@QMS n/t

.
The news feed mentioned y'all got some flooding out your way.
Cars swept away. Wonder if feral hogs swim?
Enjoy your concert!

@Lookout I am tired of Musk hoggin' the headlines. A 15% cut in government spending just netted him 15% increase in military contracts. After all, the defense budget was increased. Oh, I am cynical. $500 commodes are superior commodes.
Sorry to hear about your friend. It is so good that you can rely personal contacts for info or even gossip. Our trades days are food carts, tee shirts, honey, wind chimes, and coffee mugs for sale. The trade is hard earned money for junk. All vendors are from out of town. Locals tend to avoid the shit show. We get our local news by visiting the Senior Citizens facility during the weekdays, or via Facebook.
We should have good seats tonight, pretty much near front row, and center. Maybe the chatty drunks will remain standing behind at the bar. With luck, it will be an older crowd.
Enjoy what remains of your weekend and best wishes for your friend's speedy recovery, my friend.

Heard an old musician buddy of mine had a heart attack yesterday. One advantage of going to Trade Day is hearing the local news.

Sadly, to my knowledge, there are no ceasefires in Ukraine nor Palestine. I heard Elon is going to resign soon.

There an old song, Wild hog in the woods

Enjoy the concert tonight! Thanks for the OT.

@Cassiodorus Bernie and AOC have become very rich by doing the bidding of the oligarchs. There crowds do not seem to be grass roots and spontaneous, but rather, bussed in paid attendees. Needless to say, I have spent maybe 30 seconds reading about their rallies. I have no interest in what they say, since it is obvious they do the opposite when casting votes.
We will never know all of the oligarchs by name who run the world. We do know there goal is and always will be to suck all wealth from below up into their pockets.
With the total degradation of the education system, will there be true philosophers in the next generation?
Thanks for the food for though, Cass. Enjoy the remainder of your weekend.

it will be to teach America that it is not really a democracy. Of course, the idea of having Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez voicing something about "oligarchy" is so suffused with irony that whatever truths they may claim to utter will appear trivial. Sure, an oligarchy is in charge, but you're hearing it from members of that same oligarchy -- unless of course you hear it from Workers Strike Back or Butch Ware's little scene or RBN or something like that, in which case it might be meaningful.

Apparently Kyle Kulinski put out a podcast in which he claimed that Bernie/ AOC detractors were the "enemy." It would probably accomplish something if someone here were to repost the podcast; I can't stand to watch him.

At any rate, in a previous comment I suggested a list of the layers of oligarchy. The principle was stated some time ago in simplest form by the philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis:

One of the many reasons why it is laughable to call contemporary Western society “democratic” is because the “public” sphere is in fact private – be it in France, the United States, or England. This is true because the real decisions are made behind closed doors, backstage, or in places where those who govern meet informally.

This is of course the context in which Donald Trump attempts to be an autocrat, and to rule America as dictator. But, really, Trump can only put on a dangerous show, as he rules at the behest of the oligarchy and until said oligarchy has no use for him.

To elaborate further on that list:

1) Duopoly -- you must either believe in the (D) fiction or the (R) fiction if you wish to participate effectively. The political parties are of course controlled by members of the political class, but you don't have to hold any actual office to rig an election in America. These people, the political parties, also control the NGOs through what Jane Hamsher once called the "Veal Pen." There are apparently people out there who review the political activities of the NGOs, and issue orders if any of said NGOs endorse the Green Party. Soon thereafter, said NGOs discover that they no longer have any grant money.

2) The donor class -- if you cannot find a billionaire patron, you will receive no publicity. Soon I will issue a new set of lyrics to America's most famous patriotic songs, so that sarcastic protesters can pay real tribute to the real power behind the so-called political class. "God bless Zionist Billionaires" will sound fun with an enormous choir singing it. At any rate, this group has the power to nullify the Constitution simply by paying off all of the meaningful actors in the power structure, and by using the police state to crush anyone who would dissent. This group can get America to look the other way while a genocide is taking place. Eventually their well-armed puppets will come after you.

3) The alphabet agencies and the Pentagon -- These are the CIA, FBI, NSA and so on. It does not appear as if they have any Constitutional restraint. They have a veto power over real change in America. If you piss them off, they will retaliate, like they did against the Kennedys and King.

4) The Ivy League and the social clubs -- the two groups deciding how everything is to be run. By social clubs, I mean the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the World Economic Forum, the Bilderberg Group, the Bohemian Club and so on. There is of course a layer below this, with the fraternities and other social clubs at Harvard, Yale, and to a lesser extent the other Ivies, and then beneath those groups there are the private schools which feed into the Ivies.

*****

There used to be a subfield called "elite sociology," in which works appeared such as Domhoff's Who Rules America and McNamee and Miller's The Meritocracy Myth. As the universities in America are killed off by the donor class with Trump's help, we can expect elite sociology to be the first thing to disappear. To be honest, I don't really know why America thinks business as usual is fine under Trump. Hitler's subjects had an expanding economy to anticipate, whereas we do not.

@snoopydawg I read that FEMA is being dismantled. I hope it is still viable for the folks in McAllen.
When coming through the Austin road construction in blinding rain, we hit a huge pool of water on the road. It stopped the truck! A small car would have floated and caused an enormous wreck. Cars were bumper to bumper for miles. Close shave!

The predicted sun and temperature rise for yesterday is happening now. I packed for one chilly evening, not 48 hrs of cold. I really screwed up. Good thing we didn't bring steaks to grill.
No deer, no hogs, only birds so far this morning.
When are we gonna see some Tesla terrorists arrests? When do we see the baby rapers on Epstein's island in handcuffs? Are law enforcement officers not allowed to get distracted from their task of spying on people for being anti-genocide?
When do we stop talking about the Signalgate leakers and start discussing the war crime of killing Yemeni civilians? Just askin' for a friend...
I hope my client is happy and healthy and making you laugh all day long! Enjoy your weekend, my friend!

.

Just saw a Texas city being flooded by mega rains and homes and cars have been flooded. How many people will recover from that?

@enhydra lutris Oh, when the tariffs work through the supply chain and hit the store shelves, the drain circling will speed up.
I hate the dl renewal process. I have to go to a nearby city, by appointment only, to a sheriff's office annex, have my picture taken, do an eye exam done by a damn cop, then get the actual dl via mail weeks later. It always keeps me out of my office half a day, and every person in the sheriff's office is rude. I mean, RUDE. I have that magic yellow star on mine, and that gives me the creeps.
Everyone, including our military strategists, say the Rus' will have this thing done in no more than 120 days. Btw, have you read anything about the encircled soldiers in the Mursk region? That fell off the headlines overnight, didn't it?
Well, on to more excellent bombings of civilians in Yemen! Yeah, that's the ticket!
Enjoy your weekend, my friend, and take good care of you and yours.

day and am blissfully iggerant of some of the past week's frauds and fiascos, so, in summary, dunno. Am pretty certain that no ukie ceasefire is in the works. Ukiestan can't even abide by the partial in place regarding attacks on energy facilities and the Rus are on something of a roll, so why even try to go further down that trail of phony agreements proposed with bad intentions.

Don't see much hope for a ceasemurder in the mideast either. Israel has longstanding fgoals, formulated and even admitted back before it came into existence and they are not yet achieved or fulfilled.

We are in a holding pattern, which seemingly consists of circling around the drain. The semblance of civil rights that were talked up by the ruling class are dissipating at a rapid rate. To paraphrase an infamoud decision's infamous dictum, "you can't holler 'free speech' in a non-empty theater".

My driver's license is up for renewal, recalling to mind the days of yore when we would, at times, yell at friends seen walking down the street "Hey! You gotta permit?" and laughingly pass by. "T'ain't funny McGee" as the man once said.

be well and have a good one

@soryang Question for you: Let's say the moderates/leftists eventually regain power, re-start talks with NK, do you think that could result in the US military base being shut down? I do not believe the US would hesitate to fill the roof tops with CIA snipers before such a thing occurred, but that doesn't spell defeat, it just prolongs the violence and unrest.
Enjoy your weekend, eat some good Korean cuisine, take a nice walk around the neighborhood, and, of course, dream on, friend!

...from yesteryear. Jeong Tae-chun could be thought of as a Korean Woody Guthrie or Pete Seegar. He's a poet, singer song writer who came of age during the Chun Du-hwan dictatorship. I feel lucky to learn a little bit of his story. If I had not seen this video below of him singing to a large demonstration crowd in Gwanghwamun Plaza, I might have never known. His songs were censored and subject to government pre-approval and revision up through the early nineties. He led the movement to stop censorship which finally succeeded in 1996. This although the democracy period supposedly ended started when street protests forced Chun Du-hwan to agree to relinquish power in 1987. Because of divisions on the left, his partner in crime, General No Tae-woo, won the election, in 1988, so censorship continued.

Apparently Jeong was raised in the country near Pyeongtaek, where Camp Humphrey's is. Given a guitar at a young age, he demonstrated that he was a musical prodigy. His older brother actually served in the US Army. Pyeongtaek is currently the site of the largest US military base overseas in the world, after USFK/8th Army moved out of the imperial base at Yongsan. Yoon's presidential office and the Korean Ministry of Defense are still in the Yongsan garrison location. Anyway here's the scene in Seoul this am :

https://music.bugs.co.kr/track/71072?wl_ref=list_tr_08_mab

The first song is Pushing through this Dark Tunnel. This song is allegorical because I think it was also subject to censorship. The song is about the quiet dignity of the masses (Bekseong) pressed together on the commuter train every day, tired (exhausted), every day after long hours of work in Seoul. This is another computer translation from Bugs.

https://music.bugs.co.kr/track/448655?wl_ref=list_tr_08_ab

We are riding our tired bodies on the fast-moving train over the long railway bridge, and we are crossing the dark Han River, home, home, dozing off, even the sunset that used to shine on the river has faded.... We are crossing this sacred day of labor, another precious day of our lives, shaking on the train that hides underground again, just going through another day with our bodies that have been entrusted to us, and are we going? Under the pale light, our bodies are rubbing against each other, and the sorrow of people is nothing else. Isn't this place where we are returning to another car on this train? Ah, those eyes, those caressing hands. We shouldn't be hopeless burdens carried through this long, long tunnel. We are not the train itself, running on this parallel track, never getting tired. Our heavy eyelids close for a moment, and we dream briefly in our sleep. The train kicks through this dark tunnel into a world of brilliant sunlight. Every face of the people there is full of joy and pride in life, a world worth living in. Those beautiful people. All of those people who wait for this train every day. Not all of them. We must carry all of us and not a single person must get off. We must push forward through this dark tunnel with the train past the last station and the depot. We must dream until we get there. We must go together. We are 1993

Yoon's martial law plans called for censorship again. I heard a pundit say last night, that no matter what the cowardly and ineffectual Constitutional Court decides it's obvious that the insurrection isn't over. This because the elites and their party with a continuous heritage from the Chun dictatorship can't win in a democracy, and stubbornly won't yield power. So they continue to manipulate the justice system. The CC delay is causing a crisis in republic's legitimacy.

The moderates in South Korea support the progressives at this point because of Yoon's attempted coup. They favor Yoon's dismissal by 70 percent in a recent Gallup poll. In an unwise move, police and prosecutors continue with the investigation of former President Moon Jae-in, a moderate democrat, who had opened negotiations with North Korea, further antagonizing the public in South Korea. The pundits say come what may this will be decided in the streets.

Thanks for the O&E OntheCusp! Dream on.

(oops had to edit this, had the songs out of order. Had a lot of trouble posting this)

@The Liberal Moonbat I don't read him because he is behind a paywall.
I just watch him when he goes on video streams.
On the cusp, on the cheap, in my cuspie nature!
Depends on the world happenings, but on occasion, this comment threat goes hog wild!
Enjoy the remainder of your weekend, friend!

Cuspie, do you read Taibbi? If not, you might want to be aware of this: Uncle Matt wants YOU!

https://www.racket.news/p/note-to-readers-d27

@enhydra lutris I threw some leftovers over the yard fence into the pasture on Friday and Saturday night. I heard the hogs eating it, grunting happily. They like our cooking.

be well and have a good one