"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
by Smitty
This #OccupySF fellow wants to burn down the house:As shown in this graph, actually burning currency will have more than an emotional impact. . .never.
But, hey: let’s not try to cast this silliness as unimportant. It gets at some serious education requirements.
via ypngdotcom on Twitter
And there’s more: Steven Crowder #OccupiesCrowd:
by Smitty
Dear Governor McDonnell,
I submit that it may be time to call ‘nonsense’ on the #OccupyRichmond protest.
The Occupy Richmond group, however, as well as many other Occupy groups across America, are not only demanding to be exempted from the rigorous requirements met by any other group before them, they are being given that exemption in city after city — by politicians either too weak or agenda-focused to do their jobs for all their citizenry.
Richmond City Councilman E. Martin Jewell even wanted a resolution that would make the Occupiers’ illegal actions legal — and surely would have done so except for the inconvenient requirement that he actually act within the rules.
Everything about our country is predicated upon the Rule of Law. No one, least of all those of us who’ve voted legally and participated in lawful Tea Party events, wants to see the right of assembly infringed.
Yet, as with illegal immigration, we see what is a slow erosion of the Rule of Law. Thus, it would worth considering having Virginia lead the way by revisiting laws for lawful public assembly, and re-assuring everybody that, in this country, all of our revolutions are conducted in a positive, peaceful way, by valid ballot, at a ballot box.
Let us not kid ourselves, sir: this #Occupy nonsense is nothing short of a prophecy of where the country is headed, on this current ideological course. No, no, no, a thousand no’s, and again: forget this noise.
Yours in service of the Constitution,
Chris Smith
P.S. I suggest that readers of this post also ping their state governors. It is crucial that some executive leadership be located in this country which supports our Constitution.
via Instapundit
Related:
by Smitty
Furious Fanboys report:
After becoming a huge box office surprise at the end of the summer, Rise of the Planet of the Apes will definitely get a sequel. Deadline has confirmed the news, and that Andy Serkis will see a seven figure deal to return as Caesar. Director Rupert Wyatt will be back as well.
Sissypuss the Blog Kitty has confirmed, with some trepidation, an unexpected twist. Due to the need to pile all the cash in #OccupyResoluteDesks’s Canadian tour bus when it comes through Southern California for tribute, the sequel will consist of a Rupert Wyatt collaboration with Michael Moore on an #OccupyHollywood documentary.
Moore expressed glee that the #Occupy apes already have the story’s scatalogical angle in hand, albeit messily. The only real plot twist to await in all this is how they will pin the blame for societal collapse on Bush.
“Let it sink in: Their protests now need rape shelters. This is actually happening. And New York City lets it go on. . . . [T]he coverage of OWS protests compared to the coverage of tea-party protests is the worst media double standard in recent history.”
— Allahpundit, Hot Air
“These are the people the Democrats and their accomplices in the media stand with.”
— The Lonely Conservative
Michelle Fields has posted her crew’s video of the violence and intimidation perpetrated by the “Occupy DC” mob Friday night:
About the elderly woman you see on the video (3:20) who got shoved to the ground by the “Occupy” mob:
“Her name is Dolores Broderson, age 78. She rode on a bus for 11 hours from Detroit to get there. She went to the emergency room with a bloody nose and bruises on her hand and leg.”
We can no longer tolerate media assertions that this is a non-violent movement. When your purpose is to inspire hatred, to threaten and intimidate, when you trespass and obstruct traffic, when you chant obscenities and deliberately seek to provoke confrontations — no, you’re not being non-violent, no matter how often you claim to be “peaceful.”
But who can expect honesty from such savages? And who can any longer doubt that the mainstream media are acting as accessories to this criminal movement by pretending that the “Occupy [Whatever]” mob’s regular eruptions of violence and criminality are atypical aberrations? Just look at the headlines:
Occupy Protester Arrested In $10M Arson Fire
— KMGH-TV
Occupy Boston Occupies Israeli Consulate
— Ira Stoll
Zuccotti protesters put up women-only
tent to prevent sexual assaults
— New York Post
Fear Of Violence Spreading To OccupySeattle
— Thomas Ferdousi
“Nothing to see here, move along. Just what ‘democracy looks like.'”
— Darleen Click, Protein Wisdom
Yes, in the sense that “democracy” is a mob contemptuous of Western civilization, without respect for private property, ignorant of the Anglo-American Rule of Law tradition, and worked into a fevered frenzy by ritualistic incantations of radical-egalitarian concepts of “social justice” — well, indeed, this is what democracy looks like.
Those smelly hippies probably never even heard of Edmund Burke, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Richard Weaver, Russell Kirk, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, et al.
Perhaps the malodorous mobsters would reply: “We’re not going to pay money for books, you capitalist vulture!” But even if you offered them Leonard Read’s classic essay, “I, Pencil,” online for free, they couldn’t be bothered to spend the time needed to read its 2,229 words. Even if you could force them to read it, however, they couldn’t possibly understand it, either because they lack the intelligence to comprehend basic reasoning, or else because they’ve been so thoroughly brainwashed into the collectivist mentality as to have become actively hostile to freedom.
As I explained last week, the “Occupy [Whatever]” movement is about “Organized Ignorance.” Once you’ve seen the phenomenon first-hand — chanting slogans or doing their ridiculous “mike check” call-and-response routines — you realize that their insistence on speaking in unison is a function of their inability to think as individuals.
“The good news is that more and more Americans are seeing these disgusting creatures in action. It will help Republican candidates immensely in 2012.”
— John Hinderaker, Powerline
Good news? If you look at it from a short-term partisan perspective, I suppose it’s good for independent voters to be reminded of what the Democratic Party’s “base” really looks like. But there is something genuinely tragic, and profoundling troubling, in watching this sorry “Occupy” farce unfold. So many young people have been so miseducated that they can’t tell “heaven from hell, blue skies from pain,” et cetera.
UPDATE (Smitty): Welcome, Instapundit readers!
PREVIOUSLY:
Michelle Fields stands next to a policeman while
covering ‘Occupy DC’ protests, Nov. 4, 2011
Michelle Fields, a young video reporter for the Daily Caller, was assigned to cover Friday night’s Occupy DC protests outside the Americans for Prosperity “Defending the American Dream” conference at the Washington Convention Center. In an interview Saturday morning, Fields described how she was targeted for harassment:
Robert Stacy McCain: You won’t be going back?
Michelle Fields, Daily Caller: I won’t be going back to cover it. I actually don’t feel safe going back to those protests, because they singled me out, they singled out the Daily Caller. I just don’t think it’s safe for me to be back around those people.
They actually had a person covering me all night, for about three hours, with someone walking around with a camera, screaming things out to me like, “You’re worse than Fox,” and attacking me, attacking what I’m wearing. So I won’t be returning.
McCAIN: Attacking what you were wearing?
FIELDS: Exactly, yes. I think they were just trying to figure out ways to upset me — about the clothing I was wearing, where apparently I shop, really strange stuff.
McCAIN: Where you shop?
FIELDS: Exactly, yes.
McCAIN: You were wearing what? Abercrombie & Fitch or what?
FIELDS: They were screaming out that I was wearing [designer] Ann Taylor. So I’m not sure — I wasn’t wearing Ann Taylor.
McCAIN: Oh, my goodness.
FIELDS: They were screaming stuff out like that. They were screaming like, ‘F– Michelle Fields!’
And when I tried to conduct interviews, an individual would jump in front of the camera and stop the interview, or block it with a piece of paper or cardboard, so that we couldn’t tape anything or talk to anyone.
McCAIN: Oh, my goodness. So while they want all the friendly media they can get, in terms of —
FIELDS: Exactly, yes. And so people started chanting, ‘Right-wing extremists,’ while we were trying to interview people, and they talked to people who were part of Occupy DC and told them not to talk to us. So they chanted that, they chanted songs at me that I’m ugly, like ‘U-G-L-Y, you ain’t got no alibi, you’re ugly,’ to me individually, and that I’m a ‘horrible person.’ It was, literally, just attacking me and the Daily Caller, but specifically me.
McCAIN: Wow. Wow. And so they had somebody whose job was apparently to monitor you?
FIELDS: Exactly, yes. So for about three hours, I had someone following me around, harassing me, screaming things out to me. And I actually did not feel comfortable, because at one point there were a whole group of men surrounding me saying, ‘F—Michelle Fields.’ And I went to a police officer and I told him that I felt these people were harassing me. And the police officer said he’d take care of it, but it never ended. These people were harassing me for the entire evening.
McCAIN: Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. These are the enlightened, tolerant, liberal, progressives.
FIELDS: Supposedly.
* * * * * *
UPDATE (Smitty): Welcome, Instapundit readers!
UPDATE II (RSM): Linked by Don Surber, Darleen Click at Protein Wisdom, Dan Collins at The Conservatory, Fire Andrea Mitchell and The Lonely Conservative — thanks! — and welcome, Hot Air readers!
PREVIOUSLY: #OWS Protesters Attempt to Storm AFP Defending the American Dream Summit
WASHINGTON, D.C.
“Occupy DC” protesters just attempted to force their way into the Washington Convention Center where the Americans for Prosperity Foundation is holding its Ronald Reagan tribute dinner for the “Defending the American Dream Summit.” I was in the middle of the scrum of smelly hippies when they stormed the doors and have multiple photos and video which I’m uploading now.
UPDATE: Smelly hippies chant “We are the 99%” while attempting to force their way into the building:
UPDATE II: A couple of AFP supporters who were attending the dinner and had stepped outside to watch the protesters marching, got caught in the mob when the protesters rushed the doors:
You can see Michelle Fields, a video producer for the Daily Caller, next to the policeman.
UPDATE III: Another brief video showing the chanting frenzied mob:
So you have the sights and sounds of “civil disobedience,” and are fortunately spared the smell.
UPDATE IV: Welcome, Instapundit readers! It’s stuff like this that makes you nostalgic for the Good Old Days of real police brutality.
UPDATE V: After the storm-the-doors stunt, the smelly hippies deployed to block adjacent street corners and chant stupid slogans:
A Republican consultant (who shall not be named) said: “I’ve never seen so many losers in my life.” Truly, it was LoserFest 2011.
by Smitty
On the one hand, the substance isn’t terribly challenging. On the other, Alfonzo Rachel still delivers the well-played style. Click the image to view:
Update: And it looks like Steven Crowder has some #OccupyShenanigans coming on Monday:
by Smitty
Allahpundit catches us up on the deterioration of #OccupyWallStreet, but misses the obvious question posed in the title.
So says Time magazine. Meanwhile, thanks to the nasty weather, there were reportedly between 50 and “just over a hundred” protesters in the park this weekend, which means on some days the ratio of “Occupy” oversight committees to actual occupiers is roughly 1:1. No surprise, and not just because a proto-utopia founded by leftists would naturally have lots and lots of redundant government. The more I read about the movement, the more subordinate their political grievances seem to be to the underlying experiment in communal living.
How can people who don’t work form a ‘working group’, I would like to know.
There are some who see dark possibilities for #OWS. When it was pitched down there in the bunker, the decision maker may have heard tales of how these shock troops were going to be the heralds of the revolution that would make the world safe for Social Democracy. A healthy, non-paranoid eye on things with that in mind is perfectly sane.
Not unlikely, however, is that, as #OWS gets a hot blast of climate change over the next few months, it peters out.
‘Working group’. Hah!