Author: Patrick O'Grady

After decades with his scabby little nose pressed to various grindstones of journalism, Patrick O'Grady came away with plenty of mental scar tissue, a good deal less hair to cover it, and an undiminished appreciation for three subsets of the craft: drawing cartoons, writing commentary, and composing headlines. All three are short, punchy attention-getters, the literary equivalent of yelling, "Hey, look at me!" before hanging a moon out the school-bus window, and thus own a natural appeal for an overgrown class clown with the attention span of a rat terrier raised on angel dust and bong water. And thanks to the Internet, the best thing to happen to journalism since the invention of movable type, he gets to do all three of them without having to go to work at a newspaper, where management has slowly devolved into a button-down mutant hybrid of the worst aspects of the Spanish Inquisition, the dental bits in "Marathon Man" and the DMV of your choice. He and his wife, the long-suffering Shannon, share an adobe hacienda in The Duck! City with their cat, Miss Mia Sopaipilla.

Honky if you love Romney

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
Jockeying for position in the presidential contest.

The RomneyBot v2.012 mistook President Obama for one of its gardeners and tried to fire him yesterday.

“Take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago and let us get about rebuilding and reuniting America,” it hummed.

The only word missing from that sentence was “boy.”

“Campaign of division and anger and hate?” Romney and the Rethugs have called Obama everything save a bone-nosed, watermelon-eatin’ lawn jockey and yet the prez manages to refrain from calling his opponent a lying sack of runny chickenshit whose tongue has more plastic forks than a Salt Lake City Chick-fil-A.

I still have no idea why this slimy prick wants the job he seems to need so desperately. And I’ll never find out by listening to him, because the truth is simply not in him and the media seem unwilling or unable to squeeze it out of him. Doesn’t he already own a couple of white houses?

Jesus wept. The squawk of a Jersey Giant and the balls of a parakeet. Are there any men left in the Republican Party? Besides Ann Coulter, that is?

The Shit Monsoon: Repairs revisited

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
At left, fresh vinyl in the laundry room; at right, new tile in the crapper (though still no crapper).

Yesterday was a perfect day for a bike ride. The temperatures peaked somewhere in the upper 70s, I had a tailwind for most of the uphill bits, and it even rained a bit during the homebound stretch. I didn’t have a rain jacket, but I didn’t care, because it felt great. Plus the bike had fenders.

Good thing I made time for cycling, too. Because today, after nearly three months of not much happening as regards restoration of the basement following The Shit Monsoon of Memorial Day Weekend, not one but two crews showed up to lay tile and vinyl. Tomorrow comes the carpet, and later this week, the toilet and vanity. Good times.

The downside — and there always is one — is that it is another beautiful day for cycling, yet here I sit, enjoying a symphony of jackhammers and saws, because Herself has pissed off to Denver for a meeting and there is no one else to mind the store. The cats are notoriously unreliable in such matters, and Mister Boo would be down there happily eating adhesive and grout because he thinks everything is food. Swear to God. He’d scarf down a bowl of cat piss and sawdust as though it were steak tartare.

Speaking of folks who will swallow anything, David Stockman isn’t one of them — not when it comes to Paul Ryan and his alleged budget “plan.” Ronnie Raygun’s OMB chief ripped Ryan a new one in The New York Times, and Ed Kilgore of Political Animal adds his personal touch to the bits and pieces he quotes.

Over at The Nation, meanwhile. John Nichols takes the opportunity to contrast Ryan’s Randite vision with Wisconsin’s progressive tradition.

And at The Maddow Blog, Steve Benen calls out Ryan for hypocrisy, noting that while he was raising against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Ryan was right there with his hand out like everyone else.

Robot-Zombie 2012

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments

The RomneyBot v2.012 has picked Charlie Pierce’s “zombie-eyed granny-starver,” Paul Ryan, to be its running mate. And as usual, Mr. Pierce nails both the timing of the announcement and what it means.

Meanwhile, the fine folks at Political Animal remind us of Ryan’s pedigree and plans for us:

• Ed Kilgore says the RomneyBot’s choice “makes the task of exposing Mitt Romney’s agenda for the future of the country — already mortgaged to the conservative movement as the price of his nomination — vastly easier.”

• Ryan Cooper revives Jonathan Chait’s profile of the ZEGS in New York magazine.

• And James Fallows, writing for The Atlantic, calls it a “good” choice, but reminds the press corps to avoid terming Ryan’s crackpottery “serious.”

Over at The Maddog Blog, meanwhile, PA alum Steve Benen says the RomneyBot’s pick means voters will be voting not on whether the Obama administration has been a success, but on the right-wing ass-hattery of the Robot-Zombie “vision.”

And at Mother Jones, David Corn says Ryan is the GOP vice-presidential candidate of Obama’s dreams.

Myself, I’d caution against overconfidence in the analytical ability of the American electorate, which has shown a disturbing hunger for the taste of bullshit in recent election cycles. Plenty of people heehawed at the notion of a faux-redneck trouser stain from Texas making it to the White House, as you may recall.

More as I unearth it.

Training for his urine test

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Color me cynical, but I do believe Belgian trackie Gijs Van Hoecke will test positive for tonsil polish — that is, if he has any fluids remaining inside his body for testing purposes.

The Belgian federation shitcanned Van Hoecke from the 2012 Olympics after the Limey scandal sheet The Daily Mail ran pix of Olympians leaving a London club earlier this week. The sopping wet, sleepily smiling 20-year-old was snapped as his mates fetched him to a waiting cab, the driver of which I trust they tipped handsomely.

Van Hoecke issued an apology of sorts in a chat with RTBF television. “What happened is a pity. I am sorry, this should not have happened,” he said. “But I also think that after two years of relentless work, I have the right to let my hair down.

“It would have been better if it had not happened here in London. I chose the wrong moment. Having said that, it was outside the Olympic Village, I wasn’t disturbing other athletes, they didn’t say anything about it.”

Word. I wonder how many esteemed Daily Mail scribes have had to be carried from pubs to cabs after concluding their little bit of business at day’s end.

Attack of the Democrats

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

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The prez popped in for a chat today, and a sizable crowd of Bibleburgers seemed happy to see him despite the astonishing disrespect shown for the Second Amendment by his security team. Why, the only people packing heat were the heat. Imagine my astonishment. Where’s Ron Paul when you need him?

The speech itself was basic campaign boilerplate, but it went over pretty well, especially considering we’d spent about four hours broiling under an August sun while waiting to catch Obama’s act. A small army of volunteers was passing out water to the masses, though my requests for three fingers of Chamucos with a beer back went unanswered.

It was quite a crowd infesting Cutler Quad at Colorado College. Blacks, Asians, honkies and Hispanics; old, young and in between; gay, straight and in between; haves and “waiting to haves.” While waiting for the prez to crank it up we chatted with a black Vietnam vet and his German secretary, a Buddhist who sits thrice weekly with three different sanghas, and (of all things) one of Herself’s friends from elementary school back in Maryland.

If there were any pro-Romney hecklers in the bunch I didn’t hear them. It was a fine departure from the horrid discourse one reads in the public prints. Strangers were passing water to each other, sharing the few bits of shade and taking care that everyone had a chance to see the famous tyrannical Kenyan crypto-Muslim socialist usurper in the flesh so they could scope out the horns and that big 666 on his forehead.

Frankly, there’s something reassuring about seeing that many fellow travelers packed into one place like red herrings in a tin. I caught more than one person giving another that appraising glance that says, “Oho, so you’re one too, eh?” Makes it easier to keep plugging along, knowing you’re not the only round peg in a town full of square holes.