Re: Occupy America I'm idly curious - google finds me lots of people who are saying 'maybe this was just a wedding' or referring to other places where they heard it was a wedding - but I can't find the report where someone actually confirmed that instead of just offering it as a plausible alternative circumstance. Any idea where I'd find the actual 'it was a wedding' story?
Re: Occupy America This is getting ridiculous in my neck of the woods. The Occupy Brisbane protesters/squatters got evicted this morning from the city park they were in, relatively nicely. Amongst other things, the park is needed for the Remembrance Day ceremonies on 11 November. The paper reports that $30,000 of re-turfing is needed to repair the damage that was done. They even included an aerial photo, and you can see the damage to the ground around the cenotaph. If I was a ratepayer in Brisbane, I'd be pissed... because that is who is ultimately paying for it. That aside, the protesters moved to another park. The Premier (equivalent to the Governor for those of the USA persuasion) asked them to move to another park, because the one were they were didn't have public toilets and was booked out for functions. Accordingly to the Occupy co-ordinator, they weren't moving unless she came down and asked them nicely to their faces. For fucks sake, there's people at other places getting arrested, gassed and beaten and these fuckwits are complaining because they didn't get a written fucking invitation, delivered personally? Does anyone else find it ironic that these bastards are protesting against greedy, self entitled pricks, and yet act this way? Fuck all that shit.
Re: Occupy America There's another board that I post on, and they have a couple people going down to these rallies and seeing what's going on. One of the posters is excellent. ---- TL; DR: There are intelligent people, but they're generally busy being productive citizens and can only come for a smaller portion of the day. The media is tending to look for the craziest fuckers to make a story, and the crazy fuckers aren't helping.
Re: Occupy America I like the OWS movement, but I like this video even better: He freely admits that he is part of the 1%, and he raises many questions that OWS needs to hear - and more importantly - needs to answer, if they have any chance of succeeding. More here: <a class="postlink" href="http://mrctv.org/videos/peter-schiff-takes-99" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://mrctv.org/videos/peter-schiff-takes-99</a>
Re: Occupy America They might get more support if they posted in the Boobie thread. I mean, come ON America! These girls can't afford a shirt!
Re: Occupy America I like this guy. In watching the footage, something occurred to me that has parallels to crap I have to deal with every day. It's a bit of an aside, but it highlights some of the lack of understanding that's going on. This is specifically in regards to the talk about tax rates: People don't know jack about percentage. They think they do, but really - they don't. The secret to any percentage, and this is the thing that most people do not actually realise, is that by itself it is only a concept. It gains no real meaning until it is related to something to derive an actual figure. In other words: if I asked you if 35% is a lot, the only correct answer is "of what?" Or, to look at it another way: If person A is paying 30% tax and person B is paying 50% tax, most people will say that person B is paying more tax. However, if person A is earning $120,000 a year and person B is earning $60,000, then person A is paying more tax than person B. For the mathematically challenged - $120,000 x 30% = $36,000. $60,000 x 50% = $30,000. I am surprised, almost daily, at the number of people who do not understand this concept.
Re: Occupy America The problem I had with that video is that people just made and accepted the assumption that the people on the balcony were all mocking the protesters and the champagne was adding insult to injury. Like you question if it was a wedding party or not there is no proof in the video and nothing I'v heard except the conjecture from the OWS crowd without any real proof, just knee jerk outrage. I don't know if that's the original video, I don't remember seeing the lead up footage and time listed in the video I saw back when this first happened. But again, there is no proof from the video that they were there specifically to mock or were intentionally mocking the protesters with their actions. Hell only two or so on the balcony had champagne glasses, the rest look like they had beer or high ball glasses. It could have easily just been a happy hour that got caught in the middle of a protest march that seems to not have been planned to march by that particular balcony in the first place that day. If you aren't blowing off steam after the high stress jobs in finance with a couple of high balls of quality whiskey then I feel sorry for you son. But all that was reported and all that you heard were angry protesters claiming the top 1% was telling them "let them eat cake"*. *a famous statement that was in fact attributed without any factual evidence to Marie Antoinette.
Re: Occupy America He came across as a jackass to me. I watched the video until he was talking to the guy who mentioned the theoretical woman working at Walmart and it seemed pretty clear to me that he wasn't really interested in debate so much as he wanted to tout his version of laissez-faire capitalism as the cure-all for all the issues that we face as a society. He's either disingenuous with his arguments or not as knowledgable as he thinks he is.
Re: Occupy America He probably is a jackass - but the people arguing with him are knuckleheaded morons that really have know idea what they are talking about. Like him or not, OWS needs to be able to address the issues he brings up; they can't win by merely being the loudest. I want OWS to win, I really do - but I'll be the first to admit that I don't even have the answers to Schiff's questions. I like to think of OWS in similar terms to the 'Infinite Monkey Theorem'...
Re: Occupy America He's not as knowledgeable as he thinks. He cites the 50's as the economic boom period, which to some extent is true. What he really should be citing is the Industrial Revolution. Very little taxes, very little regulation, and it led to such widespread income inequality and abuse of workers that legislation was passed in the late 1880's through the early 1900's to try to level the playing field. But I agree, he presents capitalism as the cure all, and while capitalism isn't an evil system per se, like every other economic theory, it sounds great, til you actually apply it in real life, then not so much - and the same can be said for any other purely theoretical economic model.
Re: Occupy America My response to the 1950's argument is always "It's easy to dominate the global market when General Motors is building cars in their factories and Volkswagen is digging bodies out of the ruins of theirs."
Re: Occupy America Occupy Phoenix, Unusual Occurrence: Militias Exercise Their Second Amendment Rights To Protect It's a shame that the media keeps getting it wrong and pegging it as a "left versus right" or "conservative versus liberal" situation, when it is so much more than that. *FYI, the content starts to get wanky with a Ron Paul circle-jerk around the four minute mark.
Re: Occupy America Yeah I thought the same thing, as soon as the they started going on about the gold and silver standard I knew where it was headed. The reason the media pegs it as left vs right is because they have to label it otherwise they dont know how to report it. My question for people on here who are involved with the protests is, do you have local grievances as well as the national ones that youre protesting? Or is the just the general corporate/Wall Street greed stuff? Just curious.
Re: Occupy America First response to the linked page. WHOOPS! I am a little fuzzy on the 2nd Amendments right for armed deadly force in connection with preserving our other natural rights. Obviously the framers had the protection of individual rights in mind, not just individual gun ownership rights, with armed individuals and militias but I'd have to see what previous laws and ideology they had in mind when writing it in terms of using force to protect rights. Also the major cases since then on the subject. The dude just seems like he wants to be RamboHitler masking it behind what he supposes our rights to be.
Re: Occupy America This was in a local paper* today... I'm gonna let you interpreret that yourself. Also from the article: Now that is just cute, dontcha know. *source: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.twincities.com/minnesota/ci_19243581" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.twincities.com/minnesota/ci_19243581</a>
Re: Occupy America The story was brought up and refuted at another forum I frequent. I tried to find a link for this last night but didn't have any luck. I'll try again later if I get this paper finished. Take another look at the video in the mean time- the men are mostly in khaki pants and blazers and the women are all wearing cocktail dresses. No power suits or anything. Plus every story about it, even those that call it a "Let Them Eat Cake" moment, say it happened on a Saturday. Anyone at work at Wall Street on a Saturday is a) going to look like it and b) won't make time to drink champagne and laugh at the peons.
Re: Occupy America I'm about as pro-gun as you can get. However, those guys are nutbags! The group they represent is an offshoot of Sheriff's Posse Comitatus and American Christian Patriots. I'm not surprised they are jumping at the chance to attach themselves to a larger protest and get into an armed conflict with police.
Re: Occupy America <a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15568057" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15568057</a> Oakland just stepped things up by shutting down a port. There are pictures floating around that are amazing: Spoiler I'm sure by now things are quiet and by Monday, things will be back to normal. But, wow.