Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

This is the kind of story every newsdog lives for. It has it all: tyke gone missing in spectacular fashion; oddball family; a cast of thousands, first-responder-wise; a handy TV copter; and a happy ending. Well, for everyone save the kid, who probably has an ass-whuppin’ coming. You just can’t make this shit up.

Of course, Flush Limburger and his cronies will find some way to blame Obama for this. But for a couple hours there, while the nation thought a 6-year-old kid was zipping along at 8,000 feet in a homemade “flying saucer,” nobody was paying any attention to them.

Some commenters are already wondering whether the flight of “Millennium” Falcon Heene was a publicity stunt. If so, it worked like a charm. All of us will soon know a good more than we care to about this lot.

Meanwhile, some really good news: While Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden was busy dealing with The Case of the Missing Child, he was not harassing law-abiding cyclists in his jurisdiction. So we’ve got that going for us.

The times, they are a-changin’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

When I was a sprout, I had “a friend” (wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more, say no more) who used to sell ounces of weed for $12. As a journalist some years later, I used to snicker at the police valuation of weed seizures, knowing that they were based on outmoded business models like “matchbook” or “joint” sales.

Well, they’re still at it, or I’m hopelessly behind the times. According to the Bibleburg Gaslight, a medical-marijuana dispenser who beat the rap after getting arrested at a traffic stop in December 2008 — “even though he presented his medical marijuana registration card and signed documents showing that he was the … lawfully appointed supplier … for several medical marijuana users” — was holding less than a half-pound, which either the G or the cops say was worth about $4,000.

Shit, no wonder Dave’s not here. He can’t afford to be here.

Does a Blue Zoomie have Buddha nature?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

While I was mired in a weather-related funk I missed an interesting NPR “Morning Edition” story right in my own back yard. It’s about the Buddhist chapel at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Sarah Bender, who leads the AFA’s Buddhist program, is also the resident teacher with Springs Mountain Sangha, the local Zen outfit. Buddhism and Death From Above might seem incompatible to some, but Bender says no: “People in the military come up — for real — against questions that most of us just consider abstractly. The questions of Buddhism are the questions of life and death. So, where else would you want Buddhism than right there where those questions are most vivid?”

Big light in sky slated to appear in East

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

The Big Yellow Ball is back, and just in time, too — I nearly hit the deck thrice on ice in the past couple of days, and I was only walking, not cycling or running.

My closest call came this morning as I was stumbling out to chisel two days’ worth of ice from Herself’s Subaru so she could motor off to work in Denver and make me some whisky money. A bit of black ice on the backyard sidewalk sent me into windmilling-spastic mode, and the only thing that kept me up was the deck railing, which was there to catch my right shoulder as I was going down. Good times.

The cats are equally amused. Turkish insists on going out the back door only to come right back in the front, and on one of his go-rounds Miss Mia Sopaipilla escaped into the frosty grass, where she slammed to a halt with a “WTF?” expression on her furry little face. She’s used to a soft, warm lawn, and it probably didn’t help that a startled Turk’ gave her a swat as she rocketed past and into the yard for an icy bit of satori.

Happily, with the sun out the frost is in full retreat and the trees are dribbling a combination of leaves and water. The weatherman is calling for a high near 50. Fat city.

Rewarding failure

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Frank Rich at The New York Times draws a bead on John “Wrong Way” McCain, whom he deems chief among “the unrepentant blunderers” who dug us deeply into the twin holes of Iraq and Afghanistan. Notes Rich: “Americans … want to see the fine print after eight years of fiasco with little accounting. While McCain and company remain frozen where they were in 2001, many of their fellow citizens have learned from the Iraq tragedy.”

In noting Rich’s broadside, Steve Benen at Political Animal wonders why, given his long record of bellicose ineptitude, Wrong-Way McCain keeps getting invited to broadcast his ignorance of foreign policy via the Sunday morning political talk shows. Today marks McCain’s 14th Sunday-morning appearance since President Obama’s inauguration, notes Benen: “Not bad for a senator in the minority, who isn’t in the party leadership, who has no role in any important negotiations, and who has offered no significant pieces of legislation.”

The mainstream media often mistakes septic tanks for oracles, but McCain is a particularly odiferous sack of effluent — a military man with the boundless ego, lust for publicity and tactical genius of Gen. George Armstrong Custer.

At least Custer was among those with boots on the ground when the deal went down. McCain’s clearly spent too much time in — and on — the air to have a real sense of the real costs of warfare.