Author: Old Man With Candy

It’s a nice balmy zero outside Chez SP this morning, with a good stiff wind. I may go for a nice brisk stroll and enjoy the fine weather. And tonight, SP and I will have a quiet night in, with a fine dinner and a couple bottles of our best wines. But first, let’s serve up a pile of some steaming hot links.

In Germany, the reaction to widespread actual sexual assault on New Year’s Eve, which has become a tradition there, is to set up “safe zones.” Not actual zones where people will be safe, mind you, or areas where people can arm themselves for deterrence, but rather, areas where there will be people to talk to once the rape is finished.

…a team of medical professionals in a white tent only yards away will be standing by, waiting for possible victims of sexual assault and harassment to seek their help. Women will be able to speak to psychologists immediately after being assaulted or harassed in a “safe zone” at the Berlin New Year’s Eve event.

“[Assaulted women] can stay here and calm down or speak to someone trained to offer psychological support,” said Anja Marx, the spokeswoman of Berlin’s main New Year’s Eve celebrations. Up to five members of a German Red Cross team will be available to offer immediate support to victims.

More infuriating coverage of the SWAT cop murder. As is usually the case when there’s nothing to feed the race-hustler angle, the media outrage toward the cops is nearly nonexistent. 90% of the article is about the prank caller, with only one mention of the cop who actually committed the murder:

Wichita police have not said what action might be taken against the police officer who shot and killed Finch. Wichita Deputy Police Chief Troy Livingston said Finch moved his hand toward his waistband.

“Our officers came here preparing for a hostage situation. Several got in position. A male came to the front door, and one of our officers discharged his weapon,” Livingston said.

[CNN legal analyst] Callan said he doesn’t think the officer will be charged if the evidence shows Finch “went for his waistband in a way that looked like he was going for a gun.”

It’s Saturday morning, I’ve been pounding coffee and basking in the glow of last night’s dinner- SP made tamales, which was my payoff for getting her that top of the line Easy Bake oven for Christmas. All the other kids in 4th grade were horribly jealous.

We had a lot of discussion last night about the now-infamous swatting murder. And of course, the police are totally spinning this as Not Their Fault Just Following Procedures. And the media are quite obliging in going along with that spin.

“Due to the actions of a prankster we have an innocent victim,” [police chief] Livingston said.

I’m sure the murderous cop will have plenty of time with his lawyers and union reps to get the story just right before he gets questioned. It’s a wonderful system.

The officer who fired the single shot, a seven-year veteran of the department, is on paid leave pending an investigation.

Thank goodness he gets free vacation.

Iranians express mild discontent, government responds. Didn’t we do this in 2009?

There is also anger at Iran’s interventions abroad. In Mashhad, some chanted “not Gaza, not Lebanon, my life for Iran”, a reference to what protesters say is the administration’s focus on foreign rather than domestic issues. Other demonstrators chanted “leave Syria, think about us” in videos posted online.

I can totally get behind that. When will we do the same?

And in today’s episode of Trump Derangement Syndrome, the mysterious white truck. There’s a Marguerite Duras joke in there somewhere. Lord knows, I dislike the guy intensely, would never vote for him, but the trolling and derangement are even more amusing than I could possibly have hoped for. If I can’t get a president I can respect and support, one that makes me laugh is an OK consolation prize.

You thought I could get through the links without mentioning this. You were wrong. I could never resist a story like that.

Old Guy Music time! Y’all know this one, of course, but I still marvel at how ahead of his time this one-hit-wonder was. Bonus: a young Carl Palmer wearing a hood and playing a smaller drum set than one associates with him.

Sorry, this is literally last minute. But the link quality will be to our usual standards.

I am convinced that Roy Moore is Gloria Allred’s spirit animal.

Riven Hardest Hit. There really is such a thing as over-sharing.

My cynicism meter went to 11 when I read this– the “concerned mom” works for an asbestos-litigation law firm, and the test lab she used is one that specializes in developing evidence for courtroom testimony in asbestos cases.

Try harder next time, Bono.

And in Old Guy Music, a song my band used to cover. I must have played this a thousand times.

If these seem rushed, it’s because I’ve got to freeze my nipples off and drive to work this morning. Sloopy, on the other hand, is relaxing on a beach chair in Bali, drinking a cocktail out of a coconut-shaped cup with a paper umbrella.

Just from the headline, you know where this one is going. I note the after he left the Pittsburgh area, he moved to Florida, which seems fitting. Named his daughter “Lyric,” which I guess is the wypipo version of L’aQuan.

Another news story where I hate everyone. Obama, please go away. Trump, please shut up. British royals, get a fucking job and stop sponging.

OMG OMG TRUMP HATES TREES!!!!!!11!1!

I’ve got a great idea! If we have trouble counting votes, let’s figure out a way to shovel money at lawyers.

They left off the 11th thing: make it easy for “law enforcement” to spy on you. No way that shit is coming into our house.

And by the way, you people disappointed me in the movie thread yesterday- not one mention of Polyester.

OK, now your turn to suffer: Old Guy Music.

While you goyim run outside to see a Mercedes with a big bow-tie on it (I assume that’s what you people do, it’s every other damn commercial during football), I’m inside looking at retailer stock prices and rubbing my grubby Jew paws together while cackling.

Something that gave me hope for America was having a bright young man over here last night who had been homeschooled, started college early, and was trying to figure out whether he was more of a minarchist or an an-cap. Good luck in college- they’re do everything they can to beat that out of you.

Sic transit gloria Lainie. My father used to drool over the younger version of her, but he was always a sucker for a large set of boobs.

There are old pilots and there are stupid pilots. There are no old, stupid pilots.

Pope Frankie lectures us all. Just curious, does Vatican City welcome immigrants? (BTW: my Honduran next door neighbor dropped in last night while we were all having drinks- and he brought multiple bottles with him. Yahweh bless our new citizens)

The Palestinian Arabs learned the Washington Monument maneuver from us. Well done, you killed commerce for your co-tribalists. Let’s see how the money-beg to the US works out for you. While we’re looking at news from the least important part of the Middle East, looks like Guatemala is moving their embassy to a better chunk of real estate. Rumor is that Romania is next, so I’m planting the suggestion in the Elders of Zion’s sidelock-bordered ears that they request Pie as the ambassador.

Old Guy music presents to you the best Christmas song ever written.

This will of necessity be brief- I have to get to Walmart and stock up with salt for the coming ice storm. And the only reasonable time to go to Walmart this close to Goyishe Chanukkah is at 4am, when it’s only me, a couple of drunks, and a few meth-heads wandering the aisles. The huge groups of Mexican families blocking all of the aisles while their kids intermingle won’t start until 7 or 8.

Motivational speech or a signal that Trump is going to try to match Obama’s miserable record of starting wars? I think the former and I hope I’m right. If it’s the latter, we might as well have had Hillary.

DHS touts its failures as a need to do moar. And this is actually close to Amish country, just in case you want to snark. In perspective, this is any given hour in downtown Chicago, and if DHS just went away, we’d all be better off. Especially the TSA part.

Want to take an instant hatred to someone? Someone unbearably smug, insular, and intolerant? Here ya go!

When someone goes postal, it’s a yawner. I mean, how many times do we read the same old story? Well, this one has a twist- he got naked first.

OMG OMG OMG, EXPLOSIVE REPORTING!!!!!! PRESIDENT MENTAL LINT ACCUSED OF SAYING STUFF!!! That’s it, we’ve got the Roadrunner this time!

Old Guy music, in case you thought you’d get away without it today. The greatest band that no-one seems to know.

I have no idea why I’m awake this early, but as long as I am, let’s take a cynical view of the news.

Once again, our brave Federal law enforcement heroes have thwarted a terror plot. One which was hatched by an ineffectual loon, and encouraged, enabled, and abetted by… our brave Federal law enforcement heroes.

Another one of Obama’s wars is nearly at its third birthday. Oh wait, it’s not really a war, we just send “advisers.”  And weapons. And provide logistics. And Special Forces. And… I think I’ve seen this movie before.

The Left continues to pimp for extending the War On Drugs because this time, it’s the wrong sort of people involved. You know, rural white people. THEY’RE FUCKING UP OUR STATISTICS! Putting them in cages seems only fair.

There has long been an affinity between the Chinese and Jews- they share a strong cultural affinity for family, education, commerce, entrepreneurship, and tribal loyalty. And the Chinese, taking note of what’s happening in both the US academic world and the active government discouragement of business innovation in traditional areas like Silicon Valley, are reciprocating (((our))) love for moo goo gai pan. Hat Tip to Chafed (and gaslight as well).

Old Guy music time! This was from a fascinating album- how would Stephen Foster’s classic American songs sound if arranged and played in the modern folk style? The answer is that they’re great songs in the sense of being timeless and adaptable. It was a clever idea, and Nathan Edwards is talented enough to pull it off.

Sloopy got his Christmas present from SP, which was some customized golf balls (not your cheap pieces of shit, either- Titleist Pro V1s with a custom imprint). This backfired a bit, because in his anxiety to try them out, he blew off morning link duty. “Eh, some Jew can do it, they don’t do Christmas.” So as famous Jew-Hater Martin Luther once said (or would have said in this situation), “Hier schreibe ich, ich kann nicht anders.”

In Jew News, the UN voted to condemn US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Note that the NYT positions this as “Defying Trump.” #resist!

“I think this was a significantly self-inflicted wound and really unnecessary, clumsy diplomacy on the part of the United States,” Stewart M. Patrick, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said of the outcome.

“In this case what you had was the Trump administration basically changing the rules of the game that the international community had accepted,” he said. “More than that, I think it symbolizes the self-defeating notion that for the United States, ‘it’s my way or the highway.’ ’’

Because “changing the rules of the game” that have had zero positive effects on the petty border dispute that is the singular cause of all of the problems of the toilet known as “The Middle East” and requires the full attention of the 99.9% of the world is just CRAZY SHIT.

In other TDS News, one of the lawsuits against Trump for supposed violation of the emoluments clause was tossed. Here’s a gem from the story:

The third federal lawsuit was filed in June by nearly 200 Democratic members of Congress. Some legal authorities consider that suit to be a purely political move…

What would we do without legal authorities?

What’s worse than a pedophile priest? A pedophile priest who fucks up traffic at rush hour. 

My biggest objection to the current wave of executive purges? That someone is purged because of non-PC comments rather than for the much more valid reason of selling shitty pizza and making commercials with Mr. Potato Face Manning.

BIG SCANDAL! People make crude jokes and speak honestly via private e-mail! This MUST CEASE IMMEDIATELY! The old “how many feminists does it take to change a light bulb” joke immediately comes to mind.

And in Department of Futility, sensing an opportunity with the public dissatisfaction with the NFL, Vince McMahon is trying to revivify the failed XFL. I will let the jokes write themselves on this quote:

The company also sought to trademark “URFL.”

Because the answer to a league that sufferes from too much expansion and the dilution of talent is to add more teams. Riiiiiight.

You thought you’d get away without Old Guy Music. You were wrong. One of the perversions that SugarFree and I share is a love for the Magnetic Fields, a band led by a deeply weird guy who cranks out brilliant songs as effortlessly as my dog sheds fur. So, here we go.

Today excuse was something about getting a VD test. It didn’t make much sense to me, but hey, one can always claim that Chlamydia is a character from Roman mythology. Anyway, enough mit deh kvetching, let’s link.

Silicon Valley is a hotbed of perversion and toxic rape culture. Even the fictional one. Sigh, the bonfires are only getting fiercer.

And in “the pattern repeats itself repeatedly,” another narrative collapses. Just remember who kept pointing out the bits that weren’t making the news. Ahem.

OK, one more example of shit I’ll never understand. You take pride in being plus francais que les francais. Your stop signs say “Arret!” You ban the use of “Hi!” as a greeting. Why in the name of Escoffier would you jealously claim that the worst goddamn dish to ever originate in North America should only bear the name of your province?

And the delightfully transparent grifter Jill Stein is now sucked into the Neverending Story. Two things stand out to me- first, she’s dumping the documents in public since, hey, they’ll be leaked anyway and may as well not have the leaking be carefully curated. Second, this observation, with which I heartily concur:

Even Mother Jones admits there’s nothing to desperate Russia smear spread by Maddow, Reid & fellow neo-McCarthyists.

Speaking of grifters, Harry Reid is vociferously defending the pelf he mulcted for his buddy because it’s necessary for our national security that we be prepared for the imminent Klingon invasion and there’s Really Serious UFO Science out there. He saw it on TV!

In a statement Monday, Reid continued to defend the program. “I’m proud of this program and its ground-breaking studies speak for themselves,” the statement read. “It is silly and counterproductive to politicize the serious scientific questions raised by the work of this program, which was funded on a bipartisan basis.”

Team Blue is the veritable Party of Science.

Wonder why Tulpa has been so quiet lately? I think I have found the answer.

And Old Guy music, in honor of my dear friends Riven and Mad Scientist (but for different reasons).

I’ll admit to wasting most of yesterday because it’s now reached the part of the NFL season where the entire weekend is wall to wall. Lions-Bears was a classic stinker, but we drank watched it anyway. KC-San Diego was a blowout, but since SP and I are both fans of Alex Smith, we drank enjoyed the spectacle anyway. Every now and then, we’d read each other funny comments from yesterday’s posts, and I’d find news stories that made her go, “WHAAAAAAAT?” We have a drunken happy marriage.

Net Neutrality was last week’s WORLD GONNA END outrage. If you’re still talking about it, you’re not one of the cool kids. To be cool, you have to be talking about TODAY’S outrage, ZOMG THERE’S FORBIDDEN WORDS AT CDC! Of course, as I pointed out yesterday, this only related to budget documents, but isn’t the outrage much sweeter if you can pretend that SERIOUS SCIENTISTS ARE BEING MUZZLED? “Keep political catch-phrases out of budget docs” isn’t nearly as deliciously disastrous-sounding, so make sure that little fact is either not mentioned or buried deep in the news story.

Speaking of outrage, I nominate this as Drama Queen of the Year. FIGHTING FOR HIS LIFE. LITERALLY!!!!

Here’s another shocker: the UN Security Council is about to propose another symbolic toothless resolution about the most important border dispute in the whole world, the one thing with prevents joy, love, and peace from descending on the Islamic world. And a resolution that will get vetoed anyway now that the Obamoids have departed. Can someone remind me what the UN actually does, anyway? And why we send our tax money to them? Well, no matter, here you can see the outrageous massacre of an innocent Arab after he is attacked by filthy Zionists after one of them deliberately runs into his knife. Please, please, please, can we just stay out of this shit?

SP noticed that the pregame, halftime, and postgame TV discussion panels are smaller now and populated by B and C team people. Apparently all the groping stuff has greatly depleted the supply of talking heads. One can only wish this were happening in congress. But hey, we are one step closer. See, sometimes there IS good news.

Amazing, there’s all kinds of bleating when prosecutors do end-arounds for politicos to gather illegally obtained evidence, the same way they do for us Little People.

I was forced to go on a cruise once, which I described as “checking into a crowded hotel with shitty food and expensive drinks and you can’t leave.” I think the ship was called Chicken of the Sea. Our room was infested by bedbugs and I was thoroughly bitten. I was caught trying to lash together some empty drums to improvise a raft to escape TO Cuba. But at least I avoided this.

Shut the fuck up, Frankie.

Old Guy music time. And this is some old guys playing, the original lineup from Jethro Tull from the days when they were still playing interesting music in a British blues sort of vein, reuniting. I played in a couple bands that covered this song- while watching this, my fingers itched and I grabbed my flute to play along, discovering quickly that my muscle memory betrays me when people change the key of a familiar song. Guys, this is supposed to be in G! But still, goddamn, it’s great to see Mick wailing away on that SG.