‘Our long national nightmare. …’

January 6, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

… is not over.

It wasn’t over on Aug. 9, 1974, when Gerald R. Ford trotted out that boogeyman-be-gone bullshit upon assuming the presidency vacated by Richard M. Nixon, a rat fleeing the ship of state he did his best to sink.

And Ford went on to be even more stunningly full of shit when he added:

Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.

A month later, Ford finally achieved escape-velocity, bullshit-wise, when he granted “a full, free and absolute pardon” to his predecessor, a man whom Hunter S. Thompson called “so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning.”

Some of us thought that was as bad as it was ever going to get.

Ho, ho, as the Good Doktor would say. We were wrong.

We have elevated some remarkably stupid, ineffectual, and/or venal hombres to the presidency since then. Not Ford, though. Nobody voted him into the gig, but he certainly got voted out in ’76 when the nation decided, well, fuck it, they’d rather have a Georgia peanut farmer in the Oval Office than the knucklehead who waved Tricky Dicky off to San Clemency with nothing but his pension and related benefits to keep him warm in retirement.

And even now, when we appear to have reached our political nadir, the creaky national machinery in the tiny palsied handsies of a senile, shambling, burger-gobbling narcoleptic, a convicted felon with a mean streak a mile wide and an unquenchable thirst for wealth, power, and vengeance, who apparently has a joy buzzer installed in his diapers so an aide can shock him awake, however briefly, to unleash a torrent of non sequiturs to be dutifully chronicled, analyzed, and excreted by the press corpse, well … I’m not about to tell you that this is as bad as it’s ever going to get.

Pogo — himself a candidate for the presidency in 1952 and ’56 — hit the nail on the head back in 1971, when Tricky Dicky was still kneewalking drunk around the White House, arguing with the paintings and looking for an exit that didn’t involve a perp walk in cuffs. Had we insisted upon it, we might have been spared some of what was to come.

But we didn’t. And so it goes.

“We have met the enemy and he is us,” said Pogo. Truer words, etc.

See you in the funny pages

January 2, 2026 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments

As long as I was enjoying a rain delay, exercise-wise, I decided to see if I still remembered how to draw a cartoon.

I don’t think Gilbert Shelton, Pat Oliphant, or Bill Watterson have anything to worry about. But this doesn’t look too much worse than the stuff I used to get paid for, before the vulture capitalists et up and shat out all the bicycle magazines.

So I guess the ol’ muscle memory hasn’t gone completely senile. Yet.

Night shift

December 27, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Mad Dog?

Another shower of oddball dreams, and after two consecutive dinners of nothing spicier than a mild beef vegetable soup with cornbread, too.

The old MacSkull Air must be defragging its hard drive. Or just fragging it.

Why else would I be dreaming about three things I haven’t been doing lately — cyclocross, burro racing, and cartooning — all in one long dark night of the soul?

Maybe my cranial janitor came back from an extended coffee break to find a new supervisor scowling at him, with arms crossed and one foot a-tapping.

“Have you seen the state of this place? Acid flashbacks piled up here, empty liquor bottles scattered over there, and just look at this fantasy closet! No, on second thought, just nail that fucker shut. Nobody needs to see that shit. One quick peek and I had to book a double session with my shrink. So, deep clean, new carpet and drywall, and fresh paint all around. Chop-chop!”

When I arose and toddled into the kitchen in search of the Ebony Elixir of Life, Herself was fiddling with a Panasonic bread machine that she and her sisters found at some estate sale last fall, and I was onboarded as a consultant before I could decide whether I was actually awake.

A quick glance around took in zero sisters, so after two cups of the black velvety goodness and one fat slice of buttered cornbread I put my two cents’ worth into the project and now we await the results. If you hear of a mushroom cloud over Albuquerque and the Authorities say it smells like bread you’ll know the backstory.

A quack in our armor

December 10, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

Pat Oliphant has examined the Pentagon’s procurement practices over the years … *1982* being one of them.

The New York Times editorial board marches on with its “Overmatched” series. Today’s installment: “The Pentagon’s Gilded Fortress.”

An excerpt:

In 2011, the Army decided to get its soldiers new pistols. The odyssey that followed included a 350-page list of technical specifications, years of testing and a protracted battle on Capitol Hill between competing gun makers. The Pentagon won’t complete delivery until 2027 at the earliest. The Army could have raised an infantryman from birth to within two years of enlistment age in the time it will have taken to get him a new handgun.

Unsurprisingly, our elected representatives are part of the problem:

As the House and Senate work toward the country’s first trillion-dollar defense budget, over $52 billion is for things members of Congress added, unbidden, to the Pentagon’s wish list, according to the independent budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Jaysis. Planes that can’t fly. $13 billion sitting ducks. Millions for retrofitting Vietnam-era helicopters to carry and launch drones. For Ike’s fabled Military-Industrial Complex it’s like robbing the same bank, over and over and over again, because you have a guy on the inside. You don’t even need to bring that pistol you can’t seem to acquire for some mysterious reason.

More bucks, less bang

December 8, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

The New York Times editorial board has some thoughts about the U.S. military and “the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically advanced ones.”: