The Right Wing Pushback to Occupy Wall Street

I came across this today on my Facebook page:



Only in America do minimum wagers fight for the rights of millionaires to keep their collective foot on the throats of the "have-nots."

A new website has cropped up called, "The 53%." This is a response to the Occupy Wall Street protesters, and according to their cute, little pictures with their signs, they seem perfectly happy working multiple jobs to make ends meet, pay for college and don't understand why the OWS protesters, "want something for nothing." (I put that in quotes because I've seen it on multiple signs.) Their failure to understand what the protests are about is painfully obvious.

This isn't about partisan politics. This isn't about Democrat vs. Republican, Liberal vs. Conservative. This isn't about getting something for nothing. This isn't about iPads or smart phones or new cars. This is about a matter of fairness.

These people are protesting the fact that Wall Street has the government's economic policy by the balls, with one party in their pocket while the other party plays along as well. Both parties collect plenty of coin for their campaign coffers from Wall Street.

As former, and hopefully future, Congressman Aman Grayson so elequently described in last Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher, and which I'll paraphrase here, the people standing on the streets day in and day out are there because Wall Street basically wrecked the economy three years ago and no one has been held responsible for it. No one's been indicted. No one's been convicted. Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme bilked people of $50 billion in investments and retirement savings and that made the front page headlines for months. But $50 billion is a fraction of what Wall Street's games cost the country - 20% OF OUR NATIONAL NET WORTH - you and I as taxpayers bailed them out so we wouldn't fall into a catastrophic collapse. And yet here we sit three years later and absolutely nothing has changed in terms of their practices to avoid flirting with the edge of the financial abyss again. In fact, they received multi-million dollar bonuses for their efforts. Does that seem fair to you? Even GOP candidate Buddy Roemer (yes, a Republican) agrees with and backs the OWS movement.

Does it seem fair that Bank of America has decided to earn an extra $3 BILLION a year simply by charging it's customers $5 a month to use their debit card for purchases? Does it seem fair that Citibank arbitrarily raised credit card interest rates to 29.99% for no reason other than to skim some more of our hard-earned money before credit card legislation stopped (or at least slowed down) their loan sharking ways?

This isn't about hating the rich. I don't have a grudge against rich people. For those who earned their way and clawed their way up the financial ladder, good for them and their fortunes. For those who were born into money, well who am I to moan about it? But if I'm paying 28-33% in federal taxes, they'd better pay the same goddamn rate. What's wrong with that? Why should they pay less? Reinvestment for job creation? Please. Enough with the "job creators" bullshit. How many stock brokers create jobs? Why should a hedge fund manager or a stock broker have a lower tax rate than a teacher or a carpenter or a sanitation worker or a research scientist?

If you think someone playing with other people's money should be entitled to a lesser tax rate than someone who works as hard as the misguided person holding this sign, then it's time to recalibrate your moral compass.

ADDING... Although I assert this is not about right versus left, the title of this post remains relevant as the something-for-nothing-get-a-job-hippies-welfare-queens attitude of the anti-OWS voices screams of right wing memes.

What Would Jesus Do? (Or "Karma's a Bitch")

 This story was the perfect way to end the week.*

Members of Westboro Baptist Church returned to their minivan to find its tires slashed after their picket of the funeral of a McAlester, Oklahoma soldier. And every shop in town refused to make any repairs.

Good for you, Oklahoma.  Now if you could do something about Senator James Inhofe, we'd really appreciate it.

(* Yes, I know Sunday is technically the beginning of the week, but how I see it, Sunday is the last day of the weekend, so suck it.)

Tea Party Protesters

Because the Tea Party is all about being "taxed to death."




Photos by Ana Marie Cox

UPDATE (7:30pm): I just finished watching a Chris Matthews interview with a couple of well spoken Tea Party representatives, but the main problem with their stance was that they were unwilling to admit that there was even a fringe element of their group that thought violence against the government was appropriate (24% according to a new New York Times poll) and only 41% believe President Obama is an American. They ask where the documentation is but refuse to call themselves Birthers. As long as they dismiss polls and refuse to acknowledge the dangerous elements in their midst, they will not be taken seriously.

How Did Fox Miss This Story?

Jon Stewart is awesome.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Queer and Loathing in D.C.
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Frank Schaeffer on the 9/12 Marchers

...Ordinary folks from Planet Earth may ask why the Republican Party, right-wing activists and members of the Religious Right seem so unreachable with mere facts let alone decency and decorum. (As the proud father of a US Marine who fought in Afghanistan I'm particularly outraged that these people would exploit the 9/11 attacks after my son and others were prepared to give their lives in response to our enemies.)

As a former Religious Right leader, who was raised (and home-schooled by my Evangelical-leader parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer) in the movement, let me explain just why the ordinary rules of decency don't apply to the right these days...

Read the whole post here.

Why Give Him A Voice?

I got home from running some errands this morning to be able to catch most of President Obama's New Hampshire town hall meeting, which was luckily more respectful than the loud noises most other politicians were experiencing with their own town hall meetings. This of course prompted naysayers to claim that it was obvious this was a staged event and not really a town hall, but I digress.

After the meeting was over, the desk jockeys at MSNBC reported that there was a protester outside of the high school the President occupied with a gun strapped to his leg. There he was, probably being scoped out by Secret Service, but since it is legal to carry a licensed firearm in the "Live Free or Die" state, was allowed to peacefully protest while holding a sign that read, "It Is Time to Water the Tree of Liberty" obviously referring to the famous Thomas Jefferson quote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots." With the blood of tyrants and patriots. With a gun strapped to his leg. Something tells me that, of those two choices, he wasn't considering President Obama the "patriot."

Within a few minutes of the initial report of this gun-toting protester, MSNBC's David Shuster had updated news: the man's name was William Kostric. And he was already booked on the 5pm hour of Hardball with Chris Matthews. What. The. Fuck?

My guess is that Matthews was angered by someone stupid enough to bring a gun to a public event with the President and wanted to take him to task. Further, I would have hoped that Matthews would try to figure out where this man came from and research his background. After all, he already had his name. But never let it be said that Matthews fails to disappoint. Mr. Kostric held his own against an irate Matthews until Matthews calmed down. Of the two people on the screen, Matthews was the one that seemed unhinged.

Within an hour after the interview, Joan Walsh wrote a post on her blog at Salon with details of William Kostric. This is why Joan Walsh is a journalist and Chris Matthews is not.

...Kostric insisted his intentions were peaceful, and that he's not affiliated with Birther groups.

But at least one of those statements doesn't seem to be true. A right-wing activist named "William Kostric," who's left a lot of footprints around the Web, is listed as a "team member" of the Arizona chapter of We the People, the far-right group best known for joining a lawsuit challenging Obama's right to be president based on his not being a U.S. citizen. Kostric told MSNBC he recently moved from Arizona to New Hampshire. (Kostric did not reply to Salon's e-mail request for an interview.)

And on his MySpace page (h/t Lavender Newswire), Kostric also lists as one of his heroes Robert Schultz, the anti-tax activist and We the People founder who spent a ton of his own money on ads promoting the Birther movement.

...Kostric's MySpace profile also lists among his heroes Randy Weaver, the white supremacist and right-wing activist who survived the Ruby Ridge confrontation with federal agents, along with Ayn Rand's John Galt, Thomas Jefferson, libertarian/GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul and William Wallace, the Scottish resistance leader portrayed in Mel Gibson's "Braveheart."

The profile also includes, as one of Kostric's "Top 12 friends," the Free State Movement, a group organizing libertarians to move to New Hampshire and expand on the state's "Live Free or Die" credo, and ultimately secede from the union. A "William Kostric" also signed two pledges at PledgeBank, a site that lets people organize around various causes. Kostric's two pledges include: "move to New Hampshire by 12/31/2008 where I will work to bring about a society in which government’s maximum role is protecting life, liberty, and property" -- the credo of Free State Movement members -- and "refuse to accept a national ID card," a cause among many far-right libertarians.

Reading the rest of Walsh's post on what she found on Kostric in an hour, when the Hardball crew had at least twice that amount of time before the interview gives you a much more in depth profile of the person Matthews hastily had on his show. Why give this man a voice on national television?

Times Square Tea Party Fail

Imagine my surprise when blocks of 7th Avenue were blocked off for yet another demonstration in Times Square. Iran election? Iraq troop withdrawal? Michael Jackson tribute? No. It was a Tea Party.

Here's a quick pic from my phone.



Maybe about 100 people? Looks like more signs than teabaggers. Here's the rest of the avenue.



Looks like the police had a fairly easy time with crowd control. TEA PARTY FAIL!

Palestinian Protests In Times Square

Here's a glimpse of what's happening on 7th Avenue between 42nd and 37th Streets today.

From what I understand, it was a joint Palestinian/Israeli protest to stop the bombing in Gaza. I did see one sign that read, "Another New York Jew Against Israeli Apartheid."

And yet today we have this: Israeli ground forces enter Gaza in escalation

(Crappy photo taken from my Treo 700WX)

Amy Goodman Arrested In Sweep of Protesters

This is unfuckingbelievable.

What's really sad is perusing through the comments section and reading the wingnut comments that think this is a good thing. It's amazing how many people out there are pro-Nazi.

Hitler Would Be Proud

Has Minneapolis become a police state? This is incredible.

Minneapolis "police" raiding homes in advance of the GOP Convention looking for possible protesters, denying the right to see a warrant before the raid takes place, entering the premises with machine guns drawn. The last time I checked, protesting was still legal, right?

Glenn Greenwald: There is clearly an intent on the part of law enforcement authorities here to engage in extreme and highly intimidating raids against those who are planning to protest the Convention. The DNC in Denver was the site of several quite ugly incidents where law enforcement acted on behalf of Democratic Party officials and the corporate elite that funded the Convention to keep the media and protesters from doing anything remotely off-script. But the massive and plainly excessive preemptive police raids in Minnesota are of a different order altogether. Targeting people with machine-gun-carrying SWAT teams and mass raids in their homes, who are suspected of nothing more than planning dissident political protests at a political convention and who have engaged in no illegal activity whatsoever, is about as redolent of the worst tactics of a police state as can be imagined.

...We spoke with the people who were staying at the house about the raid in the video above, and they were really sweet and inspirational, interested in “food not bombs.” Coming off the Denver DNC where most young people were blackberry-wielding Young Democrats hustling tickets to bigger and better parties, they were extremely refreshing and a much needed part of our political landscape. The idea that they were a serious threat to security is rendered rather ludicrous by watching the video...

Yes, there were protesters arrested in Denver during the Democratic National Convention, but they were arrested while protesting. I don't remember hearing about a massive sweep of houses looking for possible organized protesters. And I'm sure no one else will hear about this from the McCainstream Media either. I haven't seen anything on the local news... have you?

Behold, the look of our country under a Republican administration.

(H/T Crooks & Liars)

A Korean Vet Visits My Blog

I received a comment today regarding last week's post, "The Obama Smear E-Mail Campaign Continues." Mr. Bert Kortegaard didn't seem to like the title of my post, found it offensive and biased. Unfortunately, his website (links included by Mr. Kortegaard) don't contain any contact information in order for me to respond.

Here's his comment and my response. I hope he decides to come back to read my response.

Bert said...

The title of this blog site is at least as offensive as any of its posts.Senator Obama doesn't need to be smeared,he's provided quite enough information to discredit him, himself. It's much like saying criticisms of Vietnam Protesters http://www.kmike.com/VietnamProtesters.htm
or Jane Fonda http://www.rt66.com/~korteng/SmallArms/hanoijan.htm
are smears. The origin of this particular complaint need to be tracked down, but the blog title is too biased, imo.

BertKortegaard
http://www.kmike.com/b606.htm
http://www.kmike.com/wantuck1.htm
http://www.rt66.com/~korteng/SmallArms/
July 9, 2008 2:18:00 PM EDT

My response:

Broadway Carl said...

Mr. Kortegaard,

You say that my post title is offensive, but you don't explain why. You say that Senator Obama has discredited himself, but you don't explain how.

I don't know if you've bothered to look up my previous posts regarding the e-mailed Obama smears that have been circulating for quite some time now, such as "Obama is a Muslim", or "Obama won't say the Pledge of Allegiance" or "Obama swore on the Koran" or "Obama will stand with the Muslims", ad infinitum, but if you had, you'd see that all those previous e-mails smears have been debunked.

When I received the latest of e-mails regarding Obama's alleged "dismissal" of a handicapped Vietnam Veteran and didn't immediately find a reputable source to debunk the e-mail, I decided to try and find out for myself.

As of this writing (July 9th, 2008 8:54pm EST) I have yet to receive a response to the e-mails I've sent to the supposed writer of said accusation; whether he wrote it or not or if the writer's name was used deceptively, whether the incident actually happened, specifically where and when this incident allegedly took place, and other factors to either prove or disprove the validity of the e-mail. My post has stated nothing but the fact that I am searching for the truth - the facts - of this supposed interaction.

I have tried to go about this as objectively as possible, including the e-mails that I sent to those who might be able to help with more information, being polite and respectful in my correspondence. Yet, there are those who may not agree with my political affiliation or Senator Obama (I am assuming you are one of those people) who will take offense to what I consider a very objective post, no matter how I may phrase it.

I come to this conclusion based on your inclusion of web addresses citing Vietnam War protesters and Jane Fonda as part of the reason for America's loss in the war and using that opinion in an attempt to compare what you consider to be facts regarding Obama, his background and his record. One thing has nothing to do with the other. (And on a side note, do you really believe that if there were no Jane Fonda and no war protesters that the end result in Vietnam would have been any different?)

You may be of the opinion that the title of my post is somewhat biased, but I will assume that the e-mail I am researching is a smear based on the fact that there was neither any information nor any reference material attached to the e-mail for verification. My opinion will remain that way until I can find proof otherwise. In my world, frame of mind, thought process or whatever you want to call it, one bases their accusations on facts, and the e-mail I received contained none. It was just a story.

My question to you, if you would be so kind to answer is: On what basis do you make your decision or judgement on Senator Obama? Is it something that you know about him that I don't? Or is it based on something you may have heard or read?

Granted, I'm truly upset that he chose to vote in favor of today's FISA compromise bill, in contradiction to the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. Is he therefore discredited, or is he being a politician trying to win an election? After all, Senator Obama did say that he would vote against telecom immunity, but if amendments in opposition to immunity failed, he would vote in favor of the FISA bill. He didn't break his word.

I thank you for visiting my blog and for leaving your comment. I hope to hear from you again.

UPDATE (7/10/08 1:25am): I just realized that Kortegaard is actually offended at the title of my "blog site"! "Broadway Carl's Blog-O-Mania" is offensive! Wow! I never knew. I just scanned his comment over again and assumed he was offended at the "biased" post title, but according to him, the blog site title is "at least as offensive as any of its posts." Well, if you can't get past the title...

Regarding the title, it was always a working title until I found something more catchy, but nothing ever popped up and now it's been more than a year and a half, and some 1,000-odd posts later, so I guess I'm keeping it. But offensive? Let's see, "Broadway Carl"... that's me. I chose the "Broadway" part because I work on Broadway and the "Carl" part because... it's part of my name. "Broadway Carl's Blog" just didn't seem to pop. "Blog-O-Mania" sounded more fun. Maybe it's the "Mania" part. Or the "O".

I suppose it's "at least as offensive" as a terrorist fist jab. I thought it was pretty tame, as opposed to... oh, I don't know... "Hanoi Jane & The Dirty Fuckin' Hippies' Psychedelic Blog-O-Roonee." But I guess I can't tell anymore - I'm too biased.

Debate Protesters at ABC Hand Out Flag Pins

This is great. DDay at Hullabaloo writes about the protest at Disney Studios on Friday as 60-70 people voiced their opinions of the "shoddy and despicable" handling of the latest Democratic debate. It shows you the strength of the internet and blogosphere when 70 people can organize within 24 hours without a single phone call being made.

Their main goal: bringing attention to the way moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused on the past Democratic gaffes of Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, instead of issues like the war in Iraq and the American economy.

[Organizer Rick] Jacobs said he was offended that Obama was asked why he hasn't worn an American flag pin on his lapel.

"Patriotism isn't defined by a flag pin made in China," he said.

...[News reports] didn't note the most important part of the protest: our distribution of flag pins to employees as they left the ABC gates. Letting them know that they were getting "free patriotism on a stick" and telling them that "Charlie Gibson won't approve of you unless you wear one," we handed out about 300 pins. Most took them graciously and approvingly.

Yes... the pins were made in China.

Clinton Heckled at Global Warming Conference

MyFox Los Angeles:

Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York and Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio detailed their positions on global warming, energy conservation and other environmental issues -- and occasionally talked about other issues, including the war in Iraq -- before an invitation only audience at the Wadsworth Theater in Westwood.

The forum was sponsored by Grist, an environmental journalism magazine and Public Radio International's Living on Earth.

Candidates from both the Democratic and Republican parties were invited, but only Kucinich, Edwards and Clinton accepted.

During the conference, a Code Pink protester rose and yelled at Clinton because of her pro war Iraq vote. Clinton took it in stride and continued with her talk after asking, "Were you invited to speak here this afternoon?"

Now whether or not the protester chose the right forum (global warming) to voice his opinion is one thing, but it does bother me that when a protester gets ushered out of whatever forum he decides to attend, that the audience cheers at he exits. Don't they care to listen to what he/she is protesting about? Have Americans become so blasé, that the sight of a struggling protester flanked by security is something to cheer or laugh about?

Watch the video.

Presidential Advance Manual

Sensitive - Do Not Copy

I love living in a Democracy, don't you? Too bad we're slowly losing ours.

Herr Bush doesn't like dissent. We all know that. We can see it in his face when he is questioned by an occasional reporter who hasn't checked his testes at the door before walking into the White House Press Room. And we've all heard the stories of protesters being arrested by his henchmen (formerly known as local police and the Secret Service) at events just for wearing anti-war shirts or holding anti-Bush signs.

But who knew to what detail they would try to prevent Herr Bush from even having these protesters in view? Now we have proof.

WASHINGTON POST:

A White House manual that came to light recently gives presidential advance staffers extensive instructions in the art of "deterring potential protesters" from President Bush's public appearances around the country.

...The manual offers advance staffers and volunteers who help set up presidential events guidelines for assembling crowds. Those invited into a VIP section on or near the stage, for instance, must be " extremely supportive of the Administration," it says. While the Secret Service screens audiences only for possible threats, the manual says, volunteers should examine people before they reach security checkpoints and look out for signs. Make sure to look for "folded cloth signs," it advises.

Why bother? Can Monkey Boy actually read?

They even have pointers on "rally squads" who should physically block the protesting and drown out the dissenters with chants of "USA! USA!" so Herr Bush doesn't see it.

The only reason we find this out is because of the lawsuits involving the people who were arrested.

For example, "Jeffery and Nicole Rank, who attended [a] Charleston event wearing shirts with the word "Bush" crossed out on the front; the back of his shirt said "Regime Change Starts at Home," while hers said "Love America, Hate Bush." Members of the White House event staff told them to cover their shirts or leave, according to the lawsuit. They refused and were arrested, handcuffed and briefly jailed before local authorities dropped the charges and apologized. The federal government settled the First Amendment case last week for $80,000, but with no admission of wrongdoing."

The White House of course, could not discuss the manual because it's an issue in two other suits.