Category: Just Fucking Shoot Me

There’s a new tariff in town

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
The “Rubáiyát of Owe-More Khayyám.”

Hoo-lawd. Anybody’s portfolio turn into a postcard yet?

In case you’ve missed Paul Krugman, he’s speculating over at Substack that Elon’s Hitler Youth may have cobbled together the tariff scheme using ChatGPT and/or other A.I. models.

In my post immediately following the Trump announcement I speculated that Elon Musk’s Dunning-Kruger kids might be responsible for those tariff numbers. That now looks like a distinct possibility.

Who makes policy this way? The key point is that Trump isn’t really trying to accomplish economic goals. This should all be seen as a dominance display, intended to shock and awe people and make them grovel, rather than policy in the normal sense.

Again, I’m not being snobbish here. When the fate of the world economy is on the line, the malignant stupidity of the policy process is arguably as important as the policies themselves. How can anyone, whether they’re businesspeople or foreign governments, trust anything coming out of an administration that behaves like this?

Good time to be heavily invested in the knee- and elbow-pad markets.

Saints preserve us

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments

It being St. Me Day, and with a nod to The New York Times for its story on how the DOGEbags have been taking a shillelagh to the National Nuclear Security Administration — which is said to have lost “a huge cadre of scientists, engineers, safety experts, project officers, accountants and lawyers — all in the midst of its most ambitious endeavors in a generation” — we present The Bothy Band performing, “Old Hag You Have Killed Me.”

Ralph Spoilsport Motors, ‘The World’s Biggest’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

Say, when did Ralph Spoilsport open a White House dealership?

Man, they really do it in the road at their West Gomorrah location. Let’s just look at the extras on this fabulous car! Wire-wheel spoke fenders, two-way sneeze-through wind vent, star-studded mudguards, sponge-coated edible steering column, chrome fender dents, and factory air-conditioned air from our fully factory-equipped air-conditioned factory. It’s a beautiful car, friend, with doors to match! Birch’s Blacklist says this automobile was stolen, but for you, friends, the complete price, only two-ninety-five hundred dollars, in easy monthly payments of twenty-five dollars a week, twice a week, and never on Sundays. …

Zero’s Day

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Understatement of the year. But it’s only March 5.

Congress is like a drunk dad watching as his sugar-crazed rug monkey tips over a display of Easter treats at an understaffed Walmart, wondering whether he should deal harshly with the little shit, blame it on the ex, or just hit the door running.

And no, we did not watch last night’s episode of “The Worst Wing.” I use the word “episode” in its medical sense, “an occurrence of a usually recurrent pathological abnormal condition.”

No, instead we watched the new Robert De Niro vehicle, “Zero Day,” in which the smart Black lady is president. (In this instance, Art does not imitate Life.)

But at least I didn’t already know what was going to happen in “Zero Day.”

You didn’t have to be Nostradamus to call the play on Zero’s Day in DeeCee.

Zero was going to rave like a poorly raised toddler. The Repugs were going to find it all oh-so-cute. And the Donks were going to be as bold, decisive and effective as a Walmart shopper, watching the kid step out of his overflowing diaper in the produce section as dad idly thumbs his phone, and thinking, “Somebody really should do something.”

Yes, somebody should. We’re still waiting.

Guess what. Didn’t stop. And this was in 1954.

I’m not picking on Rep. Melanie Stansbury here. I’ve met her. I like her. But god damn, etc.

You don’t derail the Dingaling Bros-Barnum & Beelzebozo Circus train by standing on the tracks holding a tiny sign, like Wile E. Coyote. What you get there is run the fuck over. Take it from a guy who knows what it feels like to get hit by a locomotive.

Ignorance is strength

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
“Hey, I said no DEI! Who wrote this?”

The FreeDummies have finally turned their beady little eyes to the Land of Enchantment.

According to Alaina Mencinger at The New Mexican, Los Alamos National Laboratory has been “suspending programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion and climate change and scrubbing old issues of the lab’s magazine that discuss these now-disfavored topics.”

LANL employees are federal contractors, not federal employees. Nevertheless, a review has determined that at least two of Dear Leader’s edicts apply to the lab’s DEI and affirmative-action programs, “and the lab is ending such programs as a result,” Mencinger writes.

The New Mexican apparently got its hands on some internal communications — a memo signed by lab director Thom Mason went out Thursday — and bits of this, that, and the other have already begun slip-sliding away down the old memory hole, among them issues of LANL’s National Security Science magazine, focused on anything and everything from climate to diversity, nuclear deterrence to manufacturing.

And it’s not just magazines getting fed into the shredder. According to Mason, LANL has “received guidance” to suspend climate action, sustainability and carbon-neutral energy programs. It goes without saying that LANL is also removing “relevant terminology” from external communications.

But, good news, comrades! “The removal of some content isn’t permanent,” according to the Ministry for Sit the Fuck Down and Shut the Fuck Up.

“To comply with recent direction from the Presidential administration, parts of our website are temporarily unavailable while they’re under construction. We appreciate your patience as we work to update and repost them. … You may notice changes to our website while we reconstruct pages and evaluate language.”

Huh. “Construction” and “update” are not the words I would have chosen for this odious project. As for “evaluating language,” I’d be inclined to leave that sort of thing to the smarties, who are very much not in evidence as the Stalinization of the federal government continues.