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.
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?
“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. …
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.
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.
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.
• 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.
It’s morning in Albuquerque.
I just rang up our freshman representative in DeeCee, Deb Haaland, and asked that she and her colleagues start working up articles of impeachment.
Haaland was quick out of the chute with a response to last night’s State of the Wall Address, saying:
“The real national emergency right now is thousands of New Mexicans not being able to put food on the table or pay rent, because of the government shutdown. New Mexicans need quality public education, good paying jobs, and a renewable-energy economy — the wall does nothing to address those issues. On day one, the House passed a bill to get federal workers back to work and paid, and now it’s time for the Senate and the President to do their part.”
I imagine that the congresswoman has a pretty full schedule, being new to the job, but as I told the woman who answered the phone, “This administration is a cartoon that never was funny, and it’s long past time the show was canceled.”
“That Wall money must be up there somewhere, lemme have another look.”
This just in: Rich get richer.
And those other folks? Oh, they get something, a’ight, but it ain’t richer.
Cowboy up.
The pimp who has been whoring out the Interior Department has Caddy’d off into the sunset, and good riddance.
Sez The Washington Post:
During his nearly two years in office Zinke came under at least 15 investigations, including inquiries into his connection to a real estate deal involving a company that Interior regulates, whether he bent government rules to allow his wife to ride in government vehicles and allowing a security detail to travel with him on a vacation to Turkey at considerable cost.
I guess Turkey was too far a trot on horseback, alone, like Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name (in this case, more like a Man With No Shame). And now there’s one less horse’s ass in this criminal clusterfuck. Two, if you count the horse.
But before we cheer too loudly, consider this, from The New York Times:
Rather than an end to Mr. Zinke’s pro-fossil fuel policies, the resignation quite likely signals a passing of the playbook. Mr. Zinke’s deputy, David Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist, is expected to step in as acting head of the department.
In the meantime, Charles P. Pierce uses his weekly newsletter to call for the impeachment process to start, today. Sez Chazbo:
If the House doesn’t begin its own inquiry, and very soon, then the impeachment power in the Constitution is what Jefferson called it — a scarecrow. … The Founders made it a point in the Constitution that it would be the House, the half of the national legislature thought to be closest to the people, that would possess “the sole power of impeachment.” The exercise of that power begins with the power to investigate independently—independently, not only of other investigations, but also independently of political calculation and institutional timidity.
You can sign up to support Mr. Pierce and his newsletter over to Esquire.
Patrick O'Grady sells words and pictures to Adventure Cyclist, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, and pretty much anyone else who can spell his name correctly next to the phrase which sounds so musical to his aged ears: "Pay to the order of. ..." For more on Your Humble Narrator, click the comic.
Patrick O'Grady was bad enough with pen and ink. He got worse
with a keyboard.
Now he has a microphone.
God help us all.
If you need a tub of margarine, a spatula, and the dubious assistance of a giggling friend to squeeze into your old team jersey, it's time to step up to some kit that fits. Click the pic to join the Old Guys Who Get Fat in Winter Racing Team!
Know your rights, and defend them.
Fight hate.
Defending press freedom since 1970
Colorado Central columnist Hal Walter cranks out a book now and then, and they'd look swell in your library (they also read nicely, too). Click the image to order yours.
Drink the Kool-Aid
Words and pictures on the DogPage © 2019 by Patrick O’Grady/Mad Dog Media. All rights and most lefts reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, redistributed, laser-printed, photocopied, crocheted into a sampler, knitted into sweater, tattooed on a floozy, spray-painted on an overpass, tapped out in Morse code, sublimated onto a jersey, shared in whispers in the back row of an adult theater, shouted from the rooftops, scored for tuba and banjo, translated into Squinch, or communicated via telepathy without the permission of and hefty payment to a heavily armed, whisky-addled cyclo-cross addict who knows your IP address. Bonehead shysters and the simpletons who employ them, take note: The opinions expressed on the DogPage contain toxic quantities of hyperbole, satire, parody and humor. Pah-ro-dee. Hyyuuu-mor. Acquire a sense of same or read at your own risk.
