Category: Deep political thought

Mercury falling

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

Summer vanished faster than the public option today. I was forced to retire my usual professional ensemble of shorts and sandals in favor of a ratty pair of sweat pants and moth-eaten socks, though I stuck with the sleeveless T for freedom of movement while rassling typos for VeloNews.com.

It was a slow day in the VeloBarrel, as the crew was scattered far and wide, either at Outdoor Demo, en route to Sin City or playing one-handed spit-in-the-carpet somewhere, and that suited me just fine. I don’t like Mondays, and I really don’t like cold, gray, windy and damp Mondays, especially when I’m staring down the barrel of a five-day work week like the rest of y’all. If I wanted to work, I’d get a job, a self-imposed sentence that I have successfully avoided for 18 years now.

Still, a slow day pushing pixels is not exactly hard labor, and I was able to raise my head for a quick peek now and then to see what was shaking in the hairy-legged world. It was not encouraging.

Dingbat W. Cleon Skousen is apparently enjoying something of a renaissance thanks to Glenn Beck, Texas Gov. Rick “Goodhair” Perry and other gibbering asshats. Remember your Ed Abbey (“You can always tell a shithead by that initial initial.”)

Gen. Stanley McChrystal wants more troops for Afghanistan. Kevin Drum is skeptical, and so am I, having read a little Kipling and observed some recent history. The Persians, Brits and Soviets all screwed the pooch — I see many bootprints entering, but considerably fewer leaving — and Uncle Sammy is batting cleanup? No, thanks. Bring ’em home, please.

And finally, apparently straight porn makes you gay. But I don’t even like show tunes.

Diary of a mad rumormonger

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

Another gray day in Bibleburg. Big Bill McBeef popped by to say howdy after his Sunday ride, and he was wearing some old long-sleeved Mad Dog Media kit, at least two iterations off the back, the real warm stuff we got from Aussie about a thousand years ago.

Naturally, being a cyclo-crosser (emeritus), I called him a pussy for wearing long sleeves so early in September. But I was slouched in my office chair with a cup of tea, in front of two large, heat-generating flat-panel monitors, editing copy for VeloNews.com, so there was little doubt as to whose manliness was in question.

We have a moment between revenue-generating chores here, so let’s take stock of what’s going on in the hairy-legged world.

First, Jim Carroll, the punk-rocking poet perhaps best known for his memoir “The Basketball Diaries” and his punk anthem “People Who Died”? He died.

Next, The Washington Post continues to undermine the notion that the media are controlled by a tiny group of media elites. (Thanks and a tip of the Mad Blog tinfoil beanie to Steve Benen at Political Animal.) Honorable mention goes to The Bibleburg Gaslight, which proudly lists the right-wing harpy Michelle Malkin as an advisory member of its editorial board, which is not unlike Sybil adding another demonic contributor to the list of voices in her head.

And finally, my buddy Hal Walter writes about net worth versus self-worth. Take a squint; it’s most definitely worth pondering over a hot toddy as you wonder why you are where you are — and where you left the snow shovel.

Some animals are more equal than others

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

How is it that respectable news organizations keep giving Darth Cheney a soapbox? I will be interested in his oinkings when they emanate from between the bars of a jail cell.

And while we’re on the topic of mistaking bullshit for a more nourishing substance, Steve Benen at Political Animal notes that The Washington Post ombudsman writes (surprise, surprise) that most of the health-care “journalism” to date has been of the smelly, stick-to-your-boots variety.

Notes Benen: “For the media in general, I think there’s a reliance on horse-race and he-said-she-said journalism because it’s easy — and because all of their colleagues and competitors are doing the same thing.”

Awash in a wake

~ Patrick O'Grady

Judas Priest. More rain. Happily, I managed to reduce the back-yard jungle with the lawn mower before the skies cut loose with a fresh dousing of angel piss. Must be the Kennedys celebrating the latest arrival. Dunno what they’re drinking up there, but clearly prostate issues don’t carry over into the next life.

Watering the tree of crazy

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
Thats my old .357 Magnum right there, next to the S&W 22A target pistol, the Ruger Mini-Thirty and 10-22, and the Marlin .357 Magnum saddle gun. I dont take em to political rallies.
That's my old .357 Magnum right there, next to the S&W 22A target pistol, the Ruger Mini-Thirty and 10-22, and the Marlin .357 Magnum saddle gun. I don't take 'em to political rallies.

How is it that these people didn’t bat an eyelash at eight years of the Daffy-Fudd Reichstag barbecue, but go batshit crazy in less than a year of Obama-Biden? I’ll bet the Secret Service has given up drinking coffee and is horning lines of Ethiopian hararrharrarhar right off the counter at Starbucks.

I lived in Arizona, briefly, back in 1980, and had the same handgun I do today — a Smith & Wesson Model 19 Combat Magnum — but my mild hippie-anarchist gun-nuttery didn’t prepare me for seeing a motorcycle gangster roaring down the road with an assault rifle slung over one shoulder. Or a line of greasy-spoon stools bearing rednecks wearing holstered pistols.

If I recall correctly, back then you could wear a sidearm or fetch a long gun pretty much anywhere in Arizona, barring banks, bars and liquor stores. But I don’t recall anyone fetching one to a Ronald Reagan rally. We had to wait until 1981 and the nation’s capital for that, when John Hinckley Jr. punched a few .22-caliber holes in the prez, press secretary James Brady, DC police officer Thomas Delahanty and SS agent Timothy McCarthy.

I remember folks being somewhat upset over the idea that a crazy fucker with a gun might have the audacity to shoot a president. I guess times have changed.