Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Mayday Mayday!

Comrades! As you read this, no doubt the dirty capitalist pigs have their backs against the wall and our glorious OWS shock troops are shooting them with non-polluting goodwill projectiles. The world is ours. Now we need a list of demands. Oops, sorry, wrong speech.

For those who haven’t heard, OWS is making a desperate attempt today to seem relevant. Specifically, they’re leaving the safety of their college dorms and their rich parents’ basements, and putting aside their raping and their racism and their whining, so they can march out (probably by cab) to block bridges and banks and other instruments of capitalism.

And nobody’s going to care.

It’s amazing how badly OWS has exposed the left. Despite controlling liberal arts colleges all over the country. . . despite being backed by the money of billionaires like George Soros. . . despite being backed by the “labor” of unions. . . despite being fellated by the MSM and Hollywood. . . OWS has been a complete and utter failure. Indeed, in the end, all they’ve done is annoy liberals in big liberal cities as they drained the budgets of those cities: “Sorry, no homeless shelter for you, we spent the money cleaning up the poop the OWSers left in the park.”

In any event, here’s why they failed. The left has become an intellectual basket case. In the days of Lenin and Marx, the left stood for the idea of restructuring the relationship between labor and those with capital. It wanted to remake the world. But socialism failed miserably everywhere it was tried. It bankrupted country after country, it broke the work ethics of the people it ensnared, and it murdered hundreds of millions of people. Only kooks still believe in it.

But the hardcore left won’t quit because it was never about economic for them, it was about control. So they regrouped and sought new allies: man-hating feminists, white-hating blacks, religion-hating atheists, gays, eco-nuts, animal worshippers, anti-Semites, and militants of every stripe. Then they enlisted welfare lifestylists, perpetual college attendees, and the spiteful as ground troops. And the result is a hodgepodge of hatreds, spite and envy, without intellectual rigor or even a common platform. Indeed, they ceased to be an ideology and instead became a (bowel) movement of hate.

OWS encapsulated this perfectly. Not only could they not come up with a coherent list of demands, the demands they did make were nonsense. They were a list of tantrums seeking the impossible, and even if we wanted to meet their demands, we couldn’t. . . not that any sane person would want to try.

Nevertheless, it shocked them that they were ignored. Here’s why. The OWSers are the result of two fascinating trends coming together. The first trend is liberalism’s inability to grasp that others do not share their views. Liberals truly believe that everyone thinks like they do. We’ve seen this time and again, and I think it’s getting worse because of the groupthink out of Hollywood and the MSM. And in this case, that resulted in the OWSers truly believing that the moment they stormed the parks, millions or ordinary Americans would rush to join them. It never occurred to them that might not happen.

The second trend is more subtle by much more damaging. Liberals have been dumbing down achievement for a long time now. This is what is behind the self-esteem movement: to teach morons that feeling good about themselves is as good as actually doing something. Ironically, the result of this has been to cause the utter collapse of liberalism as a functioning force. By teaching liberals for generations now that trying is as good as doing, they’ve bred a generation incapable of setting goals and worked hard to achieve them. Instead, they only aim to “raise awareness” now as if that would magically get someone in charge to implement their desires. This is exactly what OWS did: they sought to raise awareness, as they’ve been taught, and then they waited for the magical whatever to change the world. . . it’s Underwear-Gnome-grade stupidity.

Compare them to the Tea Party, who never bought into the self-esteem crap. They didn’t set out to raise awareness, they set up a network of people who have been slowly taking over the Republican Party with the intent of changing the party and then the government, i.e. they set goals and worked to implement them. OWS just walked into a park and declared, “you are all aware now, so somebody do whatever is supposed to happen next.”

OWS failed because they lacked an agenda, they didn’t understand that the rest of the country wasn’t going to rush to join them, and they lacked an understanding that just whining about something doesn’t lead to change. And causing problems today will not change any of that. Indeed, even if they are somehow wildly successful today, the problem remains -- all they will have achieved is whining again that “somebody should do something.” Good luck with that, fools.


Don't forget, today is Trek Tuesday at the film site! Today I'm criticizing Jim Kirk of all people!

107 comments:

Joel Farnham said...

I am pretty sure the OWS crowd respects no laws except "Might makes Right". It also make me wonder who about their parents. Do they know what their precious snowflake has been doing? Or do they even care?

T-Rav said...

I cannot think of a better way to describe OWS than as a bowel movement. Especially when police cars are around.

tryanmax said...

This made me think of an Onion article from the late 90s, "Somebody Should Do Something About All the Problems"

Unfortunately, re-reading it today, it hardly seems laughable anymore. Too many people actually think like the fictitious author.

LL said...

It would be far more interesting if OWS could get some people who were once (genuinely) gainfully employed (not volunteers at marijuana communes, etc.) to join their ranks. However, that's not going to happen.

Then again, I'm sure that their parents are delighted that they're out of the house doing something in the fresh air (and out from under foot, demanding that their breakfast be delivered to their rooms promptly and having mom wash their clothes and make their beds).

So there IS an up-side to OWS to haggard parents of parasitic children.

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, I suspect OWS doesn't even think about laws. To them, it's all a huge tantrum: "this is what I want and I want it now! And since I'm the most important person in the world (my self-esteem class taught me that) I should get what I want."

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, How wrong you are! They are a vast movement (trillions strong) of brave and noble thinkers who could remake the world into a upotia if only we would let them! Why won't anyone let them?!

//wipes away tear

Writer X said...

...and when Susan Sarandon showed up in her limo to support the OWS crazies? Priceless.

I look forward to sitting back and enjoying the freak show.

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, That's exactly what this is and that's why this is so bizarre. OWS is the end result of two generations of liberal training in self-esteem: they are a group with no idea what they really want, with no plan to get it, and with huge selfish egos which cannot take not getting everything they want whether they can name it or not.

This is what liberalism has become. "Somebody fix everything!"

AndrewPrice said...

LL, True. OWS must be a Godsend to these parents to get their precious little smelly failures out of the house for a while.

I do take issue with one thing though, there is no evidence that anyone at OWS ever gets their clothes washed.

AndrewPrice said...

Writer X, That is indeed rich! (Pun intended.)

I can't wait to see how absolutely nothing of consequence will happen today yet how they will still claim dramatic victory. I'll bet we hear how this revived the movement and now makes them a serious player (at a time when the Tea Party, we are told, has vanished off the face of the Earth... except where it's knocking down MSM-approved Republicans).

BevfromNYC said...

What do we want? We don't know
When do we want it? NOW!!

So far so good in NYC. No one got shut down on their way to work. Sadly, I might add ;-) But then it's raining and I figure the OWS'ers didn't want to be out too early since that might make them appear as if they had a job or something. Noon is early enough...

T-Rav said...

Andrew, that's exactly how they think. I remember last fall some OWSer being interviewed who wanted the government to pay for all his college tuition. "Why should the government be doing that?" "Well, because...it's what I want." OWS in a nutshell: The government should give us everything we want.

T-Rav said...

I'm starting to get the feeling Bev is deliberately double-posting to drive up the comment count around here. I smell a conspiracy....

Joel Farnham said...

Andrew,

I can actually visualize a parody of a movie like AirPlane! with a stereotypical OWS character. In fact, I see a merging of an OWS character and a nerd who never left his parent's basement. OWS aka Adult Baby Syndrome could be a movie title.

Tennessee Jed said...

thoughts: 1) your description of how socialism has failed is among the best and most concise I've ever read. I calim the Commentarama right to steal it and file it away for future use!

2) I think one of the reasons OWS has failed so miserably is it appears obvious it was concocted by the Obama strategists as a campaign year antidote to off-set the tea party. In addition to it being nonsensical, and obviously manufactured. A lot of people are seeing through the charade. I happened to catch a segment last night on one of the Fox shows where Dick Morris mentions how Obama's favorability rating has finally dropped to be more in line with his job approval numbers. He's going negative and bullshit and it shows.

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, That was always the problem. Most commuters are at work between 7-9 AM. OWS doesn't get out of bed until 10-11 AM (on a good day). That makes blocking the morning commute difficult.

Now they might try to stop people from getting home, but that would be really stupid. For one thing, that will make people violent. For another, that will actually drive people to go spend money at bars and restaurants -- breaking their "general strike."

Also, it is asking a lot (even of truly dedicated revolutionaries like OWS) to go out into the rain!

OWS Mole said...

Bev, That's like an awesum slogan.


Wat du we want? We don't know, but that don't matter!

Wen du we wants it? Like, NOW or faster, dude!

BevfromNYC said...

T-Rav - First you accuse me of being an evil twin and now you think I'm double-dipping! Well, Occupy this! ;-Pbpbpbpbpbp (I think that "spells" a "Bronx cheer"!)

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, That's them all right. They look around their lives and look at the their wishlist and decide "why not?!"

There is zero thought given to anything else or anyone else. They simply want what they want and they don't care how it's given to them so long as they get it.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, I don't see any double posts. I think you're imagining things.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, I don't see any double posts. I think you're imagining things.

AndrewPrice said...

Joel, We have absolutely reached a point of parody. If I worked at SNL, there would be a regular OWS feature every single weekend showing how stupid and pointless and inept they are.

T-Rav's Psychiatrist said...

Ignore my patient. He's gone off his meds again and had another psychotic break.

AndrewPrice said...

Jed, You may steal that any time! :)

I think you're right that OWS always had a manufactured feel to it. The unions tried the brown bagger thing to offset the Tea Party and that felt horribly fake -- not to mention it showed they are worthless thugs who don't care about litter or the jobs they left behind and who tried to profit from their little adventure. So they needed something new. So they came up with a "spontaneous, college student-led" movement -- OWS. But the whole thing has felt manufactured, especially when you see the old-time radicals running the show and pretending they aren't really running it. Then they got money from the left and endorsements etc. to keep them afloat, which made them feel like astroturf. And then they were afraid to state their goals, which made them sound like fools and liars. And when the popular support they expected didn't arrive, they just got nasty.

T-Rav said...

Bev, I calls them as I sees them. Your Bronx friends'll never take me alive.

AndrewPrice said...

Dear Mole... stay off my lawn!!!

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, Don't mess with the Bronx. . . J-Lo is from the Bronx and she drives a Fiat (in L.A.), ergo she is not someone to be trifled with! Or is it truffled?

DUQ said...

Not those guys again! I thought the human size roach motels took care of them?

DUQ said...

Also, we have yet another scandal brewing. This time the head of ICE has been fired and will be facing jail time along with a couple others. Obama is having a rough year! :D

Unknown said...

Wall Street West (aka San Francisco) is rather quiet this morning. The only official reaction to the call for a general strike was that the ferries from Marin County to San Francisco were shut down for the morning runs only. The ferry companies didn't think it was worth the effort to get the union employees to show up for work, so they just suspended operations for four hours. I checked in with a few of my friends in the retail area around Union Square and in the Financial District, and nobody seems very worried. Business as usual. If a general strike were actually going to happen anywhere, San Francisco would have been that place. So far, no strike.

Meanwhile, across the Bay in Oakland, police are prepared for an onslaught of what the OWS movement is really all about--rioting for the hell of it.

BevfromNYC said...

T-Rav - Have you ever heard of the breed of kitten called "The Bronx Tabby"? Let's just say it may look harmless, but I wouldn't want to meet one in a dark alley...

BevfromNYC said...

Seriously, as I have stated before, Tea Party groups realized fairly quickly that the way to effect any kind of change was not to stand out in a park and carry signs. It's fun and entertaining, and looks good if you have a large crowd. But it loses it's effectiveness after a while. One must be part of the system to change it. That's why we have evolved into meeting and campaigning for sympathetic (and hopefully not crazy) candidates. And most of our work is being done for local and regional campaigns. It gives the appearance of losing steam, but in fact, most of the people who started out 3 years ago are still very much involved and active.

AndrewPrice said...

DUQ, No such luck. And the winter didn't get them either. So look for a return to Rapey-Park this summer.

I read something about the ICE scandal this morning. Add another one to the list. The Democrats are actually getting worried that this is having a strong impact on how people view the government. Ya think?

Also, as Jed noted above, with Obama going negative and his personal popularity falling, things could shake up very quickly in this election.

AndrewPrice said...

Lawhawk, That's hilarious. So in a city that is predisposed to being an OWS city, they can't even pull off a minor strike. You would think that would be a sign to give it up. But I guess the real question is, what else are they going to do with their time?

I can imagine it will be a solid day of rioting in Oakland. That seems to be par for the course out there. I guess they view it as sport.

T-Rav said...

I had Oreo truffles once. They were awesome. I definitely prefer them to J-Lo. (What's her appeal, anyway?)

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, That is the precise reason I have faith the Tea Party will succeed -- because they are one of the few movements in American history to grasp how the system really works. Everyone else thinks that showing up in a park and holding signs will get the powers that be to take note and change their ways. But that's false. The powers that be only make changes when they want those changes to happen. And they have all the advantages: (1) they control all the levers of power, (2) they have the money to live happily while the outsiders must do this in their spare time, (3) the public by and large does what it's told, i.e. 80% of the population are sheep, and (4) they know that you will grow tired and will quit if they just deny you long enough.

But the Tea Party has gone a different route. They are infiltrating the powers that be. They are step by step claiming the levers of power which control the Republican Party. And once they have that, they will can make the changes they want and the powers that be can't stop them.

OWS never understood this because they are too self-absorbed to realize how all the other players will react. The Tea Party people realized this really quickly and plotted an alternative course.

And you're right that it doesn't look sexy, but sexy is never what gets it done. The richest businesses aren't the ones making the coolest toys, they are making the boring things everyone needs. The teams that do well in sports aren't the teams that buy the sexy stars, they are the teams that buy the solid no-names (e.g. offense linemen) who allow the stars to become stars, etc. Human experience says that success is the result of getting the dirty, unpleasant stuff right... not the glamor stuff.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, Her rear end. Seriously. She was famous for having a shapely tush, which she parlayed into a singing/acting career. She was Kim Kardashian before Kim Kardashian (and with talent).

DUQ said...

I see that some OWS types send envelopes containing white powder to the banks. Fake terrorism threatening to kill mailroom employees, very nice.

Unknown said...

Andrew: I often wonder if the limousine liberals have a clue as to where San Francisco "union solidarity" went. The union dockworkers killed the shipping industry in San Francisco decades ago. All that's left is the cruise ship business. Everything else went to Oakland. Almost every major business that used to be headquartered in San Francisco has left. Many of them employed large numbers of union employees (Southern Pacific Railroad, Union Oil, Rice-A-Roni, Burgermeister Breweries, and multiple major construction companies). It's hard to get "union solidarity" when the only significant union employers left in town are the hotels (and many of the biggest hotels have avoided unionization). A "general strike," once a serious threat in San Francisco, would now involve less than 10% of all workers in San Francisco. The irony is that the liberals have basically destroyed the union base which would have supported a general strike. The biggest possibility of serious work disruption would be the public employees unions, and so far, there seems to be little indication that there is any widespread support for the proposed OWS/general strike.

EricP said...

>>That is the precise reason I have faith the Tea Party will succeed -- because they are one of the few movements in American history to grasp how the system really works.>>

Finally, teachers' slow removal of high school Civics classes works in our favor. Way to inadvertently thin the herd for our movement, the one who actually studies outside of the commie curriculum.

AndrewPrice said...

DUQ, Trying to kill/scare mail-room workers is always a great way to win over people and show your respect for the common man.

AndrewPrice said...

Lawhawk, That's interesting. It's fascinating both because it shows that when the unions are give serious political power in a city, their policies end up destroying the unions by driving away the employers, and it's fascinating that a town as liberal SF seems so indifferent to that. It really does show that they don't want to practice what they preach.

It's also interesting to think of how "industrial" SF once was. Today I think of it as a tourist center with a few financial hangovers, but not much else except a high-tech neighbor.

tryanmax said...

Andrew, Colbert did some funny pieces about Occupy WS LINK That one really shows how incapable the movement is. (Not a good thing for a bowel movement.)

T-Rav said...

Bev, that's why I'm currently working on my plans to instigate a war between the Bronx and Queens felines. Once they're both weakened, I can move in for the...wait, this is supposed to remain private. Forget I said anything.

AndrewPrice said...

Eric, I'm seeing a true irony in all of this.

Liberals promote the removal of actual knowledge from education. They also promote the removal of teaching kids the importance of actually achieving something rather than just feeling good about wanting something.

Conservatives still beat this stuff into their kids, either through private schools or just by supplementing their educations at home.

The end result is that conservatives remain knowledgeable and capable of analyzing a problem, forming a plan, and executing the plan to achieve their goal. Liberals, on the other hand, can't do that anymore.... they don't even realize they should be doing that. Instead, they are now all about whining about something they don't like and hoping somebody else hears their whining and fixes it. They have essentially become helpless as a political force.

This is a fascinating turn of events.

T-Rav said...

LawHawk, I guess that's what happens when you jack up the minimum wage and the average cost of housing and do other stuff that makes it completely impossible for industry to operate profitably in your city. Sucks for the proletariat.

T-Rav The Mighty (or more likely Andrew) said...

I hereby declare The War of the Cats has begun!

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, When even Colbert has abandoned "the idealists" of OWS, you know they've hit rock bottom.

tryanmax said...

T-Rav, your plan sounds highly reminiscent of Gangs of Mew York.

wahsatchmo said...

"Socialism broke the work ethics of the people it ensared..."

I never thought about this aspect of socialism before you so succinctly pointed it out, but man, is that ever true. I immediately thought about the USSR's grain policies in the Ukraine where no matter hard the laborers worked, the state essentially took all of their food production and left them to starve. The only way to survive was to lie, cheat, and report your neighbors to the state. Hard work earned you nothing.

And this is what OWS admires.

BevfromNYC said...

Wahsatchmo - Starving people is THE best way to control them. Any dictator worth his salt knows this. Starving people do not have the energy to fight against you. They can only fight to get food.

AndrewPrice said...

wahsatchmo, Glad I could help!

Yep, socialism changes people's behaviors for the worse. It teaches them that hard work does not pay, only dishonesty pays. After a generation, you end up with a society of people who have never given an honest day's labor in their lives and literally have no idea how because no one around them in living memory ever has. So even when the socialist system is brought down and they find themselves in a free society, they simply lack the work ethic to succeed.

At the same time, the people who thrive under socialism are the thieves and liars. So when the system collapses, the people who end up on top are the crocks.

That's the worst possible way to run a society and it's a horrible way to start a new society when the socialist system inevitably collapses.

This is why places like Russia can't get their act together even today because their people don't understand concepts like hard work and the connection between hard work and success, and because their movers and shakers are all their worst crooks.

And yes, this is what OWS would have us emulate here. Sick, isn't it?

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, That's true. Stalin in particular used three forms of control:

1. Starving his people because it kept them focused on survival rather than revolution.

2. He forcibly mixing the ethnic groups in each territory and then favoring the minorities over the majorities. This kept everyone at each other's throats and prevented any region from uniting against him.

3. Group punishment. The NVKD and then the KGB would turn neighbor against neighbor and family against family by threatening to punish the people around you.

All very effective.

BevfromNYC said...

Tryanmax and T-Rav - Yes. "Mews of New York" highly-regarded kitty litter-ture!

CrispyRice said...

Yaaaaaawnnnnn... is something going on today?? Snooooooore....

AndrewPrice said...

Crispy, How dare you ignore OWS! They will not be ignored. . . hey, why is nobody listening? Is this thing on? Testing... hello... me me me me... I want, I want. Hmm.

Must be censorship!

CrispyRice said...

LOL!!

T-Rav said...

Andrew, that's a pretty good summation. Unfortunately, it indirectly contributed to the virulent Russian nationalism we're seeing today on the fringes, because naturally the people in Moscow and St. Petersburg got mad that Ukrainians, Armenians, etc. were getting preferential treatment, so there was a rapid move toward Russian chauvinism as the house came tumbling down. One more great thing communism did for the world.

T-Rav said...

Oh, and by the way, five anarchist plotters have been arrested today for trying to blow up a bridge in the Cleveland area. Two of them are--wouldn't you know--Occupy organizers. Of course.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, Unfortunately, actions typically have long-term unintended consequences, and times of upheaval and evil in particular have long term negative effects.

Had Stalin not done these things, Russia and Eastern Europe (particularly Hungary and Romania) would be much more stable today. The same is true in the Middle East where the British did something similar after they carved up the Ottoman Empire -- they joined ethnic groups into single countries to keep them fighting each other. The result is a modern world with massive ethnic tensions which wouldn't have been the case if these people had simply been left alone.

Similarly, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, meant to weaken a strong Soviet neighbor, fueled modern Islamic terrorism. Reconstruction spurred race hate in the South which Jim Crow enshrined in generations. Colonial and then Soviet tinkering in Africa turned the continent into a murderous basket case. Leftist revolutionaries in South America caused narco-gangs. Etc.

Each of these things introduced long-simmering poisons into whole populations, which we are still struggling to cure today.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, I'm not surprised. Terror will be their next weapon since whining didn't work and since they don't know what else to do. You see this already in the Animal Liberation types, the Earth-First types, and the communist/anarchist types. And since they are all fellow travelers, OWS won't be far behind.

StanH said...

Barry’s Brat are an imperative for the election of 2012 in my opinion. They must be permanently linked to the democrat party, by using their own words against them, with their proclamations of support for OWS.

The Tea Party is alive and well, working on changing the system, not cleaning the local parks, but cleaning out Washington, statehouses, and city councils.

AndrewPrice said...

Stan, I agree. OWS is playing around, the Tea Party is serious. And we need to keep linking OWS's "agenda" with Obama and the left.

T-Rav said...

I recommend, as always, checking out Iowahawk's twitter feed to see his pithy comments on this "International Workers' Day." I just shamelessly stole one of his tweets for my new Facebook post, so that might keep my afternoon busy.

ellenB said...

OWS is a joke and it's funny that the only press they are getting right now is the bridge in Cleveland and the white powder to the bank.

Notawonk said...

their general mission statement of "mayhem and misery!" needs defining. if they'd only paid attention to the 1% they'd know this important lesson by heart. folks with a real agenda get things done. those who are just pretending to have an agenda because someone is bankrolling them, get what they deserve (in this case our pointing and loling).

rlaWTX said...

Be careful when you talk about people living with their folks (or grandfolks)! We aren't all slackers! ;) Relatedly, the Midland paper ran a story on housing in the Basin - or the lack of it. I'm a big fan of "supply and demand" in theory, but this active participation in the process is kinda rough!!!
OH! I just realized - we were supposed to picket and riot for free housing!!! Duh! Lemme consider the pros & cons- Pros: ummmmmm; Cons: Lots of concealed carry around here; most of the house-poor folks have jobs. OK, never mind, I guess I'm not much of an Organizer, and I'll never be President - back to work!

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, Iowahawk is usually good for a laugh. He's a very clever cultural observer!


ellen, That's all OWS has at this point, since they can't even seem to bring more than a couple hundred morons together.

T-Rav said...

rla, I think you're doing it wrong. You're supposed to be happy about getting free stuff.

AndrewPrice said...

Patti, That is one thing OWS should be commended for -- they have given us much to laugh at. It's better than any modern sitcom. Indeed, it should be a sitcom -- "Idiots in the Park":

"Dude, we want stuff."
"Like what do we want?"
"Like, I don't know, just stuff."
"Dave's not here man."
"Huh?"
"Nevermind. I hate rich people, they keep me down."
"Down where?"
"I don't know, just down, like not owning stuff."
"Man, I hate that too. I should get everything I want."
"Me too."
"Dude, we should run the world."
"Hey, let's go crap on a cop car."
"Dude, that'll show the world."

Notawonk said...

^ andrew is #winning today!

AndrewPrice said...

rlaWTX, I have nothing against people living at home. Far from it. Having European relatives, I think the idea is great of families living together. Plus, it often makes economic sense.

The problem is really the ones who never had the motivation to leave home physically or mentally. They basically want to stay wards of their parents and/or wards of the state their entire lives. That's who OWS is -- people who gave up before they started and not only want everything handed to them, they want to punish those who actually tried to achieve something and they want to be treated with the same respect and rewards as those who have earned it.


"lots of concealed carry around here" -- LOL! Bravo! Very solid reason for not demanding other people's stuff! :)

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, rlaWTX is doing it the right way! She has properly assessed why it's smarter for OWS to stick with big liberal cities to make their obscene little demands! Because they are less likely to get shot.

AndrewPrice said...

Thanks Patti! :)

BevfromNYC said...

Seeings as how today is a huge socialist holiday, there are huge Labor Day parades and Labor rallies all over the socialist world.

How much you want to bet that the OWS will use photos of these labor rallies to bolster claims that they are being effective? We all these parades and rallies have taken place for generations now, but I just bet...

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, I think that's exactly why they picked today -- because they can piggyback on rallies all over the world. In most of Europe, they'll be protesting austerity and cuts to union wages. In China and South America, May Day is huge for their leftists.

So I very much think OWS picked today in the hopes of getting credit for what would have already happened. But the sad truth for OWS is that no one cares about them. . . they are a joke.

T-Rav said...

I'm all for people bringing in their grandparents or elderly parents to live with them when they become unable to live on their own. That's what we did with my great-grandma during the last couple months of her illness. But the young punks living in mom and dad's basement when they're in their 30s....um, no.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, You anti-basementist!

rlaWTX's whisper said...

[if you live in the spare room because apartments are exorbitant, and you're putting yourself through grad school, and you work for a church in a budget crunch, and you're in your 30s, and you're not a punk, is it OK then???]

AndrewPrice said...

rlaWTX, That's ok! :)

Don't listen to T-Rav, his psychiatrist says he's off his med again.

rlaWTX's cats said...

whew... we didn't want to have go on a diet!

T-Rav, listen to the nice doctor and take your Tic-Tacs...

Ed said...

I love your use of "Mayday" rather than "May Day" in the title. Very funny! Lol!

Ed said...

T-Rav, Don't pick on basement dwellers! Basement dwellers can be good people -- like rla!

Pick on the lazy slugs of the OWS who want everyone else to support them.

AndrewPrice said...

Thanks Ed! I thought it was funny.

Ed said...

I posted this in the other thread, but Obama is now in Afghanistan trying to make himself seem like a great military leader. What a jerk!

Unknown said...

Here's some more irony from San Francisco. Things remained relatively calm throughout the day with only minor incidents in the areas most subject to Occupy anger--the high-end retail districts and the financial districts. So where was some real damage done? The Mission District, nowhere near the wealth downtown, and largely comprised of Hispanic immigrants and small shop owners trying to make ends meet. A breakaway Occupy contingent headed out to the Mission, and trashed 30 small businesses, restaurants and cars on the streets. In other words, the scumbags attacked some of the very people they're supposed to be in sympathy with. Hopeless!

rlaWTX said...

Spare Oom - not the Basement!

Ed said...

rla, If you live in the spare room and not the basement, then you are exempt from T-Rav's non-drug induced diatribe! He clearly referred only to people who live in their parent's basements! :D

Doc Whoa said...

I actually bought some stuff today just to break their boycott, kind of like how I turn on all the lights on Earth Day!

AndrewPrice said...

Good for you Doc! Good for you! :)

AndrewPrice said...

Ok folks, let's leave basement (and spare room) dwellers alone! Being with your family and finding a way to save money are both very conservative ideas. :)

AndrewPrice said...

Lawhawk, I'm seeing zero effect today from OWS -- total waste of time.

AndrewPrice said...

Ed, Did you expect anything different? The man ran a laughable ad thumping his chest about how no one except him would have had the courage to kill bin Laden.

tryanmax said...

For no (good) reason in particular, I watched Frontline tonight. I don't know if they were trying to do Obama any favors by running a special on the 2008 financial collapse, because they painted a picture of a cadre of inexperienced children scrambling to do a job they never prepared for.

One thing that they made abundantly clear: the administration regarded the collapse primarily as a PR and communications issue. Now, you all know that those two things are totally my bag. But I'm not fool enough to think that real problems can be solved with the proper amount of spin.

I'll give Tim Geithner credit for one thing: he was smart enough to know that you don't want to spook an already spooked market. But he still saw it as solely a confidence issue. He doesn't seem to have understood why the market reacts to certain government actions with fear and other actions with confidence.

The entire administration behaves as though they are wandering lost in a Wonderland, knowing only that one side of the mushroom makes you taller and the other side make you shrink, but having absolutely no idea why it is so.

tryanmax said...

Punks, professors, kitties; none shall escape T-Rav's wrath.

tryanmax said...

Oh, and basement dwellers (but that is included in "punks").

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, I'm generally a fan of frontline even though I know they're pretty far leftwing.

On the meltdown, I think in truth a big part of it was a confidence problem because our entire banking system relies on confidence, i.e. there is little "hard reality" to it and so much of it is premised on promises. Once those promises break, then the whole things collapses.

But the real problem is that more than just confidence was wrong with the system. There were serious underlying problems. And I don't think Geithner knew how to fix the problem because the fix was necessarily painful and no administration could withstand that kind of pain.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav is a wrathful dude... ;)

T-Rav said...

Yes, wrath is indeed my sin. But if you found Gwyneth Paltrow's head in a box, how would you react, might I ask? How would you react?

And Ed and rla, I make no exemptions for the "Spare Oom."

tryanmax said...

By no means did I mean to suggest that confidence is no part of the banking system. It totally is. That's practically business 101: things have value because people believe they have value. But once that belief about a certain commodity is dispelled, hardly any amount of spin will turn that back. And since the banking collapse was mainly due to derivatives trading--a product wholly fabricated by the finance industry--it was a little impossible to re-purpose those derivatives into something that people might consider valuable once more. That was what the administration failed/refused to recognize: that the loss of confidence was for a good, tangible reason.

tryanmax said...

RE: Frontline -- their production value is incredibly high. They make the network shows look cheap in comparison. And I will agree that, even though there is a leftward slant, I wouldn't call it a spin.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, Is that a trick question? I would think the dominant emotion of most people would be, "whatever, it's not like she was using it."

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, I'm a fan. What's I've found with Frontline is that they have great production values, solid journalism and excellent organizational skills. Where they fall apart is always the last couple minutes when they offer their own solution, which is inherently nonsense.

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, I wouldn't dismiss them as stupid by any means. I think in truth, there were only two solutions to the problem: (1) let the big banks fail and help the next tier to step up and replace them or (2) take the debts off the bank's books and put them on the taxpayers.

Neither is a good solution politically. So I think Obama did what Bush would have done -- they tried to create a third way by rescuing the banks a little at a time with a mix of bailout money and promises (backing). What they ended up doing was keeping the system alive, but not healthy.

T-Rav said...

Andrew, this is no laughing matter. Were this to actually come to pass, the future of Coldplay and Iron Man would be in serious jeopardy. And if loving those two things is wrong, I don't wanna be right.

tryanmax said...

I don't really mean to call anyone stupid, and it's impossible to tell how much of Frontline's report is actual and how much is interpretation, but the impression the show left me with is that the White House was treating the bank meltdown as a PR issue first, and a real crisis second. Now, maybe Geithner was just speaking the language that Obama and Axelrod could understand, but the show made it pretty clear that it was he who talked everyone else back from much more drastic maneuvers using the language of PR. In any case, leaving Geithner out of the question, the instincts of the administration as a whole were painted as that of a communications firm.

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, That wouldn't surprise me in the least if they saw it as a PR thing first and a genuine crisis second. But I do think that ultimately the real problem is that there simply was no solution to this crisis that voters would accept, so they tried to create one -- some money combined with injecting confidence. And that didn't solve the problem, it only delayed the problem.

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