Category: Assholes

When will it be Labor Day?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
The late, great Gahan Wilson.

We never hear of Capital Day, not because Capital has no day, but because every day is Capital Day. The struggle in which we are now engaged will end only when every day is Labor Day. — Eugene V. Debs, Labor Day 1903

It’s still Capital Day. For now, anyway.

At The Guardian, Douglas Rushkoff recounts his chat with a secretive group of super-wealthy dudes “preparing for a digital future that had less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether.”

In short, they’ve grown tired of our sniveling about their shitting in our shared sandbox and wonder whether they might be able to dispense with us altogether.

Writes Rushkoff, a self-described humanist and Marxist media theorist who writes about the impact of digital technology on our lives:

Their extreme wealth and privilege served only to make them obsessed with insulating themselves from the very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us.

One of the capitalists’ main concerns centered on how to control their security people after The Event — “their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer hack that takes everything down.”

Yep, that could be risky. A SEAL might grow weary of barking for fish from the plump, well-manicured pinkies of a plutocrat. How to get away from it all when you need to take a few of “them” with you?

What happens when Labor Day finally comes around for real?

Paging the White House gardener

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments
Adolf Twitler couldn’t even get his own veep hanged. Sad!

OK, just for the hell of it, let’s say Adolf Twitler’s putsch was successful. Kept his fat ass blistering the Oval Office furniture with angry Mickey D’s farts, on the rare occasion when he was actually in town instead of slinging divots and bullshit at one of his comic-opera palaces.

Let’s also say that a group of angry socialists, Blacks, women, gays, gun-controllers and pro-choicers unhappy with this outcome marched upon the U.S. Capitol and started a “dustup,” as a DeeCee feetsball knuckle-dragger recently described the Jan. 6 insurrection.

And while we’re at it, let’s envision the GOP response to a House committee investigating the second “dustup.” Would its work be dismissed by Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, and other pustules on the American body politic as “illegitimate” and “a sham?”

Hee, and also haw. There would be no such committee. The Proud Boys hired to replace the Capitol Police would have machine-gunned every one of those terrorists while Mike Pence’s dead eyes gazed blindly down upon them from his gibbet. Congress would be too busy wondering who’s next to look into anything more substantial than airfare to Costa Rica.

Only white fascists get to water the Tree of Liberty in this country.

‘Anyone can get an auto loan’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
For when the M1126 Infantry Carrier Vehicle just isn’t big enough.

OK, so, with the Russian war in Ukraine, random gun violence here at home, and inflation everywhere, we all have plenty to worry about.

But wait! There’s more!

Cyclists, pedestrians, and anyone else hoping for safe streets in a livable environment will hop the first dick-missile to Mars after scanning this New York Times story on what the quarter-point hike in the Fed’s key interest rate means for any of us chickens who’d like to cross the road without winding up fried and breaded in one of the Colonel’s buckets.

A couple key pull-quotes:

“There is far more variation in auto lending than in, say, the mortgage market because there are more credit types. Anyone can get an auto loan.” — Jonathan Smoke, chief economist at Cox Automotive, an industry consulting firm.

“Car-loan rates will move up as the Fed hikes interest rates, but it will be a nonissue for car buyers because it has such a limited impact on monthly payments. Nobody will need to downsize from the S.U.V. to the compact because of rising rates.” — Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com.

Damn straight. Fuck a bunch of Prius. Whadda I look like, some hippie? I got an image to maintain. What are the Russian oligarchs driving this season?

Snow? No

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
It ain’t easy getting green.

We was robbed.

Just as well. The ladies have plans, and though they are Marylanders and used to snow, only Herself has enjoyed winter motoring in The Duck! City, whose drivers can’t keep the shiny side up on a sunny day.

Yesterday it was a Tesla and a pick-’em-up truck that ate shit at Comanche and Tramway, where the debris from old crashes piles up like the fast-food wrappers, liquor bottles, and dirty diapers drivers toss from their vehicles between texts as they breeze through the red five seconds late and 20 over the limit.

You want to keep your head on a swivel when your light turns green. Left, right, left again — count one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, etc. — then proceed as though you believe in an afterlife.

Never mind the asshole leaning on his horn behind you. Hell ain’t half full, as s/he will learn after finally honking at the wrong person, who then climbs out of the vehicle with something more authoritative than a middle digit extending from one white-knuckled fist.

The honkers are usually tailgaters too. Some of these yahoos will crowd you so closely you can smell the beer on their breath.

Doc Sarvis, the brains and bucks behind “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” had a solution to that sort of harassment. The Ukrainians are giving these ancient anticavalry weapons a go, and why not? I bet they work against horses and horses’ asses.

‘Like a hell-broth boil and bubble’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
Hellbroth? Nah. Just an interesting sunrise.

Well, it seems Europe’s largest nuclear power plant didn’t become Satan’s Hot Tub overnight. So we got that going for us, which is nice.

According to The New York Times:

International monitors said early Friday that there was no immediate sign that radiation had leaked from the Zaporizhzhia plant. The Ukrainian emergency services agency said the fire had been contained to a training facility on the perimeter of the complex.

Oh, good. But wait, there’s more:

The company that oversees the complex, Energoatom, warned that any statements being made by workers from the time of the [Russian] takeover could be being made under duress. The company also warned against trusting statements from local officials.

Clearly we are in for many more interesting early mornings pre-coffee as Voldemort Putin continues doing the bidding of the Union of Soviet Socialist Voices in his head.

Our collective ignorance about this fellow, his notions, motivations, and base of support, is maddening. Noting the attack on the Zaporizhzhia complex last night I kept my big yap shut, crossing my fingers and hoping that Europe would not find itself suffering the sort of steep decline in tourism that comes with your basic nuclear disaster.

Because what is there to say? Beyond “We don’t know what the fuck he’s up to” and “There isn’t much we can do about it,” that is?

Over at The Atlantic Tom Nichols makes the case for staying calm.

The day may come, and sooner than we expect, when we have to fight in Europe, with all the risks that entails. If we are to plunge into a global war between the Russians and the West, however, it needs to be based on a better calculus than pure rage.

Sanctions and military assistance short of actual war with Russia will not save Kyiv, he concedes. But neither will letting this smirking Cossack goad the West into giving him anything that will cause the Russian people to back him up instead of knocking him over.

Russians seem to have an endless capacity for enduring suffering. But every pot bubbles over sooner or later if the fire gets too hot for too long.

Will some hero let off a little steam by busting a cap between this devil’s horns? Stay tuned.