Archive for the ‘Feddle gummint’ Category

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Antisocial distancing

March 21, 2020

The outside is still there. We’re just not making as much use of it lately.

No child likes homework. And damn few adults like working from home full time, once they’ve given it a whirl.

Oh, sure, some of us are cut out for it. Truth be told, without the option to work remotely, some of us wouldn’t be remotely employable.

So as you noobs open your laptops on the kitchen counter, launch Skype, and settle into The New Normal, remember the Old Abnormal. We’re still here, in our three-day beards, unbrushed teeth, and soiled yoga pants, taking regular meetings with the voices in our heads.

We pioneered this shit. Homesteaded it, you might say. And we like it.

So, welcome to orientation.

First, the bad news: The voices in your head are not the ones you’re used to hearing around the water cooler in the office.

The good news? You can tell them to shut the fuck up and they won’t rat you out to HR.

Yes, it’s another thrilling episode of Radio Free Dogpatch!

P L A Y    R A D I O    F R E E    D O G P A T C H

• Technical notes: It’s another bargain-basement broadcast. I used the Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB mic, and skipped the Zoom H5 Handy Recorder in favor of recording directly to the MacBook Pro using Rogue Amoeba’s nifty little app Piezo. Editing was as usual, in GarageBand. The intro music is by Your Humble Narrator, assembled from bits and pieces in the iOS version of GarageBand on a 9.7-inch iPad Pro. Angry shouting and background music (the latter by Doug Maxwell/Media Right Productions) is courtesy of the YouTube Audio Library. Cash register by kiddpark at Freesound.org. Herself was voiced either by Elle Macpherson, Tyra Banks, or Rosario Dawson, I can’t decide.

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Posted in Audio, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, Cartooning, Feddle gummint, Podcasting, Radio Free Dogpatch | 23 Comments »

‘Something Went Wrong,’ Afghanistan Edition

December 9, 2019

It’s one thing to suspect it, and another thing to have it dumped in your lap by The Washington Post.

“Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible,” Bob Crowley, an Army colonel who served as a senior counterinsurgency adviser to U.S. military commanders in 2013 and 2014, told government interviewers. “Surveys, for instance, were totally unreliable but reinforced that everything we were doing was right and we became a self-licking ice cream cone.”

Except ice cream cones taste good. This tastes like death.

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Posted in Agitprop, Assholes, Chickenshittery, Feddle gummint, Small hat sizes, War | 22 Comments »

Slouching toward impeachment

October 8, 2019

Get on with it!

 

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Posted in Agitprop, Deep political thought, Feckin' eejits, Feddle gummint, Just Fucking Shoot Me, Small hat sizes | 11 Comments »

The Farce is with us

August 30, 2019

How much closer? Honey, call the Space Farce!

Hm. No flying saucers up there. Not right this minute, anyway.

I guess we need a “space force” anyway, though, if only to learn how to flush money down a zero-gravity toilet.

Look for a low-Earth-orbit version of the F-35, coming to a military-industrial complex near you.

“Jesus, Chet, now they want the fucker to be a spacecraft, too. They’re lucky it gets off the ground at all. Oh, well, it’s only money, amirite? Haw haw haw! Back to the ol’ drawing board. …”

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Posted in Agitprop, Casual snark, Dollars and nonsense, Feckin' eejits, Feddle gummint | 18 Comments »

Bull in a China shop

May 10, 2019

There’s a new tariff in town.

MAGA, etc., et al., and so on and so forth. I’d speculate as to whether Art O. DeDeal is trying to croak the bike biz because of the relentless roasting I’ve given him, but he doesn’t know Schwinn from Shinola.

He apparently wants everyone else to lose money the way he did.

So. Much. Winning.

Posted in Bad news, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, Bidness, Bike stuff, Dollars and nonsense, Feckin' eejits, Feddle gummint, Incisive financial analysis | 5 Comments »

Wired

February 7, 2019

I got wired a time or two when I lived in southern Arizona, but it was nothing like this. Photo by Jonathan Clark | Nogales International via The Associated Press and stolen shamelessly by Your Humble Narrator

Whatever the sonofabitch gets, it’s never enough. Wives, bankruptcies, you name it.

Now not even a Big, Beautiful Wall® will tickle Il Douche’s little pickle. Now it has to be a Big, Beautiful Wall with Six Rows of Razor Wire®.

And remember, folks: FreeDumb® isn’t free. DoD estimates that the military has spent $132 million so far “supporting” U.S. Customs and Border Protection — never mind that the number of arrests by the Border Patrol is the lowest since the early 1970s, while the number of agents has more than doubled — and other estimates indicate that border deployments could eat up a cool billion by the end of fiscal 2019.

Can we maybe put one of these BBWWSRORW® around the Orange House? With a lid on it?

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Posted in Agitprop, Assholes, Chickenshittery, Derision, Feckin' eejits, Feddle gummint, FreeDumb®, Just Fucking Shoot Me, Small hat sizes, Stupidity, Things that suck | 32 Comments »

What a boar

February 5, 2019

“Roll him back to makeup, fellas, someone screwed up the spray tan.”

Does anyone else find it suspicious that as we enter the Year of the Pig there will be some preposterous oinking from Capitol Hill?

Saaaaaaay: You don’t suppose he’s a Chinese stooge instead of a Russian stooge. …

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Posted in Agitprop, Assholes, Capitalist swine, Deep political thought, Feckin' eejits, Feddle gummint, Small hat sizes, Smashing the State, Stupidity, Things that suck | 8 Comments »

Degrees of difficulty

January 22, 2019

It wasn’t what I’d call warm on Saturday, but the Big Yellow Ball was out in a blue, blue sky, so I had that going for me, which was nice.

Hmph. After six consecutive days of healthful outdoor exercise I thought I’d award myself a day of rest yesterday.

Should’ve kept an eye on the weather wizards. ’Cause today, it’s snowing again. Bah, etc.

Happily, I wrapped and shipped the latest “Quick Spin” video to Adventure Cyclist on Sunday, so I won’t have to check the integrity of those Jamis fenders today. Instead, I can go for a short run in the snow, see if I can find a new place to fall down.

And it could be worse. It could not be snowing in January, and come June I would be bitching about being on fire.

Or I could be an unpaid federal employee standing in line near the Trump International Hotel in DeeCee, waiting for some free food.

Radha Muthiah, president of the Capital Area Food Bank, tells The New York Times that her organization has had to reassess its targets, which now include people “making upward of $60,000 a year.”

“What was more interesting than the number were the types of calls: individuals who had never had to request food,” she said of those contacting the food bank. “Many had donated, but had never expected to be on the receiving end.

“What this experience is showing them is that so many of us live paycheck to paycheck. Any time of emergency — whether a medical emergency or something else — how quickly one can become vulnerable.”

Some federales are hunting other work, whatever they can find — babysitting, driving for Uber, substitute teaching. This may or may not keep other Americans from landing those jobs.

Notes FDA employee David Arvelo: “Who’s going to hire me not knowing how long I’m going to stick around?”

One common thread running through all these stories involves infernal combustion: people who suddenly can’t afford gas, insurance, car payments, whatever. The humble bicycle looks awfully good by comparison. Unless, of course, it’s snowing.

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Posted in Agitprop, Albuquerque, Bike stuff, Feddle gummint, Snow, Winter | 8 Comments »

Here’s the turd, there’s the handle, what’s your hurry?

January 18, 2019

His Lardship on the throne.

Once again Charles P. Pierce breaks it all down so the rest of us can lean on our shovels.

Waiting for Mueller is now an unacceptable and inadequate response from the national legislature. Mueller’s job is to see if the president* and his minions should go to jail. The House’s job is to determine if the president* should not be the president* anymore.

Bring it. Impeach the sonofabitch. If nothing else you give him a fresh case of ants in his pants to distract him from rendering the Republic uninhabitable.

Here’s more, from Adam Serwer and Yoni Appelbaum at The Atlantic.

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Posted in Agitprop, Assholes, Deep political thought, Feckin' eejits, Feddle gummint, Smashing the State | 15 Comments »

Hard reign in Swamptown

January 12, 2019

What a blockhead.

The pestilence of the Benighted States, Wally O’Steele, a.k.a. Artie Deal, wants a Big, Beautiful Wall® at the nation’s southern boundary to keep brown people* from crossing the border to work anywhere other than at his hotels or golf courses.

Unable to procure funding for same, he has instead walled off the feddle gummint from its own tax-paying citizens, idling more than a few of them in the process and forcing others to work without pay while selling their Christmas presents on eBay to keep from freezing to death in the dark.

It’s a hard reign, and the water — if that’s what it is — just keeps rising.

Man the lifeboats and rig for heavy seas, matey — it’s the latest episode of Radio Free Dogpatch.

* Russian oligarchs and Saudi princelings get a pass, of course, along with a coupon for a complimentary fluff and fold at Artie Deal’s Motor Inn & Money Laundry.

 

P L A Y    R A D I O    F R E E    D O G P A T C H

• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with a Shure SM58 microphone and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. Additional bad noise via an Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB mic and a Sony ICD-UX533. I edited this hot mess using a Behringer XENYX 1200USB mixer wired to a 2014 MacBook Pro with an external LG 24MP59HT-P monitor and Apple’s GarageBand. Obligatory Cultural References From Bygone Days© courtesy the Bard of Hibbing.

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Posted in Agitprop, Assholes, Capitalist swine, Deep political thought, Derision, Feckin' eejits, Feddle gummint, Fire, Flood, Podcasting, Radio Free Dogpatch | 11 Comments »

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