Spring Break Resort, Book Two of a series “Another pointless college story with lots of egregious sex,” is now live in Amazon.com. As part of its release celebration, Book One, Spring Break Awakening, is on a free special Friday-Sunday.
The first ten buyers of Spring Break Resort who write an honest review, good or bad, copy it and e-mail it to me, will win a free copy of a Novella, Emgee Adopts a Pet. It's written by a Terrier-Beagle puppy who experiences the world through his sense of smell.
I am a retired Army intelligence officer who tries to eschew politics in my fiction. I am nowhere on the Red-Blue continuum, I’m a libertarian. Which takes me off the liberal-conservative continuum as well because I’m a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. What does any of this have to do with being a retired military officer?
In June 2020, sixteen hundred National Guard troops were deployed to Washington, D.C., during the summer of mostly peaceful arson, looting, destruction and murder. They were brought to the nation’s capital to augment forces protecting federal property, including the White House. The Mayor wanted them gone and ordered them out of their hotel, refusing to pay the bills. They were depicted as an occupying force and part of the problem.
In January 2021, twenty-five thousand national guard troops were deployed to Washington, D.C., in certainty that armed insurrection would occur. They were used as props for photos of the capitol, saving the Republic from the half of the country declared traitors. There was no armed insurrection. And the white supremacist uprising predicted for all fifty state capitals was limited to one: a mostly-white Antifa group set fires and attacked the state Democratic Party headquarters in Portland, Oregon. They featured a sign saying they didn't want Biden, they wanted Revenge.
As soon as the inauguration was over, these women and men who had volunteered to protect and defend our nation no longer had any use as props, and were ordered to leave the capitol and spend the night in a parking garage during sub-freezing temperatures.
As physical privation goes, this is small potatoes albeit gratuitous. Seven thousand soldiers, two bathrooms, no internet and one electrical outlet make for interesting math. The order allegedly came from the capitol police, who report through committees to the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader of the Senate. These two bear ultimate responsibility. Shame on them.
This would be less significant were it not preceded by an undeserved insult from Representative Steve Cohen, who expressed concern that the loyalty of members of the military was suspect because only “twenty percent of them voted for President Biden.” That goes beyond shameful to disgusting. His focus was on white members of the National Guard, which is racist and unacceptable. It’s not the first time Cohen has sounded the racist klaxon; in 1996 he lost the primary election to succeed Harold Ford, Sr, to Harold Ford, Jr, and claimed that the result proved that it didn’t matter what a white person did, he could never overcome bias in the black community.
I close with an unattributed quote I found today on the internet.
The nation which forgets its defenders will itself be forgotten.
mark@marktreble.com
Spring Break Resort is expected to go live on Amazon on February 1, 2021. Volume one in the series, Spring Break Awakening, should go on a free promotion for several days around that time.I've already begun structuring the first book of the new mystery series, Sea Monsters. I've had an artist create an illustration for use on the blog, and another artist is creating the sketches of the luxury yacht on which the investigators will work, the Yasmina.
This is the cover art for the new book, coming out around February 1.
I've started an online column under another of my writing names, Bill Heath. It is on Substack, a relatively new platform for independent journalists. A number of established journalists, such as Glenn Greenwald, formerly of The Intercept, and Matt Taibbi, formerly of Rolling Stone, have switched to this platform because it promises not to censor based on political beliefs. As a citizen and a writer, I find the practice of censorship to be abhorrent, no matter whose views are being blocked.
The column is free, and all are welcome to comment. I will reject only comments that promote violence or censorship, or that portray incenst, pedophelia or bestiality as acceptable. Otherwise, you're invited to comment as you wish. It can be found at BillHeath.Substack.Com, and is called "One Foot in the Gravy." Drop by, enjoy or not, join or not, it's free either way. Register to receive columns as they are published, leave comments, offer suggestions or even offer to write a column yourself. I'm not sure how, but content will remain free in perpetuity to all who decide to register during the first six months.
The title is One Foot in the Gravy.
mark@marktreble.com
Remember all the people claiming COVID19 was the same as the flu? Well, in the 2019-2020 flu season 22,000 deaths occurred; 22,000 people died last week from COVID19. That is true if a week is the same as a year.
Remember all the people claiming that two-week lockdowns were needed only until we bent the curve? That is true in the same sense that the curve has no end.
We know more today about COVID19 than we did when all of these claims were made. In only one way are COVID9 and this year's most-prevalent influenza strain the same: each is a mutation of a common cold virus. They are very different in age distribution of death, which impacts the gross number of deaths and the deaths' impacts. See https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-7015-10-162.
For COVID19 in the U.S., the average age at death is the same as the general population's life expectancy. My initial suspicion is that the current pandemic is culling the population by bringing forward by a matter of months deaths that were already inevitable. For influenza, the death rate for infected infants and toddlers is higher than that of 70-year-olds. Epidemiology is a matter of numbers, not feelings. I am 73 and in poor health. If I catch COVID19 and die a month from now, some will agonize over my death, but those who can separate thinking from feeling understand that the impact of me losing up to a year of future life pales in comparison to my niece's newborn losing seventy years of her future life.
The use of a single measurement to judge a complex system carries great danger. In another online conversation today on Substack, I replied to a post asking why China was so quick and organized to vaccinate, while we appeared clownish.That uses a measurement of efficiency, which considers elapsed time plus resources consumed. Achieving China's efficiency came at a cost of as many as 150,000,000 deaths at the hands of authoritarian government in the 20th century.
And, the standard FDA process for approving a new medication, be it vaccination or treatment, is for a private company first to spend $2B+ of its own money over twelve years before the medication is released for public use. In China, the process is far more efficient. A medical lab develops a vaccine, the central government orders it manufactured and administered, and the hoi polloi are told when and where to show up. The Chinese have 150M reasons to obey. The U.S., as with Australia, was settled by dissidents and malcontents. Our submission-to-authority genes are weak, and our "Up Yours" genes are strong. The Federal nature of our governments treat states as sovereigns, and our constitution was written for liberty, not efficiency. But, this is an emergency!!!!! No, it's a really contagious common cold virus that primarily kills people close to death already. If this sounds cold, then you're free to disregard it along with the remainder of the real world.
