Category: #Occupy

Dennis The Constitutional Peasant Lives! UPDATE: Ali Akbar Says ‘Rep. Lewis, Come On Down!’

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by Smitty

Via email from Warner Todd Huston, who introduces this video:

A bunch of child-like protesters in Atlanta, Georgia refused left-wing Congressman John Lewis — a civil rights icon to many — to be allowed to address the crowd this weekend. The whole scene is reminiscent of the worst, hackneyed, new agie-styled preschool program devised for 5-year-olds by one of the most idiotic leftist imaginable. But it makes for hilarious video entertainment.


This whole scene recalls:

Dennis: We’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as sort-of-executive officer for the week–
Arthur: Yes.
Dennis: But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting–
Arthur: Yes, I see.
Dennis: By a simple majority, in the case of purely internal affairs–
Arthur: [getting bored] Be quiet.
Dennis: But by a two thirds majority, in the case of more major–
Arthur: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
Dennis’ Mother: Order, eh? Who does he think he is?
Arthur: I am your king!
Dennis’ Mother: Well I didn’t vote for you.

One of my favorite points is that people do not scale. Athenian democracy works in the case of, say, my local Baptist church, because it’s kinda small, we don’t disagree terribly much, and the heavy lifting typically occurs before the vote for all but the tiniest matters.

Hence the nasty existential truth, which plays nicely with Rational Ignorance, that we are a representative democracy.

Update: Ali Akbar offers Lewis a platform!

Update II: Dan Collins plays the Life of Brian card, inviting the question: are we dignifying #OrderingWindowShades excessively with all these Monty Python references?

Update III: Da Tech Guy is also following the story, and has requested comment from Lewis’ office.

Update IV: More at The Rio Norte Line.

#OccupyIowahawk

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During a long phone conversation with Dan Collins today, we talked about “Occupy Wall Street.” I mentioned that the only thing I’d written on the topic was a post praising the restraint of the NYPD in not opening fire on those useless motherf–king protesters.

They’re the kind of commie scum who give commie scum a bad name and my trademark “hypothetical atrocity” rhetoric was intended to signify nothing other than my bottomless well of contempt for such people. Therefore if I were the commander of the NYPD riot squad, my orders would be to open fire and shoot to kill. We’d make Kent State look like a Sunday school picnic. The brutality would be something more on the scale of Guernica, complete with Predator drone airstrikes.

However, a career in law-enforcement never appealed to me, so Andrew Sullivan is free to denounce the hypothetical massacre committed under the imaginary command of “what-if” NYPD Capt. Stacy McCain. Sully’s hysterical outrage over my jocular celebrations of satirical bloodshed would only serve to make us wonder if he ever had any sense of irony, or whether it was drummed out of him by his professors at Harvard.

So while the anarchist maggots infesting Lower Manhattan continue to fascinate bloggers like Weasel Zippers and Jammie Wearing Fool, I’ve been too busy trying to cover the 2012 GOP presidential race to pay much attention to the uproar, hubbub and brouhaha.

That’s when Dan told me about a real social injustice: After years of providing quality satire for a global readership of millions, Dave Burge’s total earnings from his world-famous Iowahawk blog have not yet reached $500. The 1% of wealthy corporate bloggers have hoarded all the PayPal contributions, while the 99% of proletarian satirists like Comrade Dave have been deprived of their fair share of bloggola.

When Dan told me this, I was astonished. “You’re kidding me — $500? Tucker Carlson spends more than that for lunch most weekdays. Hell, even Ace of Spades wouldn’t bother to do more than a snarky headline and a “meh” for less than $100 a day. Surely it can’t be true that Iowahawk’s total earnings for his ‘Beer Fund’ haven’t yet reached $500.”

But Dan insisted that, indeed, the oppressive forces of Corporate Blogging had conspired to deprive Burge of the Means of Satirical Production, and that high officials of the Obama administration were “all in on it,” conspiring with Halliburton, Goldman Sachs and Tabitha Hale to prevent readers from making “Beer Fund” donations.

So I went and gave Comrade Dave $20 for the revolutionary cause, and wondered what more I could do to call attention to the plight of downtrodden online humorists. And then it hit me: #OccupyIowahawk!

All we needed was a Twitter hashtag, some protest signs and maybe a gigantic papier-mâché puppet or two, and the world could no longer ignore the oppression of Dave Burge, the Rachel Corrie of the Blogsophere.

Click the image and contribute to the “Beer Fund” Iowahawk Legal Defense Fund. An Army of Photoshoppers™ will emerge in virtual civil disobedience to the System. We await adulatory coverage from Dylan Ratigan, Ed Schultz, Lawrence O’Donnell and the New York Times.

#OccupyWallStreet As A Preview Of GOP 2012 Triumph

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by Smitty

Allahpundit:

The most ridiculous (and, if you’re sympathetic to them, tragic) thing about OWS is that they’re trying to mobilize the left against “the system” at the very moment the left is mobilizing to re-elect the guy who’s in charge of the system.

The system is simply over-centralized. DC’s answer to the #OWS crowd, along with the rest of Americans, should be that “the Man has left the beltway, take up your complaints with your state capital”. We cannot keep flogging this dead, bankrupt horse of Progressivism. We cannot even bring it back as a zombie horse and have it drag the cart some more. This is why transitioning off of federal entitlements, without throwing existing recipients under the bus, seems a more sensible approach.

Reason TV At #OccupyWallStreet

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by Smitty

One is stunned, and left to wonder where these people [Update: yes, the #OWS weenies, not the ReasonTV folks, sorry for the ambiguous definite article] were for any Tea Parties?

There may be some muscle and skeleton somewhere to support the concerns of some that that #OWS is supposed to provide shock troops for 2012, but the bone and beefcake managed to evade the camera effectively, in my opinion.

And, in defense of these guys, I’ve met people at Tea Parties also needing to do some homework.

#OccupyWallNuts Continue Their Epic Struggle Against That One Thing

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by Smitty

Trifecta is well worth your time. The rotating Kirk/Spock/McCoy chemistry of the three amigos plays well in serving up the abuse for the #OccupyWallNuts. I’m giving Whittle the Kirk role here, cheerfully telling the tools to get out of the toolbox and get a job. Green has the McCoy role, working hard, trying to empathize with a sad herd of sheep, and Ott does a Spock-tacular job of synthesizing the two, and offering a warning that the tentacles on the friendly guy handing out the money to support the protest signs that say ‘Brought to you by Cthulhu’ may be an indicator.

Stephen Green's head 'splosion whas captured by a fetching bit of silk.

Meanwhile, over at Heritage, we find this:

Stand aside, citizen-protestors. The Occupy Wall Street movement is about to get professional help. New York City labor unions have decided to join the demonstrations. Members of the Service Employees International Union and the United Federation of Teachers, among other unions, will soon be marching with the protestors.

Why is the union movement making common cause with disgruntled students?

Because these protests are useful vehicles. Unions can use them to marshal support for special-interest policies that benefit them.

Read the whole thing. A private sector union is a company without a product. A public sector union is a civil service mutiny. I’m not opposed to the former, insofar as liberty means the freedom to do even the stupidest things. However, a company without a product must be allowed to feel the winter cold on the bare bottom of their idiocy. Capitalism lives or dies on the feedback. In particular, the private sector unions must be prevented from injecting their idiocy into public sector contexts.

Update: FilmLadd has me doing a double-take:

An even smarter one would be asking how are they planning on using these protesters in 2012 to subvert the elections. My hunch is that these protests aren’t about accomplishing anything right now except to flex their muscles, test out the police, and see which supporters “they” (the White House) can count on.
In short: #OccupyWallStreet is a dry run for November 2012.

Ladd, I hope you are as correct in that prediction as I was on the Palin candidacy. Read the whole thing, where Ladd Ehlinger rips Bill O’Reilly and the rest of the media for laughing at #OccupyWallNuts.

Update II: linked at The Camp of the Saints

Update III: Prof. William Jacobson locates some fine irony about the transition from pure anarchy to union manipulation for #OccupyWallStreet:

How many of the unemployed in the crowd will make the connection between exclusive union shops and lack of right to work laws, and diminished job opportunities? How many will understand that trade unions exist to protect members of the unions, even if it means driving up the cost of products and services to consumers?
As they tearfully mourn the loss of Steve Jobs, how many will wonder why Jobs was so against unions, and fought a long battle to keep unions out of Apple? As they tweet the revolution from their iPhones and iPads, how many will realize that these devices may not ever have come into being but for Apple’s fight against some of the very unions marching along side them?

Update III: Linked at The Lonely Conservative, who, like me, cannot recall any Tea Party clashes with police.

Dear NYPD …

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NYPD resisted the temptation to kill this Commie douchenozzle

Permit me to praise you, courageous officers of the New York Police Department, for your admirable restraint in dealing with the smelly Marxist scum currently infesting your city.

While I haven’t previously bothered to grant any underserved publicity to the vermin involved in the “Occupy Wall Street” protests, I did notice some accusations of “police brutality.”  For a few minutes Sunday, I wrestled with a sudden and nearly overwhelming urge to write an article recommending Medals of Meritorious Service for any NYPD officer who billy-clubbed or pepper-sprayed one of those protest pests.

My notorious tendency toward sarcastic hyperbole was resisted, however, until today Moe Lane linked an article by a progressive blogger praising the anti-capitalist creeps.

“The protesters are what you’d expect, a kind of hippie dippie group of students, anti-globalization activists, and antiwar movement actors. . . . They believe themselves to represent all Americans who are frustrated by politics and finance. Whether or not this is true, what is happening is that there is a belief that their actions matter, that they themselves are moral beings who have dignity and power simply by the very act of self-expression.”
— Matt Stoller, “former Senior Policy Advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute”

What super-human willpower your officers have hitherto exerted is now so apparent that I am compelled to send you this note of praise.

Also, speaking on behalf of decent Americans everywhere, I wish to offer in advance my sympathies for whichever member of your riot squad is the first to break under the unbearable strain. We hope the NYCPBA has provided counseling to officers struggling against the temptation to engage in the “very act of self-expression” by whipping out their 9mm Glocks, emptying the magazine into these advocates of “civil disobedience,” re-loading with a fresh clip, and continuing to fire for effect so long as there is ammunition available and fresh targets in sight.

However, there is only so much that can be accomplished by psychological counseling, and not even the iron discipline of the NYPD can forever suppress the basic instinct that will, I know, finally unleash the pent-up fury the hard-working men and women of your force must feel toward the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters.  Whether the result is merely a few hippie skulls busted by baton-wielding officers or, as I greatly fear, something more like the Ohio National Guard’s historic 1970 victory over Viet Cong sympathizers at Kent State, I just want to say to the officers involved in the unfortunate incident: We understand. We care. We’re here for you.

Sure that I speak on behalf of a grateful nation, I remain

Sincerely yours,
Robert Stacy McCain