Skip to content

After all, we wouldn’t want to keep them from living amid their own filth, would we?

Posted by on 14 October 2011, 8:38 am

From The New York Times:

Cleanup of Zuccotti Park Is Canceled

By COLIN MOYNIHAN and CARA BUCKLEY

October 14, 2011, 7:04 AM

Shortly before the dawn announcement, the protesters sat vigil with their brooms. The cleanup of the Lower Manhattan park that has been occupied by protesters for nearly a month was canceled Friday shortly before it was supposed to begin, averting a feared showdown between the police and demonstrators who had vowed to resist any efforts to evict them from their encampment.

The announcement was made by the Bloomberg administration around 6:20 a.m., about 40 minutes before workers were scheduled to enter Zuccotti Park, which has been the home base for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators angered by what they see as an unfair and corrupt financial system.

“Late last night, we received notice from the owners of Zuccotti Park — Brookfield Properties — that they are postponing their scheduled cleaning of the park, and for the time being withdrawing their request from earlier in the week for police assistance during their cleaning operation,” Deputy Mayor Caswell F. Holloway said in a statement.

More at the link.

So, the Overly Wet Snuggies crowd decides to camp out and complain about the wicked corporations which manufactured the clothing they wore, the tents in which they slept, the cell phones and iPods and laptops and electronic games they used, processed and transported the food they ate and provided jobs for the parents who are still supporting them, and when the city decides that it will spend extra money to clean up the mess they’ve made, they want to stay there and continue to wallow in it.

Dudes and dudettes: the city is trying to help you here, trying to make your impromptu campground a little less of an open fetid and festering cesspool, and you want to complain about it? Grow the [insert vulgar slang term for sexual intercourse here] up!

Oh, wait: if they actually did GTFU, they’d get up, clean themselves up, and go out and find a job.

Filed under Crybabies, Culture and Society, Idiots.
15 Comments

Wasting money in Philadelphia

Posted by on 13 October 2011, 7:15 am

There were several stories from the City of Brotherly Love yesterday which amounted to nothing more than wastes of money.


Supreme Court refuses to reinstate Abu-Jamal death sentence¹

By Joseph A. Slobodzian, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to hear a petition by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office seeking to reinstate the death penalty against Mumia Abu-Jamal.

The ruling in the case of Abu-Jamal – convicted of murder in the 1981 shooting of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner – was one of more than 250 appeals summarily rejected by the high court without comment. It means that, unless the District Attorney’s Office decides to conduct a new sentencing hearing, Abu-Jamal, 57, will continue serving a life sentence with no chance of parole.

Tasha Jamerson, spokeswoman for District Attorney Seth Williams, said the prosecutor’s office would not comment on the ruling while its appeals unit decides what to do next.

The prosecutor’s unsuccessful appeal to the nation’s highest court followed a decision in April by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia.

The Third Circuit reaffirmed its ruling that Abu-Jamal’s sentencing hearing was unfair, giving the District Attorney’s Office the choice of conducting a new death-penalty hearing or letting Abu-Jamal serve life.

More at the link. Wesley Cook, the convicted murderer who likes to go by the ridiculous name of Mumia abu Jamal, was willing to deal out death, but is afraid of death for himself. Given that, even if the capital sentence against him were reinstated, it’s highly unlikely he would actually be executed. In Pennsylvania², there are currently 219 people on death row. Since capital punishment was re-enacted by the state legislature in 1974, there have been three executions in the Commonwealth, and all three were of men who had voluntarily dropped their appeals; they, in effect, volunteered to just get it all over. But no one has been executed against his will in Pennsylvania since the reinstatement of capital punishment.

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams knows this, as did Lynne Abraham, his predecessor, yet they have kept pursuing the efforts to have Mr Cook executed. His case has become something of an international cause célèbre, which means that all such continual efforts on the part of the District Attorney do is to keep promoting this thug and murderer to the idiot fringe . . . and, of course, costing the city money it doesn’t need to spend.

But, it isn’t just the stupidity of the District Attorney that’s wasting city funds:


Occupy Philadelphia costs city $400,000 in police surveillance³


By Bob Warner, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer

The city has spent more than $400,000 in police costs to deal with the Occupy Philadelphia protest on the west side of City Hall, Nutter administration officials estimated Tuesday.

The figure includes $164,000 in police overtime through the first five days of the protest — the bulk of the city’s out-of-pocket costs — and an additional $237,000 for the plainclothes and uniformed officers stationed at Dilworth Plaza and other City Hall locations on their regular shifts.

“In one sense the added cost is the overtime number, but there is also a deployment issue — the officers are here instead of other places,” said Mayor Nutter’s spokesman, Mark McDonald.

Now entering its seventh day, the demonstration has drawn several hundred people or more to City Hall during peak periods each day. The number of tents that provide overnight accommodations increased to about 100 from 80 over the weekend.

City budget director Rebecca Rhynhart — now initiating an effort to pare about $47 million from the budget to compensate for three months of weaker-than-expected revenue — said she would ask all city departments to provide reports on what the demonstration is costing them.

The offshoot of the Overly Wet Snuggies protests in Manhattan are complaining that those mean ol’ capitalists and wicked corporations and evil rich people aren’t paying enough in taxes, yet their protest is just costing the city — and all of the cities in which they are protesting — more tax dollars which are collected and which could be spent on other things.

Nor are these costs even complete. The article noted that Philadelphia has a 100-tent area to “house” the overnight protesters, and there will certainly be clean-up costs if they prove to be as big a pigs as the ones in Manhattan . . . which I’d bet a case of Mountain Dew will be the case. I’d be very surprised if the bill for the Occupy Philadelphia protests — which are planning to move to Doylestown, a borough which really can’t afford to pick clean up after their mess — comes in at under a million bucks.

Perhaps if they were cleaner, more responsible people, like the TEA Party protesters of 2010, they wouldn’t be costing the government so much to clean up after them.

And here’s one in which it could be argued there was no choice but to spend the money:

13 arrested in prostitution raid at Philly Mummers club4

By Allison Steele, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer

One night a month, police say, the inside of the modest Mummers’ Downtowners Fancy Brigade clubhouse in South Philadelphia transformed into a bacchanalian free-for-all where dozens of men ate, drank, and had sex with prostitutes in full view of each other.

For a $30 cover charge, attendees got one free beer from the cash bar, food, and access to the women at the party. The women, police said, walked around scantily clad or naked, charging from $30 to $100 for sex.

On Tuesday night, the festivities came to an abrupt end when police officers swarmed the two-story building near Second Street and Snyder Avenue. About 50 men and 20 women were inside.

Police arrested 13 people in the prostitution sweep, including 10 women and two executives of the Downtowners.

John Murray, 56, of Deptford, the club’s financial secretary, and Alfred Sanborn, 44, of South Philadelphia, its steward, were arrested on liquor violation charges. The two acted as bartenders during the parties, and the clubhouse did not have a liquor license, police said.

Lawrence Crovetti, 65, of Feasterville, was charged with promoting prostitution by arranging for the women to get to the building. Police said he organized the parties and rented the building each month. Authorities on Wednesday were uncertain how long the parties had been held at the clubhouse.

OK, prostitution is illegal, no doubt about that, and perhaps that makes spending the money on this investigation legitimate, but it seems to me to be absolute idiocy that something which is perfectly legal to do if no money changes hands — having sex — can legitimately be a crime if money does change hands. We’ve already established that it’s really none of the government’s business with whom someone has sex — as long as it is consensual — so how it can continue to be illegal to have sex for a specific reason (money) seems silly.

And from a monetary standpoint, wouldn’t it be less expensive for the city and the state to have prostitution legal, and taxable?
________________________
¹ – The Philadelphia Inquirer, Wednesday, 12 October 2011, page B-1
² – Information accessed on Thursday, 13 October 2011; the numbers are subject to change.
³ – The Philadelphia Inquirer, Wednesday, 12 October 2011, page B-1
4 – The Philadelphia Inquirer, Thursday, 13 October 2011, page A-1

Filed under Crime and Punishment, Death penalty, Defecate Spending, Environmentantal Clean-up, Freedom of Speech, Pennsylvania, Personal Responsibility, Philadelphia, State and Local Government, State budgets.
26 Comments

Political Campaign Money: Correcting The Liberal Lie

Posted by on 13 October 2011, 3:15 am

Liberals love to spread the lie that Big Business is buying elections for Republicans. Liberals love to spread the lie that the Koch brothers are buying elections for Republicans, suggesting Democrats don’t stand a chance, what with all that “evil Right-Wing” money pouring in. But the lie is easily fixed by taking a quick trip over to Open Secrets and looking at the top 140 donors list.

I broke down that list into 10 different mutually exclusive subsets (with some on the list not falling into any of the 10 subsets), based on the percentage of money given.

90 percent or more to Democrats — 21, with the top 2 and 4 of the top 10 ranked donors
80 to 89 percent to Democrats — 12, with 3 of the top 10 and 5 of the top 12 ranked donors
70 to 79 percent to Democrats — 6, the top donor ranked 5th
60 to 69 percent to Democrats — 5, the top donor ranked 25th
50 to 59 percent to Democrats — 15

90 percent or more to Republicans — 3, the top donor ranked 70th
80 to 89 percent to Republicans — 6, the top donor ranked 30th
70 to 79 percent to Republicans — 10, the top donor ranked 23rd
60 to 69 percent to Republicans — 26, the top donor ranked 17th
50 to 59 percent to Republicans — 34

Where do those “evil” Koch brothers — who are Libertarian and not Conservative — fit in? Koch Industries is ranked 82nd, with 88 percent to Republicans and 11 percent to Democrats.

Once again, the easily-found facts defeat the Liberal lie, which is why Liberals need people to be ignorant of the facts in order for Liberals to win elections.
________
Cross-Post

Filed under Culture and Society, Elections, Lunacy From The Left, Outright lies by Democrats, Playing The Public For Fools, Politics. Tagged , ,
26 Comments

Obama Administration Attacks Church At SCOTUS

Posted by on 12 October 2011, 11:51 pm

The Obama Administration has decided it can tell a Protestant Church which doctrine it is allowed to enforce. The case is now before the US Supreme Court. Tina Korbe has the background information.

In the early 2000s, Cheryl Perich was a “called teacher” or “commissioned minister” at Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School in Redford, Mich. As such, she taught religious classes, led students in prayer and incorporated religious teachings into secular subjects like math, science, social studies and art.

But in 2004, she was diagnosed with narcolepsy and became unable to teach the fall semester that year. When she failed to return to school in January 2005, the school hired a replacement teacher. The school wanted to “peacefully release” Perich from her “call,” but Perich demanded she be reinstated — and threatened to sue the school if she wasn’t. It was that threat of a lawsuit — not Perich’s narcolepsy — that led the congregation to “rescind her call” (i.e. fire her). Apparently, it’s against church teaching to take an internal dispute of that sort to the secular courts.

Indeed it is against Lutheran Doctrine to sue the Church in secular courts. Flyfisher provided Bible reference material backing up the Doctrine in the comment section.

1 Corinthians 6:1-8

Lawsuits Among Believers

1 If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints? 2 Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! 4 Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges even men of little account in the church![a] 5 I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? 6 But instead, one brother goes to law against another—and this in front of unbelievers!

7 The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? 8 Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers.

Matthew 18:15-17

A Brother Who Sins Against You

15 “If your brother sins against you,[b] go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. 16 But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’[c] 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

So the Lutheran Church is doing something extraordinary and unusual as far as the Obama Administration is concerned: basing its no-lawsuit doctrine on the Bible — something Jeremiah Wright never deigned to do. But even if the Church’s doctrine is not Bible-based — as Jeremiah Wright’s is not — the Supreme Law of the Land (for you Liberals reading this, that would be the US Constitution and not the Obama Administration) is very clear on this point.

First Amendment (first part)

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof[.]

That means the Church has the right to govern itself by its own doctrine and the US Government has no jurisdiction. Period. If you don’t like the Church doctrine, you’re free to find another Church or abstain from Church altogether. The government does not have the right to dictate to the Church which doctrine it can mandate and which doctrine it cannot.

Thomas Peters at CatholicVote.org links to the Washington Examiner for some of the details of the oral hearings. As Mr Peters rightly says, the Obama Administration’s arguments and attempts at destroying religious freedom are simply breathtaking.

The justices then rejected the argument of Leondra Kruger, Obama’s lawyer for the EEOC, who argued that there’s no ministerial exception in the Constitution, only the same rights that secular organizations possess to choose their own affiliations.

At this, Scalia exploded. “That’s extraordinary! There, black on white in the text of the Constitution, are special protections for religion. And you say it makes no difference?”

Kagan agreed with Scalia’s rejection of the argument that the First Amendment doesn’t protect churches from government ordering who they should hire as pastor or priest.

Justice Samuel Alito (a Catholic) made a critical point, asking if a Catholic priest married and the church removed him from ministry for violating Catholic doctrine, could the EEOC order him reinstated.

When Kruger answered no, Alito replied that EEOC was making a judgment that certain teachings — such as the Catholic belief that priests must be celibate — are more important than the Lutheran doctrine that ministers cannot sue the church.

Chief Justice John Roberts (also Catholic) agreed, saying, “You’re making a judgment about how important a particular religious belief is to a church.” Government cannot make such theological judgments.

Where, praytell, are all the Constitutional Scholars in the Obama Administration? Oh, right. Better question: Are there any “Constitutional Scholars” in the Obama Administration, including the Chief Executive Officer of the Obama Administration, who have actually, you know, READ the US Constituion? Another question: Is there any part of the US Constitution the Obama Administration is not willing to violate?

This is beyond the point of “old and wearisome” at this stage of the game.
________
Cross-Post

Filed under Christianity, Constitution, Contempt for The Constitution, Culture and Society, Elections, Freedom of Religion, Judicial/ Supreme Court, Lack Of Responsibility and Morals, Lunacy From The Left, Obama's Destruction of America, Outright lies by Democrats, Philosophy, Political Contempt, Politics, President Obama, Pure Unrefined Washington Bovine Feces, Solutions By PROGRESSIVES. Tagged , , , , , ,
1 Comment

Yet another lie from President Obama’s re-election campaign

Posted by on 12 October 2011, 7:33 pm

I received this e-mail from Jim Messina, President Obama’s campaign manager, under the title, “President Obama: ‘I will not take no for an answer’”:

    Dana –

    Last night, the American Jobs Act was filibustered by Senate Republicans. There was no vote on the actual bill.

    But it would have succeeded: the American Jobs Act has at least 51 votes — a clear majority — to pass the Senate. And a new poll shows that 63 percent of Americans support it, too.

    Today the President recorded a message he wants you to see, laying out where we go from here in the fight for jobs.

    Watch President Obama’s video — and pass it on to anyone you think should see it.

    The Republicans who voted yesterday to block this bill weren’t thinking about middle-class families. In fact, at last night’s GOP debate, one of their leading candidates actually refused to say he’d extend a payroll tax cut that puts more than $1,000 in the pockets of everyday working Americans.

    They might believe it’s in their political interest to oppose whatever the President proposes for the next 13 months, but we know that when it comes to jobs and restoring economic security, Americans can’t afford to wait.

    The American Jobs Act would get to work now, providing incentives for businesses to hire unemployed veterans, helping hire tens of thousands of teachers, cops, and firefighters, and rebuilding and modernizing our schools, railways, bridges, and airports. Even though it’s fully paid for and made up of proposals both parties have supported, Republicans yesterday said no.

    Now the President wants you to hear directly from him about what’s next.

    Watch the video — and make sure your friends do, too:

    http://my.barackobama.com/President-on-Jobs

    Thanks,

    Messina

    Jim Messina
    Campaign Manager
    Obama for America
    Paid for by Obama for America

Now, let’s look at Mr Messina’s claim that “it would have succeeded: the American Jobs Act has at least 51 votes — a clear majority — to pass the Senate.” The New York Times story on the defeat of the bill noted that three Democrats voted against it: Senators Ben Nelson (D-NB) and Jon Tester (D-MT), described by the Times as “two moderate Democrats facing difficult re-election campaigns,” voted against it, as did Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who changed his vote from yea to nay as a parliamentary maneuver, to allow him to call for a reconsideration at a later time.

So, with 47 Republicans voting against the bill, and joined by two Democrats, that gives Mr Messina his 51 votes, right?

Wrong! If you read further in the Times’ article¹, you’ll find:

Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, voted to take up the jobs bill, but said that he opposed the measure itself.

OK, now we’re down to 50 votes for the bill, assuming all other Democrats vote for it, and with Vice President Biden to break the 50-50 tie, the bill would pass.

Except, the next two paragraphs tell you:

Senator Joe Manchin III, a West Virginia Democrat who had expressed reservations about the bill, also voted to begin debate and to end what he described as a Republican filibuster.

“But let there be no mistake,” Mr. Manchin said, “if this bill does not change, if it is not improved, if it is not more focused on job creation and more fiscally responsible, I will strongly oppose final passage.”

Now we’re down to 49 votes for the bill, and 51 opposed. The honorable Mr Messina knew this, but he chose to deliberately lie to us and say that there were “at least 51 votes — a clear majority — to pass (the bill in) the Senate.”

Let me stress that again: President Obama’s campaign manager deliberately lied to us. I can’t say that I am surprised in the least.

Of course, the entire process was nothing but a political ploy. The Constitution of the United States specifies:

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.²

The Senate bill includes in it provisions to raise revenue, which means, to pass constitutional muster, it would have to have originated in and been passed by the House of Representatives, which was not the case. The President and the Democrats knew that the bill would never pass the Republican-controlled House, and never make it to the Senate. But they were not really interested in passing the bill; all they wanted was a political opportunity to castigate the Republicans, to say that they blocked the will of the majority.

So, once again, the Democrats lied to us. I wish I could say that I am surprised, but I’m really not.
_______________________
¹ – You’ll have to go to the second page to find this information.
² – The Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 7.
_______________________
Cross-posted on Truth Before Dishonor

Filed under 2011 Economic Stimulus/Jobs Creation Bill, 2012 Election, Congress, Constitution, Demagoguery, Democratic Party, Disdain For The Public, Outright lies by Democrats, President Obama, Taxation.
6 Comments

President Obama’s day

Posted by on 12 October 2011, 6:59 am

When a President seems to be on a downward spiral, stories like this seem to come out:

Aimless Obama walks alone

Last Updated: 3:45 AM, October 9, 2011

Posted: 2:49 AM, October 9, 2011

headshotMichael Goodwin

The reports are not good, disturbing even. I have heard basically the same story four times in the last 10 days, and the people doing the talking are in New York and Washington and are spread across the political spectrum.

The gist is this: President Obama has become a lone wolf, a stranger to his own government. He talks mostly, and sometimes only, to friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett and to David Axelrod, his political strategist.

Everybody else, including members of his Cabinet, have little face time with him except for brief meetings that serve as photo ops. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner both have complained, according to people who have talked to them, that they are shut out of important decisions.

President Obama has become a lone wolf, a stranger to his own government.

The president’s workdays are said to end early, often at 4 p.m. He usually has dinner in the family residence with his wife and daughters, then retreats to a private office. One person said he takes a stack of briefing books. Others aren’t sure what he does.

If the reports are accurate, and I believe they are, they paint a picture of an isolated man trapped in a collapsing presidency. While there is no indication Obama is walking the halls of the White House late at night, talking to the portraits of former presidents, as Richard Nixon did during Watergate, the reports help explain his odd public remarks.

Obama conceded in one television interview recently that Americans are not “better off than they were four years ago” and said in another that the nation had “gotten a little soft.” Both smacked of a man who feels discouraged and alienated and sparked comparisons to Jimmy Carter, never a good sign.

Blaming the country is political heresy, of course, yet Obama is running out of scapegoats. His allies rarely make affirmative arguments on his behalf anymore, limiting themselves to making excuses for his failure. He and they attack Republicans, George W. Bush, European leaders and Chinese currency manipulation — and that was just last week.

The blame game isn’t much of a defense for Solyndra and “Fast and Furious,” the emerging twin scandals that paint a picture of incompetence at best.

We heard plenty of stories about how President Clinton was always up late, talking policy with anyone and everyone, keeping aides and interns [cough!] working late. And our friends on the left tried to make some political hay out of President Bush’s normal routine, up, exercising and at work very early, but also early to bed.

But this is the first of the stories I have seen about President Obama’s routine, and my first question would be: has his routine actually changed, or was he running his job this way even when he was riding high in 2009? The picture being painted by Mr Goodwin seems a bit disturbing, on the surface, sort of implying — without directly stating — that the President is losing it, but unless you have more background, it’s at the very least incomplete, and really rather unfair.

However, Mr Goodwin was right on target when he noted that Mr Obama’s supporters “rarely make affirmative arguments on his behalf anymore,” instead blaming everybody else, but that’s understandable: by every objective measure, his presidency has been a failure, and he’s hoping to hang on to his job not by telling us how good a job he has done, but by trying to persuade the voters that the Republicans would be even worse. That’s not usually a winning argument, and the President is a smart enough politician to know that, but it’s really the only one he has.

Filed under 2012 Election, President Obama.
47 Comments

Where are the adults?

Posted by on 11 October 2011, 9:27 pm

Barbara O’Brien of the Mahablog¹ wrote:

Now, the Occupy Wall Street activists are on the edge of building a movement centered on economic populist issues that polls say most Americans support. And the slogan “we are the 99 percent” could be very effective IF most Americans come to understand it in the context of kitchen-table economic issues.

A broad swatch of Americans feel Washington pays no attention to their problems and caters instead to the rich and Wall Street. Big nationwide marches filled with middle-class, working people could actually get the attention of politicians in Washington. This would be a good thing.

But most of that broad swatch will not join in if they whiff a bunch of leftish issues they are not ready to embrace, and I suspect unmanned drones on foreign soil is one of those issues. And if the “movement” never goes beyond the usual vocational protesters, it’s pissing in the wind.

Hat tip to Donald Douglas.

Miss O’Brien’s complaint is that the far-left fringe groups have been hijacking what she sees as legitimate liberal rallies, and, in doing so, they alienate large numbers of people who might be more sympathetic to the main cause of the rally, because they are so far-left-whacko.

This is exactly the kind of crap that prevents the Left from building any kind of effective movement to accomplish anything. Since several of you don’t seem to understand what I’m complaining about, let’s go back to September 2005.

There were huge antiwar rallies September 24 in Washington and other cities. I went to the Washington DC march around the White House. It was one of the better ones, really big, with people of all ages and ethnicities joining in.

As usual, Code Pink tried to steal the show by holding a separate rally and march a few blocks away. I remember reading that some of them were arrested. In any event, none of the pinksters came anywhere close to the advertised rally and march.

Also meanwhile, as most people marched around the White House, International A.N.S.W.E.R. — one of the sponsors — held its own event on the Ellipse, covered by CSPAN. After the march I got back to my hotel, logged on the Web, and read Steve Gilliard’s review –

You know, it’s time for the campus radicals to go home and take ANSWER with them.

I watched an hour or so of the rally and I wanted to smash my screen.

Why can’t they have adults who can speak in words, not slogans.

There’s much more at the link, but even though it was Mr Gilliard who made the specific complaint that these rallies don’t have — but need to have — the adults in charge, Miss O’Brien never added anything to her article which disassociated herself from Mr Gilliard’s characterization; I assume, therefore, that she agrees.

I guess that it isn’t too surprising. While Miss O’Brien’s site biography does not tell us her age, it does state that she earned her Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1973. Assuming that she was not a child prodigy, and was not graduated from college at age 16 or something like that, she’d be about sixty years old now. No wonder she has some difficulty in identifying with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, as characterized by the liberal New York Times.

I’ll have to ask Dr Douglas and Stacy McCain if this pic qualifies as Rule 5 Blogging. :)

Miss O’Brien lamented that there wasn’t a middle class face to the Overly Wet Snuggies protests, something to give their grand cause some credibility among American middle class adults. But there’s a very simple problem with that: the vast majority of middle class Americans are working Americans, and they can’t just take off weekdays to go protest in Manhattan. Moreover, though unemployment is certainly a serious problem at its current level of 9.1%, that means that 90.9% of the workforce is employed, and, in not-very-good economic times like today, about the last thing that they want to do is rock the boat; they might be the ones to fall overboard!

The lovely blonde lady to the right in the picture is holding a sign which tells us that “A Job Is A Right.” It is? A job normally entails actually producing something, and if current economic demand is already being met with less than 100% employment, just what job does the young lady — and, I presume, her compatriots — believe she should have? Should we employ people to produce nothing, to meet no economic demand? And if we do so, just where do we get the money . . . and how soon does it run out?

And one of the biggest problems for the Overly Wet Snuggies protesters, the ones who tell us that they want jobs, is that, looking at them, in a time when employers have the luxury of being rather selective in who they do hire and retain, my first thought is: who would want to hire them? I’d be willing to bet a case of Mountain Dew that a lot of the middle class Americans watching the OWS protests on the evening news have that same thought occur to them; Miss O’Brien might even be one of them.

There is a significant amount of talk linking the OWS protests to the TEA Party rallies of last year, but I think that’s kind of strained. The TEA Partiers were generally older and more responsible, and they sure cleaned up after themselves a lot better. More importantly, they translated their protests during the summer into votes in the fall. I have some real doubts that the OWSers will be able to do that.
______________________________
¹ – I have been banned on the Mahablog, and Miss O’Brien, after commenting here and my banning on her site was pointed out to her, wrote, “Sorry, I block lots of people. Didn’t realize you were one of them. However, my readers tell me they appreciate being spared right-wing groupthink, since they get saturated with it everywhere else.” I am still blocked there. :)

Filed under Crybabies, Dumbass Radical Envy, Economics.
10 Comments

A Tale of Two Protests

Posted by on 11 October 2011, 2:55 pm

From this morning:


Environmental protests on the rise


By Sandy Bauers, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer

The morning of Aug. 24, Judy Wicks put her driver’s license and $100 cash in her pocket. She wore no jewelry.

Now, she was ready to be arrested. So many would join her that she needed to be unencumbered, so she wouldn’t hold up the processing line. Wicks, former owner of the White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia, and 1,251 others — including a dozen or more from this area — were arrested during a two-week action in front of the White House to protest the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil from Canada’s tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico.

Organizers termed it “the largest environmental civil disobedience in decades.”

Experts predict more such protests. They say the nation is entering an era of environmental civil disobedience rivaling that of the 1970s.

It may also signal a larger discontent. Since Oct. 6, Occupy Philadelphia, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement largely focused on what it sees as corporate greed, has been occupying City Hall.

In the environmental realm, frustrations have long been more focused.

In recent months, eight activists climbed the smoke stack at Chicago’s Fisk coal plant and painted “quit coal” in 10-foot-high letters on it.

More at the link. Unfortunately, the Inquirer’s website did not carry the picture accompanying the article, on page A-12. It shows protesters in front of the White House, with a big banner which reads Shut Down the Tar Sands.

I found this story rather amusing, when considered with the Overly Wet Snuggies protests by the bottom 1%. Those liberals are complaining that there are no jobs for them — and they must not have jobs, if they can camp out and protest on work days — and whining about “corporate greed,” while the other liberal protesters want to shut down a large project which would create more jobs.

The environmentalist whackos want to shut down the tar sands pipeline, which would mean that the United States would have to import more oil from foreign suppliers, sending more of the rewards for our productivity overseas, removing it from our economy, and making Americans poorer. They want to stop the use of coal to generate electricity, though there is no other practical source of electric power available on a large scale other than nuclear power, which does not consume fossil fuels. While I’m sure that they’d love to see everything powered by solar and wind power, those sources are incapable of providing the vast amounts of electricity our modern society requires.

And electricity is certainly something that the Overly Wet Snuggies protesters are consuming. They are using the internet, they are using cell phones, they are using all sorts of electronic devices — all provided, at every decreasing costs, by those wicked and hated corporations — to keep in touch, to amuse themselves, and to organize their protests.

It really would be interesting if the various groups of our friends on the left actually understood economics, actually understood what they were doing. They are wearing clothes manufactured by corporations, traveling to protests in vehicles manufactured by corporations and powered by fossil fuels, eating food brought to them by corporations — and trucked there by vehicles burning diesel fuel — consuming electricity to keep all of their gadgets running, and supported by the welfare checks that those of us who do work for private businesses and corporations are paying for with our taxes.

Yet they want to end the use of the fuel which provides the electricity they use, and kill the corporations which produce all of the things they are using and wearing and eating.

I guess that we really could just trash it all, and go back to an eighteenth century lifestyle . . . and we could all die at 45, see a significant percentage of our children die young, succumb to diseases that modern medicine has virtually wiped out, and scratch the earth for a subsistence lifestyle.

Or they could actually grow the [insert vulgar slang term for sexual intercourse here] up and realize that they are protesting against themselves, protesting against the consumers of the things that corporations provide.

Filed under Crybabies, Economics.
1 Comment
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »