".. there seems to be some confusion about the message"

[Wild Cobra]

30 versus 1

I'll bet he was a fake marine.

Jarheads can be stupid, but not that stupid, and not that disrespectful of authority.

I wonder what his name is, and if he was court martialed or something. If he pulled that in front of a Marine commander...

[Nbadan]

Occupy message meets pop-culture

[Nbadan]

This will not end in your terms...

The Rude Pundit: This Is Not Your ing Movement; This Is Our ing Movement

Let's be honest here: the march this morning to shut down Wall Street was useless if its goal was to, well, shut down Wall Street. The New York Stock Exchange is, more or less, a show. Multi-million dollar financial transactions are not done by crazy, sweaty guys on a loud, chaotic floor. They're done digitally. So whether or not the secretaries and junior bag executives and janitors got into work didn't stop a single transfer of funds from one rich asshole to another. It pissed off some people and got the cops more overtime.

But, as ever, as ever, since it's started, everyone, from The Daily Show to Diane Rehm, right, left, and middle, have insisted that Occupy Wall Street conform to some readily defined paradigm of what a protest movement needs to be. Essentially, they are echoing something that Karl Rove drooled out the other day when he asked protesters at a speech he giving at Johns Hopkins University, "Who gave you the right to occupy America?" The real question is "Who took that right away?"

We are just two months into this. Two ing months after sucking up the given to us from the right for years. Two ing months after being part of the movement that propelled Obama into the presidency, only to see that movement dissolved and dissipated. Two ing months after watching two years of Tea Party bull being flaunted in our faces as if it represented anything but the height of corporate and conservative cynicism and manipulation.

We are two months into this and everyone in the media is clamoring for closure. It took years for the civil rights movement to get laws changed. It took years for the anti-Vietnam War movement to get through the thick skulls of the majority of Americans. This is just starting. Welcome to the real occupation.

Right now, the whole Occupy Wall Street narrative arc is following a well-worn script: defiance of authority followed by a crackdown by the agents of the authority. The corrupt, illegal power of the police and the governments of New York, Oakland, and elsewhere have been on display, with the raid on Zuccotti Park and on encampments around the country, as well as attacks on media members from the right, left, and middle.

The march this morning wasn't going to do anything, despite the hopeful rumors that the stock market opening bell had been delayed (it wasn't). No, the point was, like the rallies for Obama before them, that there is power in numbers. And that power needs to be exhibited and enacted.

When the Supreme Court, in the Citizens United decision, said that corporations are people with First Amendment rights and affirmed that money is the equivalent of speech, it essentially was saying that some people have more speech than others. The wealthy and the corporations can never be matched in terms of the speech effect of their dollars. But they can be matched and overcome by the sheer volume of people. That's why we say we are the 99%

rude pundit

[boutons_deux]

critical difference:

the astroturfing tea baggers had the Kock Bros, etc $10Ms and Repug operatives running their show to get 1%-friendly candidates to run, and got some elected. And those tea bagger Congressmen almost shutdown govt with a fake debt/budget crisis.

the 99%/OWS probably won't even have (sufficient) candidates, never mind getting them elected.

iow, the 99% are fully disenfranchised by the 1%

"But they can be matched and overcome by the sheer volume of people. That's why we say we are the 99%"

G M A F B

[CosmicCowboy]

[Nbadan]

Coming in 2012...

The revolution is Love - Occupy Love

[Nbadan]

Arrested for dancing in a public area...