Category: Deep political thought

New year, new recipe

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
Bacon-potato cake from "The Feed Zone Cookbook"
Bacon-potato cake from “The Feed Zone Cookbook”

Happy New Year to all you hungover old dogs out there. Here’s hoping you did not overdo it last night.

Herself and I actually made it to midnight, and I overslept for some reason, so breakfast turned into brunch. It being a new year, I test-flew a new recipe for bacon-potato cakes, from “The Feed Zone Cookbook” by Biju Thomas and Allen Lim.

It wasn’t bad, but was a shade bland for my taste, despite involving three of the four basic food groups (bacon, potato and cake). Next time around I’ll punch that sucker up with a little garlic, maybe some red chile powder, a bit of cumin, for sure some Mexican oregano. At the moment I’m kicking myself for not adding a dollop of the red chile sauce I made for enchiladas the other night. That would have put the old fire in the belly. Or the fire in the old belly. Whatever.

Speaking of things that need punching up (or out) I see “our” elected representatives in the nation’s capital have been up to the usual not much beyond redefining upward the definition of “middle class.” We seem to be a few hundred thousand short of that particular finish line, which is probably why the prez never replies to my brunch invitations.

You can read more than you care to about the fiscal-cliff shenanigans at:

• The Maddow Blog (Steve Benen).

• The Atlantic (Matthew O’Brien).

• Political Animal (Ed Kilgore).

• The Nation (William Greider).

More murders? More guns!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 60 Comments
Second Amendment Spectacular!
That’s a weapon for every human, cat and dog in the house, though our four-legged citizens lack opposable thumbs and therefore decline to bear arms.

Some days there are no words.

I’ve tried several times to write something sensible about the massacre in Connecticut, but there is no sense to be made of it. Alas, there is plenty of nonsense to be made of it, which may be the primary reason I’ve been keeping my big yap shut on the matter.

The Second Amendment absolutists — among them the renowned Constitutional scholar Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Asshat) — are clamoring for more guns. Um, no, shit-for-brains, issuing M4 carbines to school principals is not the solution. I wouldn’t have made it out of seventh grade alive had my principal been packing.

Our goal here is, or should be, to deny military-grade armaments to the insane (like Rep. Gohmert, who should not be allowed to carry a dime-store squirt gun, even if his mommy promises it’s unloaded).

But how do we get there past the Second Amendment, which has kept lawyers, judges and grammarians scratching their heads for the life of the Republic?

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Christ, do I ever wish the framers had hired a copy editor to work that sucker over before committing it to posterity. But they didn’t, and as a consequence a certain subset of the citizenry dasn’t answer a knock on the door without an AR-15 and a 90-round drum magazine in the old umbrella stand.

Mind you, I’m a gun owner. Actually, make that “guns owner” because I have five of them — a .357 Magnum Smith & Wesson Model 19 Combat Magnum revolver; a 7.62x39mm Ruger Mini-Thirty semi-automatic carbine with a couple 10-round magazines; a Ruger 10-22 semi-auto .22 carbine with a 30-round magazine; a .357 Magnum Marlin lever-action saddle gun; and a boxy-looking S&W Model 22A .22 target pistol that will carry 10 in the mag’ and one in the chamber.

Buying them was about as troublesome as scoring a six-pack from the neighborhood grog shop, and if making the purchase process more onerous would save one human life, well, call me a limp-wristed, tyrant-hugging traitor, but I’m all for it.

In fact, I’ve already made inquiries about selling the entire arsenal, ammo dump and all, to some responsible party in the country, for use in protein collection and/or varmint dispersal. I don’t anticipate a visit from the blue helmets and black helicopters anytime soon, nor do I feel up to toppling the government right this minute.

Besides, the goddamn things look like dead children to me.

Election Day 2012: Real-time snark ‘n’ bark

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
I voted: Nov. 6, 2012
Another feeble blow against Fascism, more properly described (by Mussolini himself) as Corporatism.

Chores will take me away from the iMac from time to time during the day, but I’ll pop in irregularly to provide my own personal lack of objective perspective on the big doin’s throughout This Great Land of Ours®. Posts will be listed below, with the most recent at the top and the least so at the bottom.

In the meantime, keep an eye on Charles P. Pierce’s Politics Blog. He’s going at it hammer and tongs over there.

And if you haven’t done so already, vote.

More below the fold: ↓

Continue reading “Election Day 2012: Real-time snark ‘n’ bark” →

Twilight of the dogs

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
Riding into the sunset
Is the sun setting on the American Experiment? Just remember, things always look their darkest just before everything goes totally black.

Looks kind of rural and peaceful, doesn’t it? A fisherman stands by a mountain lake just before sundown. …

Actually, it’s a pond upstream from a water-treatment plant in north-central Bibleburg. The place is surrounded by high-traffic roads, a dog-boarding operation and a hamburger stand. And it wasn’t nearly as dark as the iPhone thought it was when I shot this pic on yesterday’s afternoon ride.

Likewise, things aren’t nearly as dark as they appear to be as the minority of Americans who actually take part in their representative democracy prepare to do so once more tomorrow.

Yes, there will be voting problems, both manmade and heaven-sent. And yes, fully half the people who intend to cast ballots are clinically insane, woefully unqualified to operate the napkin dispenser at a burger joint, much less the right to vote.

But I cling to the faint hope that there may be slightly more of us than there are of them, and urge you to drag your deeply disappointed selves down to your neighborhood polling place tomorrow, and take two or three friends and neighbors with you.

Unless you plan to vote for the RomneyBot v2.012, that is. Then please to stay home, clinging bitterly to your guns and religion.