Category: Deep political thought

We can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
We have a new champion in the Upperclass Twit of the Year Show, and it ain't Nigel Incubator-Jones.

Meanwhile, from our You Just Can’t Make This Shit Up Department comes this item about British Petroleum’s Tony “I’d Like My Life Back” Hayward pissing off to the southern coast of England to watch his yacht compete in the (wait for it) J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race, which circumnavigates the Isle of Wight. It sounds like a Monty Python skit.

On the one hand, it’s almost refreshing to watch a capitalist who really and truly does not give one runny shit about the proles with whom he is condemned to share a planet.

On the other, fuck this guy.

Nothing sucks like a Hoover

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments
We have a fine crop of commie-pinko roses coming up in the back yard.
We have a fine crop of commie-pinko roses coming up in the back yard.

Speaking of the brain-dead, the Senate Repuglicants — aided and abetted by Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson — have once again resorted to the filibuster to croak a package of jobless benefits and state aid, ostensibly because its costs are not offset by cuts in other programs. Yeah, right.

Notes Steve Benen at Political Animal: “Because the Senate is ridiculous, 40 votes trumps 56. In real-world terms, this means more than a million unemployed Americans will stop receiving assistance next week, and aid states are counting to prevent massive layoffs won’t arrive.”

Lovely. Where were these self-styled fiscal conservatives when the Daffy-Fudd administration was running two wars off the budget and flushing the Clinton surplus down the gold-plated, diamond-studded loo of tax cuts for the rich? The shameless dingbat Orrin Hatch has stated for the public record that during the previous administration “it was standard practice not to pay for things.”

He added: “We were concerned about it, because it certainly added to the deficit, no question.” Just not concerned enough to actually, y’know, like, do anything about it — like put the brakes on your own “conservative” cabal’s reckless spending and givebacks to the wealthy.

Jim Hightower made an excellent point recently. American politics is not about left vs. right, conservative vs. liberal, red vs. blue — it’s about top vs. bottom. Now cover the kiddies’ ears, ’cause we’re gonna talk a little class warfare here. Notes Hightower:

“As I’ve rambled through life, I’ve observed that the true political spectrum in our society does not range from right to left, but from top to bottom. This is how America’s economic and political systems really shake out, with each of us located somewhere up or down that spectrum, mostly down. Right to left is political theory; top to bottom is the reality we actually experience in our lives every day — and the vast majority of Americans know that they’re not even within shouting distance of the moneyed powers that rule from the top of both systems, whether those elites call themselves conservatives or liberals.

Hardly an earth-shattering revelation, but true nonetheless. Those durned federales in DeeCee will start giving a shit about the po’ folk when they are po’ themselves, and not before. The question is: How do we junk-shot their money pipeline? The two parties have effectively rigged the game so it’s impossible for an honest player to even get a seat at the table.

Hightower preaches populism, which he describes as “the continuation of America’s democratic revolution.”

“It encompasses and extends the creation of a government that is us,” he continues. “Instead of a ‘trickle down’ approach to public policy, populism is solidly grounded in a ‘percolate up’ philosophy that springs directly from America’s founding principle of the Common Good.”

“The Common Good.” E pluribus unum. Do these concepts find a home in Americans’ hearts and minds anymore? Or should we change the national motto to, “I’ve Got Mine, Get Yours!”?

Dumbing it down

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

Anyone besides me miss the good ol’ days when our political adversaries were smart?

I have disagreed heartily, sometimes violently, with many a Republican over the years — Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater, my father — but I never thought they were idiots. Even Dickless Cheney must be considered a sort of evil genius, the Doctor Strangelove of the previous administration, which ushered in the Age of the Boneheads with Alfred E. “What, Me Worry?” Bush as patron saint.

But Jesus, these shitheels we hear spouting off without letup in today’s 24/7 news cycle are feebs, dumb as a bag of hair, stupid all the way down to their bones.

• Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, who apologized to BP for its harsh treatment at the hands of Democrat green meanies — and quickly retracted said apology after John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mike Pence (the holy trinity of fucktardery) called him an imbecile. This is like getting smacked down by Carrot Top, Howie Mandel and Pauly Shore. Barton’s chief corporate donor is (wait for it) Anadarko Petroleum, a 25 percent partner in the Macondo Prospect, which was the site of the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

• Bill Randall, a GOP congressional hopeful in North Carolina, who thinks the federal gummint and BP planned to spill that oil.

• And let’s not forget Michele Bachmann, Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Haley Barbour, Tom Price, Dick Armey … the list goes on and on and on.

The real idiots, of course, are the people who voted for this lot. I hope they’re enjoying the show. To me, it looks like “Jackass: Dumbing It Down in D.C.”

Fuelishness

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

The sun has returned, and just in time, too. I got the hell out of the house and onto the bike the past couple days, thereby missing the roundly panned Obama address from the Oval Office, the Limeys finally figuring out that Bloody Sunday was a bloody cock-up, and Apple’s quiet update of the Mini (we’ll be buying one to run the 20th Century Dog videoplex so I can get my ’06 MacBook back for purposes of revenue generation).

The cycling was the usual hodgepodge of on road and off, with one ill-advised, impulsive detour through the Garden of the Gods on Tuesday. How some folks pass a driver’s exam is a mystery to me. In one half-lap of the Garden I encountered three SUV pilots who apparently were incapable of reading the ubiquitous “No Parking” signs stenciled in the bike lane and posted at roadside.

At least one of them didn’t even understand spoken English, because I explained the bike lane/no parking concept to him after watching him park in the bike lane for a photo, leave it without signaling, and then zip back into it again for another snap, confusing two- and four-wheeled traffic equally. Ever try reasoning with a feedlot cow? You get the idea. Dude was 25 meters from a parking lot and 25 pounds shy of that first ton, which I hear is the hardest to lose. At least this one didn’t want to fight.

Today, as a change of pace, I fired up the Vespa for my trip to the chiropractor, who hates it when I show up all sweaty from cycling (makes it hard to get a secure grip for the back-cracking, don’t you know). The carb’ was fouled after a particularly damp and chilly May, but the folks at Sportique set it right and now I’m back to scooting hither and thither, drawing admiring glances from all and sundry.

“Cool scooter,” said a fixie hipster with the iBuds in as we both sat at a stoplight. Yes, indeedy. Don’t have to pedal or nothin’. Burns gas, too, just like a Harley, if at a slightly reduced rate.

After the back-cracking and a bit of cartooning for fun and profit I went for another one of my patented weirdo cyclo-cross rides (concrete, asphalt, pulverized granite, singletrack, etc.). Then I broke out the townie and a messenger bag for some light grocery shopping.

First it was south to America the Beautiful Park for this summer’s inaugural Colorado Farm and Art Market, buying some frozen free-range pork chops from Doug Wiley of Larga Vista Ranch. Next it was north to Ranch Foods Direct for a flatiron steak and some asparagus from Pueblo’s Milberger Farms so I’d have something to eat tonight.

Mind you, this was hardly the Frozen Chosin in the Freezing Season — I’m talking about 10 miles of leisurely cycling in fine weather for a dinner of grilled steak, boiled spuds and asparagus. Wiley’s pork chops are thawing in the ’fridge awaiting Herself’s return from The Big Easy. But my velo-shopping set me to to thinking about that roundly panned Obama speech.

The prez spake thusly:

The oil spill is not the last crisis America will face. This nation has known hard times before and we will surely know them again. What sees us through — what has always seen us through — is our strength, our resilience, and our unyielding faith that something better awaits us if we summon the courage to reach for it.

If we can’t park our SUVs and walk a few meters for a Kodak moment, how strong, resilient and courageous are we? Because the hard times are surely coming. And the SUV pilot who couldn’t be bothered to hump a few meters? He was a Marine.