Category: Deep political thought

Highway 666 Revisited

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
We seem to be missing a 6 here. Nevertheless, get your kicks, etc.

Another Jan. 6 has come and gone.

This time we managed to skip the armed-insurrection part of the program, so yay for us. Turns out that when they win, The System works.

Who knew?

Watching Vice President Kamala Harris preside over the certification of the 2024 election results this week sent me careening down Memory Lane, revisiting a night in the sneezer in 1977, a Louis C.K. dramedy from 2016, and the last three pestilential erections.

Somehow the Joker, Billy Joe Shaver, The Cars, Dana Carvey, Willie Nelson, and Bill Clinton snuck in there too.

Once you have a cast of characters like that assembled, for good or ill, you just know it’s time for — yes, yes, yes — the first episode of Radio Free Dogpatch in The Year of Our Lard 2025, Dog help us all.

Additional music not included, but which should replace “Hail to the Chief” for at least the next four years, is “Catch Us If You Can” by the Dave Clark Five.

• Technical notes: RFD favors the Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple’s GarageBand, and Auphonic for a wash and brushup. Performing for us this week are Danny O’Keefe, AC/DC, The Cars, and Billy Joe Shaver, all from YouTube. The 2016 dramedy “Horace and Pete” remains available on Louis C.K.’s website. Audio of the 2024 election-results certification courtesy C-SPAN. Dana Carvey as Ross Perot on “SNL” was lifted from YouTube. Bill Clinton comes (har de har har) from the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. The Walk of Shame is from HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” The headline is a riff on Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” not incidentally in honor of RFD’s 61st episode. Finally, ask not for whom the clown horn honks; it honks for thee (from Freesound). All other evil racket is courtesy of Your Humble Narrator.

In which noses are cut off to spite faces

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
Ow. Ow. Ow.

Blogger Kevin Drum passes along some dispiriting yet unsurprising news from The Washington Post: Voters in a poor Pennsylvania town cast their ballots for Oney I. Kinfixit “even though they depend on welfare benefits that Republicans have long wanted to cut back.”

Here’s 55-year-old Lori Mosura, one of the townspeople quoted in the piece: “He is more attuned to the needs of everyone instead of just the rich. I think he knows it’s the poor people that got him elected, so I think Trump is going to do more to help us.”

Cue Messrs. Simon & Garfunkel:

I am just a poor boy 

Though my story’s seldom told 

I have squandered my resistance 

For a pocketful of mumbles 

Such are promises 

All lies and jest 

Still a man hears what he wants to hear 

And disregards the rest

Look on the bright side

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
Heads up. …

After the results of the pestilential erection came in I decided to leave our Halloween lights up through Christmas.

It was just my way of saying “Jesus Christ!”

I may leave them up until the results of the next pestilential erection come in. Assuming we have another one, that is.

My little boneheads are considerably brighter than the MAGA dimbulbs, but those low-wattage loudmouths may actually be more illuminating in at least one respect. They provide a daily reminder that we must walk some distance in darkness.

Rather than curse that darkness, I light my candles. They have their joke, and I have mine.

Happy holidays from Herself, Miss Mia Sopaipilla, and Your Humble Narrator.

The Nanofesto: writing a wrong

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
Do the write thing.

When the John Laws collared their suspect in the CEO assassination he was said to have had in his possession a ghost gun, some fake I.D., and a 262-word “manifesto.”

A 262-word manifesto?

By the ghosts of Marx and Engels! That’s what I call phoning it in.

Except our man didn’t use a phone to compose it. Or a laptop. It was handwritten. Whether on papyrus, stone tablets, or a shithouse wall was not made clear.

What is abundantly clear, however, is that 262 words do not a manifesto make. And let me tell you why.

Yes, yes, yes, it’s time for another political-science fiction episode of Radio Free Dogpatch.

• Technical notes: RFD is loving the Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple’s GarageBand, and Auphonic for a sonic colonic. “The Internationale (Traditional)” and “The Internationale (Death Metal Edition)” both come from YouTube. The typewriter comes from Freesound. The police siren, screeching tires, ballpoint scribbling, and game-show buzzer all come from Zapsplat. All other evil racket is courtesy of Your Humble Narrator.