From Tour de Tedium to Rancho Pendejo

July 15, 2009 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments

Logged onto the Versus video this morning to catch the final kilometer of today’s Tour stage. Cav’ wins again; ho hum. GC unchanged. Close the laptop. Move along, move along, nothing to see here. More of the same tomorrow.

It was refreshing to read Andrew Hood’s interview with Bernard Hinault, who clearly is as bored as the rest of us. Asked what riders should do to break Astana’s stranglehold on GC, the Badger replied succinctly: “Attack! It’s necessary to attack. There are not 36 solutions, just attack!”

I followed Hinault’s advice and attacked, sprinting to the garage, grabbing my second-best Steelman and riding north along the New Santa Fe Trail into the Air Force Academy. The trail exhibits some erosion from the recent heavy rains, but it’s still easily handled on a cyclo-cross bike, though I saw plenty of sissies on mountain bikes. Army types, no doubt. Or maybe swabbies.

Just short of the North Gate, I veered right and tunneled under I-25 to Voyager Parkway, then hung a right to Highway 83. Lots of cheesy Rancho Pendejo-style shitboxes in that neck of the peckerwoods, along with a few half-built shoppettes. If it weren’t for the Zoomie Zoo, Pikes Peak and Nude Life Church you could be anywhere — SoCal, Phoenix, Cleveland, you name it.

I rolled along 83 until just past Academy Boulevard, then took a side street behind a struggling strip mall, crossed Woodmen and picked up the bike path again just past the Nissan dealership, southbound this time. It made for about two hours in the saddle, 30 miles or so, and an interesting study in contrasts.

The wingnut fucktards who rail against the feddle gummint while praising the private sector to the skies ought to take this ride sometime. ‘Cause if it weren’t for the feddle gummint and its Air Force Academy, the private sector would’ve covered that beautiful trail and the 18,000 acres surrounding it with Rancho Pendejo shitboxes about 30 years ago.

Much noise, little signal

July 14, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

"Calling all cars; calling all cars; be on the lookout for a Manx sprinter, 5-foot-9, 150, a pair of guns concealed under the Lycra ... that is all."

Arrgghh. Another one of those days at Le Tour. “As exciting as watching flies do the nasty,” as I tweeted between bouts of posting stories and photos at VeloNews.com. And I don’t know which of those things is dirtier — flies doing the nasty, tweeting or posting cycling journalism to the Ethernets.

The peloton had its collective chamois in a bunch over the decision to ban race radios on this stage and one other, stage 13, which may explain the general lack of action.

Yet who among us can blame them? The riders found themselves alone, cast adrift on a roiling sea of asphalt, with no resources other than teammates, feed zones, cell phones, team vehicles full of directors, spare parts and complete bicycles, Mavic neutral support, the race doctor, guys on motos bearing blackboards, maps of the day’s route and their own intimate knowledge of the strategy and tactics of the sport. Oh, the humanity.

Sure enough, the lack of moment-to-moment radio communication between the team cars and their riders proved so decisive that (gasp) Mark Cavendish won a bunch sprint on a mostly flat stage! Imagine that, if you dare. I tell you, it had me whimpering like a little child.

Meanwhile, in DeeCee, the extremely junior Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Aryan Nations) tried to bitch-slap Supremes hopeful Sonia Sotomayor during day two of her confirmation hearing today and found himself munching a fat mouthful of his own feeble knuckle sandwich.

Contrasting Sotomayor’s approach to jurisprudence with that of Reagan nominee Judge Miriam Cedarbaum, saying Cedarbaum “believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices,” Sessions got whacked upside his pointy head with a one-two tag-team tap from Sotomayor and Cedarbaum, who was present at the confirmation hearing. It’s a wonder that Kluxer hood of his stays so white, considering where he keeps his head.

Said Cedarbaum, so beloved of Sessions that he didn’t know she was in the room, “I don’t believe for a minute that there are any differences in our approach to judging, and her personal predilections have no effect on her approach to judging.”

Quipped Ian Millhiser of the ThinkProgress Wonk Room in live-blogging day two of the Sotomayor hearing: “Note to Sessions: before you put words in a federal judge’s mouth, make sure that she isn’t in the hearing room to hear your false claim.”

I’ll bet the sonofabitch goes home, spills a generous dollop of Old Tennis Shoes on the carpet and blames it on the maid, then makes his wife fire her. This empty suit is a disgrace to rednecks ever’whur. Thanks and a tip of the Mad Dog gimme cap to Steve Benen of Political Animal.

Que triste es la vida

May 26, 2009 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

Judas Priest. The furnace just clicked on. Forty-eight and raining outdoors, 67 and cranky indoors. Are we sure this is late May in Colorado? ‘Cause it looks more like February in Oregon to me.

Oh, well. So it goes. Baldilocks will have something else to complain about before the bears come home. Like your average House Republican, who could fall into a barrel of tits and come out sucking his thumb, I am never satisfied. The glass is neither half empty nor half full, but rather a scattering of shards in a filthy gutter, just waiting for a bare foot.

Elsewhere, the prez has tapped Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice David Souter in the Supremes. She would be the Court’s second woman and its first Latina. The consensus among the parlor pinks I patronize — Kevin Drum, Steve Benen and others — seems to be that she will have little trouble winning confirmation.

Still, I have some small hope that the Repugs will insist on doing what they do best, which is acting swiftly on their worst impulses and in general behaving like spoiled children denied an undeserved treat. Hey, my pessimism knows some bounds.

Of swine and pigs

April 30, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

From our The More Things Change Etc. Department comes this cartoon by Pat Oliphant, circa 1976. This is not the first time the swine have sought revenge upon the long pigs for turning them into chops, bacon and green chile stew, and it won’t be the last.

In other news, the prez met the press again last night, and once again I was struck by how pleasant it is to hear an occupant of the Oval Office speaking in complete sentences free of pointless rancor, no matter how idiotic the question.

Speaking of idiots, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Bizarro World) seems to be out to take the title of Most Crazed Legislator from the Colorado delegation, renowned for heavyweight nutjobs like Tom Tancredo and Marilyn Musgrave. Notes Steve Benen at Political Animal in recounting Bachmann’s latest vacation from reality:

The economy under Coolidge was worse than the Great Depression? That’s pretty nutty. The New Deal created the Great Depression? That’s certainly yahooism at its finest.

But of particular interest is Bachmann’s belief that FDR passed “the Hoot-Smalley Act” and that “took a recession and blew it into a full-scale depression.” First, the name of the law was “Smoot-Hawley.” Second, it’s a real stretch to argue that it was responsible for the Great Depression. And third, the Smoot-Hawley bill was championed by Republicans and signed by Herbert Hoover, FDR’s Republican predecessor.

Bachmann is blaming FDR for a law sponsored by Republicans, which was implemented three years before he took office.

Perhaps Bachmann is thinking of the Hoot-Smalley Act, drafted by Hoot Gibson and Stuart Smalley, which created the Daily Affirmations 12 Step Program for Those Addicted to 12 Step Programs.

Toto, I don’t think we’re on Krypton anymore

March 15, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments

An AIG employee applies for his share of $165 million in bonuses.

In an early episode of the DC Comics feature “Tales of the Bizarro World,” in which the inhabitants do the exact opposite of all Earthly things, a salesman is doing a brisk trade selling Bizarro bonds: “Guaranteed to lose money for you.”

Ladies and gents, welcome to Bizarro World.

If I recall, the last cash bonus I got was $50 for saving a reporter from being hoodwinked by a school-board wiseass before her story about a fictional candidate for superintendent — Quincy Adams Wagstaff, late of Huxley College — could sneak into the pages of The New Mexican. I certainly never scored a cash payout for introducing libels into stories, throwing monkey wrenches into the presses or setting the newsroom afire.

If we were still on Earth, the 43 fools and/or thieves who run the AIG Financial Products unit — which as Steve Benen notes “was responsible for the company’s mess in the first place” — would be awarded custom-fit tuxedos of tar and feathers and chauffeured off to prison on splintery rails. But we do things backassward here on Bizarro World, and so they will get $165 million in bonuses after AIG soaked up $170 billion in taxpayer dollars.

As Josh Marshall notes at Talking Points Memo: “The folks running AIG’s financial products division should be happy to escape this mess without criminal indictments. And that’s not hyperbole. When you look at what they were doing, foolish or high-risk behavior are inadequate descriptors. It really amounts to fraud.”