Category Archives: Politics

Texan Stasi

 

The Stasi were the Secret Police of Communist East Germany tasked, among other things, with watching the population for signs of disloyalty. Recruiting people to spy upon their friends, neighbors, and family near the end of the brutal murderous regime the Stasi had informants that comprised over 2% of the nation’s population. Turning neighbor against neighbor particularly with payments and profits is a lessoned well learned by the Republicans of Texas.

This week a new Texan lawn, one that is blatantly unconstitutional, went into effect after the conservative Supreme Court of the United States of American declined to issue a stay to put the novel legal tactic on hold. Texas made illegal all abortions, save that to explicitly prevent the death of the mother, after six weeks of pregnancy, in direct contradiction to nearly 50 years of constitutional precedent. But rather than making the enforcement of the law a matter for the state of Texas the law places enforced in the hands of the public by way of civil action creating standing for anyone who wishes it to sue any and all person involved in performing, assisting, or in any way aiding the abortion of its procurement. The law also creates a floor of ‘damages’ with this standing of $10,000, allows for the plaintiff to recover their legal expensive should they prove victorious in court while also disallowing the defend to recovery their legal costs should they prevail. By removing the state as the enforcement the Texan GOP hopes, and so far, has been correct in their plot, to make this difficult to review, halt, or reverse in the courts. Resolving this by way of the courts could take years and lots of money and contrary to Conservative propaganda most abortion services providers are far from rich.

Never create a political power you aren’t willing to give to your political opponents.

There are already rumblings, though I fear it will never come to more than talk, of ‘Blue’ states retaliating in kind. Pass blatantly unconstitutional gun control laws and put enforcement into the hand of the public with ruinous ‘damages’ and expensive court fess.  Frankly I wish this would happen. Not because I am an avid supporter of gun control, I have dear friends that are gun collectors, enthusiasts, and merchants, but I also have dear friends and family that are women and whose right are being trampled for utter bullshit and if this is the sort of pain that must be inflicted to protect them, then so be it.

 

 

 

My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references,

Share

I’ll Take The Earthquakes

 

My family in Florida often comments that they could never live in California, terrified of the earth suddenly moving under their feet. I’ve ridden out a few earthquakes including one that sent waves rippling along the wall of a Denny’s I was sitting in and they are frightening but not as scary as the governor of Florida and willingness to slaughter the people in his quest to become the next leader of the Turd Reich.

Last year, at the very start of the year, I was planning a trip to Florida to see my family and celebrate the release of my first novel, Vulcan’s Forge. The pandemic killed those plans, my sales, and north of 600,000 Americans. Despite this Florida’s governor not only will not implement the simplest anti-covid measure but actually threatens those who do. California may have vast wildfires and earthquakes but do not elect our deadly disasters.

Yes, my current governor is subject to a specious recall and may be a Nexus 5 Replicant but he is not actively acting to slaughter me and my family.

 

Share

A Few Thoughts on Afghanistan

 

What is transpiring in the graveyard of empire is a terrible crime against humanity that women, girls, LGBTQ, non-believers, and other will bear the horrid costs of.

That said going into Afghanistan on a nation building project was in all likelihood a fool’s errand. Before the invasion but following the attacks of 9/11, the United States gave the Taliban leadership of that country an option to avoid invasion, surrender the terrorists to us. They rejected that offer and we invaded to get those that had killed 3000 of our own. (And now one of own political institutions shares culpability in killing 200 hundred times as many Americans.)

Our goal should have been getting al-Qaeda and then leaving. But that is don and the past cannot be changed. What to do now?

We should get every translator and their kin out of the country that wants to leave. If you have no loyalty you have nothing.

This should not extend in any manner to senior Afghani politicians scooping money into their pockets. Those who used the occupation as an excuse to fleece the country we owe no loyalty to; I have no issues leaving them on their own and closing our doors in their faces.

Share

The GOP Do Over 2: Electric Boogaloo

 

18 years ago, following the dot-com implosion and rolling blackouts across the state cause my politics and not by infrastructure issues crippled California a Republican spearheaded recall election removed the Democratic governor, Gray Davis, from office. At the time and to this day I refer to this as the GOP do-over. In 2002 Davis ran and won re-election against Republican Bill Simon. It should be noted that the California GOP has last held the Governorship with Pete Wilson in the 1990 and after the anti-immigrant and arguably racist drive to pass Proposition 187 denying services to undocumented persons the Republicans have failed to win statewide offices. Simon was a particularly bad campaigner. The economic crisis of the dotcom bust, the horrid electrical supply failures, and a deeply unpopular increase in automobile registration fee gave the GOP the tools and leverage to initiate and succeed at a recall campaign. If they were unable to win a popular vote in a statewide campaign, they could possibly take the office with a mere plurality of votes in a special election. That’s exactly what happened, 55% of the voters who showed up voted for the recall, turning Davis out of office, but only 48.6% voted for the man who replaced him, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The GOP, having now even further right than before and without Arnold’s moderate stances and celebrity status they have been driven again from statewide offices, are using the COVID-19 pandemic as the crisis in their attempts to recall Governor Gavin Newsom. I have no deep well of affection for either Davis or Newsom and Newsom’s handed his political enemies numerous PR knives with which to stab him but he, nor Davis before him, has committed and abuse of office or malfeasance that warrants a recall from office. This is once again the Republicans, too far too the right to gain a majority of votes from the population, trying to secure an office that are unable to win in any general election. Reflecting the national GOP, California Republicans instead of moderating their policies and positions seek to ‘rule lawyer’ their way into power and damn the will of the people.

I urge everyone in this state to do as I am doing and voting ‘No’ on this recall.

Share

Quick Hits

 

Just a few unrelated thoughts and observations this morning.

 

COVID-19: Well, this is fucked. We could have been well on the way to controlling the pandemic in the US and then turning our considerable resources to helping the rest of the world, but no, our fascist-adjacent party insists on throwing their tantrum modeled upon their orange god-king and screwing it up for everyone.

 

New Novel: I’ve started act break work on my new novel about alien ‘non-contact.’ I’m hoping within a week to have an outline and to be ready for actual scene writing.

 

Marvel’s What if …: the new series an anthology of animated alternate versions of MCU stories, the premier being what is Agent Carter got the super solider serum instead of Steve. It worked but I wasn’t blown away.

 

 

Share

Returning to Our Winter of Discontent

 

COVID 19 cases continue to rise alarmingly fast. The United States has sufficient quantities of vaccine to immunize every single adult in the country. The right’s base, following decades of anti-science and anti-expertise propaganda follow their orange god/king with the fever of fanatics foregoing vaccination even as their elite take the shot along with their followers money.

This is the current situation in America and though last week so half-hearted and weak attempts my ‘conservative’ elites to urges their base to get vaccinated those efforts has evaporated and case rates and death continue to rise.

This is summer. People are out and about in the open air lessening the spread and still the rates are climbing fast. When winter comes and people remain indoor sharing their breathing air over and over it may be very very bad.

“Break through’ infections, infection among the vaccinated, are happening but those who have been vaccinated even if they get COVID are not winding up in the hospital or the morgue. We will lose more people, a lot more people, all the flatter a thin-skinned lying narcissist about an election he lost.

Share

Someone Lighted the Nut-Signal Yesterday

 

After months of anti-vaxx messaging, fear-mongering, and countless people suffering pain and death to appease a spoiled pamper man-baby in Florida ‘conservative’ news and twitter yesterday suddenly began broadcasting the urgent needs for people to be vaccinated. Tweets from the Senate minority leader, commentary from Fox News and other ‘conservative’ quarters all began singing from the same hymn.

I do not know why a sanity suddenly burst like a star flare over the right and while I expect it to fade as quickly as that flare, I still welcome it.

It’s with great doubt that I would entertain the concept that a sudden empathy for the people suffering and dying motivated these elites to urge a rational and urgently needed course of action. Yesterday’s messengers have been long vaccinated themselves against this plague and all too content to let others die slow lingering isolated deaths for brief political points making empathy an impossibly high hurdle for any sensible person’s suspension of disbelief.

No, I would look to some motivated, selfish, self-interest for the sudden, and in all likelihood, temporary change in messaging. Perhaps the growing hospitalizations has depressed fundraising and the flood of cash slowed frightening the politicians. Perhaps the suburbs fled the right even more as death and disease replaced low taxation as the most identifying aspect of the Republican party. Or maybe, just maybe, someone with a little foresight, able to peer into the misty future beyond the 24 hours news cycle understood that being anti-vaxx actually resulted in killing the very voters who would be insane enough to return them to power. Despite losing the popular vote by seven or so million the GOP lost the White House only by a margin of fifty or so thousand votes a margin easily expanded by a pandemic that concentrated itself within their base.

 

Share

GOP Anti-Vaxx Did Not Start with Trump

 

I am running late this morning and so this post will be shorter than most.

While (hat tip to Stephen Colbert and his writing team) The Turd Reich has certainly accelerated and amplified anti-science and anti-vaccine ideology within the GOP he did not instigate or create that movement.

Long before that terrible entrance down the tower’s escalator many within the GOP had already begun swarming to the anti-vaccine message.

Michelle Malkin championed the idiocy because the HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer in women might *gasp* encourage sexual activity in girls. Better they die painfully and slowly of cancer that enjoy sexual pleasure not approved of by conservatives and the church.

Senator Rand Paul, a doctor for god’s sake, played with vaccines cause autism as a political ploy and then when called on it demanded that you believed him over the actual taped evidence.

The Delta variant, a far less entertaining variant thank any Loki, is spreading fast through the counties and districts of the country dedicated to the orange god/king and when winter arrives, I would not be surprised to see hospital in those area overwhelmed. Of course, the elites of the Turd Reich are vaccinated, they will survive the next waves like taxes it’s only little people that will die of COVID this winter.

Share

Stunned by Evil

 

The currently political conditions are beyond stupid, or corrupt, or evil incompetence and are transgressing into the territory that can only be called evil.

An entire political movement, devoted to a thin-skinned, orange, tantrum throwing god/king has forcefully and utterly placed itself against science, common sense, and the health and lives of its base all in the name of ‘not doing what liberals are doing.’

This pandemic has killed over six hundred thousand in the United States and despite several vaccines, produced not by miracles or divine intervention but by the hard work brilliance and education of scientific heroes, infections and deaths are beginning to against rise due the conservative crazy.

The Governor of Florida is selling campaign merchandise celebrating resistance to vaccination. Tennessee republicans have sacked the head of the health department and suspended outreach to all adolescents for ALL vaccinations, not just the COVID ones, to appease the ravenous ignorant monster of a base that they have created with decades of dedicated anti-science, anti-expertise campaigning.

All of this, this disease and death, to support what? That Former Guy who’s a cheat and swindler? To lower taxes on the uber-wealthy? To loosen gun regulations? A pistol will not save you as you die on a ventilator with your lungs shredded by a virus.

NO matter what they say, no matter what they promise, we must turn out and vote and deny the modern GOP are hint or taste or any political power or authority.

 

 

Share

Blue America and Plague America

 

When it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic there are clearly two Americas, Blue America where vaccination rates are high and Red American where they are low.

Red America, that land where refusing to wear a mask of a symbolic gesture to show that you ‘do not live in fear’ but going everywhere armed is merely judicious judgment, has climbing cases of COVID-19 and still they refuse to get vaccinated.

This chart from the New York Times shows the absolutely clear relationship between vaccination rates and death from COVID-19.

Conservatives who would be excited beyond measure if the U.S. Supreme Court declared that ‘Constitution Carry’, the ability to carry a firearm conceal without any permitting requirements, and pack pistols before the ink was dry on the decision because they live in total terror of crime still refuse to get vaccinated. In rough figures because the data is not yet fully compiled there were about 20,000 murders in the United States last year and to date the pandemic has killed 30 times that number at more than 600,000 people. More that the US lost in World War II and Vietnam combined. Clearly saving their own lives and that of their families is not the reason that would prefer to pocket a pistol before taking the vaccine.

It is a clear indication of the madness that has taken over the conservative movement that its member would rather deal death than prevent it.

Share