Do you remember a time when there were two competing protests like the Tea Party vs. the Occupy Wall Street crowd? I don’t. Sure, we had the anti-war protesters during the Bush years. Protesting against killing is understandable. Even if you thought the war was necessary, only a loon would look forward to war. What I’m talking about is protests against the basic form of government. The Tea Party wants smaller government. The Occupy crowd wants bigger government and smaller corporations (I don’t really see how that’s going to happen since it is government that enables big corporations).
There were big protests in the 60′s, but not competing protests.
This is the first time in my lifetime that a President has inspired so many people to protest against what they believe to be an unjust system.
Doug Schoen, a democratic pollster gives insight into the Occupy Wall Street Crowd
“Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn’t represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.”
I saw it coming. Most conservative saw it coming. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Obama would be a horrible failure as president. Victor Davis Hanson summarizes all are fears realized.
The skeptics of 2008 proved prescient; those who demonized them should be embarrassed. And we should remember that candidates, of both parties, will govern mostly as they campaign. Slips are not indiscretions, but often will prove in hindsight windows of the soul…Read the summary
Here’s were those who were paying attention were in 2008.
The uniter…not going to happen. He never once made common ground with his political opponents.
Foreign affairs…he is naive and doesn’t understand human nature
No real-world experience…this president fails time and again because he has not idea how the world operates out of the sheltered little sphere that he grew up in.
No common sense…see the previous post
Race baiter…Even worse than we imagined
Affirmative action president…He skated through life with people expecting little of him. Now the whole country is suffering.
Class warfare…He attacks “millionaires and billionaires” for political gain. It’s not going to work in this country because we are Europeans. No matter how much this president talks, we will never be socialist fools.
Conservatives know that we live in a republic, not a democracy. In contrast, liberals are always pushing for democracy. Liberals or Progressives (or whatever the left calls themselves these days) want democracy only until they are in control. Then they advocate for administrators who are free from politics.
At the core of “Progressivism,” as it was called then and is again today, was the view that more and more of the business of individuals and society was best supervised by expert administrators sealed off from the transient pressures of popular politics. So at the same time that Progressives championed “more democracy” in the form of populist initiatives, referendum, and recalls, they also developed a theory deeply anti-democratic in its implications. As the famous phrase from Saint-Simon had it, “the government of men is to be replaced by the administration of things.” But this undermines the very basis of democratic self-rule. No one better typifies the incoherence of Progressivism on this point than Woodrow Wilson, an enthusiastic theorist of the modern administrative state who couldn’t clearly express why we would still need to have elections in the future. In Wilson’s mind, elections would become an expression of some kind of watery, Rousseauian general will, but certainly not change specific policies or the nature of administrative government…Stephen Hayward, The American
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Crazy Progressives on October 12th, 2011
Start with Herman Cain who wants to simplify taxes and bring down debt
Rick Perry touting bipartisan support to balance budgets in Texas. He is talking about jobs in the energy sector.
Romney says he can lead, unlike Obama.
Perry’s plan: back to domestic energy. Reduce regulation. Says Romney has been running for 6 years.
Michelle Bachman: asked about Wall Street executives not going to jail. As she tries to explain that the problem is Washington, she was interrupt by the liberal questioner.
The question is transferred to Newt Gingrich who agrees with Michelle Bachman. Newt then goes after the media.
Ron Paul is then asked about the Fed. He says the artificial booms are the problem.
Rick Santorum’s turn: says manufacturing jobs if the business climate is changed. Zero percent tax on manufacture and get rid of regulations. Then agrees with Perry about domestic energy jobs. He says his plan is the only one that has a chance to pass.
…temporary tax reductions and increases in government spending can jump-start the economy and sustainably boost employment and personal income may seem like a politician’s dream policy. But the repeated failure of these short-term interventionist policies to deliver the promised economic benefits should make politicians think twice. Reliance on them has already cost dozens of members of Congress their jobs and two postwar presidents a second term.
The genius in the White House sees failure, ignores it and charges with arrogance thinking he knows how to do it correctly. He winds up repeating the mistake we should have already learned and we are left with the bill.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Economics on October 11th, 2011
Can you imagine if these idiots ran the country? First of all, it would take twice as long to say EVERYTHING…because the crowd repeats every word like a mindless electronic toy. Secondly, they make decision based on consensus. Anyone who has ever run a company knows that won’t work. Of course, these are out of work losers who don’t even have jobs. That explains a lot.
George will borrows a phrase from William F. Buckley about John Kenneth Galbraith to describe Elizabeth Warren. (Don’t re-read that…just read the quote).
(Elizabeth Warren is ) a pyromaniac in a field of straw men
Elizabeth Warren is one of the geniuses (running for Senate as a Democrat) that says rich people need society to prosper. No shit, Sherlock.
She then uses the complexity of a society with 350 million people to say your money really isn’t yours…it’s society’s…and she and her Harvard buddies should determine who gets what.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Quotes on October 8th, 2011
I was never a fan of Apple and their business model, but I’m a fan of what Steve Jobs accomplished. He was a man with a vision and the drive to see it through. The world has lost a great man.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Common Sense on October 6th, 2011
People take a day out of their weekends to protest at Tea Parties. Their message is “Don’t take my freedom.”
The Occupy Wall Street crowd sits around for days on end during the work week and their message is “Give me your money.”
Here is a sample of their mindset:
Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.
Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.
Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
Demand four: Free college education.
Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America’s nuclear power plants.
Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.
Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.
Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.
Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in Crazy Progressives on October 6th, 2011
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