Open Thread - 07-26-24 - Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
I started high school in 1968, a tumultuous year of change, both for the country and myself. For the first time I was exposed to long hair freaky people, mostly from the upper grades. I was also exposed to different alternative political viewpoints and alternative life styles than those from grade school and junior high. It didn't take long, by my sophomore year I had tuned in and turned on.
I can freely admit that my friends and I experimented with drugs, mostly pot and LSD (acid). Acid was hit or miss where I lived, you never really knew what you were getting until you tried it. We very rarely got the good stuff like owsley, what we got was usually in pill form which meant it was cut with substances like speed. That made the trip very unpredictable. It could be very enjoyable or a really bad trip with everything in between. I never had a bad trip but I witnessed them. I saw friends have breaks with reality and one that never came back. I did, though, have a couple of trips where all I could do was sit in a chair and hold onto the arms as firm as I could until I came down. It was that intense.
I see the current political situation much like that. Hold on tight.
Attribution: Pxhere
Like swirling patterns on the wall and melting faces, things keep getting weirder and weirder. Don't get me wrong, the sixties were plenty strange, but this trip we're on right now is a surrealistic reality that would make even Timothy Leary guffaw.
Democracy is standing on its head and all the loose change is falling out into the coffers of back room deals and power brokerage. Knives have been unsheathed and a king has fallen. Sociopathic ambition has replaced the will of the people.
We the People have lost agency as we whistle past the graveyard of electoral disfranchisement.
2:36
The media lies and lies until the lies become facts. That's different than the media of the sixties when there was at least a modicum of truth. Facts have become as fluid as a chameleon's coloration, they change with the winds of political expediency.
Politicians lie, gas light and obfuscate, that's no great revelation. The truth has become irrelevant to the disciples of sycophancy, it's but a means to an end for power and control.
It's become a fresh hell we must endure to obtain the leadership of mediocrity we don't deserve. Or should I say idiocracy?
4:28
The plot thickens like cement overshoes.
Like this from the Associated Press (AP). Yeah, I know, the AP, but if the AP is saying it you know there's something up:
Democrats promise an ‘orderly process’ to replace Biden. Harris is favored, but questions remain
July 22, 2024
Shortly after President Joe Biden announced that he would drop his reelection campaign, Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison had a message: There would be no automatic coronation for his replacement.
Snip...
But Democratic rules state only that delegates “in all good conscience” vote for the candidate they were elected to represent, with no mechanism for defectors. And some in the party have endorsed an open nominating process.
There’s been active debate about how to proceed among lawmakers, major donors and former high-ranking officials of the Biden, Obama and Clinton administrations, said a Democrat with deep ties to the Biden administration.
The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations, argued that Harris would benefit from a competitive mini-primary ahead of the Democratic convention, because it would help solidify her as a strong candidate and diminish criticism that she’s been undemocratically anointed. That’s a charge the Trump campaign has already sought to use against her, and could loom large in the battle for undecided voters in battleground states.
Such a scenario might leave Democrats heading into their convention without a clear nominee, though, and perhaps choosing one via a series of potentially messy floor votes. That could mean top Democratic candidates looking to replace Biden resorting to visiting individual state delegations to lobby — a process unseen since 1960, when Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy jockeyed for support during their party’s convention in Los Angeles.
If that happened, in addition to Harris, many other leading Democrats could vie for the nomination, including the likes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and California Rep. Ro Khanna — though many say they’re endorsing Harris.
Fredo Corleone comes to mind.
I've never had a flashback, thank the stars. But like an archetypal nightmare, We the People, will most likely pass that way again. We can't seem to help ourselves.
What a trip.
Comments
Good morning Free Rangers...
Thanks for taking a trip with me back to the sixties.
Lyrics
And Biden is getting to his end, but
will he stay put until January?
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Good morning my dear...
that's most likely how Joe feels given the palace intrigue he's been subjected to.
It's a good thing he's a superhero or he would have buckled under long ago, just ask any devout Democrat. [eyeroll]
Betting sites believe Joe Biden has a one-in-three chance of quitting the US presidency before his first term is up.
They're usually pretty accurate about their odds.
Good morning...
Indeed, what a long strange trip it is. The Greek play you began a few months ago continues with all the drama of a Hollywood production. Heard a fellow say - the US manipulates elections all over the world, you think they don't in their own country? So the kabuki continues. May as well enjoy the show.
Thanks for the OT. I'm hoping to touch up the road after a 1.5" rain in less than an hour earlier this week. Always something...
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
I bounce...
back and forth from Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Euripides' Medea that best defines our current zeitgeist.
1.5 inches in less than an hour, that's a gully washer. It's rained here in southeast Texas every day for the last week, sometimes really heavy. One more rainy day tomorrow then it's suppose to clear. Next weekend we're headed to Illinois for a 9 day vacation, the yard will look like a savanna when we get back. Yikes!
I find
Heinlein’s “If This Goes On-“ to be the best fit, with Sen. Tom Cotton as the current best candidate to become Nehemiah Scudder. But “Oedipus Rex” definitely fits nicely as well…
As the old chinese curse says- we live in interesting times…
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Politics...
have proven to be an incestuous vocation with the players antagonistic during the day as they show contempt for one another and protagonistic during the evening as they enjoy beers together. Also evidence by the nepotism of the last two administrations.
Good call as Tom Cotton as Nehemiah Scudder.
I long for the days of uninteresting times.
C'mon, what's this sorry blather from the AP?
What are these rules of which they speak?
Has nobody but me seen The Balcony, or even read it?
A US Court of Law upheld the Democratic Party's assertion that they are a private corporation and can select their candidates in any fashion they damn well please. The "rules" are vapor, a malodorous fiction. Rules which cannot be enforced have no substance, no reality and certainly no bearing on any putative "election" in this day and age.
I have seen reports, images and snippets of Kamala asserting in public that she already has enough "Delegates" to be the candidate? How the hell did she acquire them, then? Via the primary system? Bwahahahaha. She has not been a candidate in any primary and yet has a preponderance of the delegates?
The truth, as we once thought we knew it, has long ago ceased to exist. It died when we entered the evidence free reality. The word of the century is "whatever", so hop on the bus and hang on.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
The nattering nabobs...
of negativism blather on unabated.
The DNC is like the spoiled child that changes the rules of the game to fit their fancy.
You're right about the Kamala's unearned delegates, much like her unearned meteoric rise to the pinnacle of political ambitions. Then again, some say she did earn that distinction in an unconventional way, if you catch my drift.
The truth is DOA, toe tag it.
It really will be fun
to watch them all making mouth-noises to the effect of “Where have all the voters gone?” in the aftermath of the general, won’t it?
I have a meme of the world’s tiniest violin around here, somewhere…
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
They know...
the writing's on the wall. She's the sacrificial lamb, if she makes it that far.
Right you are about the Private Club.
Political Parties have operated as private clubs since the very beginning of the nation.
All US Political Party events fall under the general category of "Kabuki." — (Story telling, lies, passionate patriotism, circus acts, magic tricks, film-flam political barkers, the coordinated PR and brainwashing delivered by the media monopolies, and targeted beatings of audience members (the public) by the police, just to give the election the thrilling sensation of 'reality.')
All this has been a known-known for as long as I have been alive. I have never actually lived in a national Democracy, but I hjave been a life-long fan of the Gang of Three — Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle — who went to great pains to explain that democracy is a catastrophic failure in the hands of the homo Sapiens of Western Civilization. That lesson was learned and Democracy was largely avoided for the next 2,000 years. Tribes, communities, communal living, and casual socialism allowed people to survive.
Until.... the modern era, when Democracy was ushered into mix by the needs of the Industrial Revolution. The capitalists and Plutocrats found rigged Democracy to be the perfect device to bamboozle the masses — by giving them a vote and telling them they were 'free.'
'Democracy' worked pretty well during Western civilization's transit through the four industrial revolutions. Using a kabuki form of Democracy, the plutocrats could harness the labor of humans, tax it, and exploit this wage theft to pay for the massive expenses of the violent Plutocratic Empire. The staggering sums of money they borrowed on top of tax revenues is also piled on the people's heads. Now, as we enter the End Game, the People will soon discover that they can continue to purchase food and shelter and human rights ONLY IF THEY PAY the interest on the Plutocratic Debt. (At the moment, the debt is being paid through much higher prices on everything the People buy (inflation) and through the price-doubling of property ownership and rents. The People are suffering personal bankruptcy, repossession, foreclosure, and evictions — quietly — as personal property ownership is slowly being transferred to the Plutocrats and their corporations.
Here's how that works:
.
Elections are just a harmless diversion. Joe, Kamala, Donald Trump — it doesn't matter who gets to play President. People have always been told what to expect. This is not hidden information. The people are in denial. They do not listen and do not learn. If they were thinking critically, they would not be participating in their own demise. They go to church and read the Ten Commandments on every government wall where they are posted. God is explicitly named on the US dollar. Surely God won't let them end up living on a corporate-owned Plantation.
I like the gambling websites. They are more realistic in their predictions.
Populations don’t like wars. They have to be lied into it.
That means we can be “truthed” into peace. — Julian Assange
it's difficult to underestimate
...a culture of resistance or revolution. That Gimme Shelter video strikes a chord for me.
I had missed this in the news last week in South Korea. Kevin Gray brought up this old resistance song Morning Dew written and sung by Kim Min-ki in South Korea. It was then banned during the Park Chung-he military dictatorship. I think I posted it here within the last year because I recall hearing it sung at Candlelight demonstration in Seoul not too long ago. It's a classic demo song. I had listened to the song many times on a CD in the truck while driving cross country OTR over the years.
Kim Min-ki, singer songwriter, producer, artist, director, teacher died July 21. He left a great cultural legacy. His memorial service was held on July 24 in the small theater arts building where he established his school for the arts where 700 artists, singers, and actors some famous now studied under him. He is the cultural equivalent of our Pete Seeger perhaps. When his song Morning Dew was banned he was designated a thought criminal by the dictatorship in South Korea arrested and tortured. Believe it or not he later wrote another resistance song Pine Tree which became famous during the resistance to the Chun Du-hwan dictatorship in the 80s.
This is from Namu Wiki on the song Morning Dew. Looks like an automated translation.
Morning Dew
https://en.namu.wiki/w/%EC%95%84%EC%B9%A8%20%EC%9D%B4%EC%8A%AC
The legend goes that the singer song writer Kim Min-ki wasn't satisfied with the song and tore it up, but the singer above saved it and made it famous.
Staying up all night long
To every green leaf clinging, more lovely than pearls, the morning dew-
when sadness, drop by drop clings to my heart, to mornings east hill
I climb- bringing a slight smile...
The red sun climbs over the graves...
In the midday blazing heat, my ordeal, go forward!
Now, I go! Toward rough wilderness.
Let go all your sorrow. Now, I go!
When sadness, drop by drop clings to my heart
To morning's east hill I climb, bringing a slight smile
The red sun climbs over the graves
In the midday blazing heat, my ordeal, go forward!
Now, I go! Toward rough wilderness.
Let go all your sorrow. Now, we go!
That's my interpretation of the song, it's history and the news on Kim Min-ki's death this week. I'm sure there are smoother ones out there. I am responsible for any mistakes.
語必忠信 行必正直
Thanks for...
the songs, soryang. It's eye opening to witness the struggle that spans different cultures and in the end, we humans suffer from the same hardships befallen upon us by other so called humans.
Cringe…..
.
I was using 'cringe' to describe the Kam before I saw others using it. It’s so spot on.
Either she writes her own speeches or her staff hates her and writes them to make her look stupid. Over 91% of her original staff have quit.
OTC, it has your favorite 'time' quote. And notice that there is no talk about Mayo Pete. They don’t want to sacrifice his chances next time during this farce. And it is a farce. Biden was saying that he had no intention of dropping out…until he just did.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
That video...
just gave me the heebie jeebies, walking pneumonia and the boogie woogie flu.
In politico talk, when they unequivocally claim they wont do something, you can count on it being just the opposite.
The DNC would be better off running Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho:
"Word Salad" Kamala has nothing on him.
Boy just think
If people could eat word salads we could end world hunger. Alas tho….we will just have to protect our ears and brains.
And since nothing will change with her in charge I hope she does become president. 4 more years of laughing at the president.
And nothing would change if Trump won. We will still support Israel and we will still have wars. Ukraine might end, but China and Iran will be just as bad.
Did y’all catch Biden saying that America is not at war anywhere? Guess Yemen will be happy to hear that.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
Yup...
not to mention the air in her head and his inflated ego.
Yes, I saw Biden's speech. I'm still trying to delineate the lies.
This was classic Kamala
(Sep 2023)
정신( 精神 ) 없다 jeongshin eobda The lights are on but nobody's home. Spacey. We all may have moments like this, the question is how many and how often? Then there is a lack of self awareness or insight at another level.
One of her most conspicuous photo ops was visiting the spot where John McCain was shot down in Vietnam. The Vietnamese have demonstrated a forgiving spirit over the years from the reports I've heard.
2021:
Guess she's qualified in foreign policy now. "Been there, got the belt buckle," as they say.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-mccain-vietnam-idUSKCN1LB055/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2023/07/25/harris-laid-flo...
Kamala Harris meets Vietnam's top leaders, slams China again
語必忠信 行必正直
No way in
Hades that Ds don't nominate KH. Too much drama and chaos for weeks about Biden stepping aside, then the KH strong rollout of her campaign reassured Nervous Nellie Ds. They are on board. United party. The big $$$ is rolling in. KH is about even now w DJT in the national polls, and swing states are tightening.
And Rs currently have a JD Vance problem.
She might be pulling away some RFK Jr supporters.
She actually could win this.
I'd venture a guess that unless there is a major D screwup in the next 3 months, KH and whoever she picks for her VP will win in Nov. Donald Trump will never see the inside of the WH again.
She may be able to pull it off...
if she reads from a teleprompter from now until the election, if she makes it that far. If she is allowed to ad lib she's toast, in my humble opinion.
Either way, Kamala Harris, if she becomes the candidate, or Trump, the real winners will be the MIC and wall street.
No question
I don't think it will matter if she's so shielded -- campaigns today are so packaged with fillers and preservatives and most voters are now used to the artificial flavoring of the whole show.
The cornucopia of recreation drugs which I vaguely recall
.
.
window pane
printed blotter
chocolate mesc
orange sunshine
microdot
reds, whites and blues
probably forgot a couple along the way
but having a stubborn mind
nothing seemed to have the desired effect
thanks for the OD!
truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security
Ahhh...
a fellow wayfaring son. What glued me to the seat was orange barrel based with STP.
I had my run, long ago. Does it show? LOL
apropos
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Sigh….
.
I remember her and lots of democrats supporting the BLM riots and not one said that violence had no place in protests. Clown world indeed and more taking Netanyahu's side.
Dr. John Carpenter:
He speaks for me.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
Turning down...
the gas that she lit earlier.
what ch'yall be listening to?
.
.
truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security
A little bit of this...
a little bit of that:
Hi all,
Hey JtC!
Hope its all good all over folks!
Finally a subject I thoroughly studied, drugs...
All I know about this stuff is what I heard from a friend of a friend, etc. ad. infinitum, long ago and far away, in another galaxy, but apparently in a parallel universe where the names have not changed.
Jonathan Winters and Steve Allen were on Sandoz prescription acid. Lucky bastards.
Caitlin Johnstone had some fictional character quotes in a piece maybe last week or so. One was a female who said something like, 'psychedelics are good not just for the hallucinations they bring, but for the ones they get rid of.'
This is exactly what it was for me. It removed my frame of reference (brain-washing) instantly. As in 'Just give me one night... (the acid queen). I have seen everything differently forever since. Almost magically it seemed, I saw through the facades and charades.
I can't imagine speed with L. It is like putting tobacco in fine herb but worse. Seems like speed has been in all the coke since the 90's. At least that people showed me. Wouldn't get near it with a 10 foot straw.
Not just acid though, certainly shrooms and peyote belong in there with it. They can get the job done too. Yep, didn't take their word for it and checked myself. Love a good research project.
Country Joe
It was another life, a long time ago, but it was fanfntastic!
Don't mind talking about it? I don't mind bragging about it! We did the best shit, following the advice of a dude that seemed to know his stuff about it, named Keith Richard. Only do the best shit.
Yeah man, sophomore in high school. That's when it hits. 1970 I turned 15, in Huntington Bch. CA. There was hardly a better place to be we thought. We smoked more Afghan thin patty Primo (shish) than pot. Last half of 70's I was in Redondo Bch. up in LA Co., and got in with some real high end specialists. It was shall we say a heady time.
I could not afford to go to college, so had to get my own, uh, higher education. Made it all the way to under-assistant west coast promo man. Oh the stories I could tell...
Thanks for the OT and great memories JtC!
I gotta get back to work...
happy trails all!
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
Wouldn't it be interesting
...for those of like mind and experiences to share a riverboat cruise. I'm forever amazed at how often I was in the right place at the right time to journey with people who would become esoteric legends and talented voyagers through the times-they-are-a-changing. There were miracles of proximity and propinquity that we thought would never end. There was a alternative kind of college education then, where you're kicking back with Timothy Leary in the Hollywood Hills or contemplating altered states with John Lilly on Russian Hill. I suspect thousands of unrecorded historic moments and bright points of potential connection will blink out of existence when the kind of people who gather here are reabsorbed by the creative force that weaves the collective mind of this universe. Time is moving so fast now. People on this planet came very close to realizing that their coordinated conscious thoughts can create the future — but then they missed it utterly and completely — and the significant moment passed. How surprised I will be if I post this.
Populations don’t like wars. They have to be lied into it.
That means we can be “truthed” into peace. — Julian Assange
Yeah, no really
.
.
the sum total of coincidental encounters have permeated the web of mind
to an extent (that we now perceive as reality)
to the point it can not be erased
perhaps absorbed into another form by the mind masters
does not stop the process
truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security
Thanks for the surprise Pluto n/t
Hey PR!
A quick one on the cosmic kismet of our journeys... got on a Greyhound bus in downtown LA for a 6 hour ride to Big Pine in eastern Sierras. Guy gets on it an airforce uniform. I am at the back row of the bus because I was a back row sort of dude... There's the front row people and the back row people, and the ones in the middle are to keep them apart. Anyway, despite the uniform he was heading my way so I gave him the signal to sit here next to me. Asked where he was goin', he said Edwards AFB. I told him I had spent Armed Forces Day every year from about 60 to 70, at Edwards. Usually seeing the first public flight of whatever just came out. He replied, do you want a hit of blotter? I got 6 hour bus ride I'm looking at, only stop is in Lancaster where once the wind stopped and everyone fell over... and he wants to know if I want a hit of blotter!?!?!?!? Talk about cosmic meetings!
Thanks for posting it PR!
happy trails!
edit to fix typeo
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
Higher education d ; )
Nothing like finding broader perspectives on life.
Hey J!
Wasn't it twain that said nothing cures bigotry like travel? I'd add, or acid.
Yeah I got a higher education then most do. Got a couple degrees from Euphoric State.
be well!
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
Do you think
Euphoric State would accept me? I need some higher education ; ).