Ignorance is strength

February 15, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

The FreeDummies have finally turned their beady little eyes to the Land of Enchantment.

According to Alaina Mencinger at The New Mexican, Los Alamos National Laboratory has been “suspending programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion and climate change and scrubbing old issues of the lab’s magazine that discuss these now-disfavored topics.”

LANL employees are federal contractors, not federal employees. Nevertheless, a review has determined that at least two of Dear Leader’s edicts apply to the lab’s DEI and affirmative-action programs, “and the lab is ending such programs as a result,” Mencinger writes.

The New Mexican apparently got its hands on some internal communications — a memo signed by lab director Thom Mason went out Thursday — and bits of this, that, and the other have already begun slip-sliding away down the old memory hole, among them issues of LANL’s National Security Science magazine, focused on anything and everything from climate to diversity, nuclear deterrence to manufacturing.

And it’s not just magazines getting fed into the shredder. According to Mason, LANL has “received guidance” to suspend climate action, sustainability and carbon-neutral energy programs. It goes without saying that LANL is also removing “relevant terminology” from external communications.

But, good news, comrades! “The removal of some content isn’t permanent,” according to the Ministry for Sit the Fuck Down and Shut the Fuck Up.

“To comply with recent direction from the Presidential administration, parts of our website are temporarily unavailable while they’re under construction. We appreciate your patience as we work to update and repost them. … You may notice changes to our website while we reconstruct pages and evaluate language.”

Huh. “Construction” and “update” are not the words I would have chosen for this odious project. As for “evaluating language,” I’d be inclined to leave that sort of thing to the smarties, who are very much not in evidence as the Stalinization of the federal government continues.

Post this, yo

January 4, 2025January 4, 2025 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments

A snippet of the Ann Telnaes cartoon that the WaPo found objectionable. | © Ann Telnaes

Salud to cartoonist Ann Telnaes, who quit The Washington Post after a cartoon critical of Management — and by Management, I mean Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Patrick Soon-Shiong, and Mickey Fuckin’ Mouse, who are all managing to affix their chapped lips to the Pestilence-Erect’s ass at once — got croaked by the WaPo’s editorial-page bots.

At her Substack HQ, Telnaes explains:

As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, “Democracy dies in darkness.”

Ho, ho. “Just a cartoonist.” Telnaes knows, as I do, that a sharp pen can puncture a gasbag as thoroughly as a sword, and encourages onlookers to snicker at the well-deserved deflation.

As Boss Tweed once said after getting righteously stuck by cartoonist Thomas Nast:

“Let’s stop those damned pictures. I don’t care so much what the papers write about me — my constituents can’t read, but damn it, they can see pictures.”

I kinda wish I still had a WaPo subscription to cancel. Mebbe I’ll sign back up so I can cancel the fucker again.

See Mike Peterson at The Daily Cartoonist for more about Telnaes and her stellar work.

Rocking out

November 2, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 28 Comments

Having taken note of of the pummeling endured by The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times for showing all the backbone of two clawless fiddler crabs when it came time to take a stand in the 2024 pestilential erection, Mother Times struggles up out of her rocker on the Saturday before Election Day, squeaks out a fart, and plops back down.

“That’ll show ’em,” she mutters before falling back into a fitful snooze.

Democracy dies, yadda yadda yadda

October 27, 2024October 27, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 19 Comments

Ho, ho. I beat the rush to the exit after The Washington Post‘s management stepped on its editorial dick by declining to endorse a candidate in the pestilential erection. I had already canceled my account based on the plummeting value of their homepage, not the cowardice of the ownership.

Not long ago the WaPo was beating The New York Times like a dusty rug when it came to good, old-fashioned, nut-cutting hard news. Now they pretty much both stink, but at least Mother Times offers some good recipes to take the vile smell out of your nostrils. Plus she still employs a friend of mine.

So I’ll try to forget that the topside of today’s homepage is spattered with shit like “25 Jump Scares That Still Make Us Jump,” “What’s It Like to Tail the Vice President?,” and “Nobody Told Me This Would Happen to My Body in My 40s.”

I’d serve up a critique of the content, if I had clicked on any of it. Alas, I moved on with great haste.

At least the NYT doesn’t start bullshitting you right up there in the flag, like the WaPo. “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” me bollocks. What management does in the darkness you can see in the balcony at any adult theater. Tidy up afterward and check the phone to see if anyone Bezos has business with has invited you to a cocktail party. No? Might as well go lay off a few columnists, if they haven’t all quit already. Only one opinion counts at the newspaper in the nation’s capital, even if it’s mostly being expressed from mansions in Miami, SoCal, or low earth orbit.

Of course, if Jesus Hitler prevails on Nov. 5, it won’t mean much to the WaPo’s owner. Bezos is a podium billionaire, runner-up on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. And when JH (No. 432) croaks any and all contracts with Blue Origin because Elon (No. 1) was the last guy in the Oval Office to kiss his ass when the deal went down, well … maybe the internment camps can double as Amazon fulfillment centers.

Hey, a dollar isn’t red or blue. It’s green, baby.

Nothing to fear but fear itself

November 25, 2023November 25, 2023 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 31 Comments

The reports of a squadron of heavily armed Bentley Flying Spur medium-heavy bombers targeting the United States from a top-secret Canadian base seem to have been slightly exaggerated, if by “slightly exaggerated” we mean “fabricated out of whole cloth.”

“This confirms our worst fear: the explosion at Rainbow Bridge was a terrorist attack.” — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Insult My Wife, Please)

“Today’s apparent terrorist attack must be a wake-up call to all Americans.” — Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Finance, Insurance & Banking)

“So it begins. We need to lock down the borders immediately. Full deportation efforts need to begin. The U.S. does not need to be the world’s hospitality suite any longer.” — Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Ashkenazi Catholicism)

Yes, a 2022 Bentley Flying Spur exploded at the Rainbow Bridge connecting the United States and Canada. Yes, two people died. And yes, many more people freaked the fuck out, thanks in large measure to (wait for it) the 101st Half Cocked Rapid Response Team at Faux News (h/t Charles P. Pierce at Esquire).

And then, the other combat boot dropped:

“But the FBI and other assisting agencies concluded within hours that the explosion was not a terrorist act and rather a terrible accident – possibly caused by a medical incident or a vehicle malfunction,” reported The Buffalo News, adding, “In 2021, the Australian government issued a limited recall of Bentleys over problems with the accelerator getting stuck.”

A medical incident. The accelerator getting stuck. The case handed over to local police as a traffic investigation.

Well. That’s entirely different, as Emily Litella might say.

Down here in our little corner of The Duck! City we have some small experience with airborne motor vehicles.

At least thrice in nine years some leadfooted yahoo who failed to grasp the concept that all roads eventually must end has rocketed up Comanche and through the stop sign at Camino de la Sierra only to find the pavement replaced with what appears to be, and in fact is, a short dirt ramp that launches them and their cobbled-together street-racing shitbox through a wire fence and into the cacti-and-rock-studded base of the Sandia Mountains after a brief flight of, oh, I don’t know, three to six feet.

The Wright Brothers did better than that in 1903, and they were just a couple of bike jockeys who took the scenic route to what their descendants would call “hucking,” “getting big air,” or “shredding the gnar.”

So we have never considered going to DEFCON 3 over it. Of course, none of our local test pilots has ever been incinerated. That we know of, anyway. Also, our little wire fence isn’t at an international border, and we don’t dream of it becoming a Wall.