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.”

Tom Joad lives

March 11, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

Times have gotten so hard here in Bibleburg that even cute little kittens find themselves forced to live in drawers.

If they’re not crowding into shitbag motels, they’re setting up tent cities by the river — welcome to “Grapes of Wrath II: From Hotels to Hoovervilles.”

In Sacramento, a tent city that has sprung up near the American River already has some 300 residents and is growing like the proverbial weed as working-class people join the chronically homeless in life in the great outdoors.

A spokeswoman for a Sacramento non-profit that provides “survival services” for the neo-homeless told The New York Times that the number of unsheltered people in her town rose 26 percent in one year:

“We have lots of folks living in their cars. People are buying storage units and living in them. People are trying to do what they can to put a roof over their head. Sometimes people romanticize camping, that they are free spirits. In fact, it’s an act of desperation.”

There are many such Hoovervilles in Bibleburg, albeit on a smaller scale. Walk 10 minutes north or west from Dog Central and you will see a cheap tent here, a ragged bedroll there; head south along the Monument Creek trail and you’ll see the po’-folks’ version of the RV camp — battered shopping carts and bicycles, and the soup kitchens and shelters just a short hop away.

Seven hundred people eat daily at the Marian House Soup Kitchen, up 40 percent from last year, according to the Gazette. And with unemployment up to 8.1 percent as of January — the highest level in nearly 17 years — they’re not likely to get lonely anytime soon.

Elsewhere, a Yale student is suing US Airways over a lost Xbox 360. He wants a million smacks for his pain and suffering, plus $1,700 to replace the hardware. A guy could buy himself a sweet little tent for that kind of money, and maybe a shopping cart to go with it.

Below the belt(way)

March 7, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

The Mighty Turk views with alarm as winter returns to Bibleburg, however briefly.

I’ve been trying very hard to ignore the Repuglicans’ screeching, holding of breath and stamping of pudgy widdle feet, reasoning that, like Oscar Wilde — or perhaps a gasbag with a microphone who is better fed than taught — they have decided that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

But damn, am I sick of the racket.

I don’t agree with everything going on in the Obama camp, either, perhaps because I’m not smart enough to unravel the grand design. But after eight years of enduring that other guy, I’m willing to give Obama a little time to assess the situation and determine his response, free of snarky asides about how he’s already going gray or uses the teleprompter more than Honest Abe.

And seriously, if you voted for that other guy the last two outings, you really need to shut the fuck up for a while. Firefighters at work are not obliged to take criticism from arsonists.

Another advocate of reasonable behavior in the face of idiocy, Robert Sullivan, argues in The New York Times that cyclists have begun acting like cars instead of people. He never really defines himself as a cyclist (commuter? recreational rider?), though he does sneer weakly and tritely at Lance Armstrong wanna-bes and fixie kids. And his essay wanders around more than I’d like. But his basic point is one I support — treat others as you would be treated. It’s hypocritical to bitch about psycho motorists if you ride like a bonehead.