Happy New Year with an Empty Tank, the Budget Deficit, Vince Flynn & Ben Coes

I’m in a foul mood!  There are many reasons for my foulness and there are no reasons – that is – there are no legitimate reasons, so I’m left with some fanciful creation of my imagination.

It’s the first week of the year and it is the most anticlimactic and depressing week for me - for some reason this may hit a nerve with others who feel the same about the month of December, with the crescendo of blinding activity culminating around the holiday season, ending in a free-fall to ground zero on the first of January – with a headache to boot, rather than a smooth decrescendo down to a comfortable baseline. There is literally nothing left in my tank!  

But - the year has now - once again – started its dispassionate forward movement without me!  I’m not ready for it to start! Time: why not give us a break; can you not sit still even for a moment?  What does a few moments mean to you when your basic unit of time is the light-year!!  After New Year’s Eve….why not give mankind a 2-3 week window of nothingness drenched with time for sleep, no one to worry about, no work, no responsibility, a winter hibernation to purge our brains and bodies, a central nervous system enema to decompress, desensitize, recuperate, reinvigorate, recharge and recommit to the world.  Ahhh, only if this could happen…. I would even promise to do my taxes on time.  Sorry, …….  Start moving or be trampled!

Added to this, this last year we have been sitting on our butts watching our government ruminating in a fiscal cliff debate while the federal deficit increases by 3.86 billion each DAY.  (http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/). Instead of anything meaningful, we have a bill which skirts the important task of any meaningful reduction in the deficit; it will generate little revenue and includes special interest pork style government favors to offset most of the meaningful gains, assuming there are any. It is painfully obvious that the revenue from the "rich" that will be generated from this legislation is intended to fund the pork style government favors, not reduce the US budget deficit!  Is anyone paying attention?  Nah, got to get back to the NFL playoffs! 

I’m currently not a fan of any party, disgusted with the political maneuvering and conniving, unrelenting posturing and brazen disrespect for basic economic principles, and the cowardly denial and procrastination for the obvious steps that are needed to reverse this downward fatal trajectory. How many of these congressmen (and women) would run their households spending more than they earned without taking some major corrective action. And we know the final chapter for those in denial who run their lives as irresponsibly as our government, as desperation sets in and the wheels churn to undo the undo-able, a shameless, senseless and ill-conceived act to return the world back to them eventually fails, collapsing them and their families into ultimate total self-destruction.   How often have we seen this occur?  We know the last chapter, does anyone care?

Yeah, I’m in a pissy mood.  And I ask myself if I’m really all that pissed off about the deficit or is it some surrogate for other things in my life…..taxes, work, my kids, my dancing, my travel plans all laid out leaving little to the imagination?  Or maybe I’m mourning the fact that I’m on the last book of the Vince Flynn series having read the last one out of sequence…The Last Man which I loved!!!! ….and now having to content with Kill Shot – the next to the last book which everyone told me was his "least best book" which I agree with but I still can’t put it down.  What is a man to do when he finishes reading your damn books, Vince????  Can you be a bit more productive and spit out a few more for me and the rest of your readers.  Or you could at least push Ben Coes to write some more of his thrillers real fast. Otherwise, I am left with too much time on my hands that will invariably turn my attention back to the US budget deficit and the crooked, paralyzed and ineffective congress that we have in reality.  The truth is that I would rather read about the same in your books (Ben, you’re included) and I then I can dream of a Mitch Rapp or a Dewey Andreas coming to the rescue to save the day.