Category: Smashing the State

Humbugs and gasbags

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
The Wizard of Ooze. (Behind the curtain: Stephen Miller, Generalfeldmarschall, Twatwaffen SS.)

You will recall that Professor Marvel, a.k.a. the Wizard of Oz, traveled by gasbag.

His very distant cousin in humbuggery, the Wizard of Ooze, likewise gets around on hot air, with an assist from other people’s money.

But I don’t expect we’ll see him at the 2025 Albuquerque International Balloon Festival, which begins today. Oh, sure, there’s a golf center at Balloon Fiesta Park, with a driving range and a six-hole pitch-and-putt course. But there is a distinct lack of screening foliage and even the most myopic of Repuglicunts could see him improving his lie.

The Great and Powerful Ooze might send the ICEholes in his stead (darn those bone spurs!). What a fine addition to the spectacle that would be — fats with tats in masks and battle-rattle snatching up brown people and stuffing them into locked baskets beneath unmarked black balloons, to be spirited away to Kansas or someplace even worse, flanked by escorts of flying monkeys.

But I expect those boyos are busy too, lumbering after nekkid bike riders in Stumptown or the more easily caught deep-dish pizza in Chicago.

Eat up, fellas! And don’t worry about the legs on the black olives. Ramón says they’re free-range. Organic.

Yippie!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

Remember the Yippies? Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, et al.?

The wildmen who lit up the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago may have a descendant in the City of the Big Shoulders — a cyclist who gave the old razzle-dazzle to La Migra and seems to have gotten away scot free. (A tip of the Mad Dog Red Zinger cap goes out to Digby and Tom Sullivan.)

I emailed Grant Peterson about getting him a sponsorship through Rivendell Bicycle Works — a Charlie Gallop would be just the thing for Charlie Hustle there — but no deal so far.

Now if we can just get this dude to run a pig for president. No, not that pig. Some honorable swine, like Pigasus the Immortal.

Just another manic Monday

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
“Will you look at the man? He’s a Freudian delight; he crawls with clues!”

Maj. Whiskey Tango “Foxtrot” Sterno was said to be “crawling out of his skin” as the Warfighter in Chief prepared to address the brass hats he has ordered to assemble like so many raw recruits, reminding us not only of “The Caine Mutiny” but also “Lost Weekend.”

OK, so it’s The Daily Beast riffing on a piece from the Daily Mail. Not exactly the Word of God. But I’ll take good news wherever I can find it, especially on a Monday.

Speaking of good news, the clock is ticking to the first shutdown of the federal government in nearly seven years. This has been the goal of the Repuglicunts for as long as I can remember, which hardly makes it breaking news. But this time, who knows? It could stay shut down this time, and the generals and admirals would all have to travel back to their assignments via private transpo ho ho ho ho ho.

There will always be money to blow shit up, government or no government. But I wouldn’t want to be hanging by my nutsack waiting on a Social Security check.

‘Tedious and burdensome’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
Page 1 of 85. I’m surprised the judge didn’t order these ambulance-chasers summarily hanged.

Well, “tedious and burdensome” is one way to describe The Pestilence’s latest lawsuit against The New York Times.

“Wall-to-wall bullshit” is another. Or “the ramblings of an ADHD preschool dropout ‘parented’ by an outlaw-biker uncle who makes him work without safety gear in his poorly ventilated meth lab.”

But Judge Steven D. Merryday of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida clearly is not one for hyperbole, and so he confined his observations to phrases like “tedious and burdensome,” and “florid and enervating,” noting that in alleging only two simple counts of defamation, “the complaint consumes eighty-five pages.”

“A complaint is not a megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally or the functional equivalent of the Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner,” Hizzoner wrote.

He added — without giggling, which must have been difficult, because this shit is funnier than Jimmy Kimmel on a good day — that the complaint, as written, “stands unmistakably and inexcusably athwart” legal requirements that complaints must be “a short and plain statement of the claim.”

And then Merryday wrapped things up the way editors of my early attempts at journalism were known to do, by crumpling that big ol’ 85-page pile of bushwa into a wad and throwing it at the authors, with further instructions appended.

“This action will begin, will continue, and will end in accord with the rules of procedure and in a professional and dignified manner,” Merryday wrote. “The complaint is STRUCK with leave to amend within twenty-eight days. The amended complaint must not exceed forty pages, excluding only the caption, the signature, and any attachment.”

Then he dropped the mic and walked off stage.

The Essential Works of Skid Marx

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
Let the rolling classes tremble. …

The proletarians have nothing to lube but their chains!

Wait a minute. That’s not right. …

The proletarians would also want to butter their chamois, lest they suffer knots on their knuts during pedal revolutions. When V.I. Lenin wrote “What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement” in 1902 he was not recommending remedies for saddle sores.

Yeah, it’s another Labor Day entry.

I’d been invited to smash the State at a rally in Fanta Se, but that was looking like an all-day affair, and with (a) it being Monday, and (2) Herself inbound from a long weekend in Minnesota, I had trash and recycling bins to set out and retrieve; sheets, pillowcases and towels to launder; plants to water; hummingbird feeders to wash and refill; the usual feline maintenance; and a general all-round, stem-to-stern, rapid reassembly of a living space in which only one-third of the occupants really cares about any sort of Better Homes & Gardens tidiness.

Guess who. Here’s a hint: It ain’t me or Miss Mia. I’ve always done my best work under deadline pressure, but I can guarantee you I’ve cut a few corners here today. The self-criticism session will be grueling.

So, anyway, instead of invading the capital with my socialist brethren and sisthren I spent a couple hours cycling around the foothills with my geezer comrades in what proved to be a delightful debut for September 2025 before buckling down to the task(s) at hand..

I flew the red jersey and took all my pulls. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” etc. And I stood by valiantly as one of our number was waylaid by a reactionary goathead or shard of glass. The lumpenproletariat traditionally recycles beverage containers at roadside, via passenger-side windows, during revolutionary holiday weekends.

“Glassholes,” as one comrade muttered.

When I returned home to a frugal working-class lunch I discovered that there were two — two! — Labor Day rallies right here in The Duck! City. And I had missed both of them.

The comrades in PR are way off the back here. I’m gonna have to start paying closer attention to my socialist-media accounts.