A letter to the New York City protesters

[ElNono]

I have and no one seems to want to answer the questions.

You don't want to listen to the answers. Do you need to wait for Cain to tell you what to about next?

[admiralsnackbar]

I have and no one seems to want to answer the questions.

What is the end game for the "Occupy Wall Street" protests? How will I know when they've achieved their objective? Why is the politician that received more corporate campaign money than any politician in history not being targeted by this group?

All legitimate questions.

I wonder if end-game is even a political necessity? I went to the tea-party rally here in SATX, and there was a rather obvious lack of ideological cohesiveness, with only some vague tenets of libertarianism (and a fair amount of Koch bros money) to suggest anysort of overarching solidarity. However half-assed as that movement was/is, it has been able to affect nat'l policy, so I don't see why this efflorescence of bile will deserve any less (assuming, of course, that the Koch money wasn't really necessary, which I have trouble believing).

As for targeting Obama... aren't they doing just that by going after Wall St? Or rather -- why is Obama or X GOP POTUS any different if Wall St. controls government?

[ChumpDumper]

Chump demonstrating what a brilliant fellow he is.

Famous one-liners, that will go down in history....

Cant prove the other guy wrong just throw something at the wall, maybe
it will stick.

Um, I did prove you wrong with a one-liner. Yoni confirmed it -- unwittingly, of course. He has nothing resembling wit.

You couldn't even read one line.

That's why you aren't worth actually engaging. You're just ignorant and stupid and like being that way no matter what.

lol brilliant

lol famous

[Spurminator]

What's the end game, Spurm? How will we know if the protests were successful? In what way will the Corporate Satans capitulate?

Your last question proves you still can't grasp the idea of people protesting Washington from somewhere other than Washington. Even if I told you the legislative changes that might be borne out of this movement, you would suggest those changes can't be made unless the protesters are squatting on the steps of the Capitol building.

I'm sure the people involved in OWS would consider their efforts a success if it helps push through campaign finance reform, the closing of corporate tax loopholes and a re-evaluation of income tax rates. With that said, this protest, like the Tea Party protests before them, is really about people venting their frustration. From that collective frustration comes activism, and from that activism comes change.

We'll have to give it longer than three weeks to find out if any change comes of it.

[xrayzebra]

Um, I did prove you wrong with a one-liner. Yoni confirmed it -- unwittingly, of course. He has nothing resembling wit.

You couldn't even read one line.

That's why you aren't worth actually engaging. You're just ignorant and stupid and like being that way no matter what.

lol brilliant

lol famous

[Cry Havoc]

Accuses other people of using "one-line responses".

Posts even less than that in response.

[ElNono]

I wonder if end-game is even a political necessity? I went to the tea-party rally here in SATX, and there was a rather obvious lack of ideological cohesiveness, with only some vague tenets of libertarianism (and a fair amount of Koch bros money) to suggest anysort of overarching solidarity. However half-assed as that movement was/is, it has been able to affect nat'l policy, so I don't see why this efflorescence of bile will deserve any less (assuming, of course, that the Koch money wasn't really necessary, which I have trouble believing).

As for targeting Obama... aren't they doing just that by going after Wall St? Or rather -- why is Obama or X GOP POTUS any different if Wall St. controls government?

Agree that they're false premises. According to Darrin, the Tea Party got people talking about deficit spending. Well, just as easily these protests got people talking about pervasive corruption and inequality. But what's good for the red goose, probably isn't good for the blue gander.

I also agree that the criticism extends to Obama and the Dems. When Pelosi spoke in good terms about the demonstrators, it was just further proof of her disconnect with reality.

[boutons_deux]

Journalists Funded By ‘Vulture Capitalist’ Paul Singer Campaign To Smear Wall Street Protests

Journalist Who Admitted To Infiltrating Protests To ‘Mock And Undermine’ The Movement Works For A Singer-Supported Right-Wing Magazine. In a column posted last night, reporter Patrick Howley admitted that he had surrep iously joined an anti-war spin-off group from the OccupyDC protests that planned to demonstrate at a military drone exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space museum. Howley wrote that he “infiltrated” the action and sprinted into the police along with a few protesters in order to “mock and undermine” the movement. Singer is a major donor to the Spectator, a right-wing magazine known for its role in the “Arkansas Project,” a well-funded effort to invent stories with the goal of eventually impeaching President Clinton.

Journalist Pushing To Discredit Occupy Wall Street Is Funded By Singer’s Think Tank. Josh Barro, a journalist who has attacked the 99 Percent Movement in the National Review and the New York Daily News, draws a salary from the Wriston Fellowship at the Manhattan Ins ute, a big business advocacy think tank in New York. Barro makes the same tired arguments, that anti-Wall Street protesters are too inarticulate and “extreme” to be taken seriously. Singer is the chairman of the Manhattan Ins ute, and even oversees the Wriston annual fundraiser.

http://thinkprogress.org/special/201...t-journalists/

[boutons_deux]

Panic of the Plutocrats

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

And this reaction tells you something important — namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called “economic royalists,” not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.

Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.

Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging “class warfare,” while Herman Cain calls them “anti-American.” My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them.

Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor and a financial-industry an in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to “take the jobs away from people working in this city,” a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement’s actual goals.

And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the protesters “let their freak flags fly,” and are “aligned with Lenin.”

The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.

Last year, you may recall, a number of financial-industry barons went wild over very mild criticism from President Obama. They denounced Mr. Obama as being almost a socialist for endorsing the so-called Volcker rule, which would simply prohibit banks backed by federal guarantees from engaging in risky speculation. And as for their reaction to proposals to close a loophole that lets some of them pay remarkably low taxes — well, Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, compared it to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.

And then there’s the campaign of character assassination against Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer now running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Not long ago a YouTube video of Ms. Warren making an eloquent, down-to-earth case for taxes on the rich went viral. Nothing about what she said was radical — it was no more than a modern riff on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dictum that “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”

But listening to the reliable defenders of the wealthy, you’d think that Ms. Warren was the second coming of Leon Trotsky. George Will declared that she has a “collectivist agenda,” that she believes that “individualism is a chimera.” And Rush Limbaugh called her “a parasite who hates her host. Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it.”

What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their ins utions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/op...gewanted=print

[ElNono]

Clearly, nothing alike...

[boutons_deux]

Fed is owned by Wall St, it ain't going anywhere.

[Winehole23]

[Yonivore]

Anti-capitalist chants read from a smart phone.

[Wild Cobra]

Is this how Barack Obama became so popular, and elected?

[ChumpDumper]

Is this how Barack Obama became so popular, and elected?

That clip isn't from The Manchurian Candidate.

[Insomniac]

[Cry Havoc]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1...n_1003871.html

Yep. Not making a difference. Not organized enough to be taken seriously.

[Wild Cobra]

The message is that our government is run by Wall Street. It's not a difficult message for anyone who doesn't take their cues from what they hear on the radio.

Wall street can influence things more than any one of us, but their power is still only so much.

[JoeChalupa]

Ben & Jerry's show support

[Trainwreck2100]

ben & jerry's show support

Ben and Jerry should use all their money to fix this then

[Yonivore]

Ben & Jerry's show support

Are they going to shut down operations, lay off all their workers, and divide their assets among the masses?

That seems to be what the "Flea Partiers" want.

Yeah, heard that this morning. I like it.

"The Flea Party" Movement.

[Trainwreck2100]

Are they going to shut down operations, lay off all their workers, and divide their assets among the masses?

[resistanze]

[Winehole23]

That clip isn't from The Manchurian Candidate.

Nope. Andy Griffith as a hysterical tragedian hooked me a little.



(Small town drunk makes good, then blows it all, exposing his tragic flaws: flawless certainty and propping himself up disdainfully on others. Literal superiority consists mainly of sitting on top of the pile. Before a fall goeth pride etc. etc..)

[ElNono]