Different Day, Same Shit.

Anyone who's kept an eye on the Occupy Wall Street protests may have noticed something a bit odd about most, if not all of the rallies. Or maybe not. With this "something," plenty of people wouldn't be able to notice it. Or a lack thereof.

Yep. A lack of black people.

And this is where most whites moan, groan and think to themselves "oh, THAT AGAIN? You people are never satisfied."

BooMan from Booman Tribune does it up in decent fashion, but I want to approach the issue from a slightly different angle:

1) There seems to be this unspoken obligation for blacks to join up with the OWS movement, if only to even out the whole "middle-class white people with iPhones" visual problem.

2) One of the biggest complaints I've heard regarding OWS was how whites steadfastly disregarded police brutality until they and theirs experienced it. That's part and parcel with most problems black Americans face -- their problems are not worth investigating until ordinary whites are affected by it, too.

3) Remember the "middle-class white people with iPhones" visual problem? When working class black and white Americans see those people at OWS rallies, they see a bunch of people who apparently have the leisure time and financial support to spend their time at a political rally. Meanwhile, working class families of all stripes have to deal with minimum-wage jobs that don't afford them that sort of leisure time or the financial support. And obviously, single mothers can't justify dropping the kids off at a sitter just for an OWS rally or even joining in a rally on break if one is nearby.

4) The police brutality. This is something black Americans have to put up with on a daily basis. They're not going to voluntarily put up with it unless there is something tangible for them that they will directly benefit from. This is not the Civil Rights Movement, no matter how hard OWS supporters try to frame it in that manner.

5) This "sudden" discovery of police brutality by ordinary white Americans. Plenty of black Americans have spoken out about it, yet they were largely not taken seriously until it started happening to OWS protesters. It's something that pisses some of us off.

The biggest failure of the OWS movement in regards to ethnic relations was the organizers not going out of their way to frame it as being all-inclusive to all ethnic backgrounds. Instead, it ended up framing itself as a bunch of middle-class white people holding iPhones while conducting mic checks. And conservatives are more than happy to exploit this with a bit of that ol' "divide and conquer" class division.

And how. Michael Moore picked up a rumor from Rick Ellis' article at Examiner.com (which is a rather sophisticated content mill that prides itself on "local sourced" news -- uh oh...). That rumor happened to be how the Department of Homeland Security had coordinated a massive crackdown of Occupy Wall Street protests across the nation with a number of federal and municipal law enforcement agencies. Breathing life to that rumor was word from Oakland Mayor Jean Quan on how she was on a conference call with other city leaders to put an end to the protests.

As it turned out, that report was all hat and no cattle. Joshua Holland explained how such brainstorming among city leaders wasn't uncommon and that there was no real pressure from any federal agency, let alone from DHS, to bring the Occupy Wall Street protests to a close. The Examiner.com story came courtesy of anonymous sources. These days, anyone can make up a story and attribute it to an "anonymous source" for credibility's sake. This AP story confirms everything except DHS involvement.

Somehow, Naomi Wolf wasn't inclined to believe that the DHS wouldn't have anything to do with the crackdowns, and instead penned her own op-ed, complete with a sensationalist bent designed to tug on the heartstrings of any reader. The main problem? She picked up the already debunked DHS involvement and ran with it, presumably to juice up the op-ed. And here's one of the many problems with this op-ed:

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

Yet there is no concrete proof that DHS was involved. But if one were to repeat the above line long enough, eventually you'll have the masses repeating it themselves, thereby making an otherwise erroneous statement truth to some and gospel for others. And that's exactly what we need less of -- a fallacy masquerading as truth.

Karoli from "odd time signatures" broke his/her foot into Wolf's literary ass over this issue:

There you have it. Bullshit, spread worldwide, with the full cooperation of so-called journalists. It’ll work, too, because she has enough name recognition that people won’t question her claims.

That's a pretty big problem these days. People with name cred who choose to abuse said cred by peddling bullshit to those who refuse to question their "trusted sources." Sound familiar to you?

And this is where I break away from everyone else who posted their own articles over this issue. I get the sense that maintaining journalistic integrity here is far more important than doing something to address the rampant abuses inflicted on protesters by police at OWS rallies. Perhaps that's not entirely true, but that's the vibe I get when I read a lot of these pieces.

We've spent enough time filleting a journalist hack who was caught fishing for more name cred with a juicy, yet rank piece of literary bait. Meanwhile, there's another OWS protester getting hit in the face with America's favorite condiment.

Chancellor Katehi, your students aren't very happy with you. Not with the way you've handled things recently. Not with stuff like this happening.



Allowing the authorities to do these things to your own students with nary a word in opposition? As the Field Negro would say, that's "House Negro" behavior. From The Second Alarm:

A few commenters and people on Twitter have asked why the chancellor is at the center of this firestorm over the police pepper spraying. Chancellor Katehi approved of the police action (though specifics of what she ordered exactly are still a mystery), and ordered the UC Davis cops to evict the protesters, resulting in the heinous pepper spraying video now plastered everywhere on the web. She has not apologized to the students or worked to remedy the situation — for instance, one student who was pepper sprayed told me she still has health problems after the incident, and no one from the administration contacted her to see if she’s okay. Katehi’s refusal to condemn the police action has only made a bad situation worse.

The dead silence (minus the reporters) speaks volumes. That's a hell of a way to send a message.

This is Dorli Rainey, an 84-year-old participant in the Occupy Seattle protests. A couple of nights ago, she was hit in the face with pepper spray deployed by police. Pepper spray burns. Like hell. Now imagine your grandmother or great-grandmother being hit in the face with this stuff. This picture was taken after she was doused with a milky substance that's supposed to counteract the effects of the spray.*

But that's part and parcel for police departments that have responded to largely peaceful gatherings and protests with intentionally violent crowd control and suppression tactics that are designed to goad protesters into responding with like violence, finally giving law enforcement officials the official pretext to effect even more heavy-handed detainment procedures.

So this is what police departments all over the country do when they want to "restore order" and clear out OWS sites. They bean war veterans in the head with tear canisters and spray elderly women in the face with pepper spray. But the cops don't deserve all the blame -- they had their orders from higher up, after all.

*I expect crude "money shot" jokes from less-cultured conservatives, trolls and other assorted assholes. But since this is DDSS, where trolls are a genuinely endangered species constantly bordering on extinction, these comments may happen elsewhere, but not here.

See folks, there's a good reason why we see Republicans as insensitive, out-of-touch assholes who are only concerned with what they can get out of their constituency and what they can kick back to their favored friends, partners and cronies.

Behold, Clark Durant, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate and, by his own words, "Debbie Stabenow's worst nightmare." Doesn't he know he has to get past Pete Hoekstra, first?

In regards to the Occupy Wall Street movement, Durant said the protesters should “go find a job.” In regards to the wealth gap the movement decries, Durant said, “I think it should be wider.”

The people out there in Zuccotti Park, on the streets of Oakland and elsewhere would very much like to get a job, especially one that allows them to take care of themselves and their families. But the job prospects for ordinary Americans aren't looking so good, and the few jobs that are available don't pay enough for Americans to survive. It doesn't help that your your fellow Republicans are doing their best to hamstring job creation, Clark.

But you don't really care about any of these things. Not your problem, since you're safely on the other side of that wealth gap. After all, you're just a career politician who fancies himself to be "outside politics." I guess that'll get the hearts and minds of the low-information voters who see a new name and automatically think he's the new kid in town.

- Millions of people around the country are honoring the sacrifices made by those in past and present service to our nation's defense forces.

- Meanwhile, Victor Davis Hanson compares Herman Cain's "authenticity" against President Obama's decidedly not-so-black "Metrosexual cool":

Yet most Americans are far more concerned with authenticity than with color or diction, and Cain is nothing but authentic. His speech and manner are as genuine as Obama’s are forced and often phony. His everyman persona and appeal to the working classes scare the liberal elite, in much the same way that Sarah Palin’s did. If Cain were to say “corpse-man” or “punish our enemies,” he would be written off as an embarrassment — in liberal parlance, a “minstrel” and “buffoon.” But if he said “corpse-man” with an academic non-accent and a Harvard pedigree, well, that’s a momentary, understandable slip for a gaffe-prone Harry Reid or Joe Biden.

This is what happens when you mentally masturbate yourself into blindness. Bravo, VDS. *golf clap*

- Jefferson County, Alabama just filed the biggest municipal bankruptcy in recent history. Thanks to putting all-in on J.P. Morgan and other lenders' financial poker game in exchange for sewer project funding, the county ended up in over $3 billion of debt. After seeing a huge source of income evaporate and little to no help from the state government, the county commission decided to fold and declare Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy. A more detailed blog post is forthcoming.

- Joe Paterno and Graham Spanier are officially gone from Penn State. Tim Curley and Gary Schultz may be gone along with them. And Mike McQueary's career options are rather limited right about now. The Board of Trustees are cleaning house.

It wasn't bad enough that Jerry Sandusky was allowed to prey on young boys for the 15 years he was with Penn State. No, there are nasty implications floating around on how the Second Mile charity he founded was really a one-stop shop for Sandusky and others' pedo needs. Oh, and the disappearance of a district attorney who decided not to prosecute Sandusky in 1998 may or may not be related.

I feel awful for Penn State students. The coaches you looked up to are now outed as baby bumpers and cover-up artists. And now the football program will most likely catch hell from any other opposing team for the rest of the season.

- Colin Powell calls the Occupy Wall Street movement "as American as apple pie." Careful, Colin. Those Teabaggers might not agree with you on that one.

"People are concerned now that there is not that source of an income, there isn't that work source that I remember," Powell continued. "What you're seeing with Occupy Wall Street and the others are people who are unhappy and they're directing their unhappiness now toward Wall Street and toward those they think are doing too well in our society."

That's putting it lightly, Colin. Corporate and financial powerhouses have gone out of their way to impoverish and defraud countless millions of Americans. They're pissed over more than just someone doing a bit too well.

Dominic: We're under siege here. The whole city's gone mad.
Finch: That's exactly what he wants. Chaos. The problem is that he knows us better than we know ourselves. That's why I went to Larkhill last night.
Dominic: That's outside quarantine.
Finch: I had to see it. There wasn't much left. But when I was there it was strange – I suddenly had this feeling that everything was connected. It was like I could see the whole thing; one long chain of events that stretched back to before Larkhill. I felt like I could see everything that had happened, and everything that was going to happen. It was like a perfect pattern laid out in front of me and I realized that we were all part of it, and all trapped by it.
Dominic: So do you know what's gonna happen?
Finch: No. It was a feeling. But I can guess. With so much chaos, someone will do something stupid. And when they do, things will turn nasty. And then, Sutler will be forced do the only thing he knows how to do. At which point, all V needs to do is keep his word. And then...

An Iraq war veteran has a fractured skull and brain swelling after allegedly being hit by a police projectile.

Scott Olsen is in a "critical condition" in Highland hospital in Oakland, a hospital spokesman confirmed.

Olsen, 24, suffered the head injury during protests in Oakland on Tuesday evening. More than 15 people were arrested after a crowd gathered to demonstrate against the police operation to clear two Occupy Oakland camps in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

It's been something I've been waiting on since Occupy Wall Street started. I've been waiting for the police to do something so jawdroppingly stupid that it would cause all hell to break loose.

Given the previous animosity between locals and the police force, and the police department's own added zeal in "restoring order," Occupy Oakland could easily slip from being a protest to a full-on riot, one that the mainstream media most likely hope would discredit the entire movement, something that portraying the protesters as slackers, hippies, losers and sexual deviants couldn't do.

Military members, those who have risked their lives in the defense of this country, are held in high regard by many. Having them injured or killed by people who are looked at as abusive, power-hungry bullies and servants of corrupt government and corporate American interests? There's no telling what would happen.

I'd hate to even think of what would have happened if this Marine had died. As it stands, he's in "fair" condition in ICU. One report states he's suffered loss of speech due to the sustained injuries and brain swelling.


As I said before, I can't help but wonder if the Powers That Be™ are hoping for a riot or two to break out at one of these Occupy protests. It'll give them all the pretext they need to really crack skulls en masse, while the mainstream media sighs collectively in relief and go back to investigating Paris Hilton's shopping patterns or something else that's completely inane and self-centered.

- Muammar Gaddafi is dead, after being wounded and captured by Libyan rebels in his hometown of Sirte.

A spokesman for the National Transitional Council (NTC) in Benghazi, Jalal al-Galal, said a doctor who examined the fallen strongman in Misrata found he had been shot in the head and abdomen. Jerky video obtained from Sirte showed a man looking like Gaddafi, with distinctive long, curly hair, bloodied and staggering under blows from armed men, apparently NTC fighters.

The brief footage shows him being hauled by his hair from the hood of a truck. To the shouts of someone saying "Keep him alive", he disappears from view and gunshots are heard.

"They captured him alive and while he was being taken away, they beat him and then they killed him," one senior source in the NTC told Reuters. "He might have been resisting."

- If you plan on attending an Occupy Wall Street protest, you might want to find out if it'll get you canned from your day job. Because that's what happened to Lisa Simeone, producer and host of NPR's "World of Opera" after attending an "occupation" at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C.

That same day, NPR persuaded a company for which Simeone worked to fire her, cutting her income in half and purging from the so-called public airwaves a voice that had never mentioned politics on NPR.

About three and a half hours after the above email was sent, Simeone had been fired by a show called Soundprint as punishment for having been "unethical." Here is her bio on that show's website. And here she is on NPR's.

Soundprint is a show that does touch on politics and includes political viewpoint in Simeone's ledes, but it is not an NPR program and not distributed by NPR. It is, however, heard on public radio stations. Despite the title "NPR World of Opera," that show is produced by a small station called WDAV for which Simeone contracts. Simeone was not an NPR employee. WDAV has not expressed any concern over Simeone's "ethics."

Simeone told me: "I find it puzzling that NPR objects to my exercising my rights as an American citizen -- the right to free speech, the right to peaceable assembly -- on my own time in my own life. I'm not an NPR employee. I'm a freelancer. NPR doesn't pay me. I'm also not a news reporter. I don't cover politics. I've never brought a whiff of my political activities into the work I've done for NPR World of Opera. What is NPR afraid I'll do -- insert a seditious comment into a synopsis of Madame Butterfly?

It makes you wonder why NPR would take such drastic steps to have a freelancer on a show that was merely broadcast on some of NPR's affiliate stations given the boot just hours after she attended the protest. The whole thing reeks of an over-reactive legal department -- or someone who had a grudge and found the perfect excuse to give her the boot.

NPR hasn't done much, if anything at all, to cover OWS. It seems NPR feels more comfortable staying in the good graces of corporate donorship than covering one of the most important and game-changing events in the history of the United States.

BTW, when conservatives parrot claims of how "50% of Americans don't pay taxes," remember that those claims are just that. Over 86% of Americans pay their taxes, a damn sight better than what the Wall Street boys are doing.

In one of my previous blog posts (The School-To-Prison Pipeline), I mentioned something about sycophants and how they spend their time sucking up to and carrying water for the wealthy and powerful while pissing on the poor and weak. Well, here's a prime example of a sycophant in action (also known in other circles as a "ratfucker"):

Since the Occupy Wall Street protest began on September 17, New York security consultant Thomas Ryan has been waging a campaign to infiltrate and discredit the movement. Ryan says he's done contract work for the U.S. Army and he brags on his blog that he leads "a team called Black Cell, a team of the most-highly trained and capable physical, threat and cyber security professionals in the world." But over the past few weeks, he and his computer security buddies have been spending time covertly attending Occupy Wall Street meetings, monitoring organizers' social media accounts, and hanging out with protesters in Lower Manhattan.

As part of their intelligence-gathering operation, the group gained access to a listserv used by Occupy Wall Street organizers called September17discuss. On September17discuss, organizers hash out tactics and plan events, conduct post-mortems of media appearances, and trade the latest protest gossip. On Friday, Ryan leaked thousands of September17discuss emails to conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who is now using them to try to smear Occupy Wall Street as an anarchist conspiracy to disrupt global markets.

The NYPD might have been very grateful he did so, since it involved a proposed demonstration outside NYPD headquarters at 1 Police Plaza. In the thread, organizers debated whether to crash an upcoming press conference planned by marijuana advocates to celebrate NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly ordering officers to halt arrests over possession of small amounts of marijuana.

"Should we bring some folks from Liberty Plaza to chant "SHAME" for the NYPD's recent brutalities on Thursday night for the Troy Davis and Saturday for the Occupy Wall Street march?" asked one person in the email thread. (That past Saturday, the video of NYPD officer Anthony Bologna pepper-spraying a protester had gone viral.) Ryan promptly forwarded the email thread to Loyd at the FBI and Dragos at the NYPD.

But Ryan didn't just tip off the authorities. He was also giving information to companies as well. When protesters discussed demonstrating in front of morning shows like Today and Good Morning America, Ryan quickly forwarded the thread to Mark Farrell, the chief security officer at Comcast, the parent company of NBC Universal.

And his rationale for helping the NYPD and others?

My respect for FDNY & NYPD stems from them risking their lives to save mine when my house was on fire in sunset park when I was 8 yrs old. Also, for them risking their lives and saving many family and friends during 9/11.

Don't you find it Ironic that out of all the NYPD involved with the protest, [protesters] have only targeted the ones with Black Ribbons, given to them for their bravery during 9/11?

I am sorry if we see things differently, I try to look at everything as a whole and in patterns. Everything we do in life and happens in life, there is a pattern behind it.

Lovely. Under the guise of being a good citizen, this self-important individual meddled with Occupy Wall Street by giving authorities an inside first-look on activities organized by other coordinators. In return, I'm sure he expects Wall Street, the FBI and NYPD to remember his calling card whenever they need some cyber-security assistance.

Remember this whenever you see the NYPD interacting with citizens in the following manner:

The most notable aspect of the Occupy Wall Street movement is that it didn't come pre-approved from the loins of mainstream media. It didn't seek permission from the scions of print and television media or wait for the online pundits to bestow blessings upon it. There wasn't any need for protesters to patiently wait their turn until "Very Serious People" decided the movement was worth bothering themselves with, if at all. It took a while for the MSM to finally take full notice of Occupy Wall Street, whether they really wanted to or not.

Yet there are those out there who are still keen on dismissing OWS outright, as though it were some sort of aberration among the masses that fails to reflect upon the rest of America, despite how Americans across the country are standing in solidarity with their brethren in Zuccotti Park. Apparently, David Brooks of the New York Times feels this way about the movement.

Similarly, if you look only at the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements that have been getting so much coverage in the news media, you know very little about the wider America. Most Americans seem to understand this. According to data from the Pew Research Center, they are paying less attention to the Occupy Wall Street movement than any other major story — less than Afghanistan, Amanda Knox, the 2012 election, the death of Steve Jobs and far, far less than news about the economy.

This, despite the amount of solidarity shown across the nation. The above isn't an accurate reflection of the news stories Americans believe are important to them, so much as it's a telling reflection of what Brooks and other "Very Serious People" believe should be worthy of America's collective attention.

Quietly and untelegenically, Americans are trying to repair their economic values.

There's more than one way to dismiss OWS. In this instance, all one has to do is separate the protesters from "ordinary Americans" who are piecing together their shattered financial security, then contrast the "camera-hungry" protesters against other Americans who are "quietly working" behind the scenes. Al-Jazeera, the news outlet that conservatives and "Very Serious People" wanted Americans to dismiss throughout the War on Terror, has a great piece on how the media marginalizes dissenting movements such as OWS.

America went through a similar values restoration in the 1820s. Then, too, people sensed that the country had grown soft and decadent. Then, too, Americans rebalanced. They did it quietly and in private.

The main point driven home is Occupy Wall Street's lack of necessity when it comes to rebuilding the country's shattered finances, as it will be done by ordinary Americans who will surely pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get back to work. Brooks goes so far as to pat Americans on the back for disavowing credit cards and debt without realizing how many Americans had to rely on debt instruments just to survive, and without realizing that being flat busted broke is the biggest reason Americans are ditching credit cards in the first place.

No mention is ever made about the financial sector playing a role in America's economic meltdown or how it encouraged the finance of expensive lifestyles with dubious debt instruments. The role of corporations in shedding jobs as a method of inflating their own worth and executive bonuses goes unmentioned. As far as Brooks and other "Very Serious People" are concerned, these entities weren't responsible for the current economic crisis, therefore such discussions aren't necessary. Instead, fault lies with ordinary Americans who should have known better and a government that constantly gets in the way of "job creators."

The "Very Serious People" are vexed how OWS continues to stand outside of "Serious" influence and ignore "Serious" advice given by "Very Serious" pundits and opinion-makers, most of whom themselves are ridiculously disconnected from the lives and ordeals of ordinary Americans. Brooks himself probably wonders at times why the rabble in Zuccotti Park couldn't just stop being such mindless hippies and piss off elsewhere, so the "Very Serious People" can once again represent America's clearing house of great minds when it comes to solving America's most pressing issues.

Occupy Wall Street represents a method of bringing important issues to light without relying on mainstream media to green-light their voice and without seeing the media repackage said voice for further acceptability among center-right and conservative interests. Not being able to role-play as the arbiters of the angered American voice scares guys like Brooks, because otherwise they'd be paid hacks consigned to the margins of genuine American free speech and political action.

Whenever I think about the various conservative movements, such as the Tea Party and others throughout the years, I can't help but notice how the interests of the so-called "small town America" conservatives seem to dovetail neatly with those of corporate America. Lower taxes, looser (or nonexistent) regulation, greater military involvement, less government welfare and the ability to dictate social morality and enforce religious doctrine on a national scale (except when it inconveniences the Powers That Be™). Okay, so the last two aren't exactly things you'd see corporate America cosigning to, but stranger things have happened.

I hate it when small business stand behind their larger corporate brethren, thinking those lowered taxes are going to benefit them instead of allowing Wal-Mart and others to either run them out of business or buy them out. Ditto for small town Americans who think the entire country can be run on the same shoestring budget faced by their own small municipalities. These same taxpayers shit themselves when their "hard-earned taxpayer dollars" go to help the homeless, but have absolutely nothing to say when those same dollars are poured into law enforcement or military expenditures. When it comes to government functions that specialize in beating, maiming or killing undesirables as a matter of policy, you'll either hear cheers or crickets. The aforementioned social morality issues serve as distractions from the issue of consolidated and concentrated wealth.

It doesn't surprise me the least to see Tea Swillers stand up for the same things that corporate America want. Lower sales and corporate taxes equal higher profits and larger bonuses. Larger budgets for law enforcement insure a standing force better equipped to enforce the laws that largely apply to the "little people" and not the "job creators." The push to get rid of welfare and other "entitlements" gives the self-righteous another social windmill to tilt it, while freeing up federal and state funds for kickbacks and other pet projects. The death of Social Security in exchange for a "stock market-based free market solution" for pensions and retirement provides financial markets with more taxpayer capital to gamble away on Wall Street. The whole self-reliance bit is meant to invoke the country's past as a nation full of rugged individualism, but in reality, it subconsciously prepares Americans for a period of time where the only service available to ordinary Americans is the ghost of Dick Cheney telling you to "go fuck yourself."

Yesterday, Robert Reich posted a straightforward piece outlining the true motives of those behind the general conservative movement, including where conservatives and corporate America want the nation to regress to.

They’d like to return to the 1920s — before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act.

In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants.

In truth, if they had their way we’d be back in the late nineteenth century — before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the pure food and drug act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons — railroad, financial, and oil titans — ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few.

Very few people have a working memory of what life was like before Social Security, worker's rights, minimum wage and other protections were put into place. Ordinary Americans who genuinely believe the nation could do without these things have no idea what it would be like for them if the nation did just that.

Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s — the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the “rot” is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it).

The only people who'd benefit from "doing nothing" about economic downturns are those who stand to benefit greatly from said economic downturns. The Carnegies, Mellons and Morgans of the world benefited from low tax rates and economic policies that allowed them to not just hold the vast majority of the nation's wealth, but also make even greater fortunes through interest payments and other forms of rent seeking, while extracting the maximum amount of labor from average Americans for the least amount of money possible. The end result is an impoverished nation that works for pennies while the moneyed men and women profit from their deeply discounted sweat equity. Their successors currently have over 42% of the nation's financial wealth and 34.6% of the nation's net worth.

Latent filial piety among small town Americans and their employers and the idea that ordinary Americans will someday be the next Andrew Carnegie through sweat equity are the only explanations I can come up with as to why conservatives like to line themselves up with the Carnegies and the like. The former is something I've seen in the Deep South -- essentially, if you do right by the company, then the company will do right by you. This could explain part of why unions aren't particularly welcome in these parts -- if you piss off the company, the company will take a good, long piss on you. This works, in the reference of small-to-medium-size companies where the bosses know the workforce, but at huge, multinational corporations, the idea of filial piety towards an employer becomes something of a joke. These huge companies couldn't give a good fig about you or yours.

The latter implies that with enough hard work, you too could be up there with the big boys. Or at least have a very comfortable lifestyle. Once upon a time, this was possible to pull off, with decent wages and low barriers to entry when it came to starting your own businesses or just methodically saving your money (with interest, even). Today, most of those avenues are closed, and unless you hit a huge lottery jackpot, you're not going to have much chance of being up there with the big boys.* Yet some conservatives hold on to this hope. Others fancy themselves to already being in the comfortable 1%, when they're really just a couple of bad days and bad decisions away from falling from grace.

Then there are those who genuinely believe that if they keep rewarding the wealthy by giving them everything they want, they themselves will be rewarded with "a seat at the table," or at least a few crumbs thrown their way. Social Darwinist doctrine offers this while tapping into America's "inner asshole":

Listen carefully to today’s Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age: Survival of the fittest. Don’t help the poor or unemployed or anyone who’s fallen on bad times, they say, because this only encourages laziness. America will be strong only if we reward the rich and punish the needy.

Have you ever felt the urge to be an asshole to someone just because? Or better still, be an asshole to someone perceived as beneath your own social standing in order to reaffirm and validate said standing? This is what Social Darwinism essentially offers. It exploits the average person's base desire to not want to appear weak or accommodate what could be perceived as weakness. The wealthy represent the strong, talented and successful, while the poor are derided as being weak, stupid and generally worthless. These beliefs benefit the wealthy, as there are a few challenges to their wealth and nothing but a public outpouring of support by the masses who are enamored and even somewhat jealous of their wealth and power. It encourages Americans to become sycophants who curry favor with and avoid doing any sort of harm to the most powerful and successful among them, while showing great disdain to those seen as weak and useless.

Apparently, that's the America conservatives want, whether they say so outright or not. That America runs counter to the general principles of the America envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

Corporate America has little to no interest in helping conservatives usher the "small government America" they've envisioned unless it is to the financial benefit. Conservatives will be disappointed to see the "job creators" strip everything of profit away from them after they've gleefully helped corporate America do the same to liberals and others outside of the conservative ideology.

The Carnegie Corporation and other similar foundations came about only because those people felt they were duty-bound to give something back to the American people. Can anyone say the same for the latest batch of CEOs and CFOs?

*Even the lottery winners are hit hard with federal and state taxes, not to mention the winners' own spending habits. Unless you're careful in how you manage and invest your money, chances are your dreams of being with the 0.5% won't come true any time soon.

I won't go into the man's history, the actions that helped positively shape and mold the nation or the legacy he's left behind. Anyone can research that and come up with an abundance of info. I'll just remind everyone that the MLK Memorial in Washington, D.C. was finally dedicated this past Saturday.

And I'll leave everyone with this, which happens to be fitting with Occupy Wall Street and other movements happening today:

Today, Occupy Wall Street passes the one month mark of making the voice of the American people heard or being whiny, hippy crybabies who need to get back to work, depending on who you ask. As the fall weather slowly degenerates into winter blues, I'm wondering if any of the Occupy protests, let alone the one in NYC, will keep going in spite of the cold. As a southerner largely unaccustomed to cold weather, it's a question I gotta ask.

Meanwhile, the NYPD's shelled out over $1.9 million to cover the costs of patrolling Zuccoli Park and other protest areas, largely for overtime pay. Considering the $4.6 million pick-me-up graciously donated by J.P. Morgan and other Wall Street firms, the NYPD shouldn't be hurting none, financially speaking.

Too bad the average American can't get sweet donations like those. At least the President is trying to do something to give the folks out there a bit of hope. If you want to pin the blame on your being laid off or inability to find a job, you can blame the Senate Republicans and the two Democrats who effectively brought the American Jobs Act to a standstill. Or you can do as the conservatives want Americans to do and start blaming themselves and their own laziness. After all, you can always pull up stakes, move to Alabama and get one of those farming jobs being vacated by the illegal immigrants. Good, honest work....

And to the fine folks at Citibank, Chase, Bank of America and others, having your customers arrested is never a good look for your business, even if they no longer want to do business with you.


And as an added bonus, here's the pre-OWS story of a man who was arrested at a Chase branch for...having his bank-drafted check cashed. See, even the checks drafted by the banks themselves start looking suspicious when they're in the hands of black American and African men and women.

He's a former Marine. He's worked 2 jobs, lacks health insurance, and put in 60 to 70 hour work weeks for 8 years to pay for college. He hasn't had 4 consecutive days off from work in 4 years, and yet he doesn't begrudge Wall Street. He wants the 99 Percenters to suck it up and "get back to work." He's a part of the so-called 53 Percent.

He doesn't realize that he's one unexpected illness, accident or emergency expenditure away from joining the ranks of the 99 Percent. Like most Americans, he's only one or two paychecks away from disaster.

I don't begrudge this man, and what he's done to get where he is in his life is admirable. But gloating over how you're not whining like those other sods while you yourself are only two steps away from joining them leaves a bad taste in people's mouths.

"Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks, if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself. It is not someone's fault if they succeeded, it is someone's fault if they failed," the ex-Godfather's Pizza CEO declared.

This was Herman Cain's recommendation to the Occupy Wall Street protesters, the vast majority who lost their jobs, houses, medical benefits and God-only-knows-what else. Yes, this is the man who wants to be the 45th President of the United States. This is also the guy who claimed blacks are "brainwashed" into supporting the Democrat party, since most black voters won't give him the time of day.

If extenuating circumstances caused you to get laid off from your job, have your home foreclosed and your health benefits taken away, then it's all your fault. Had you been smarter or stronger, none of that would have happened to you.

"They did have something to do with the crisis that we went into in 2008, but we're not in 2008, we're in 2011," Cain said."...These demonstrations, I honestly don't understand what they're looking for. To me, they come across more as anti-capitalism."

This is the sort of tone-deaf victim blaming that pisses people off to no end. It's as though Cain neither understands nor cares about why the protesters are there in the first place and what they've gone through to get to this point. And yet he wants Americans to vote for him.

Here's a PROTIP: If a famous Civil Rights activist wants to speak at your political protest assembly, you should let him speak, especially if you want to expand further support for your cause.

The last thing you should do is bottle him up by spending several minutes deliberating on granting him the right to speak, until he walks off in disbelief.



Between the creepy protest facilitator, creepier "call and response" and the shocking amount of passive-aggressive disrespect for the congressman and Civil Rights icon, I'm at a loss for words.

There's a portion at the end where Rep. Lewis was briefly interviewed, but it's cut off before he starts speaking. If anyone has a full video of this (because I've scoured YouTube for other vids and came up empty), let me know.

EDIT: Thanks to Holise Cleveland III and the Atlanta Heat, I was able to find the following interview of Rep. John Lewis post-assembly.




EDIT: Normally, once a blog post is published, it's left alone after 30 minutes or so passes, warts and all. The original title, "Silenced By Occupying Forces," didn't reflect the subject matter at hand with the accuracy and clarity I aimed for, so it had to go. Apologies to anyone who viewed this before this change was made.

The movement that started on Wall Street is now spreading to L.A., New Orleans, Portland, Philadelphia, Boston, etc,. It's a beautiful thing. The biggest concern about the movement was a seeming lack of a coherent and unified message. Personally speaking, I think it's finally found one with "I am the 99%." It's a neat summation of the wealthy few vs. populous poor and middle-class dynamic that's central to our current socioeconomic woes. The 99% are getting fed up with being squeezed and jerked around by 1 percenters.

Read this and prepare to shed tears. You can feel the pain and desperation these people are going through, just through reading. And there's a lot more of these folks out there in the same position.

Check the #OWS and #OccupyWallStreet search feeds on Twitter whenever you can.

Under the aegis of "improving security," the folks over at the Republican National Committee and Tampa, FL. city officials are lobbying hard for a $55 million federal appropriation, part of which will be used to purchase, install and operate over 200 CCTV cameras during the 2012 Republican National Convention. Among these cameras will be two unmanned aerial vehicles. Because nothing says "we're concerned about your safety maintaining order" than a couple of drones flying overhead. You know, the ones similar to those used for scoping out terrorists targets before we "liberate" them to death with missile strikes. You can't help but think the Occupy Wall Street movement's got some cages rattled over at the RNC -- they don't want something like that to pop up come August 27. I'm sure they'll have the "free speech zones" set up, too.

The following is a brief rundown of what most of that $55 million will go towards:

• 164 cameras able to read a number 3 inches high at 300 meters in the day and identify people and vehicles at 100 meters in the dark. Many of these would be mounted on light poles.
• Two "unmanned aerial vehicles" that could hover for 20 minutes, fly in 20-knot winds and carry cameras with zoom lenses or thermal imaging capabilities.
• 20 helmet cameras with 2 1/2 hours of recording time to document crowd disturbances.
• Six trailer-mounted mobile cameras on booms that rise 20 feet or more, six more breadbox-sized cameras for covert use around high-risk activities, and four cameras that could read license tags in six lanes of traffic at speeds of 100 mph.
• 3,000 additional police officers the city expects to bring in, house, feed and pay during the convention.

I understand a need for safety measures, especially during high profile and sometimes highly charged public events, but I just can't get over how the RNC and Tampa police plan to use flying drones. Once those things were invented for military applications, it was only a matter of time before they found their way in the hands of law enforcement. And the cameras? I'm sure the city will find a good excuse to maintain them as a permanent fixture of the city streets.

Someday, law enforcement officials will find ways to attach tear gas and pepper spray canisters underneath the wings. Call it "deployable pacification."

- It's good to see the "Occupying Wall Street" movement going on strong, even though I have the distinct feeling it will peter out at some point and die with a whimper. I hope it spreads to other cities -- people need to let it be known they won't tolerate being drained and discarded for financial and political gain.

Not everyone's supportive of "Occupying Wall Street." This fucking guy or gal thinks they're all "a bunch of spoiled brats":

This bunch ought to get down on their knees in thanks that America's capitalist Founding Fathers saw fit to protect the privileges of the dumb and obnoxious along with everyone else.

They should also salute the NYPD and all its officers for paying diligent attention to ensuring that peace and harmony reign in their daze of rage. But no.

Blindly directed pseudo-patriotism and an equally blind subservience to authority, no matter how brusque that authority can be. No name on the op-ed piece, but the tone of it suggests someone who likes their brew in bags, if you get my drift.

- I guess all of the "SUPPORT ARE TROOPS" rhetoric goes out the window when it comes to GLBT servicemen. It really showed how classless the Tea Swillers can be. And the President wasn't about to stand for any of it.

Some people are wondering why Obama can't be that impassioned when it comes to standing up for the black community. And others are wondering if Obama would tell any other group to essentially "stop bitching and sack up" like he told the CBC.

- For those who think the anonymity of the Internet is ironclad, read this. Saying the ongoing drug wars in Mexico are "out of control" would be the understatement to end all understatements.

- The Department of Homeland Security is scheduled to move its headquarters into the western campus of St. Elizabeth's Hospital. There's a metaphor in there, somewhere, I know it.

- The way things are going, most sex offender listings won't be worth much. Not when 16-year-olds and guys like these are being thrown on the list. Once you're on that list, it's pretty much "Game Over" as far as your career and livelihood is concerned.

Stay safe out there. It's not just the meat and pork that's killing folks -- it's the gatdamned fruit, too.

If 2,000 Tea Party activists descended on Wall Street, you would probably have an equal number of reporters there covering them. Yet 2,000 people did occupy Wall Street last Saturday. They weren't carrying the banner of the Tea Party, the Gadsden flag with its coiled snake and the threat "Don't Tread on Me". Yet their message was clear: "We are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%." They were there, mostly young, protesting the virtually unregulated speculation of Wall Street that caused the global financial meltdown.

Good point. For a group of mostly elderly, mostly white Americans with a distinct dislike of anything "liberal" or "Kenyan," they do know how to grab the mainstream media by the balls and lead them around like Katt Williams leading Terry Crews around with a pair of pliers on "Friday After Next".

But when it comes to a young and diverse group of Americans fed up with what they see as the hijacking (yet again) of America's wealth and well-being by extraordinarily wealthy and well-connected individuals and groups, the mainstream media didn't take much notice. Most Americans were blissfully unaware of what was going down. At least until the arrests and abuses started happening. "If it bleeds, it leads," indeed.

At least this was all over the social media outlets from the get-go. Just take a look at the #occupywallstreet Twitter feed. People keep saying this event, which started on the 17th this month (and there's no telling how long it will last), has the potential of becoming America's very own "Arab Spring."

And to that end, the police have been very eager to move off and arrest protesters, despite little to no threats of violence on their end.

Just to be clear, it was the police who turned violent. Protesters were dancing, singing, chanting. No reports of violence from any source that I have. I know many of those people. I would be there if I were still living in NYC. I watched quite a bit of the live feed (up until the police confiscated the video and computer equipment, arrested the media team). I saw nothing even approaching violence from the protesters...

Think about damn-near every G-8, G-11 and G-20 summit held, where protesters were pushed off, beaten down and locked up on orders from the higher-ups. Nothing different here. It's all designed to make people so afraid of the idea of protesting that they'd be loath to do it, plus it inoculates a "healthy" amount of fear-dressed-up-as-"respect" for the LEOs. Some of them relish the opportunity to swing the baton every once in a while.

There's a live feed of the protests, provided by AnonOps. Take a look.