Bookworm Room

Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.

What Occupy could have looked like — if Hollywood organized it in 1933

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I am reading a delightful book about Fred and Adele Astaire, one that offers a little insight into a long-vanished world.  Along the way, the book mentions Eddie Cantor.  That reference reminded me of a song I always liked:  We Can Build A Little Home, from 1933’s Roman Scandals.  As was the case for all Eddie Cantor movies, it was a nice little bit of fluff, with silly songs, and pretty girls (including Lucille Ball, in her first film).  The premise is that Cantor is a sweet, naive young man who lives in a corrupt town, run by rich plutocrats.  The latter seek to evict the solid, working-class citizens, so as to profit from their properties.  Homeless, a whole neighborhood ends up camped out on the streets.

In other words, it’s a complete “Occupy” scenario.  But while Occupy quickly degenerated into a sleazy, disease-ridden, parasite-ridden, drunk-ridden, alcohol-ridden, violent street orgy, 1933 Hollywood envisioned a much sweeter way of protesting:

Occupy’s profoundly evil face revealed

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We knew Occupy was a turfed up protest.  We knew that Occupy quickly degenerated into drug-fueled, dangerous debauchery.  We knew that Occupy is ugly.  But I don’t think any of us realized in the beginning quite how ugly Occupy would prove to be.

It turns out that it’s so ugly that it supports child sex slavery.  That is not a typo.  It’s a fact.  As best as I can tell, the Occupy mindset is that law enforcement is inherently evil.  Law enforcement opposes child sex trafficking and slavery.  Therefore Occupy, as part of its “principled” stand against all law enforcement, supports child sex trafficking and slavery.

No matter how jaded one gets, it turns out that it’s impossible to anticipate the directions in which completely evil people will travel.

When it comes to playing politics, not all Marines are subject to the same rules

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Sgt. Gary Stein was discharged from the Marines because he created a web page critical of President Obama.  Despite the fact that I agree with Sgt. Stein’s political views, I think the Marines did the right thing. One of the things that makes our military great is the fact that it is a non-partisan institution.  Sure, we know that individual service members have political views — often strong ones — but the military presents itself as assiduously non-partisan.  Our American military, including the individual men and women serving within it, supports America as a whole, not specific parties within America.

To address the tension between serving ones country and losing ones First Amendment speech rights within that same country, the Department of Defense came up with a fairly decent compromise:  If you’re presenting yourself as a private citizen, you have full First Amendment rights.  When you are actually wearing that uniform, however, you represent the American military and your powers of speech, while presenting yourself to the public as a service man or woman, must be consistent with the military mission and therefore be non-partisan.

Not all Marines, however, seem to be subject to the same scrutiny as Sgt. Stein was.  The Mellow Jihadi has come across a group of Marines and other members of the Armed Forces who have actively embraced the Occupy philosophy, including creating a web page advancing the far Left occupy agenda.

The Mellow Jihadi, who takes seriously his responsibility to remain non-partisan, even as he shares with his readers interesting stuff from all over the world, asks in a polite and non-partisan way “Please tell me if this the way Marines (active-duty or not) should be treating their uniforms.”  As I understand it, the answers he’s received from people associated with Occupy Marines have, apparently, been non-responsive, unless you consider obscenities and threats adequate answers to the question.

The Department of Defense Directive regarding political activities while in uniform actually provides a pretty clear answer to the Mellow Jihadi’s question:

4.1.2. A member of the Armed Forces on active duty shall not:

[snip]

4.1.2.10. March or ride in a partisan political parade.

[snip]

4.1.2.15. Attend partisan political events as an official representative of the Armed Forces, except as a member of a joint Armed Forces color guard at the opening ceremonies of the national conventions of the Republican, Democratic, or other political parties recognized by the Federal Elections Committee or as otherwise authorized by the Secretary concerned.

It is no defense to the conduct of the people in the Facebook page to say that OWS isn’t partisan but is, instead, a “people’s movement.” Because OWS has a clear political agenda, that in itself makes it partisan. In effect, by having clear, consistent policy goals, OWS has turned itself into a political party.  As for the fact that some of the people in the photos may be former or fake service members . . . well, the former group should be ashamed of itself and the latter group is committing a fraud on the public.  Neither group has anything to boast about.

My parting question:  Will these protesters, assuming they are still (and actually) active duty, be subject to the same sanctions that saw Sgt. Stein discharged (not very honorably) from the Marines?  Or in Obama’s America, is all political speech by men and women in uniform to be treated equally, except that some (that favorable to the Obama agenda) will be treated more equally than others?

I’d laugh at the self-parodying OWSers, but I do think they’re dangerous

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Zombie has a new post about Occupy’s latest stunt:  The movement’s geniuses, inspired by Earth Day,

[I]llegally took over an entire farm and transformed it into…a farm!

So proud are they of this revolutionary act that they showed off the farm to the media yesterday, so naturally I had to check it out.

Go here to enjoy Zombie’s photo essay.  Before you laugh too hard at these silly people, though, remember that they have the power to destabilize things.  The fact that they’re stupid, ill-informed, and venal is infinitely less important than whether they are successful at manipulating an alternately compliant and credulous media into making them seem like the cool, hip thing to do.

San Francisco OWS reveals its socialist, anti-American, antisemitic, anti-Israel core beliefs

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Zombie has another superb photo essay, this one about the OWS protest of Shimon Peres’ San Francisco visit.  If you haven’t already checked it out, please do.  My favorite part is the bit with the San Francisco motorcycle cop.  You go, guy!

Please remember when you read Zombie that Zombie is the new media.  Part of dis-empowering the anti-American, socialist, antisemitic, anti-Leftist old media is to support the new media.  By the way, it’s no coincidence that in describing our shiny, rich, famous old media, we use precisely the same adjectives that we use to describe the violent, aggressive OWSers on the street.  Different appearance and tactics, but same ideology and goals.

Comparing the Tea Party and the OWS movement, side by side

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When Obama came to San Francisco, two of my favorite photo-essayists attended the street protests, which marked the rare coming together (sort of) of Tea Partiers and OWSers, all of whom are discontented with Obama.

Here’s Zombie.

And here’s Fund47.

I’d add more but anything I say would be redundant, as their posts are vivid and comprehensive.

The Passover story writ large in the elites’ approach to the Tea Party and the OWS movement

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Over the years, I’ve written more than 10,000 posts.  (Yeah, that’s a scary thought, isn’t it.)  They do tend to run together in my mind, but there are a few standouts.  These are the posts in which I felt that I offered an insight or analysis that is genuinely helpful to considering a serious issue of the day.  One of my all-time favorite posts in this vein is Pharaoh, the Ten Plagues, and Iran.  In it, I tackled Mr. Bookworm’s complaint that Passover is a barbaric holiday, because it celebrates the massacre of the First Born Egyptians.  Certainly, the Pharaoh’s intransigence, despite the many plagues sent to bedevil his people (plagues that surely brought death in their wake) culminates with a mass die-off in Egypt.

The death of the innocent Egyptian first born is certainly tragic, but the Bible story, I said, has a much larger and more important point:

Sheltered in his lavish palace, Pharaoh might worry about a populace starving and frightened, but that was irrelevant as long as that same populace continued to fear and worship him.  The people’s suffering, ultimately, was irrelevant to his goals.  It was only when the price became too high — when Pharaoh’s power base was destroyed because his citizens were destroyed — that Pharaoh was convinced, even temporarily, to alter his evil ways.

From that point, I drew analogies to Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and current day Iran.

Today, Duane Lester found proof that, when it comes to the current crop of Leftist elites, in government and in the media, the same thinking holds true:  they do not care if the people suffer; they only care if the elites suffer.

So next time you hear some Progressive speaker go on and on and on about “the people,” ask him which worries him more:  massive mob violence on the street aimed at bringing down the capitalist system, or a single conservative loon who might get too close to someone in D.C.

No, you weren’t imagining the strident class warfare in Obama’s SOTU speech.

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We tend to find what we’re looking for.  Since conservatives know that Obama comes from a socialist background, has advanced policies that are antithetical to capitalism, and has defeated opportunities and initiatives that are supportive of capitalism, we’re going to assume that, in any speech he gives, ordinary statements are actually code for a socialist agenda.  Having this predisposition (“to a hammer, everything is a nail”) can damage ones credibility.  Monomania is not normally associated with reliable analysis.

Except that, with regard to Obama’s recent State of the Union speech, I can tell you with a certain amount of assurance that all those conservatives who saw in it a strident call to class warfare, the end of an American system based upon equality of opportunity, and the destruction of the free market were probably right.  Or, if they weren’t right, they’ve met an equal, although completely opposite, monomania that manages to read the same message into Obama’s speech.

(Come on, Bookworm, spit it out!  What are you saying?)

What I’m saying is that the Occupy crowd is thrilled with Obama’s speech, which they see as a high level articulation of their beliefs and agenda:

Linking the dominant themes in Obama’s nationally televised address Tuesday to the mantras of the Occupy Wall Street movement would have been unthinkable five months ago. But in having its message echoed in the State of the Union address, the Occupy movement reached a milestone in changing the national conversation.

“Once you say the definition of my campaign is fairness, you don’t have to say anything else,” said Lawrence Rosenthal, an expert on social movements who directs UC Berkeley’s Center for the Comparative Study of Right-Wing Movements. “It is the central tenet” of the Occupy movement, he added.

[snip]

Obama never specifically mentioned Occupy – and probably won’t, analysts said, because the term remains politically divisive. For some, the dominant images of Occupy are of street activists confronting police and committing vandalism, as has occurred several times after Occupy demonstrations in Oakland.

“He won’t, because given half a chance, the Republicans would try to link him to everything that’s gone on with the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations,” said James Miller, a professor of politics at the New School for Social Research in New York.

Still, analysts found Obama’s speech full of several Occupy-related themes: The president said he would not reward multinational corporations who “remove jobs from this country” and demanded “no bailouts, no handouts, no copouts.” Obama even outed himself as a member of the monied class when he said that “we need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes.”

“Tax reform should follow the ‘Buffett rule,’ ” Obama said, referring to billionaire Warren Buffett, who has volunteered to pay more taxes. “If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes.”

When Obama said Tuesday that “if you make under $250,000 a year, like 98 percent of American families, your taxes shouldn’t go up,” Rosenthal said, “it’d be hard not to say that he was alluding to the Occupy movement.”

(Read the rest here.)

Apparently while Occupy the White House was a bust from the sidewalk point of view, it worked perfectly when it came to occupying the Oval Office.

 

Occupy’s cost

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Not only is the Occupy movement ugly, divisive and violent, it’s also expensive:

The news spotlight has moved elsewhere, but Oakland continues to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars a month for the Occupy protests.

Every week for the past month, more than 100 cops, or roughly one-fifth of the city’s patrol force, are called in to work the Saturday night Occupy demonstration held downtown.

Estimated cost: about $50,000 a week.

City officials now estimate their overall Occupy tab is up to $3 million and counting – this at a time when up to 400 city workers will likely be laid off Feb. 1 for lack of money.

How low can you go? If you’re the Occupy movement, there is no bottom limit.

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Zombie has put up a short post explaining just how debased the Occupy movement really is.  Please disseminate Zombie’s post widely, as this is the type of story that might help otherwise disinterested Americans understand that the Occupiers are not a grass-roots movement made up of people who lost their jobs recently but are, instead, hard-core Leftists with a deep hatred for all things American, or even all things decent.

Madison Rising walks into the lion’s den and emerges triumphant

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I’ve blogged here before about Madison Rising, an almost-heavy metal rock group that several vets formed.  Despite its hard guitar licks, pulsing beat, and gravel voiced singing, the band’s orientation is definitely conservative.  It’s songs are pro-military, pro-American, pro-capitalism and anti-OWS.  It’s not necessarily my kind of music (I’m a bit old for it), but it’s definitely my kind of band.  (Kind of like Taylor Swift:  Her music doesn’t float my boat, but I really admire her because she is a classy gal in an often debased industry.)

I learned recently that I have a “one degree of separation” relationship with Madison Rising.  The band’s manager is Richard Mgrdechian.  Back in 2006, he wrote a very good book called How The Left Was Won: An In-Depth Analysis of the Tools and Methodologies Used by Liberals to Undermine Society and Disrupt the Social Order.  I have a copy of the book in my office, courtesy of Rich himself.  When he first published How The Left Was Won, Rich was still living in the Bay Area.  I met him for coffee (he’s a really nice guy), and he told me about the impetus for the book.  Rich gave me permission to post several interesting passages at my blog, which you can see here, here and here.

You can see where I might have a strong interest in Madison Rising, given that it’s a band I admire, managed by a man I like. Just the other day, the band added to the list one other reason for me to like it:  it walked into the lion’s den, performing at an OWS rally — to the great delight of the OWSers, who had no idea what the band was singing, but who knew they liked the music:

In a story you will NOT hear or read about in the mainstream media, it appears Madison Rising truly did “occupy” the Occupiers and those in attendance were completely oblivious to the fact that they were being entertained by a pro-American, pro-military, pro-capitalism (you get the picture) band. In fact, they absolutely loved the music; they were dancing to it, cheering them on, and even tweeting how “tight” this band was as they performed songs like American Dream, Honk if You Want Peace, Before the Hyphen Came, and Where Was The Media Then. Perhaps they were too stoned to pay any attention to the lyrics or could it be they are just that clueless? My guess is both!

You rock, guys, truly you do!

 

 

Race and protest movements *UPDATED*

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It’s not only conservatives who have noticed that the waning OWS movement was pretty much whiter than white.  Black activist preachers have noticed the same thing and are trying to mobilize their congregants to get out there to camp on sidewalks like homeless people along with the white drug-addicted, violent OWSers:

The Rev. Harold Mayberry stood before his First African Methodist Episcopal Church congregation Sunday morning in Oakland and outlined how it was time for members to connect with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Nationally, many African American leaders have acknowledged a disconnect between the Occupy Wall Street movement and the larger black community.

Mayberry is among nearly two dozen prominent African American Bay Area pastors trying to bridge that gap at the community level through a growing national effort that is ramping up today – Martin Luther King Jr. Day – called Occupy the Dream.

[snip]

“This is a great leap forward to involve local pastors,” said James Taylor, an associate professor of political science at the University of San Francisco and an expert in African American studies. “The general critique of Occupy is that it has lacked a specific agenda. But this could be a sign of maturity for the movement.”

In February, the pastors will ask their congregants to withdraw a small amount of money – at least $30 – from their bank accounts and deposit it in either a credit union or a minority-owned bank.

If that symbolic move doesn’t get the attention of “Wall Street banks,” as Mayberry described the nation’s largest financial institutions, then in March, Occupy the Dream will ask larger African American-dominated institutions, churches and black professionals to begin transferring greater amounts to credit unions.

“I ain’t got no problem with people becoming millionaires – I wouldn’t mind joining the club myself,” Mayberry told his congregation. “My problem is when you are so insensitive to people who have not been able to raise themselves up to the level where you are – and you snuff out their dreams.”

I just heard from a friend who lives in and functions in the welfare/drug community.  (I’m not kidding when I say that I have contacts in all walks of life.)  There’s a black market of food stamps there. My friend is dining on roast beef tonight because another friend traded his food stamps with him for weed.  All these people have a few things in common:  they’re white; they’re drug users (mostly post); they rely heavily on welfare programs because of their drug use, whether we’re talking about impairment from actively using drugs or from decades of past drug use; and they support the OWS movement.  They are explicit that they see OWS as a way to ensure a continued flow of welfare benefits.

Is this really the milieu to which black pastors want to sink their congregants?

UPDATE:  This video of Valerie Jarrett giving a rousing political speech at a historically black church (after which the church hosted a voter registration guide) seems apropos.  At least Michelle Obama limited her black voter drive speech to the BET awards, a venue that doesn’t get the tax benefits extended to a church.

Is there something missing from this story about the OWS attempt to shut down the Port of Oakland?

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As I was up early, I listened to KSFO’s Brian Sussman show.  A man called in, identified himself as someone who works at the Port of Oakland, and described with some amusement the eight or so luxury buses that pulled up, disgorging a bunch of people in their 30s and 40s, completely with mass-produced signs, who then set up trying to block the port.  He was pretty sure the bus company was Galactic, which is amusing, because this company offers “party” buses.  I wonder if the Galactic people knew what party they were hosting.

What’s peculiar is that I read the SF Chronicle’s account of this morning’s strike, and the Chronicle makes no mention of the buses, instead describing the protesters as walking to the site from BART:

Carrying signs saying “Shutdown Wall St. on the Waterfront” about 200 protesters marched the three blocks from the West Oakland BART Station to the port entrances before sunrise today.

Was the caller making it up?  Did the reporters not see the buses?  Did the reporters see the buses but ignore them, deliberately or because they failed to understand their import?  I don’t know.  I’m just asking questions here.

Adam Carolla gets it

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Okay, this is seriously NSFW, since Carolla is exceeded only by Jon Stewart when it comes to F-bombs (except without the little “beeps” that let people pretend Stewart isn’t really swearing).  If you can, though, ignore Carolla’s language and listen to it when you get the chance.  Adam Carolla applies — gasp! — logic to America’s economic situation and the OWSers.

Interestingly, he talks about envy, which has always existed.  What’s different, and what Carolla nails, is that in Obama’s “hope-filled” America, people couple envy with dependence.  Rather than using their envy to power their own engines, they use it to whine and beg.  That’s so not the American way.

Anyway, watch it and see what you think: