For as long as I can remember, the GOP has been clamoring for smaller government.  Well, now it’s here.  Fear mongering aside, the shutdown is anything but apocalyptic; it is merely one of 18 such lacunae since the current budgetary process was adopted in the 1970s.  Moreover, federal employees in “essential” services will remain, with full recompense, on the job.  To wit: The same Food Inspectors who habitually overlook myriad cases of E. Coli and Salmonella will unabatedly scour every farm and restaurant in our fair land, the very repositories, ironically, for the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants that our Border Patrol will ceaselessly allow to enter our country each year.  The service academies will still play football on Saturdays, despite the half-century since their last meaningful game.  And members of Congress, it goes without saying, will continue to cash their paychecks while orchestrating our great nation’s total and utter demise.

Toning out the rhetoric, the fact remains Reagan and the Bushes did far more to vitiate our collective balance sheet than all their predecessors combined.  So while it’s true the debt ceiling has been raised 78 times since 1960, a noble effort by the Tea Party to man the ramparts of debt reduction this is not.   Rather it is the dyspeptic byproduct of John Boehner’s 42 petulant — and failed — attempts to repeal Obamacare, which, Republicans avow, is our number one “job killer.”  Of course they have no explanation for why large corporations are moving employees (Walgreens, Sears and Darden Restaurants) and or retirees (IBM and Time Warner) to insurance exchanges.   Thankfully I do:  it makes health coverage less costly and more predictable, which, inexorably, leads to more employment, not less.

No doubt Stephen Colbert is picking low hanging fruit when he lampoons Fox News.  Yet I find myself siding with Rupert Murdoch’s retarded minions when it comes to the “wussification” of America.  While the National Football League is well on its way to legislating itself out of existence, there is perhaps no more iconic example of society’s castration than the recent biker beating in New York City.  En route to an unsanctioned daredevil rally in Times Square, Hollywood Stuntz “gangmembers” attacked the driver of a Range Rover on the West Side Highway.  Video shows riders on Honda and Kawasaki motorcycles wearing designer jeans, backpacks and, God forbid, helmets swarming the SUV and forcing the driver to the curb where he was “beaten.”  That is if you accept that a “couple of stitches” can be an adequate remedy for a proper stompfest.  I can only imagine the disgust boiling up in members of the Hells Angels who wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a visored Bluetooth helmet or riding anything but a Harley.  Altamont, to this day, remains their exemplar of an authentic biker beat down, and I’ll admit that without amphetamines, greasy hair and leather vests it does seem rather, well, vaginal.

In our current (and lamentable) feminine zeitgeist, the cocksure posturing in Washington seems awkward and out of place.  Rather than fostering confidence, it conjures a disturbing juxtaposition (think: jockstraps and rouge) and leaves us to wonder if anyone has the hairy ass crack necessary to get under the sink and fix the damn thing.