Category: Deep political thought

From here to eternity

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
Green now, sure, but the gold is just around the corner.

Don’t let the green leaves fool you. It’s September out there. Sixty degrees at 8 a.m. in Albuquerque, and Old Man Gloom goes up in smoke at 9 p.m. tonight in Fanta Se.

Speaking of burns, approximately nobody, save the Volk wearing their MAGA hats a couple-three sizes too small, was surprised by Jeffrey Goldberg’s piece in The Atlantic describing Adolf Twitler’s thoughts on the “losers” and “suckers” who died for their country instead of blackjacking it in some dark alley and going through its pockets.

Charlie Pierce has some thoughts of his own regarding the Good Soldiers who continued to work for the craven sonofabitch, knowing full well that this is how he sees them and theirs.

They took an oath to defend the Constitution, not to hold their tongues until they could get a book deal as a reckless vandal takes the Republic down, brick by brick. Of all the people whom history will account as being complicit in the attempted demolition of constitutional government, I rank them ahead even of the invertebrate Republicans in the United States Senate.

Sixty days until we get a chance to start rebuilding the Republic. It seems like an eternity.

Off to the races

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments

Well, ladeez an’ gennulmens, there you have it.

In a perfect world this would not be my idea of the ideal progressive ticket. But we’re more than a few ZIP codes away from perfect.

The gibbering gobshite besmirching the Oval Office at present is only a secondary infection of the body politic. The primary ailment is a political/economic system designed to shovel wealth upward to people who already have too much of it.

They get their shining city on a hill. We get the big hole in the ground. Hey, the landfill has to go somewhere. Also, the graveyard. Coffee break’s over, bitches. That moola ain’t gonna shovel itself.

Louis C.K. is not a gent I’m fond of citing lately, but he was spot on when he had Kurt, a nihilistic barfly in “Horace and Pete,” describe what Adolf Twitler’s supporters wanted: not to fix the system, but to destroy it.

I can dig it. It feels good to break things. In the short term, anyway. Cleaning up afterward is a chore, though, and then you have to either fix or replace what you broke. Especially if it’s something you need, like the government or the economy.

I don’t expect miracles from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. We’re just hiring another cleanup crew here, is all.

They’re both pragmatic pols, and they don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. We can expect them to lean our way for a while, even after they win in November. If they win in November. And if we give them a Congress that functions. Lots of moving parts in this machine.

But we’re going to have to keep an eye on them, make sure they’re shoveling, and in the proper direction, too.

And while Joe and Kamala do the scutwork, the rest of us need to think long and hard about what this country needs to be, and how it came to be what it is.

Write what you no, no, no, no, no

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments
Miss Mia Sopaipilla keeps an eye out for terrorist hummingbirds.

Miss Mia Sopaipilla, Herself, and I have not been watching the Democratic National Convention.

If you know you’re going in for a colonoscopy, do you really need a preview of coming attractions? Can’t we skip the short subjects and move on to the feature?

“Well, the good news is, we think we’ve located your head.”

I know, I know — there have been a couple zingers suitable for endless repetition, the best so far coming from Ms. Obama. And MoJo’s Kevin Drum wonders whether the virtual convention might replace the MeatWorld model, which was basically just a cumbersome, volatile, prime-time campaign ad anyway.

The pace is livelier than live conventions; more people get to speak since their segments can be more tightly controlled; and in an era of media sophistication I’ll bet viewers like it better. They know perfectly well how it’s being put together and they don’t mind.

Maybe so. But I think that in “normal” times people still like to gather in their little groups and rub elbows, surreptitiously trading greenbacks and gossip. Hell, sometimes even I miss Interbike, if only because it got me out of the fucking house.

An example from the monkey*

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 39 Comments
Heading down Spain. If I’d had a little more tread I’d have stayed on High Desert and picked up the short stretch of dirt to the Embudito trailhead.

Well, we don’t have any fire tornadoes swirling through the neighborhood, so I’m gonna go out on a limb and call it a pretty pleasant day.

Herself was busy with this, that, and the other, so I slipped out for a solo ride on the old DBR Prevail TT, which doesn’t see much daylight anymore.

It was my road-racing bike Back in the Day®, when I still did what I called “road racing” and actual road racers called “getting shelled.” So it was a pleasant change from the usual 32-pound touring machine. Even a no-hoper like me feels frisky on a 20-pound bike.

So we climbed some hills, and then some more hills, and I didn’t even need the 34×25, because I’d left a dozen pounds of bike back in the garage.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have their own hill to climb starting tomorrow. I don’t see a virtual convention crushing it, eyeballs-wise. The traditional dog-and-another-dog show has rarely been what I’d call must-see TV. Not even the Yippies could put some zip into this mutt.

Anyway, the GOP has stolen their best bit, what with running a pig for president not once, but twice.

* “The higher it climbs, the more you see of its behind. — St. Bonaventure, “Conferences on the Gospel of John.”