Tag: TFG

Your ‘duh’ moment

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments
“Just another day on the set, people. Lights, camera, action!”

I should be happy to see that someone in the elite political press has come to the same conclusion I have.

But still, I mean, like, “Duh,” an’ shit.

Of course TFG came swinging wildly out of his corner when the bell rang. Call it blitzkrieg, shock and awe, “a mix of signal and noise,” whatever. I called it flinging shit against the wall to see what sticks:

“At this pace there won’t be a wall without shit running down it before Valentine’s Day. A lot of it won’t stick, but it’s gonna pile up. The forecast calls for deep doo.”

A “deliberate strategy,” they say. An attempt “to disorient already despairing Democratic foes, leaving them so battered that they won’t be able to mount a cohesive opposition.”

C’mon. Anyone who’s watched this clown act for more than 15 seconds knew this going in. Nice to have the deets and the anonymous whispers and whatnot, but a casual glance at his wildly successful legal spasticity would give even a Democratic strategist or an East Coast journo a clue and a half.

“If you can’t dazzle them with brillance, baffle them with bullshit.” Coming soon to a wall near you.

Step right up

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments
Everyone’s a winner, bargains galore.

Once again I was awake too early.

We’d bailed on election-night coverage as it slouched inexorably toward its denouement because someone around here has to get up at stupid-thirty to make us some money. Not me.

If I had dreams, I don’t remember them. But I do remember something Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post said during the PBS coverage last night.

It was a particularly fatheaded pronouncement, even for an associate editor of The Washington Post. And I didn’t make a note of it because I’d said something similar the first time TFG flipped his wig into the ring. That the 2016 election would show us who we were as a country.

Plenty of us already knew what we were then. Not enough, though. But surely anyone who has been paying attention since has caught up. Right?

Well, there’s the phone, on the nightstand. It’s not my practice to take the pulse of the planet before coffee, but I could hear Herself prepping in the bathroom and thought that if I got cracking I could make her a bite of breakfast before she left. If she had any appetite.

And so I picked up the phone.

Well, the rest you know. Another massive breakdown of politics, press, and populace. We’re just waiting on the details, is all.

Hunter S. Thompson has already filed his report, of course. He had the scoop after my first election, in 1972, when he wrote:

This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

[George] McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.

Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be president?

We still don’t know the answer to that one, Hunter old sot. The barrel appears to have no bottom.

Leaf of absence

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
A bit more color, but not full-on fall.

Fall color remains elusive at the bosque. But it’s still a fine place to ride the ol’ bikey-bike on a Tuesday morning.

The 32-mile loop I did is about two-thirds easy-breezy like a Cover Girl. But the last bit from Mountain and Broadway back to El Rancho Pendejo has about a thousand feet of vertical in it. And since most of the climbing stacks up on the back side it sorta gets a fella’s attention.

As does the ongoing devolution of TFG. When the legacy media finally start catching on, you know that shit is dire.

A “town hall” that drifted into a “Mister Music, please” segment from Romper Room? A one-on-one Bloomberg interview in which the candidate answered only those questions posed by the voices in his head?

I wonder if there are any early voters who’d like a do-over. Dude makes King Lear look like Norman Lear.

Lift with your legs

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
And a-one, and a-two, and. …

I got to throw a rare double bird during a ride this past weekend.

Rounding a corner I saw a yard sign for TFG to my left … and then another across the street to my right.

“O! The Joy!” William Clark must have felt like this when he thought he’d finally seen the Pacific “ocian.” In honor of the Corps of Discovery I gave the placards the salute they deserved.

It’s little things like this that keep me on a slow simmer instead of a rolling boil.

As a longtime observer and occasional chronicler of our national political bed-wetting, I have felt compelled for some years now to watch and describe what appears — to me, anyway — to be a brain-damaged orangutan dry-humping the Statue of Liberty.

But damme if the lifting doesn’t get heavier every day. And I’m an old man, with a bad back.

So I lift with my legs. Which is to say that when I feel some crucial part of me starting to give way, I go for a ride, letting my legs lift my flagging spirit.

A bicycle can bear a lot of weight. You can trust me on this: I was a great fat bastard when I returned to cycling after a long absence, and that first two-wheeler had to carry a lot of baggage.

So have its descendants. But the tonnage these days is less Marlboro breath and whiskey sweat, more inchoate rage and existential dread.

That’s hard weight to shed, and not even the bicycle can get it all off you. But it definitely helps, especially if you try not to put the pounds right back on as soon as you get home.

• Pro tip: Try wearing a heart-rate monitor when you scan the news. When you find yourself surfing a hate-wave through Zone 5, remember that there is no Zone 6. Not in this lifetime, anyway. Grab a bike and get the hell out of the house.

Your Daily Don: It’s always showtime

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
It isn’t golf, but you can still score a hole in one.

The New York Times has a piece headlined “The Star-Making Machine That Created ‘Donald Trump,'” which I decline to read or link to, because I suspect Mother Times doesn’t take credit for her own heavy lifting on that project (see “But her emails!”, etc.).

If you have a greater interest in the Who Gives a Shit? File than I do, you’ll have to do some hunting to find the thing, because the NYT yanked it off the top of the homepage and buried it on page three of a search under his name after the carny barker found himself in the shooting gallery again.

Now, I am not in favor of summary execution of those who commit golf, not even TFG. Some unbalanced types insist on playing with their little white balls in public, and for most an extended period of confinement in a psych ward or correctional facility should restore them to a semblance of mental health, or at least keep them off the lawn in what should be public parks, available to all free of charge.

Anyway, for the Clown Prince of Mar-a-Lardo it’s not even about “playing” golf, which is just something else he lies about and cheats at. It’s another day at the office, a fundraising opportunity.

As Billy Penn once said, “The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of fortune.”

And thus the Clown Prince finds himself as a supporting character in a new reality series, “Duck & Cover,” in which a conga line of heavily armed loons has a go at a maniac masquerading as a presidential candidate on the campaign trail.

Bit of a comedown, from star to second banana. Oh, well, it’s a living. Awaiting a blast of fortune indeed.