being able to just turn on my computer and do stuff. That's the one cardinal rule of software design that developers like to pretend doesn't exist. See, having to worry about those hessian end users gets in the way of all their posturing - in that it requires them to follow through on their claims of superiority. In five years of IT work, I've known all of one developer who had the discipline of a proper craftsman and she was perpetually worn down by having to carry the whole project...
I'm getting off on a different rant here. Point is, I used Ubuntu for years and, having returned to the Microsoft Kool-Aide, don't miss that open source stuff in the slightest.
This started in 2008 because I didn't want to switch to Vista and I couldn't afford a Mac if I wanted to. So I gave the whole Linux thing a whirl, burning a live CD of Ubuntu 8.10 and installing it on my 2003 laptop. It ran a bit slow in places but overall it did what I wanted without ever getting in the way. I got familiar with UNIX commands, tooled around with Python despite no programming experience, I embraced the whole open source revolution! What did I need to shell out a couple hundred bucks for a GUI just to use the hardware I already paid for anyway? And so what if it took some not-at-all intuitive process just to install anything?
That was my attitude until about a month ago, when I made the change from 9.04.3 to the latest version...
First install - Woops, looks like my system isn't 64-bit compatible. Should've assumed that...
Second install - Well that worked. Eew, is that the desktop? It looks like an iPad beta. Ah well, at least it's running smoother than that first try. Now to get back all my files and... Hey, why is everything read only? Why can't I save anything? Why can't I delete anything!?
Third install - Piece a' crap, losing all my MST3K... Can't even keep up, runs slower than my 2003 machine... And now everything's turned read only again!
Fourth install - Aww hell no!
I can take a lot of abuse. I was raised by an Irish Catholic. But deprive me of Mike and the Bots? That shit will not fly.
So I went out and bought a new machine that was on sale. Pre-loaded with Windows 8. The "start menu" is obnoxious - trying way too hard to out Apple the Apple interface - but at least the damned thing works.
And just so it's perfectly clear, I did this entirely because of Ubuntu 13. I've got no complaints about 8.10 and 9.04 - go give 'em a whirl yourself. The best thing I can say about them is I never noticed a difference. For a brief period, Ubuntu really lived up to the dream of an open source OS that just plain worked, without expecting every user to be one of those Asperger's casualties who think everyone should know how to program in the command line. For moral reasons. Seriously, it's like Calvinists expecting everyone to submit to their own dull obsession...
And now, Ubuntu is trying to be the poor man's Mac. That's worse than suicide.
***Update: 10:31 am***
"You'll never miss Windows!" say the glassy-eyed cultists.
But most of all, I missed being able to just turn on my computer and do stuff. That's the one cardinal rule of software design that developers like to pretend doesn't exist. See, having to worry about those hessian end users gets in the way of all their posturing - in that it requires them to follow through on their claims of superiority. In five years of IT work, I've known all of one developer who had the discipline of a proper craftsman and she was perpetually worn down by having to carry the whole project...
I'm getting off on a different rant here. Point is, I used Ubuntu for years and, having returned to the Microsoft Kool-Aide, don't miss that open source stuff in the slightest.
This started in 2008 because I didn't want to switch to Vista and I couldn't afford a Mac if I wanted to. So I gave the whole Linux thing a whirl, burning a live CD of Ubuntu 8.10 and installing it on my 2003 laptop. It ran a bit slow in places but overall it did what I wanted without ever getting in the way. I got familiar with UNIX commands, tooled around with Python despite no programming experience, I embraced the whole open source revolution! What did I need to shell out a couple hundred bucks for a GUI just to use the hardware I already paid for anyway? And so what if it took some not-at-all intuitive process just to install anything?
That was my attitude until about a month ago, when I made the change from 9.04.3 to the latest version...
First install - Woops, looks like my system isn't 64-bit compatible. Should've assumed that...
Second install - Well that worked. Eew, is that the desktop? It looks like an iPad beta. Ah well, at least it's running smoother than that first try. Now to get back all my files and... Hey, why is everything read only? Why can't I save anything? Why can't I delete anything!?
 |
| What the frak is "/" and why are you checking for it!? |
Third install - Piece a' crap, losing all my MST3K... Can't even keep up, runs slower than my 2003 machine... And now everything's turned read only again!
Fourth install - Aww hell no!
I can take a lot of abuse. I was raised by an Irish Catholic. But deprive me of Mike and the Bots? That shit will not fly.
So I went out and bought a new machine that was on sale. Pre-loaded with Windows 8. The "start menu" is obnoxious - trying way too hard to out Apple the Apple interface - but at least the damned thing works.
And just so it's perfectly clear, I did this entirely because of Ubuntu 13. I've got no complaints about 8.10 and 9.04 - go give 'em a whirl yourself. The best thing I can say about them is I never noticed a difference. For a brief period, Ubuntu really lived up to the dream of an open source OS that just plain worked, without expecting every user to be one of those Asperger's casualties who think everyone should know how to program in the command line. For moral reasons. Seriously, it's like Calvinists expecting everyone to submit to their own dull obsession...
 |
| "Use Linux because Micro$oft is teh evuls! No I won't tell you how - RTFM!" |
And now, Ubuntu is trying to be the poor man's Mac. That's worse than suicide.
***Update: 10:31 am***
"You'll never miss Windows!" say the glassy-eyed cultists.
 |
| This is so much more interesting than that boring ol' BSOD... |
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Tea Party Terrorism
You gotta hand it to the Tea Party. From their humble beginnings as an astroturf non-movement to engineering the first government shutdown in two decades, they've risen to become the most effective terrorists to ever hit the United States.
And I'm not the only one saying it. Their latest shenanigans are still being spun as politics as usual over at the New York Times and other bastions of the muddling mainstream, but a quick perusal of the comments reveals the majority have quite had it with this anti-government jihad. For every dead-ender promising to donate to the campaign of Osama bin Cruz, there's a dozen pulling their hair out and an increasing number dropping that good ol' "T" bomb like me.
Because the Tea Party just did what all serious terrorists do - hit hard without a care for self-preservation. Like all those spoiled Saudis who crashed planes into New York and DC twelve years ago, the Tea Party orchestrated the current government shutdown strictly for ideological reasons. The reaction of John Q. Public wasn't a factor 'cause when you're running on faith - whether it's Allah or Small Government - the opinions of others are beneath contempt. At best they're a distraction, mostly they're a heresy. Just ask the morality cops in Riyadh.
But that would all just make the Tea Party just another bunch of ragheads. What they did - and I'm surprised no other global insurgents have tried this - was hit America where it really hurt... In the money.
How many people have been killed in terrorists attacks? A fair number but with rare exceptions like 9/11 they're people who are too poor or foreign to really count. And let's be honest, no one weeps over oil workers. And killing, while theatrical, just isn't how you make war on 300 million comfortable first worlders - especially if you don't have anything in the megaton range.
So what's a Tea Party jihadi to do... Why wreck the economy, of course! Conservative estimates place the cost of a government shutdown at about 1 billion dollars lost from the US economy per week. No, not "saved" because it started out as a Federal paycheck - just gone entirely. Since all those Federal employees won't have any pay to spend. Look for some shuttered Starbucks in Arlington!
But that's still small time, compared to what this is doing to the stock market. The financial press tried to downplay it this morning, claiming "cautious optimism" or something, but if you have an IRA like me you woke up to one hell of a drop. It's just gonna keep dropping the longer this shutdown lasts, which pleases the Tea Party jihadis right down to their secret keffiyahs!
You can kill all the Americans you want and just get a shrug. George W. Bush killed over a thousand trying to turn Baghdad into a white collar suburb and still got re-elected. But taking our dollars, that hurts. It hurts deep and it hurts for a long long time. Those al Qaeda hicks with all their hollering and exploding are the Where Are They Now? of jihadis while the Tea Party managed to bring the mightiest empire in history to its knees. Not with suicide attacks or Ayn Rand madrassas or billions of Wahabbi cash on the sly, but by worming their way into elected office and then not doing a damn thing.
I tell ya, world class terrorists! All those yahoos in Syria and Pakistan could learn a thing or two from the Cruz crowd.
And I'm not the only one saying it. Their latest shenanigans are still being spun as politics as usual over at the New York Times and other bastions of the muddling mainstream, but a quick perusal of the comments reveals the majority have quite had it with this anti-government jihad. For every dead-ender promising to donate to the campaign of Osama bin Cruz, there's a dozen pulling their hair out and an increasing number dropping that good ol' "T" bomb like me.
Because the Tea Party just did what all serious terrorists do - hit hard without a care for self-preservation. Like all those spoiled Saudis who crashed planes into New York and DC twelve years ago, the Tea Party orchestrated the current government shutdown strictly for ideological reasons. The reaction of John Q. Public wasn't a factor 'cause when you're running on faith - whether it's Allah or Small Government - the opinions of others are beneath contempt. At best they're a distraction, mostly they're a heresy. Just ask the morality cops in Riyadh.
 |
| On second thought, don't... |
But that would all just make the Tea Party just another bunch of ragheads. What they did - and I'm surprised no other global insurgents have tried this - was hit America where it really hurt... In the money.
How many people have been killed in terrorists attacks? A fair number but with rare exceptions like 9/11 they're people who are too poor or foreign to really count. And let's be honest, no one weeps over oil workers. And killing, while theatrical, just isn't how you make war on 300 million comfortable first worlders - especially if you don't have anything in the megaton range.
So what's a Tea Party jihadi to do... Why wreck the economy, of course! Conservative estimates place the cost of a government shutdown at about 1 billion dollars lost from the US economy per week. No, not "saved" because it started out as a Federal paycheck - just gone entirely. Since all those Federal employees won't have any pay to spend. Look for some shuttered Starbucks in Arlington!
But that's still small time, compared to what this is doing to the stock market. The financial press tried to downplay it this morning, claiming "cautious optimism" or something, but if you have an IRA like me you woke up to one hell of a drop. It's just gonna keep dropping the longer this shutdown lasts, which pleases the Tea Party jihadis right down to their secret keffiyahs!
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| "Green eggs and ham are haram! And so is healthcare!" |
You can kill all the Americans you want and just get a shrug. George W. Bush killed over a thousand trying to turn Baghdad into a white collar suburb and still got re-elected. But taking our dollars, that hurts. It hurts deep and it hurts for a long long time. Those al Qaeda hicks with all their hollering and exploding are the Where Are They Now? of jihadis while the Tea Party managed to bring the mightiest empire in history to its knees. Not with suicide attacks or Ayn Rand madrassas or billions of Wahabbi cash on the sly, but by worming their way into elected office and then not doing a damn thing.
I tell ya, world class terrorists! All those yahoos in Syria and Pakistan could learn a thing or two from the Cruz crowd.
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| Trevor Kroger is the author of One Nation Under God, in which a similar crew of reactionary screwheads destroy America! |
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