Category: Dollars and nonsense

Hope and (spare) change

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 27 Comments
Mister Boo
Mister Boo feels the torpor of the unemployed.

As the coronation of King Socialist Muslim I proceeds in DeeCee, word on the streets in Bibleburg is that job growth locally is confined to pitching greaseballs at motorists through drive-up windows, answering phone calls from pissed-off Comcast customers and blowing shit up, in part because the locals are too fucking stupid to sell legal weed.

The good news is, gas is cheap for anyone who wants to leave town in search of greener pastures.

The local unemployment rate has been at or above 8.9 percent for three and a half years, and would be more like 12 percent had not some 4,000 Bibleburgers given up looking for work altogether, according to the Gazette.

Interestingly, local number-cruncher Tom Binnings of Summit Economics LLC estimates that 24 percent of Bibleburgers are self-employed, “making money where they can and finding a way to survive, but not much more.”

That number seemed steep at first, until I started thinking about most of the local folks I know. A couple are educators, one has a gummint job, and a few are private-sector employees, but a substantial percentage of the others is self-employed: artist, screen printer, construction contractor, bike-shop owner.

We’re not all struggling to survive, but I’m certain we’d all like to be doing better. Thing is, how do we get there? Ranching the view doesn’t put beans in your burrito, blowing shit up seems likely to go out of fashion if DeeCee ever gets serious about reining in spending, and cheap gas isn’t much of a solace if you have nowhere to go.

Friday Funnies

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

Ah, Black Friday: The gift that keeps on giving. As some Walmart employees are agitating for a living wage, Sears customers in San Antonio are throwing hands and drawing firearms. Some people clearly did not enjoy enough mood-altering tryptophan on Thanksgiving.

At the higher-end shops, meanwhile, those mannequins you’re inspecting are inspecting you right back, with cameras and facial-recognition software not unlike that used by les flics. Hey, there’s one … whoops, nope, it’s just Mitt Romney.

Meanwhile, here’s something to leave on the shelf, no matter where we are in the shopping season. And fuck Weepy John Boehner and the horses’ asses he rode in on.

Gloom and doom

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
Rainy May day
Sure am glad I watered the lawn yesterday.

This is May? What, did the GOP manage to privatize the weather, hand it off to Halliburton or Goldman Sachs? It rained last night, the wind is flat barreling out of the northwest at 24 mph and there is the usual chance of snow “with little to no accumulation,” which means, “Just enough to kill anyone who thinks 4WD helps you stop.”

It’s just as well, I suppose. I had work to do this morning, and were it not so dismal outside I might have said piss on it and gone for a ride instead.

Speaking of rude awakenings, it seems the mainstream media have finally sniffed the java where Punkinhead Boehner is concerned. Bloomberg News reports that the House speaker’s economic “theories” depend upon “several assertions that are contraindicated by market indicators and government reports.” The Washington Post‘s Ruth Marcus cuts to the chase and calls him a lying sack of runny orange shit.

Careful, now, Ruthie ol’ scout. You’re liable to set off Weepy John’s sprinkler system bringing that kind of heat. Thanks to Steve Benen at Political Animal for the tip.

Tea for two

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
April bouquet
The tulips popped up the other day, just in time to catch a good old-fashioned spring soaking, our first in many a moon.

Yay! It’s Tax Day, my favoritest holiday ever, just ahead of National Polka Festival Day and George W. Bush’s birthday.

Naturally, I don’t concern myself with taxes, being an arteest rather than an accountant. But Herself, who serves as Mad Dog Media’s Custodian of Records, advises me that the State of Colorado screwed the pooch on our return, sending us a refund check for $199 when in fact we owed $24 and had sent them a check for same.

Goldurned gummint can’t get nothin’ right. Where’s m’tea-bag hat? I feel a protest comin’ on. ‘Specially after reading this Mother Jones piece about how tax-prep outfits scam the poor.

Reading for comprehension

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments

There is at least a partial solution to be found in one Coloradan’s complaint about the rising cost of fuel. See if you can find it:

For drivers such as Robert Wagner, 51, a high school teacher from Thornton, Colo., the higher fuel costs mean cutting back on movies and dinners out for him, his wife and their two children. “We’re very, very frugal right now,” he said as he trickled enough $3.09-per-gallon gasoline into his Chevrolet Suburban to get him to his next pay day.

Now try to figure out who will get the blame for this appalling state of affairs. Will it be (a) auto-motoring Americans who insist on surrounding themselves with more armor plating than a phalanx of Middle Ages knights aboard Percherons, or (2) a Kenyan-born Muslim socialist richly deserving of impeachment?