Tag: The Pestilence of the United States

Piece in our time

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
“Ve vant only piece … a piece of Venezuela, a piece of Greenland. …”

Maybe I should count my blessings.

Herself has a good job, plus a small pension from PERA set to start in a couple months. I have my Social Security. We have health insurance. The house and cars are paid for, we live frugally, and our financial adviser says we’re in fine shape.

But I just can’t stop thinking about Nazis.

Goddamnit, I fucking hate fucking Nazis. Especially the homegrown variety. We should be making them jump off bridges. And not into Venezuela or Greenland, either.

Michael O’Hanlon recently wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs that noted, accurately, and with the usual disclaimers, that when it comes to national security policy the current federal management really isn’t that much different from a number of its predecessors.

Ohhhh-kay. Thanks for the history lesson, Mickey. What say we try learning from our mistakes? Remembering the past to avoid being condemned to repeat it? The name George Santayana ring any bells in your cerebral carillon?

It’d be comical if it weren’t so serious. Which of the various Marvel timelines are we experiencing now, in which an unelected strutting fuck-bubble like Obergruppenführer Stephen Miller is running the country, giving Kent State scholarships to educate anyone who won’t do as they’re told, while his alleged supervisor whiles away the hours nailing Hobby Lobby kitsch to the White House walls, cheating at golf, and watching on TV as “Happy Hour” Hegseth punishes another two-bit dictator for stealing the boss’s dance moves?

If they were mine, I’d leave them out on the street with a handlettered sign reading, “Free.” Or maybe just park them in the shitter at Mar-a-Lago next to all those classified documents that should’ve served as his ticket to Leavenworth until Thanos snapped his fingers. Or was it Eileen Cannon? Whatever.

“Aren’t we supposed to be the good guys here?” asks Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., in an interview with Hanna Rosin at The Atlantic.

Not according to the gin pig at the top of the DoD org chart, who’d like to hang Kelly’s pelt on his office wall, no doubt in part because (a) Kegsbreath would like to see what a pair of actual testicles looks like, and (2) Kelly is making presidential noises just in case we ever have another one of those elections.

But first we have to make damn sure we have some midterms, this year. Take the House and the Senate; impeach, convict, and remove Comandante Piggy — take a seat and another fistful of Bayer’s finest, Porky, watch those cankles swell like poisoned puppies in the summer sun— and then, in 2028, reclaim the White House.

And none of this “let’s not look back” bullshit. Not this time. What’s the phrase? Oh, yeah: Never again.

Call me selfish, but I wanna get back to scribbling my little tee-hees, and I find this relentless “America über alles!” screeching a huge distraction.

Yo, Nazis. Here are your MAGA hats, there’s your bridge, what’s your hurry?

‘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.

Right in the eggs

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Cool with a side of clouds.

Whew. Looks like I picked a good week to go on a news fast. These pendejos are pitching fastballs. 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.

My news fast coincided with a cold snap that kept me off the bike. I don’t object to cycling in the 30s if the sun’s out, but when Tōnatiuh abdicates in favor of Ehecatl, it’s time to go for a run.

Thing is, I’m not a runner. Not really. A runner certainly wouldn’t call me one. Especially if s/he’d caught me at it.

I can pretend for 45 minutes but that’s about it. And that doesn’t burn a lot of daylight for a fella trying to avoid the doomscrolling.

Still, I managed. For about four days. Who can avert his or her eyes while passing a domestic disturbance in daylight or an unshaded window at night? This is like driving past a five-car crash without checking the gutters for rolling heads.

So I eased back in, slowly. A little Kevin Drum. Then a bit of Charlie Pierce. This is akin to reading the police report, if Joseph Wambaugh wrote it. The Atlantic, for a soupçon of button-down viewing with alarm.

Finally, I hit the hard stuff. The New York Times. Holy shit, etc.

I hope the rubes who elected this bozo are enjoying the shitshow. Looks like it’ll be a good long while before he gets those egg prices down.