Turn turtle

~ Patrick O'Grady
The Turtle plays the old shell game. Original photo by Susan Walsh | AP

“I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route. It’s saved some cities, and there’s no good reason for it not to be available … My guess is their first choice would be for the federal government to borrow money from future generations to send it down to them now so they don’t have to do that. That’s not something I’m going to be in favor of. Or perhaps they might consider marrying into a wealthy maritime shipping family.” — Mitch McConnell on borrowing to assist state and local governments.*

* Except for that last sentence, which he’s never gonna say out loud the way he did when he was looking for a rich woman to marry.

19 thoughts on “Turn turtle”

    1. Well, sure. Golf is for businessmen, and as you know, The Business of Business Is Giving You the Business.® Education is for pointy-headed lefty-loony intellectuals who are too busy riding bicycles in their non-heteronormative life partners’ underwear to make a contribution to society. Makes perfect sense.

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      2. I’ve ranted far and wide that Moscow Mitch has been a worse nightmare than tRump. The Turtle runs the casino we think is our government while tRump just runs his mouth. Very interesting outing of Turtlehead on Fresh Air yesterday. None of which surprised me except for why would a rich bitch marry a pud like him? She could have bought her way into any government circle she wanted without that level of pain?
        I doubt if it’s the scintillating conversation since no one can understand his mumbling which is by design on his part.

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  2. There’s a quote from Milton’s Paradise Lost that I only know because of an episode of Star Trek*: “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”

    McConnell would rather the country be a smoulder wreck with he and his ilk reaping what little profits remain than live in a country that, y’know, actually does what’s best for its people.

    *”Space Seed”, that episode from the original series with Ricardo Montalban as KAAAAAHHHNNN!

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      1. I don’t remember that quote, but damn I loved that book! It’s been too long since I last read it.

        The Demolished Man was really good too.

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      2. “When the upper class is extravagant and irresponsible while the poor have nowhere to turn- all this is robbery and chaos. It is not in keeping with the Tao. ” Tao te Ching – translation by Stephen Mitchell I would add that this situation can’t last long before serious shit starts to happen. It has already gone on way too long.

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  3. It’s not cognitive dissonance… cog diss results in one actually believing two conflicting ideas. These guys don’t believe a word of their own rhetoric. Cog diss has a cousin, not sure it even has a name, but what folks like the Eminem Terrapin do is argue every point in a complete vacuum, so neither reality nor their prior statements have any bearing. Tax cuts for the rich? That’s all about freeing up capital for future investment. But tax cuts for the poor? Not fiscally responsible at this time. Bailing out cruise lines? Gotta do it, people are hurting. Bailing out the states or investing in green tech? That’s socialism.

    I’ll bet you anything that in ten years, we have advanced fMRI technology that will let us see in real time how their brains take facts and file them down a cranial garbage collector.

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    1. Whenever I hear some upholstered fuck-puppet like The Turtle yammering I recall Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series.

      In Book One Terminus City Mayor Hardin records an Empire envoy reassuring the Encyclopedia scientists that all would be well despite the growing threats from upstart petty kingdoms, and subjects his remarks to extensive semantic analysis.

      Hardin explains that once the analyst, “after two days of steady work, succeeded in eliminating meaningless statements, vague gibberish, useless qualification — in short, all the goo and dribble — he found he had nothing left. Everything canceled out.”

      “Lord Dorwin, gentlemen, in five days of discussion, didn’t say one damned thing, and said it so you never noticed.”

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  4. My knee jerk reaction is that mitch is a hypocritical asshole. In the last three years he has piled on debt for the next generation at a record pace, including the $1.7 T for trillion tax cut which was all on the credit card, not a single spending cut. Remember when he use to rip Obama for that in his never ending droning? Asshole is like a mosquito buzzing around your ear that you can’t seem to swat. And don’t forget the $3 or 5 T in the last 20 years for useless and never ending fucking wars. In fact that is my only reaction because it is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the fucking truth. Congress stinks to high heaven.

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  5. By the way, I rode 18 miles, including some climbing, this morning on the Double Cross. Other than being a gear lower than usual and breathing a little deeper, it felt good. I haven’t ridden in 2 months. I ain’t dead yet, so maybe there is some truth in this muscle memory theory. Ramsey canyon was beautiful with some wildflowers in bloom, and I saw some javelina.

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      1. I had the canyon to myself. That suited me just fine. Maybe there is another group ride left in me for O’Grady’s Wheelmen. All we have to do is get Herb on a plane to Duke City. And, I have to drive through Hatch and buy a ristra or two of Hatch green chilis to bring up for the Rancho Perro Loco kitchen. Then we convince some other Mad Doggers to show up for the Tour de El Perro Loco.

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      1. I used to have a regular conversation with Schubert in part on the tandem@hobbes e-list and with bike politics. We kinda lost track of each other. I wonder if his aol account still works.

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