Month: December 2011

Last call

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments

What’s more appalling — the clown-college contest for the GOP pestilential nomination or the U.S. House of Representatives, which represents … what, exactly? What the authors of the Constitution intended to be “the popular branch of the national government, directly responsible to the people*,” today seems directly responsible to no one, not even its own speaker.

Punkinhead Boehner keeps striving for street cred’ by saying his old man used to run a bar. I’d like to see him try to run one. He’s certainly incapable of running the House. A freshman Tea Bagger with his snoot up a Koch brother’s tailpipe shouts “Shit!” and the speaker instantly replies, “What color, sir?”

This guy? Speaker of the fuckin’ House? He couldn’t carry Tip O’Neill’s jock. Hell, he couldn’t even pick it up.

* “American Government: Theory, Structure and Process,” by Dye, Greene and Parthemos.

A sound of thunder

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

Again with the “snow,” just enough to glaze the streets like a cop’s doughnut. I’ve seen more white powder on a proffered mirror, sighting along a rolled-up dollar bill. At least the wind is barreling down out of the north at 22 mph, with gusts to 31. So we’ve got that going for us.

Weather like this sends me straight back to the Mexican cookery for its natural-gas component. Last night it was posole and chicken-and-jalapeño quesadillas; tonight I’m simmering up a pot of beans with chipotle chile. I should whip up a batch of green chile sauce, but I think I’ll save that for tomorrow — I have a quart each of Anaheim and New Mexico chile thawing in the sink, and then we can greet the day over breakfast burritos with leftover chicken, beans and spuds smothered in green.

So, yeah. A day without beans is like a day without thunder. Just in case you thought Fort Carson was engaging in a little holiday artillery practice.

Parking brake

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
Palmer Park, 12-16-2011
The Front Strange as observed from the saddle of a Voodoo Nakisi MonsterCrosser® in Palmer Park, just above the intersection of Union Boulevard and Austin Bluffs Parkway.

That meteorological puta, La Niña, is having her way with our winter here in Bibleburg.

Strictly speaking, it’s not actually winter — the solstice doesn’t arrive until the 22nd — but I mark the arrival of winter not by the calendar, but by when I start wearing long pants both indoors and out. Thus it’s winter here and has been for some time now.

We’ve had next to no snow and only a few wickedly cold days, just one of which forced me aboard the stationary trainer. Yesterday I went for a short trail ride in Palmer Park, and today I took a whack at Sondermann Park, which is a little closer and a lot less crowded on a sunny December day.

In both cases I was aboard my trusty Voodoo Nakisi MonsterCrosser®. But I spent more time in its saddle in Palmer Park than in Sondermann. That sonofabitch has some steep climbs, too steep for even the Nakisi’s triple-chainring setup.

I nearly came to grief on one gravelly stairway to Heaven after the rear wheel came unhitched in its dropouts and jammed against the left chainstay while I was in the lowest of the low gears, my nose practically touching the stem. That I did not go ass-backwards down the hill was pure luck.

Either that or Heaven is full and Hell is afraid I’ll take over.

• Late update: Meanwhile, if you require further proof that it is already winter, I made this Spanish vegetable soup the other day and we’re about to get our third meal out of it. There may be a fourth. Talk about your bang for the buck, even considering that all the ingredients are organic. …

One war ends, another continues

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

The war in Iraq officially “ended” today, for those of you who believe in beginnings and endings.

But the war on civil liberties continues. The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act contains provisions that the American Civil Liberties Union says could authorize the U.S. military to pick up and imprison, indefinitely and without charge, civilians — including U.S. citizens — anywhere on the planet, including right here in the good old US of A.

Glenn Greenwald views this development with alarm over at Salon, charging President Obama with being more concerned with executive power than civil liberties.

At The Nation, Patricia J. Williams argues that under this law, “if the Defense Department thinks you’re a terrorist, there would be no presumption of innocence; you would be presumed a detainee of the military unless the executive decides otherwise.”

Her colleague Robert Scheer declared that this “assault on the Constitution’s requirement of due process represents a direct threat to the freedom of the American people every bit as menacing as any we face from foreign enemies.”

Andrew Cohen is less alarmist at The Atlantic, saying we’re still “much closer to the beginning than to the end of this dirty business.”

I don’t know whether to be reassured or terrified by that.

Trouble every day

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw_t21myE7M

Hey, whaddaya know, it’s Dec. 12, which means … something. I dunno what. I got nothin’ here.

Oh, yeah — this was the day back in 2000 that the Supremes pulled the plug on Al Gore’s campaign, which had been on life support for the better part of quite some time.

Well, as “Odd Bodkins” cartoonist Dan O’Neill was fond of saying, “Reality is a 5-4 decision in the Supreme Court.”

We now return you to the reality-based community, which is already in progress.