In conversations over many beers yesterday with Swiss, he lapsed into his usual complaints. “Why do we even bother doing Links? No one actually reads them. Lord Humungus just starts posting his own, Q starts posting titty pix… it’s like our efforts are useless.” I hate to see a grown man cry like that so I reassured him, “Yes, they do, they read our stuff very carefully. And they read every article we link.” Yet somehow, he didn’t believe me and continued to sob uncontrollably. I think he’s wrong. Work with me here, people.
Just when I think Jeff Sessions can’t get any stupider, he proves me wrong.
OK, y’all have fun in the comments, and make sure we stick to the topic so that Swiss doesn’t complain. But first, Old Guy Music! From the bestest guitarist with the finest patter, doing something… unexpected.
Finally another week from Hell (also known as “my job”) comes dwindling to an end. And I may even be undisturbed this weekend, since my usual sources of weekend angst are busy celebrating their New Year. That means day-drinking, and that means craft beer, and THAT means a run down to Swiss’s preferred beer purveyor where we can swap ribald stories over some high octane brews. Unlike Mexican Sharpshooter, we are not exactly experts and the beers served at this venue tend not to have wide distribution, so we won’t impinge on his reviewing territory. However, it’s at least warmed up enough here that letting out the beer does not involve an act analogous to trying to piss through a button.
While Swiss and I get a load on, you delightful reprobates can comment on today’s news. Here’s a few examples of things that randomly caught my attention.
As has been discussed extensively, the Department of Futile Gestures has brought charges against people they can’t touch for engaging in political speech. Never mind that the First Amendment doesn’t specify “citizens,” or that, yet again, our Fifth Estate doesn’t know the difference between a “campaign” and an “election.” Of course, the logical continuation would be the indictment of the Obama State Department folks for funding OneVoice to meddle in the Israeli elections campaigns to favor the leftist opponents of Netanyahu.
It is important for the all-wise government to step in and regulate home schools to ensure that they do just as poor a job of education and just as effective a job of indoctrination as public schools, or so writes Diane Moon Glampers.
And although California requires private school employees receive a background check, parents who work with their kids are actually exempted from being checked to see if they have past criminal records…
I… don’t even know where to begin with that one.
If you ever want to see a pitch-perfect example of outright lying with statistics, this excellent article does a wonderful analysis and take-down of a typical bit of bullshit that’s been heavily passed around to gin up FUD. While I’m at it, here’s another splash of cold water dose of reality.
Music time, of the Old Guy variety. High on my list of Concerts I Wish I Had Attended was the Carnegie Hall reunion of a crew of ex-Mingus band members. This extended jam is insane fun, and the best part is Roland Kirk following George Adams’s outside solo. Kirk starts conventionally, then suddenly… well listen and hear. I don’t know if Adams was ever the same after that musical spanking. This is some stunning playing by a group of the finest musicians to ever appear together on a single stage.
And the snow continues to fall here, but at least it’s slowing down a bit. Maybe SP and I will drink and pretend there’s a game on. Sunday without sports is tough on us.
Worse yet, unlike yesterday, this isn’t a big news day. If you read the Foundation Trilogy, you know the structure: something happens, then the characters spend the next thirty pages talking about it before the next thing happens. Today is one of the thirty pages.
A perfect example: yesterday, Israel bombed Syria, and specifically some Iranian sites which can’t exist because Iran insists that it’s only advising Syria. Sort of like how the US just advises people in Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq… In any case, the news today is everyone talking about it and talking about it.
The new drink became available this month, with eight flavors: limebubly, grapefruitbubly, strawberrybubly, lemonbubly, orangebubly, applebubly, mangobubly and cherrybubly. Packaging for each flavor comes with its own greeting on the tab, such as: “Hey u,” “hiii,” and “yo,” plus “personal messages” on the can” “I feel like I can be open around u,” “hold cans with me,” and “love at first phssst.”
Here’s my hope: some paranoid schizophrenic thinks these messages are from the CIA to him, goes to Pepsico headquarters, and shoots up the marketing department.
Old Guy Music. When I lived in Austin, my Tuesday night ritual was to cross the river and plop myself in a chair at Flipnotics and watch Erik Hokkanen shred on violin, banjo, guitar, mandolin, and anything else with strings. Over the course of an evening, you’d hear jazz, gypsy swing, Texas swing, bluegrass, and… well, about any genre you could imagine. The coffee and snacks were terrible, but the music was fantastic. Flips is sadly gone, but Erik is still around, along with Ryan Gould, the best slap bass player in a generation. This was recorded at one of the shows I attended- sorry for the abrupt cutoff at the end, fucking hipsters don’t know how to do video correctly.
A hell week at work (explaining my near-absence here during the week) ended with a snowpocalypse. Our enlightened betters, who rule us from afar, told us to suck it up and come to work anyway. Delightfully, there were perhaps four people (out of two hundred) who actually made it in. The downside is that this weather interferes with my semi-regular drinking sessions with Swiss. As I type, the snow has resumed, so instead of doing something fun, I’ll survey the news.
Several American intelligence officials said they made clear that they did not want the Trump material from the Russian, who was suspected of having murky ties to Russian intelligence and to Eastern European cybercriminals. He claimed the information would link the president and his associates to Russia.
Suuuure. A good con artist knows how to peddle to the marks by appealing to their deepest desires, causing logical facilities to be shunted aside.
Brand has kept a low profile at the department, but in December she wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post defending the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits the National Security Agency to collect foreign intelligence on U.S. soil without individualized warrants.
“To keep us safe, our intelligence agencies must be able to “connect the dots” between the various pieces of information the government already lawfully possesses,” Brand wrote. “In reauthorizing Section 702, Congress must not forget the lessons we learned from 9/11.” The law was reauthorized in January.
I vote “woodchipper.”
Many things going on in (((our))) part of the world. The proxy war between Iran and Israel continues in Syria, but this time, a (((plane))) came down. Shot or fell? Who knows, and who thinks that there will be any credible info? On the bright side, we’re unlikely to get dragged into this since Israel does a good job of taking care of itself. But maybe we can come up with some other excuse to expand our military operations in Syria, given the huge threat of the US being attacked and invaded by Assad, with our captive children being forced to eat mamuniyyeh and praise Allah.
And now Old Guy Music, literally. I spent an evening with one of my favorite harmonica players a few nights ago, and we got talking about who is REALLY the best. Two names kept coming up. And here’s both of them together- SP and I were at this show and can attest that it was overwhelming in person.
No links about that network spectacular which will suffer from a few interruptions by people actually playing football. Fortunately, a lot of snow here gives us an excuse to stay in and drink rather than go to some bar filled with Philly and New England fans. SP will bar-tend, webdominatrix and I will make food, and we’ll pretend that there’s teams we actually care about playing in the game. The mute button is ready for when the halftime show begins.
Fuck that, let’ s see what’s happening in the news.
Hartnett White has drawn criticism for her comments on climate change. The former Texas regulator has a history of questioning established science that man-made greenhouse gases are a major contributor to climate change. As the Post noted, when Hartnett White testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, “she said that while humans probably contribute to current warming, ‘the extent to which, I think, is very uncertain.’ “…The next year she wrote that carbon dioxide is “the gas of life on this planet.”
Yes, indeed, it’s that time again. Old Guy Music. This time, a selection from what might be the greatest rock album of all time. Probably wasted on you nekulturny children, but someone has to have patience and teach you what great music is all about. It will eventually sink in.
Not an original thought but still, it’s what I couldn’t help while looking at the news and my Twitter feed. If I had said to younger me, “It’s 2018. Who is it that sees Russian conspiracies riddling government, vociferously defends the FBI and the DoJ, puts Jew-haters into leadership, and is pro-segregation?” I would have answered, “The John Birch Society.” Who knew that it would be the Democratic Party?
Speaking of which, we need to spend more to prevent a nuclear weapons gap. The proposal here is $1.2 trillion. Team Red shows again that it loves to waste taxpayer money just as much as Team Blue does. #nothinglefttocut
The latest in Groper News. At least it wasn’t with an animal, so he’s got that goin’ for him. Maybe I should introduce him to the girl in the previous link?
Sorry, you’re not going to avoid it. Old Guy Music. But hey, not only is this one of the greatest collections of musicians ever assembled on one stage, but they all seemed to be at the peak of their talents. And Joni was not hard to look at. Great song.
It’s no secret that I’m somewhat less than enamored of Donald Trump as a person, and not terribly impressed with him as a president (‘better than Hillary” is not exactly a glowing encomium). But there’s ONE thing he could do which would cause me to admire him. Yes, not give a SOTU speech, complete with props (human and inanimate) and stagecraft, but revert back to the previous custom of literally mailing it in. But keeping Trump away from the spotlight is akin to getting between Gloria Allred and a TV camera, so that’s not going to happen.
So, given the inevitable, here’s a chance for you, the wise and always entertaining Glibertariat, to give your thoughts beforehand and as it happens.
OK, I’m not a big drinker, but I’ll confess to having a few last night. And a few more. But I had an excuse- dinner at an amazingly good Afghan restaurant, where most of the other patrons appeared to be predominantly Afghan and Iranian (the cuisines are similar), and our table was peopled with a fascinating mix. It’s a BYOB place, and we brought indeed. Swiss and two other highly decorated vets of the various Afghan campaigns regaled us with cynical stories of their experiences. RAHeinlein and her husband talked geek science. Webdominatrix and I drank and listened. And coincidentally, yesterday’s news brought us yet more evidence that our 17 year (and still running) war in Afghanistan is a stunning success.
Every time I deal with tiresome progressives who slobber over the vast superiority of Europe in all ways, I always come back to the concept of free speech. “But they have much freer speech than we do!” Bull-fucking-shit. And I speak with some experience, having had most of my mother’s family (who were shut out of immigrating to the US by changes in the laws meant to exclude “undesirables” such as Jews) slaughtered in Polish extermination camps. The two people who survived Auschwitz and were eventually smuggled into South America would never speak directly of their experiences, but carried a deep hatred of Poles and Poland which spoke volumes over who were the culprits. Come on, arrest me for saying that. (I found this in the news this morning, but looks like Chafed sent the tip last night while I was merrymaking, so I’ll be generous with the h/t; or is it yarmulke tip?)
From the Department of Let Them Eat Cake, comes this little gem. Remember all those kids who died from Legos? Yeah, me neither. The whole rush for sexy stories to pull in grant money has made certain areas of science (climatology, toxicology, epidemiology, nutrition) into the sort where the presumption has to be that the “research” is bullshit. I may have more to say about this later this week, since I’ve seen some of my work cited frequently (and mischaracterized) in stories of panic about plastics.
Speaking of eating, the Old Guy music today centers on a theme near and dear to the heart of a Jewish vegetarian. I happened to be sitting in the front row at the recording of this album and the show was as fun as it sounds here.
This week was not one of our best. SP got in a heap of trouble for wearing her Glibs gear to Show And Tell, and I had to spend a great deal of time with her teacher and principal. “But it’s a family friendly site, suitable for all ages!” Nonetheless, I had to do some fancy dancing to explain away the Hat and Hair theme…
Kilis, a town with a population of fewer than 100,000, has swelled to 130,000 with the influx of refugees, and although the Syrians have been widely accepted, there is local resentment, especially over economic resources. Turkey has spent billions on the refugees, noted Mr. Emir, the barber, whose shop was empty. “If the government had given that money to the Turkish population there would not be any poor people left,” he said.
I know, let’s get involved! What could possibly go wrong?
If you feel like you don’t have enough meaningless things to fret about, here’s one for you. Know what I fret about? That Scientific American used to be an excellent and educational publication, and now it’s all about politics, FUD, and fourth-rate bloggers. The enstupidation of America continues apace.
As much as we complain about the legacy news media, they still have the capacity to entertain. I’m reminded of the Three Stooges short where their boat sprang a leak and started sinking, so Curly drilled holes in the bottom to let the water out.
The Dutch have spoken: in a contest to determine the Showpiece of the Netherlands, the finalists included Rembrandt’s Night Watch, Leeuwenhouk’s microscope, and Escher’s Sky and Water. The winner? The Plakkaat Van Verlatinghe, their version of the Declaration of Independence from 1581; in their case, the independence was from the Spanish king. It’s worth a read.
It wouldn’t be a Saturday morning without Old Guy Music. This one is a special edition in honor of Glib Fit. If you’re old like me, you might have nightmarish memories of phys ed class with this stupid thing blaring at you, a relic of JFK’s version of Michelle Obama do-gooding. For the children, of course. When Robert Preston died, I had a little celebration.
It’s just about the last Sunday of football (with, we hope, two interesting games), SP and I are celebrating an anniversary in style (fondue and a 30 year old Vouvray), and there’s all sorts of news of the weird. Let’s run down a few examples of the last:
One gratifying change in news coverage of the soi disant “shutdown”: the media are actually treating “shutdown theater” as the stupid symbolism that it is. Could a tiny bit of the cynicism that led most of us to libertarianism be infecting the Fourth Estate? I dearly hope so. Would it be sustainable in a Team Blue-controlled government? Not a chance. Nonetheless, “shutdown theater” is, once again, in full swing.
If any of us little people were under court order to preserve evidence and we “accidentally” destroyed it, what do you think would happen? Look up “spoliation of evidence” to see. But what if you’re the NSA? Think that negative inference and jail time for contempt will hit any of their officials? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! On any of the issues that matter, we once again have proof that there’s no fucking difference between Team Red and Team Blue, it’s all Team Leviathan.
Complete non-sequitur: I heard a discussion on the radio a few days ago about the Best Sports Movie of All Time. The usual suspects were brought forth, but no-one mentioned mine. So I’ll throw it out here because it’s timely: It Happens Every Spring.Discuss.
No-one is safe from Old Man music. NO-ONE. And this week, we’re talkin’ flugelhorn and scat by the very best at both.
