Occupy Wall Street protests not valid?

Is it ok for police to pepper spray peaceful protesters and then walk away?



Oh, and the media hardly covers the protests themselves, much less this so there's only youtube.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Let me clarify it even more for you. It's basically you going back to the ridiculous "point" that the protesters are after other people's money, when in fact, it's the corruption mentioned above that they're protesting against. There. Have I slowed it down enough for you, yet?

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 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.

Oh, so even as you knee-jerkingly try to disassociate from the demands of OWS----which, if they aren't legitimately the key demands of OWS, why oh why don't they simply remove them from their prominent position on the OWS 'official' website rather than continuing their elaborate pre-designed confusion??

Why, because those are actually their demands, but like cowards they always need an escape clause to muddy the issues, & a patsy to take the hit so they can claim a plausible denial.

Deny this too 'coon.


Well, 'coon you & yer cohorts are the patsies, you just don't realize it yet!

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

Why, because those are actually their demands, but like cowards they always need an escape clause to muddy the issues, & a patsy to take the hit so they can claim a plausible denial.

It's the statements of a single user. There are no "demands."

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

S, why oh why don't they simply remove them from their prominent position on the OWS 'official' website rather than continuing their elaborate pre-designed confusion??

Why doesn't Opera simply remove all discussions that aren't "official" positions of Opera Software from the forums? That post doesn't have a prominent place on the OWS site, or even even on the forum page. Who lied to you and said it was a prominent? Rush Limbaugh? The certifiably crazy Glenn Beck? You didn't even check, you just took somebody else's word. Seriously, it takes 10 seconds (depending on your connection, of course) to verify that it is or isn't prominent and click over to the forums, where it's so far down that isn't even on the first page, where there must be a list of at least 100 threads.

That video still shows that Jew calling another Jew a Jew "prominently." It's like me calling you white Now with all the videos of OWS floating around the internet, why did they have to use the same Jew a couple times? Maybe it's because they have nothing more for the smear campaign.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

So where were they in 2009?

It wasn't a knee-jerk reaction to Obama getting elected, like the TP was. No, this is a culmination of years of frustration. Micheal Bloomberg getting a pass? You must be joking. He's one of the few specific individuals criticized by OWS. In general, though, the OWS doesn't protest individuals; it protests institutions.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Originally posted by fanfaron:

So where were they in 2009?

It wasn't a knee-jerk reaction to Obama getting elected, like the TP was.

Riiiiiight. TARP is 3 years old, and NOW they're protesting the "financial sector". All our woes can be pinned on Wall Street speculators. Uh-huh.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

No, this is a culmination of years of frustration. Micheal Bloomberg getting a pass? You must be joking. He's one of the few specific individuals criticized by OWS. In general, though, the OWS doesn't protest individuals; it protests institutions.

Bloomberg criticized by OWS for what, making less than worshipful remarks about the tent city that's I guess known as the "NYC General Assembly"? What about Soros? And WHAT "institutions" are being protested?

Come on, OWS is a joke. The TP at least had and is having some political impact. All OWS is doing is reminding people why they dislike the left.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Riiiiiight. TARP is 3 years old, and NOW they're protesting the "financial sector". All our woes can be pinned on Wall Street speculators. Uh-huh.

:sigh: Are you serious? Pretty much every economist in the world tells you this is a financial sector recession. What type of rock you do you live under? I think it must be an igneous rock, because something has melted your brain.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

And WHAT "institutions" are being protested?

Oh my God. You really pay zero attention to what's going on in the world. If I provided you a list, you'd simply dismiss it. Go learn something.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

All OWS is doing is reminding people why they dislike the left.

Good thing they don't have a large polarity of the support from the American, people, if not a majority as some polls suggest, even as the tp dwindles. Oh wait, they do... When the tp was just a few weeks old, it had zero political impact. I don't want to spend a lot of time on your stupidity, but just briefly, the polling numbers of the central message of the OWS is already reminding politicians that American public is coming to the opposite conclusions of the tp. The tp says government is the problem and business must have free reign. The people have started to notice that this free reign has destroyed jobs, homes and lives already and more deregulation is not the answer and, in fact, the financial institutions need (banks, brokerage houses, etc) need to be reegulated and not automatically bailout at taxpayer expense when they fail, taking the rest of the economy down with them . Politicians ignoring this will not get reelected. That is immediate political impact for this election cycle. It's all about the message, not the OWS claiming credit for this politician or that getting elected. Some commentators have started musing if the OWS will have institutional power. Maybe it will, maybe it won't (in fact, when you think about institutional power for a true protest movement (unlike the tp) is kind of an oxymoron and I see the corruption of the tp as warning against institutional power.) But who gives a shit, as long the message is spread?

The tp doesn't have a central message and what is it, you say. Get out from under that rock at this time, please

ps, have you noticed that your tp Congress is now polling at about 8%, meaning most of them are gone next year. I'm not saying they'll all be replaced by Democrats, but at least by sane Republicans that take note of what's happening in the world and listen to the people. (Of course, the tp will claim credit for any Republican elected, regardless of reality... )

Oh yeah, about the three years thing....the stock market crashed on October 29, 1929. The economy didn't recover until WWII. Do brush up on history after you crawl out from under rock.

You might want to see a dermatologist when you do emerge from that rock. The hot volcanic rock that melted you brain probably damaged your skin, as well.

The "Occupy Wall Street" movement is not -- is not -- a spontaneous protest against economic inequality. It is a well thought-out campaign to bring down the infrastructure of this country to turn us into a western European type entitlement state.

Here is an brilliant example of what thousands in the OWS want:





Some of the Fine, Outstanding, & Thankful People That Support OWS

Solidarity with “Occupy Wall Street”....

CPUSA

The American Nazi Party affiliates across America

Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke expressed support for the Occupy Wall Street movement — or, as he calls it, the “Occupy Zionist Wall Street” movement.

The Iranian Ayatollah Supports Occupy Wall Street

Iran's top leader said Wednesday that the wave of protests reflects a serious crisis that will ultimately topple capitalism in America. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed the United States is now in a full-blown crisis because its "corrupt foundation has been exposed to the American people."

"They (U.S. government) may crack down on this movement but cannot uproot it," Khamenei said. "Ultimately, it will grow so that it will bring down the capitalist system and the West."

First of May Anarchist Alliance

For Dignity, Justice and Freedom – Against Capitalism and the State! For Anarchy!

A parting Commentary accurately describing the OWS:



I would like it if any official representative of the OWS Mob would attempt to refute any of the above as not factual.

The fact is------it's all fact, & they cant.

Can they.

Want to see a blank stare from any OWS Mob Supporter?

Ask them what 5 specific goals they want to accomplish, & specifically how they personally are going to accomplish them.

All you will get, providing they can speak coherently, is generalities, & some nonsensical regurgitation of things they might have heard someone say while sitting stoned around a drum circle.

In other news, there was more police violence in Denver. The protesters were already there, but began to erect tents as protection against the cold. So naturally, the police show up in riot gear and begin firing rubber bullets and spray the crowd with pepper spray...

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

In other news, there was more police violence in Denver. The protesters were already there, but began to erect tents as protection against the snow and cold (three death have already been blamed on the weather.) So naturally, the police show up in riot gear and begin firing rubber bullets and spray the crowd with pepper spray...

The poor, totally innocent victims, victims one & all.

This all happened so suddenly, because they were doing absolutely nothing wrong. Respected everyone & everything. Just for being a peaceful, loving lot, the brutal police, totally unprovoked & with no reason, beat them, shot them, & arrested them.

It's all so cruel. The poor, poor, poor innocent victims!


Why were they there in the first place?

Maybe it was because mommy & daddy threw their sorry sphincters out of the house because they did nothing for 20+ years to deserve everything they consumed, no appreciation for their efforts, & there was no end in sight.

Quit throwin' yourself all those pity parties just because the $100,000 you spent on an education in the wrong field didn't pan out in a job someone promised you 5 years earlier.

Shit happens.

Simple answer, I feel sorry for their pathetic little tails, but play with fire----get burned!

Grow up, go home, & beg mommy & daddy for a second, third, fourth chance! Hey, it might work.

Otherwise, show some initiative & get ANY job, just find a job to tide you over until you eventually find something you might like better. So quit cryin' crocodile tears & start lookin' through the classifieds.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Good thing they don't have a large polarity of the support from the American, people, if not a majority as some polls suggest, even as the tp dwindles. Oh wait, they do...

OWS has at most 38% support in the polls I've seen, and about 26% support according to Gallup. I'd say Gallup's closer to reality. But why the obsession with showing that you're accepted by a society that many OWSers reject anyway?

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

When the tp was just a few weeks old, it had zero political impact. I don't want to spend a lot of time on your stupidity, but just briefly, the polling numbers of the central message of the OWS is already reminding politicians that American public is coming to the opposite conclusions of the tp.

Really? So the majority of Americans are for raising the debt ceiling, are for single-payer health care, are for increased spending and increased taxes? Show me the polling data that support that conclusion.

Originally posted by Sanguinmoon:

The tp says government is the problem and business must have free reign.

Not really. It says government is too big and intrusive, spends too much and taxes too much.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

The people have started to notice that this free reign has destroyed jobs, homes and lives already and more deregulation is not the answer and, in fact, the financial institutions need (banks, brokerage houses, etc) need to be reegulated and not automatically bailout at taxpayer expense when they fail, taking the rest of the economy down with them .

Which, of course, is why polling data show that nearly 70% of the public puts most of the blame on the federal government.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

ps, have you noticed that your tp Congress is now polling at about 8%, meaning most of them are gone next year.

Yeah, just like (according to you) they weren't going to be elected in the first place. The Republicans with 'bagger support among them will increase their majority in the House next year and will take control of the Senate. If your little group of moonbats can hold that off and at the same time get a pretty good number of moonbats elected to Congress, then I'll say that OWS has had a political impact. Meanwhile Obama can't even seem to get Democrat support for his jobs bill due to the fact that Democrat senators want to be re-elected next year. Political impact. Look up what the words mean.

(edit) Some comments to an article here pretty much nail it:

BadUncle (#153)
Sadly, this is why Occupy LA will have as much impact on society at large as Chicken John's attempted coup of Burning Man.

Note to hippies: if you want to change society, you'll have to sell it. Middle America doesn't buy ideas from threatening freaks. Note that the civil rights movement was lead by Churchy people. For reference, see March on Selma.

Posted on October 28, 2011 at 3:00 pm ...

Justin Becker@facebook (#168,059)
I've been there three times during the day, but haven't been able to bring myself to camp out yet. It's just utter chaos. Seemingly the people with an interest in actual change are in a small minority. Or at least I've been too put off by the idiots to find them, which may be my fault. But when you have to sift through that much chaff to find anyone at all with a grain of common sense, your movement has a problem with its image.

Posted on October 28, 2011 at 3:47 pm

Originally posted by fanfaron:

OWS has at most 38% support in the polls I've seen, and about 26% support according to Gallup.

38%=38% not 99%

26%=26% not 99%

38% or 26% does not constitute any sort of majority or mandate, especially if it is unable to effectively usurp established policy because it has no coherent message or goal.

There never was, nor will there ever be a 99%. That was just a marketing campaign's imaginary talking point.

Yep, just a brilliant marketing ploy by the 'establishment of leech' to attract little mindless self-centered urchins to mayhem so the 'establishment of leech' can institute a European type entitlement state, which, if successful, will then turn on & effectively enslave those same urchins.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

OWS has at most 38% support in the polls I've seen, and about 26% support according to Gallup. I'd say Gallup's closer to reality. But why the obsession with showing that you're accepted by a society that many OWSers reject anyway?

Why are you lying? Once again, for the daft one in the barret...

CC5. From what you know about these demonstrations against Wall Street, would you say
you completely agree with the goals of the protestors, mostly agree, mostly DISagree,
or completely disagree with their goals?
Based on those who have heard a lot, some, not too much or DK about demonstrations
(n=864)
Oct 13-16
2011
12 Completely agree
47 Mostly agree
18 Mostly disagree
13 Completely disagree
10 Don’t know/Refused (VOL.)

source

From Gallup:



Now this polls is a little old and a majority didn't know enough to say. However the approval was still greater than the disapproval. You guys are doing yourselves no favors by understating the public's sympathy for the movements core issues.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Not really. It says government is too big and intrusive,

Now what does intrusive mean...why it means that it regulates too much. Ie, they call for deregulation That thing about taxes is just the eternal GOP bitch, despite the US having the lowest tax rates that it's had for decades and schools being overcrowded and underfunded and the deficit going through the fucking roof because of it...

Originally posted by fanfaron:

But why the obsession with showing that you're accepted by a society that many OWSers reject anyway?

Who said OWSers reject society? You're just being silly.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Which, of course, is why polling data show that nearly 70% of the public puts most of the blame on the federal government.

O course. Without the corruption of the Federal government leading to the deregulation of the financial industry and the bailouts, this won't have happened.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Look up what the words mean.

Oh don't worry. I know what the words mean better than you do (hint, political impact doesn't mean fixing your brand to a candidate that was going to win anyway...) Funny you should bring up Obama though. Obama's approval rating among the OWS is lower than it is among the general public, at 27%, source

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

38%=38% not 99%

This shows how clueless you are as you knee-jerk to the OWS. 99% never referred to the level of support.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Why are you lying? Once again, for the daft one in the barret...

Maybe you should read your own sources, genius:

Democrats are much more likely to say they are supporters (42%) than opponents (8%) of the Occupy Wall Street movement, with the remainder neutral (47%) or not having an opinion. Most Republicans, 55%, are neither supporters nor opponents, though Republicans are much more likely to oppose the movement (34%) than support it (9%).

The poll sought to contrast support for Occupy Wall Street with another prominent American movement, the Tea Party. In the poll, 22% describe themselves as Tea Party movement supporters, 27% as opponents, and 47% as neither. Gallup has typically found that about equal percentages of Americans are Tea Party supporters or opponents, with the greatest percentage neutral. Thus, the current level of public support for Occupy Wall Street is similar to that for the Tea Party movement.

You can also check out the link to Gallup in an earlier comment of mine in this thread for the 26% figure.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Now what does intrusive mean...why it means that it regulates too much. Ie, they call for deregulation That thing about taxes is just the eternal GOP bitch, despite the US having the lowest tax rates that it's had for decades and schools being overcrowded and underfunded and the deficit going through the fucking roof because of it...

Intrusive? Think Patriot Act. And yeah, taxes are a GOP bitching point, just as the idea that someone somewhere is making more money than they are is a perpetual lefty moonbat bitching point.

The deficit's growing ONLY because we are soooooo undertaxed. Riiiiiiiiight. Oh yeah, and because we have a military or something.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Oh don't worry. I know what the words mean better than you do (hint, political impact doesn't mean fixing your brand to a candidate that was going to win anyway...) Funny you should bring up Obama though. Obama's approval rating among the OWS is lower than it is among the general public, at 27%,

Which is a dodge. Tell me how the political attitudes of the typical OWSer measures up against the "mainstream", and show polling data to prove it. I can tell you how people feel about the Tea Party's ideas and attitudes, even while reviling the brand.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

(hint, political impact doesn't mean fixing your brand to a candidate that was going to win anyway...)

Make up your friggin' mind. Either the TP is a fatally crippling label to bear or it isn't. Good grief.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

This shows how clueless you are as you knee-jerk to the OWS. 99% never referred to the level of support.

Regardless, it's presumptuous. To say "We are the 99%" in a practical sense means that "we're squatting and crapping in this here park on behalf of all those in the 99%". The freakazoids with their idiotic drum circles and "collectives" and "General Assemblies" and down twinkles don't speak for me.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

38%=38% not 99%

This shows how clueless you are as you knee-jerk to the OWS. 99% never referred to the level of support.

Show of hands........How many other imbeciles, besides ole 'coon here, actually thought I was referring to a level of support?

Tic...Toc....Tic....Toc....Tic....Toc....Tic....Toc....Tic....Toc....Tic....DING!


Geeez, 'coon.....alone again!

Use that overactive imagination of yours sonny. Up 'till now you've been doing real good!

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

Show of hands........How many other imbeciles, besides ole 'coon here, actually thought I was referring to a level of support?

Let's see, you said......

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

38%=38% not 99%

The context of your "statement" is the level of support, with the 38% being an outdated poll that FF presented in his failed attempt to show the American people didn't sympathize with the aims of the movement. Do you even know what you're posting, guy? I mean seriously.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

The deficit's growing ONLY because we are soooooo undertaxed. Riiiiiiiiight. Oh yeah, and because we have a military or something.

Who said "only" besides you. There are multiple reasons the deficit is growing. The low tax rate is one of them. Another is increased government spending and the deficit also increased because government tax receipts were down due to reduced GDP. Why do you insist on making these cartoonish strawman arguments that have no basis in anything anybody said nor in reality in general.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Tell me how the political attitudes of the typical OWSer measures up against the "mainstream", and show polling data to prove it.

And how many times have I already presented the polling data?

Here's a little more on polls:

4 Polls That Show Occupy Wall Street is Just Getting Started

After over a month of demonstrations, numerous dismissals, and thousands of arrests, Occupy Wall Street is gaining momentum. Over the last two weeks, polls have poured in revealing that Americans familiar with the protests largely support them. And since that familiarity will continue to increase, we can only conclude that the country's support for the movement will keep on growing. [/url] The more people learn about the OWS, the stronger it gets. Even the Gallup poll (criticized later) shows that people familiar with the movement are in favor of it.

Oct. 9-10 Time Magazine/Abt SRBI:

This one I presented earlier, which showed 54% support (And yet a little while ago, you pretended to have not seen it...)

86 percent of Americans polled thought that "Wall Street and lobbyists have too much influence in Washington"; 79 percent said that "the gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. is too large"; 71 percent wanted prosecutions for "executives of financial institutions responsible for the financial meltdown in 2008"; and 68 percent believed that "the rich should pay more in taxes."

Also so much for the blame the Federal Government....

Oct. 13-16 United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll: Here, a majority of those polled – fully 59 percent – said that they backed the goals of the protests from what they "know about the demonstrations." And 68 percent supported the Democratic surtax on millionaires to pay for the cost of their jobs plan, a policy cited by OWS protesters in a recent Millionaire's March in New York City.

Oct. 15 -16 USA Today/Gallup poll: This poll, which received the most misleading spin, found that nearly two-thirds of people who were asked didn't know enough about the goals of the Occupy Wall Street protests to say if they approved of them or not. Some have been duped by this result into thinking that the movement has a "branding problem."

Piffle, says Thomas Ferguson, professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. "This thing is still growing," Ferguson told AlterNet. "If you know it, you generally like it. You have to remember that the major media haven't been very good on covering the protests. Only recently did the New York Times start publishing substantive articles. Lots of people are just hearing about it, and as more hear about it there will be growing support."

Things get a little complicated when respondents are asked who they blame for the country's economic woes. The Gallup poll showed that a greater number of blamed the government compared to those who blamed Wall Street. The question is, which government policies are we talking about? The Quinnipac poll showed that respondents placed a great deal of blame on George W. Bush's deregulatory policies if you offered them more specific questions.

Yup...people do blame the government, for deregulating the banks. In other words, people are saying its the government's fault for not reigning in the banks enough

Every major poll shows support for the OWS policies and the more people know about it, the higher the support. The Right is reduced to saying "The Occupy Wall Street is a FREAK show." OMG...I watched the video and you guys don't seem to get that guy with the rubber rat is making fun of the Right and you think he's serious. Is this what you have to show the OWS are freaks?

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Yup...people do blame the government, for deregulating the banks. In other words, people are saying its the government's fault for not reigning in the banks enough

Not logical. If that were so, distaste for "Wall Street" would still be greater than that for the federal government. Here's the poll in question, and here's some of the commentary to go with it:

Not surprisingly, Americans who consider themselves supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement (26% of all Americans) are more likely to blame Wall Street than the federal government for the nation's economic problems. Supporters of the Tea Party movement (22% of Americans) are overwhelmingly likely to blame the government. Republicans and independents blame the federal government more; Democrats are split essentially in half, with about as many blaming Wall Street as blame the federal government. ...

Americans are more likely to blame the federal government for the nation's economic woes than to blame Wall Street -- although Americans say both entities are to blame. These attitudes have significant political implications. Both the Tea Party movement, which has targeted the federal government, and the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has targeted big financial institutions, are in sync with significant segments of the U.S. population.

At the same time, it would appear that neither of these movements can afford to dismiss or ignore dissatisfaction with the "other" entity they are not explicitly targeting. This would seem to be particularly relevant to Democratic candidates for office, including Barack Obama, whose possible efforts to adopt the "blame Wall Street" positioning as a major part of their campaigns could risk failing to acknowledge the even larger enmity the public holds for the federal government itself.

As I've asked numerous times, I want you to show me polling data in which the Tea Party on the issues is/was out of sync with the "mainstream"; and likewise show me polling data to show that on the issues the OWS is itself "mainstream".

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

Show of hands........How many other imbeciles, besides ole 'coon here, actually thought I was referring to a level of support?

Let's see, you said......

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

38%=38% not 99%

The context of your "statement" is the level of support, with the 38% being an outdated poll that FF presented in his failed attempt to show the American people didn't sympathize with the aims of the movement. Do you even know what you're posting, guy? I mean seriously.

Very good, very, very good!!


Bravo!


Brilliantly logical, & quite well stated!





Unfortunately, quite wrong!!!

It was a simple metaphor.

But, read it over a few times, maybe you'd get it.

Regardless, I'm not willing to teach you how to use it because you'd never understand the simplicity of it.

Because, you think too hard, & understand too little.


But in the end, you are still wrong.

I think Americans need to remember that this protest is not as of some in the past as it includes a vast army of the middle class. However the media a very subtle arm of the flawed system portraysd them all as dangerous radicals. It is that old US fear stuff that anything out of the system is a dangerous and radical. To be called 'radical' puts you beyond the pale. So much for freedom in the country of deep corporate control. Likewise, there needs to be some concern about your police. The Oakland case is certainly controversial as the protest was a peaceful one. However the uniforms when in like Gestapo with sudden unexpected force with rubber bullets, gas, etc. Then stamped on personal property. And even a protester in a wheel chair is a dangerous radical? There is something far wrong that you can be so proscribed from society when you have been part of the very middle class that gave so much and supported so much and now being drained. It's not as bad as the supid McCarthy traits of the 50's but near enough the same thinking which is that you are being un-American? Plain stupid but there again look into who runs your media.....the same corporates.

Originally posted by rjhowie:

.....However the uniforms when in like Gestapo with sudden unexpected force with rubber bullets, gas, etc. Then stamped on personal property. And even a protester in a wheel chair is a dangerous radical?......

You know how that is, coming from those that invented labeling children as radical, the brave Black & Tan I spit.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

As I've asked numerous times, I want you to show me polling data in which the Tea Party on the issues is/was out of sync with the "mainstream"; and likewise show me polling data to show that on the issues the OWS is itself "mainstream".

And its been given to you numerous times, so you should be good to go It's not my fault if you didn't check the numbers and read the articles. When somebody with comprehension, unlike yourself and SF, reads the data and sees at the public is upset with federal government, it begs the question exactly what government policies do they blame? Why, those are the ones that deregulated the financial sector.

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

It was a simple metaphor.

But, read it over a few times, maybe you'd get it.

Regardless, I'm not willing to teach you how to use it because you'd never understand the simplicity of it.

Because, you think too hard, & understand too little.

I get it. You're a kindergartner that thinks a Harvard professor is stupid for not understanding the gibberish he put on paper. What you were attempting to say is that not all of the "99%" agree with OWS. I'm not sure what your point in doing that was, since the very polling data I presented indicates that.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

I get it......

You may think you do, but you sure don't, it's obvious, because it has absolutely nothing to do with poll numbers, & that's where your stuck --- on poll numbers.

When you see, & admit, it has nothing to do with poll numbers, then you will be sure fire closer to what it really means.

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

You may think you do, but you sure don't, it's obvious, because it has absolutely nothing to do with poll numbers, & that's where your stuck --- on poll numbers.

When you see, & admit, it has nothing to do with poll numbers, then you will be sure fire closer to what it really means.

I think his mistake is rather thinking that you're replying to something he said, which as far as I can tell you're not. Besides which, the 99% thing has nothing to do with popular support. There may be problems with the number and it's obviously arbitrary*, but it looks like you're the one bringing poll numbers in as if they said something profound about it.

* Not that arbitrary of course, for I'm sure it sounds better than e.g. 99% and 2335434324/6463463343. Heck, it probably even sounds better than 98%, even though 98% might yield even more shocking results on the other side (as in, rather than 1% own 85% or whatever 2% owns 96% — percentages made up on the spot).

Originally posted by Frenzie:

but it looks like you're the one bringing poll numbers in as if they said something profound about it.

Hmmm...not really. Sanguinemoon's been quoting poll numbers ever since the Tea Party to show how despised they are; conversely, the numbers for OWS have to be puffed up to show how 90% of the country is in love with them. That's how it works. I'm more interested in polling data on specific issues. And by the way no, Sanguinemoon: you haven't shown me data to indicate that the majority is in favor of raising the debt ceiling, single-payer health care, higher taxes and increased spending. Nothing.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Hmmm...not really. Sanguinemoon's been quoting poll numbers ever since the Tea Party to show how despised they are; conversely, the numbers for OWS have to be puffed up to show how 90% of the country is in love with them. That's how it works.

Maybe, but the highest approval for some part of the movement that I've seen him quote is 45%. That we are presumably both part of what they call the 99% has nothing to do with whether you or I approve of them.

Originally posted by rjhowie:

However the media a very subtle arm of the flawed system portraysd them all as dangerous radicals.

True, but the MSM has already lost a lot of steam and only old people and masturbating tv addicts are watching it at face value anymore, if at all. This isn't North Korea (yet), and people aren't forced to watch state TV for information, and that's what the MSM is at this point. The state run media of the corporate government coup. TV and print was already in serious trouble even from a strict business perspective that disregards all that, and brazen foxnews level chicanery is only going to make things worse. They are hemorrhaging audience, are not very popular with adults, and they aren't appealing to a new generation as well as they need to for sustainability. Their best hope is to lobby the internet into submission, but even that seems insufficient.

Meanwhile, these banksters are such overtly defiant feudal lords that it's funny at some sick level.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

OWS have to be puffed up to show how 90% of the country is in love with them.

Ermmmm...no. Why should I show you polls when you don't even know what the issues even are? For example, the OWS is not out there demonstrating to raise the debt ceiling

Like an idiot,, I'll show you yet again ;p

The Hill just conducted a new poll, which hits on some of the main issues the OWS is demonstrating about (not the issues that you make up that the OWS is demonstrating for in you vast ignorance.)

Two-thirds of likely voters say the American middle class is shrinking, and 55 percent believe income inequality has become a big problem for the country, according to this week’s The Hill Poll.

Check.

Those findings follow a Congressional Budget Office report asserting that highest earners have seen their income rise much more quickly than middle- and lower-class taxpayers over the last 30 years, and come as the recent nationwide Occupy protests have highlighted the issues of income distribution and corporate wealth.

Check.

Close to 7 in 10 said the income tax system is either somewhat or very unfair — a finding that was supported among most ideological groups and income levels.

But voters are also far from convinced that a flat tax — like the one Texas Gov. RickPerry (R) proposed last week — was the solution to that problem.

A clear majority — 58 percent — said they favored a graduated income tax system, with only 35 percent backing the sort of flat tax that magazine publisher Steve Forbes pushed for during his 1996 presidential campaign. [/url] Check.

Here's where it gets a little counter intuitive:

Perhaps not surprisingly, 94 percent of liberal respondents to The Hill Poll saw income inequality as either a big problem or somewhat of one. But 55 percent of conservatives and 81 percent of centrists came to that conclusion as well.

At least 40 percent of each income group saw income inequality as a big problem as well, and 65 percent of respondents making at least$100,000 a year viewed it as a big or somewhat big issue.

That's right...income inequality is not simply a "liberal" issue among the poor and working classes. This is cross-section of America noting there's a problem.

Originally posted by xyzoneon:

and brazen foxnews level chicanery is only going to make things worse.

What I find amusing about Fox is that it complains about MSM and so do its viewers....Fox is the cornerstone of the Rupert Murdoch media empire. In other words, it IS the MSM...

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Hmmm...not really. Sanguinemoon's been quoting poll numbers ever since the Tea Party to show how despised they are; conversely, the numbers for OWS have to be puffed up to show how 90% of the country is in love with them. That's how it works.

Maybe, but the highest approval for some part of the movement that I've seen him quote is 45%. That we are presumably both part of what they call the 99% has nothing to do with whether you or I approve of them.

I think you have to take that 99% vs 1% as the percentage of us who are banker/Wall Street Overlords (1%) and the rest of us who are the 99%. It has nothing to do with popularity and everything to do with the percentage of those who hold power and those who don't.

For a reference: Right now, those of us who are citizens of the United States owe that to roughly one third of the population during the time of the Revolutionary War. One third were revolutionaries, one third were Tories who owed their allegiance to the Crown and one third wanted to be left alone by both sides. How big a percentage supported the separation of the Colonies from the Crown was open to debate, even at the time.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501369_162-20128152/tenn-agrees-to-stop-arresting-occupy-protesters/

(AP) NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee officials agreed Monday to stop enforcing a new curfew used to dislodge Occupy Nashville protesters from the grounds around the Capitol.

The protesters went to federal court seeking a temporary restraining order against Gov. Bill Haslam, arguing the curfew and arrests of dozens of supporters violated their rights to free speech and freedom of assembly.

Yeah, ya think arresting dozens of non-violent demonstrators is a slight violation of the constitutional rights?

The judge said she had already decided to grant the restraining order because the curfew was a "clear prior restraint on free speech rights."

"I can't think of a more quintessential public forum than Legislative Plaza," Trauger said.

"This is a huge victory for us because Gov. Haslam has realized the mistake that he made," Occupy Nashville protester Steve Reiter said. "The mass arrests were totally unnecessary."

Reiter said protesters planned to remain in the plaza "for quite a while."

Marett said his office would meet with the plaintiffs to come to an agreement on health and safety issues. He said the state earlier on Monday returned the property it had seized during the arrests to its owners.

A victory for everyone and a model for cities across the nation. Meet with Occupiers and discuss the legitimate issues of health and safety instead of showing up in riot gear with tear gas.

Just shows how desperate you really are Smileyfaze when you have to compare the Wall Street movement situation with a vicious and bloody uprising nearly a century ago! Stupidly you transpose that to a picture in later days and situ often funded from your quarter in violence and death. I am not going to get involved in your attempt to bluster on the black & tans but they certainly put a hold on the murderous terrorts! Now having been briefly bodyswerved back to the issue in hand.

So many of the people involved today in the economic campaign are not dangerous radicals but middle class people who have traditonally borne the country. But unfortunately the right in America sees anything outside of it's cocooned and cumfy world as radical or extremest. In many other democracies it would be run of the mill and fit in with rights and freedoms. Kind of ironic that in the land which portrays itself everywhere as almost the producer of great demoracy (!) so much is cranked up to label decent folk. Sadly people like Smileyfaze misuses the word radical as anything left of Goldwater. When you have that sort of atmosphere you can see how the divide runs so deep.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

A victory for everyone and a model for cities across the nation. Meet with Occupiers and discuss the legitimate issues of health and safety instead of showing up in riot gear with tear gas.

There will be much bowling and clattering of teeth from the right about this blatant display of sanity

Originally posted by rjhowie:

Just shows how desperate you really are Smileyfaze when you have to compare the Wall Street movement situation with a vicious and bloody uprising nearly a century ago! Stupidly you transpose that to a picture in later days and situ often funded from your quarter in violence and death. I am not going to get involved in your attempt to bluster on the black & tans but they certainly put a hold on the murderous terrorts!

Originally posted by rjhowie:

.....However the uniforms when in like Gestapo with sudden unexpected force with rubber bullets, gas, etc. Then stamped on personal property. And even a protester in a wheel chair is a dangerous radical?......

Actually, as you phrased the police in Oakland as Gestapo cracking down on what you claimed they labeled as dangerous radicals using rubber bullets, tear gas, etc...
Before you spout off & criticize our police in the United States, kindly remember that the Black & Tans labeled 9-16 year old "children" as dangerous radicals, but went quite a bit further than our cops ever would----
they summarily executed those children they labeled as 'dangerous radicals' outright ...9 to 16 year old children murdered by the cowardly Black & Tans.

So before you spout on with your Anti-American venom & hate, look deep into the mirror for the cowardly child murders you supported proudly----the Black & Tans, along with the other murderous cowards of the British Army & Royal Scots Dragoon Guards a mere 30-40 years ago...I spit on their graves, may they rot in hell!

oK since few truly understand, Ill dumb it down, GREATLY.

The reason everyone hates these war faring morons in NYC, is simply put, being dealt with a Brooklyn spirit. Everyone else puts up with it, those in NYC, will beat them out of spite.

Originally posted by Macallan:

There will be much bowling and clattering of teeth from the right about this blatant display of sanity

There are even more blatant display of sanity in Rhode Island

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=141855652

RHODE ISLAND

Providence officials said they would not immediately begin legal proceedings against protesters who defied a weekend deadline to dismantle their tents and leave a public park. Public Safety Commissioner Steven M. Pare said city lawyers are drawing up a complaint and consulting with a local attorney who has come forward on behalf of the protesters.

But Providence won't follow the actions of other cities where there have been widespread arrests and even clashes with police seeking to clear encampments, Mayor Angel Taveras said.

Maybe cities are learning that OWS "violence" such as throwing a shoe happened after the police descended like (insert your favorite fascist dictator paramilitary squad.)

New York City developments are kind of interesting too.

NEW YORK

In New York City, an Occupy Wall Street demonstrator videotaped in a police altercation met with prosecutors Monday to discuss the incident. Felix Rivera-Pitre wants prosecutors to bring assault charges against Deputy Inspector Johnny Cardona. Attorney Ronald Kuby said prosecutors indicated the investigation would continue for a few weeks.

Won't that be a kick in the head for people like SF and FF if it's the Deputy Inspector that gets charged with assault... There does seem to be ample evidence that it's the police that started the confrontation and escalated the situation through their inappropriate and excessive reaction.

The filing was a defensive move to make sure other people not affiliated with Occupy Wall Street don't try to use the name, he said. An Arizona-based company and a couple from West Islip, N.Y., also have filed Occupy Wall Street trademark applications.

This will prevent nonsense like what happened with the Tea Party. The Tea Party Express took the name, but is ,in fact, owned and operated by a GOP lobbying firm. The Democrats will not be allowed to co-opt the Occupy movement like the GOP did the Tea Party movement.

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

So before you spout on with your Anti-American venom & hate, look deep into the mirror for the cowardly child murders you supported proudly----the Black & Tans, along with the other murderous cowards of the British Army & Royal Scots Dragoon Guards a mere 30-40 years ago...I spit on their graves, may they rot in hell!

Ok, I shouldn't answer this, but what happened in the Troubles was horrible. The British shouldn't have killed those children, and the IRA shouldn't have killed innocent British (and probably Irish) civilians. But what you're doing is just distracting the excessive use of force by American "law enforcement officers" as well from the cause of the Occupy movement in the first place.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Won't that be a kick in the head for people like SF and FF if it's the Deputy Inspector that gets charged with assault... There does seem to be ample evidence that it's the police that started the confrontation and escalated the situation through their inappropriate and excessive reaction.

The filing was a defensive move to make sure other people not affiliated with Occupy Wall Street don't try to use the name, he said. An Arizona-based company and a couple from West Islip, N.Y., also have filed Occupy Wall Street trademark applications. This will prevent nonsense like what happened with the Tea Party. The Tea Party Express took the name, but is ,in fact, owned and operated by a GOP lobbying firm. The Democrats will not be allowed to co-opt the Occupy movement like the GOP did the Tea Party movement.

Only cause New Yokers don't put up with retard intentions or the idea of being a push over...

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Originally posted by Macallan:

There will be much bowling and clattering of teeth from the right about this blatant display of sanity

There are even more blatant display of sanity in Rhode Island

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=141855652

RHODE ISLAND

Providence officials said they would not immediately begin legal proceedings against protesters who defied a weekend deadline to dismantle their tents and leave a public park. Public Safety Commissioner Steven M. Pare said city lawyers are drawing up a complaint and consulting with a local attorney who has come forward on behalf of the protesters.

But Providence won't follow the actions of other cities where there have been widespread arrests and even clashes with police seeking to clear encampments, Mayor Angel Taveras said.

Maybe cities are learning that OWS "violence" such as throwing a shoe happened after the police descended like (insert your favorite fascist dictator paramilitary squad.)

Several states should be worried when even Tennessee looks sane compared to them

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

New York City developments are kind of interesting too.

NEW YORK

In New York City, an Occupy Wall Street demonstrator videotaped in a police altercation met with prosecutors Monday to discuss the incident. Felix Rivera-Pitre wants prosecutors to bring assault charges against Deputy Inspector Johnny Cardona. Attorney Ronald Kuby said prosecutors indicated the investigation would continue for a few weeks.

Won't that be a kick in the head for people like SF and FF if it's the Deputy Inspector that gets charged with assault...

That's obviously the Evil Liberal Media, PC Police etc. doing their damnedest to keep the Real Police(tm) from doing their work

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

There does seem to be ample evidence that it's the police that started the confrontation and escalated the situation through their inappropriate and excessive reaction.

Which shouldn't surprise anyone whatsoever.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

The filing was a defensive move to make sure other people not affiliated with Occupy Wall Street don't try to use the name, he said. An Arizona-based company and a couple from West Islip, N.Y., also have filed Occupy Wall Street trademark applications.

This will prevent nonsense like what happened with the Tea Party. The Tea Party Express took the name, but is ,in fact, owned and operated by a GOP lobbying firm. The Democrats will not be allowed to co-opt the Occupy movement like the GOP did the Tea Party movement.

Nah, most Democrats would rather hide under their beds than acknowledge that they may agree with one or two things said by OWS protesters.

Originally posted by Macallan:

Nah, most Democrats would rather hide under their beds than acknowledge that they may agree with one or two things said by OWS protesters.

They can't since the squatters are taking a very liberal stance

Fox News tries to defend the police actions, even as they have to show video of women already fenced off and posing no threat. Apparently, a police supervisor simply walked up and pepper sprayed the women, who were no where near the edge of the fence. The only defense is that "we don't know what happened before this." True enough, I guess, but the women were already contained. Oh yeah, and I guess the women didn't have permits Megyn Kelly (the Fox anchor) says "What if the women were pushing against the fence" when you can see that they weren't.... That's Meanstream Media for you.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

NEW YORKIn New York City, an Occupy Wall Street demonstrator videotaped in a police altercation met with prosecutors Monday to discuss the incident. Felix Rivera-Pitre wants prosecutors to bring assault charges against Deputy Inspector Johnny Cardona. Attorney Ronald Kuby said prosecutors indicated the investigation would continue for a few weeks.

Won't that be a kick in the head for people like SF and FF if it's the Deputy Inspector that gets charged with assault... There does seem to be ample evidence that it's the police that started the confrontation and escalated the situation through their inappropriate and excessive reaction.

When the findings come in there should either be a public exoneration for decisions made properly, or a public chastising for making a bad judgment call & inappropriate decision.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

This will prevent nonsense like what happened with the Tea Party. The Tea Party Express took the name, but is ,in fact, owned and operated by a GOP lobbying firm. The Democrats will not be allowed to co-opt the Occupy movement like the GOP did the Tea Party movement.

Edit: .... " The Democrats will not be allowed to co-opt the Occupy movement like the GOP did the Tea Party movement Express."

As modified, I'd agree

Originally posted by mjmsprt40:

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Hmmm...not really. Sanguinemoon's been quoting poll numbers ever since the Tea Party to show how despised they are; conversely, the numbers for OWS have to be puffed up to show how 90% of the country is in love with them. That's how it works.

Maybe, but the highest approval for some part of the movement that I've seen him quote is 45%. That we are presumably both part of what they call the 99% has nothing to do with whether you or I approve of them.

I think you have to take that 99% vs 1% as the percentage of us who are banker/Wall Street Overlords (1%) and the rest of us who are the 99%. It has nothing to do with popularity and everything to do with the percentage of those who hold power and those who don't.

For a reference: Right now, those of us who are citizens of the United States owe that to roughly one third of the population during the time of the Revolutionary War. One third were revolutionaries, one third were Tories who owed their allegiance to the Crown and one third wanted to be left alone by both sides. How big a percentage supported the separation of the Colonies from the Crown was open to debate, even at the time.

Exactly.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Originally posted by fanfaron:

OWS have to be puffed up to show how 90% of the country is in love with them.

Ermmmm...no. Why should I show you polls when you don't even know what the issues even are? For example, the OWS is not out there demonstrating to raise the debt ceiling

Yes, they are, at least in a sense. The implied position of OWS is that government taxes too little and spends too little. Anyway, you're cherry-picking. Everyone bitches and moans about the inequality of the tax system and everyone has had it drummed into their heads from populists of all stripes that the "middle class is shrinking" (the "middle class" has apparently become the new "proletariat"). Show me some polling data on where people stand on such things as the rates of taxation and government spending, national debt, etc. And then let's see which movement more closely reflects "mainstream" opinion: the TP or OWS.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Anyway, you're cherry-picking.

No, again. These are the top issues.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

The implied position of OWS is that government taxes too little and spends too little.

By implied, you mean that you made it up. The majority of the Occupiers, like the majority of the rest of the Americans that aren't tools of the corporate elite such as yourself, do agree with increasing taxes on millionaires. But that doesn't imply increasing spending. In fact, how many times have I said to decrease spending?

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Show me some polling data on where people stand on such things as the rates of taxation and government spending, national debt, etc. And then let's see which movement more closely reflects "mainstream" opinion: the TP or OWS.

No. I give you poll after poll only for you to pretend that I haven't.

As far as the declines middle class, it's not just pundits. Observe the leftist Wall Street . Firms of all times, from Procter & Gamble and Citigroup have all had to adjust their strategies as the middle household income shrinks (chart shown in article). It's a demographic reality.

Dammit, I just told you no, but here's a poll indicating people want taxes increased on the wealthy anyway. Now you enjoy yourself pretending it's not "specific" enough or that it didn't happen in the first place.

Increases in taxes on businesses and higher-income Americans 63%
Keep taxes on wealthy high 62%

Increase taxes on middle class Americans Should NOT 87% (only mentioning this common sense items because the flat tax a favorite of the GOP would do exactly that. Cain's 999 tax looks a little like 666, doesn't it )

I wonder what you'll do now. Maybe you pretend the poll didn't happen. Says it's not specific enough (your favorite strawman)? Lament that its MSM (yes, we all know MSM has issues but it's also a fallacy to say its wrong simply because it's MSM)

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

By implied, you mean that you made it up. The majority of the Occupiers, like the majority of the rest of the Americans that aren't tools of the corporate elite such as yourself

Oh, can the "tools of the corporate elite" crap. I'm saying that that is the logical outcome of the policy stances they take. They want more and bigger government to do more "regulating" and redistribution, as if "government bureaucratic elite" is somehow to be preferred to "corporate elite".

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

I wonder what you'll do now. Maybe you pretend the poll didn't happen.

Counter it with this one.

Tallying the percentages, 53% of Americans believe the top 1% of Americans should pay less than 30%, and the average fair rate suggested by Americans was 24%.

According to the most recent data available, the top 1% of Americans already pay an effective federal tax rate of 30%, six points higher than the average rate Americans said the top 1% should have to pay.

By the way, here's a spot-on comment on an article about a spot-on comment from (of all people) Michael Bloomberg:

Pfw51 wrote on November 1, 2011, 3:04 PM

The banks created the "shady financial instruments" solely BECAUSE Congress passed laws that forced them to take high risks that they knew would result in massive losses. The left side of the political spectrum is so stuck on "static accounting" that they have no understanding that many (if not most) regulations they pass have a direct and immediate effect on the balance sheets of business by increasing the costs that are required to do the business they exist to do. The banks did what any business would do (albeit in a deceptive, but legal, way): they protected their profits. Granted, their methods SHOULD have been illegal, but that's what happens when Congress and bureaucrats start dictating policies to businesses... the businesses consult with their lawyers and they start to get creative. The fact is that there are always consequences and loopholes that no one even imagined when the regulations were written, so government tends to do far more damage than good when they try to regulate the economy.

Absolutely right. Facts are facts. Source. And for your further edification, read this. Carefully.

Things are just a little more complicated than either the TP's "government is evil" line or the OWS freakazoids' "corporate greed" mantra.

Oh me, oh my. Is Rick Perry not valid?

http://www.mediaite.com/online/oops-rick-perry-cites-fake-quote-from-viral-‘occupy-toronto’-satire/

Yesterday we reported a strange story that brought attention to the intersection of satirical writing, hyper-partisan politics, and how the viral nature of the Internet has little regard for the truth, when fake quotes from a piece of comedic fiction were passed off as real by conservative bloggers.

...

Some background. Schatzker wrote a satirical essay that seemed to mock the hyperbole and hyperventilation on both sides of the Occupy movement, that listed quotes of fabricated participants of Occupy Toronto

[/quote] Occupy a clue yourself

The fabricated quote, which Schatzker clearly labeled as satire was:

“It’s weird protesting on Bay Street. You get there at 9 a.m. and the rich bankers who you want to hurl insults at and change their worldview have been at work for two hours already. And then when it’s time to go, they’re still there. I guess that’s why they call them the one per cent. I mean, who wants to work those kinds of hours? That’s the power of greed.”

So "conservative" bloggers began circulating it as fact, which in embarrassing enough. Maybe they need to check a free dictionary to see what satire is?

So anyway, tea bagging Presidential candidate picked up on it and began passing it as fact on the campaign trail. Perry's campaign is sunk already, so this might not hurt him that much. Even so, Jesus, guy have a staffer check the quotes before you repeat them. It takes Google and like two minutes. To be fair, Perry did say “I don’t know if it can be proved up or not,” but you're supposed to check the accuracy of the statements before you repeat them, especially if you're suffering the delusion that you're gonna be President.

Why, here's a dumbass "conservative" video blogger now.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

The banks created the "shady financial instruments" solely BECAUSE Congress passed laws that forced them to take high risks that they knew would result in massive losses. The left side of the political spectrum is so stuck on "static accounting"

Already dealt, Brain. Nobody forced for the banks to do credit swap derivatives and the like. Ever. Congress and President Bush (remember this happen during his administration, because you seem think Obama did this..) deregulated the financial industry Likewise, the high risk loans actually went against regulations (the regs were already talked about as well)

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Things are just a little more complicated than either the TP's "government is evil" line or the OWS freakazoids' "corporate greed" mantra.

It's about time you said something that was halfway intelligent or factual! Good on ya! It was collusion between the two sectors. The financial sector sent lobbyists to get their way with promises of support and the corrupt politicians went along with it and this fore-mentioned deregulating. It's even more complicated than that, but you have no hope of understanding history nor politics. What we need government for is that the Wall Street needs re-regulated and some of the financial products need to be at least taxed so highly that nobody will offer them anymore (if they can't be made outright illegal, like they had been before Bush and Congress legalized them. Once again, some of the shit the banks and Wall Street were doing that helped cause the recession and made it worse had been illegal only a few years prior, with good reason. It's boring repeating myself, but you don't seem to understand.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Originally posted by fanfaron:

The banks created the "shady financial instruments" solely BECAUSE Congress passed laws that forced them to take high risks that they knew would result in massive losses. The left side of the political spectrum is so stuck on "static accounting"

Already dealt, Brain. Nobody forced for the banks to do credit swap derivatives and the like. Ever.

So, genius, tell us: how were the banks supposed to absorb guaranteed losses MANDATED by government regulation?

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Likewise, the high risk loans actually went against regulations (the regs were already talked about as well)

You didn't read the .pdf file to which I linked? Let me guess...

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

It's about time you said something that was halfway intelligent or factual! Good on ya

Arrogance combined with utter cluelessness. You're perfect for OWS, come to think of it.

Who says that History Repeats Itself?

Well, I'm a believer that it does, & if you doubt it just read on.....

The Story Behind The Story



THE TRUTH ABOUT OCCUPY WALL STREET EXPOSED.

It began as “peaceful protests” on the 17th day of September – the month of the Autumn Equinox (Sept. 21 – Mabron – a very special ritual day ordained by WICCA, Kaballa, and Pagan practitioners of Lucifer as the day of atonement and the “releasing of prisoners” – both political and economic.) The protest began at a specific city which was the financial heart of THE pre-eminent global capitalist “Republic” - a world-power center of wealth and influence unequalled in the entire world at that specific time. The nation, however, had been in a Great Recession for three years. Factories were closing their doors, and unemployment had reached 36%. The national debt to the world central bank was crippling in every way. Inflation had successful eroded the wages of the people by 50%. The future of this once great nation was bleak in every way.

The message of the “protesters” was a simple one – the “working people” were the unwitting slaves of BIG BUSINESS and COPORATE GREED – a mere 1% (the “ruling class) were robbing the “people” (the remaining 99%) of their wealth and property. It was not just a single day of protests, but was scheduled to last for many months. Eventually, the “movement” spread to every other major city in the country – as well as other foreign nations.

If you think I am describing the 2011 OWS (Occupy Wall Street) and America the Beautiful, you are wrong. I am reciting the exact history of the Bolshevik Revolution (Red October) that eventually dismantled the Russian Republic of Czar Nicholas.

Continued Here.

Just mere coincidence???????

I hope so, but I wonder.

What do you think?

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

the Russian Republic of Czar Nicholas

The what now?

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

the Russian Republic of Czar Nicholas

The what now?

He was obviously a Republican and he was shot by those dastardly communists led by Obama

Originally posted by fanfaron:

So, genius, tell us: how were the banks supposed to absorb guaranteed losses MANDATED by government regulation?

Nobody said they were. BUT acting on deregulation cost them massive losses. Why in the God's name did you post a 1994 pdf that has nothing to do with the current crises is the real question. Yeah,not being able discriminate because of race in 1994 did this...yup..totally The ECEO prohibits discrimination based on Race/Ethnicity, martial status, age, sex, national origin, income from public source and FH act adds handicap. It doesn't say to make sub-prime loans or have derivatives or anything like that. Is what you guys have? Really? Seriously? What happened, did some Rightwing site point you to this "evidence?"

As far as your other excuse for a link goes, I'll just to a couple of the replies, since I'm not arsed to type anymore.

johnnieutah wrote on November 1, 2011, 12:00 PM [Link]

Am I missing something, or does this seem a bit disingeuous of Bloomberg? The situation is neither plain nor simple. The banks obviously have to bear the brunt of the blame, as they are the ones who created shady financial instruments to repackage weak loans and then trade those instruments among themselves in a high-stakes game of hot-potato. Congress isn't blameless, but Congress seems irrresponsible while the banks seems criminal. And Bloomberg, as both the founder of a financial media company AND a fantastically wealthy individual, has everything to gain by placing blame as far from Wall Street as possible.

....

spc123 wrote on November 1, 2011, 3:26 PM [Link]

CRA has been around since 1977 but just mysteriously just became a problem recently.Right. Mike is finally showing his true colors in his glorious third term. Only two more years; don't let the door hit you on the way out.
reply
ComradeANon wrote on November 1, 2011, 4:16 PM [Link]

CRA didn't apply to the private lenders that dominated the subprime market. Fact. (But I realize that facts are fast and loose these days.)
reply
ComradeANon wrote on November 1, 2011, 4:19 PM [Link]

Oh, and Fannie and Freddie don't make loans. Another Fact. Funny, you'd think someone who created a "financial" network might know this.
reply
dliman wrote on November 1, 2011, 4:47 PM [Link]

Fannie and Freddie might deserve some of the blame. But Wall Street is responsible for securitizing and repackaging mortgages (into CDO's CDS's, CDS-cubed). If anything it was Wall Street's hunger for mortgages (raw materials) to feed the derivatives machine that turned the housing crisis into a ful blown global financial crisis!

Well shit, I decided to check on the guy that make the point that Fannie and Freddie don't even make the mortgages to see if he's right. And he is.
http://www.lendingtree.com/mortgage-loans/advice/mortgage-types/fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac/

If you’re on the path towards homeownership, chances are you will run into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac somewhere along the way. Neither one lends money to consumers directly, but both of these huge financial institutions have a direct impact on how easy it is for Americans to purchase homes. They provide funding to retail mortgage lenders, such as banks, savings institutions and credit unions, by purchasing the mortgage loans these lenders have made, packaging them into guaranteed securities and selling them to investors.

AND as I pointed out before, Freddie and Fannie's problem was lack of regulation, which allowed them to create all those dodgy derivatives and whatnot. Are you sure you're a conservative and not a plant for the Socialist Workers Party or CP USA?

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

What do you think?

That you need to check your medicine cabinet. Either you're taking the wrong prescriptions or some of them have expired. Just take them to your favorite drug store and have the pharmacist check them out for you.

Smiley, I'm about as far from being a commie as you can get and still be sane. But, since you bring up Red October and history repeating itself-- maybe you would do well to study some on why things got to that point in Czarist Russia. By the time the revolution took place, things had gotten so bad that implosion of the existing government was all but inevitable. Now, Czarist Russia had a big problem which is that the Czar was an autocrat and was unwilling to share his absolute power over Russia. When he proved incapable of understanding the problems, much less fixing them--- what happened next was probably inevitable.

I don't usually deal with "what if" stuff, but this one makes me want to do just that. What if Russia had a proper Parliament, and something resembling the constitutional monarchies of modern European nations? Is it possible the outcome would have been different than it was? If the government had been more responsive to the people it governed, would the outcome have been different?

Could history repeat itself here, and we end up with something like Russia did? Yes, if: The only answer people with legitimate grievances get is to be called "Communists" and to be arrested for exercising their Constitutional rights--- if the people come to the conclusion that the only way to get redress is by violent revolution--- it could happen. Then again, maybe this time the powers-that-be might learn from history, decide to do what's right and so defuse a potentially bad situation.

Aww, now you spoiled the fun by giving an intelligent answer that doesn't deserve

Did you see this gibberish from among the replies?

The number eleven is like the holy grail to hardcore satanists. Juxtaposed against the 9 as in 911, it represents the skipping of kabbalistic step 10 on the way to enlightenment, directly from step 9 to 11 thereby excluding step 10 which is God. The star underneath the Statue of Liberty is an eleven-pointed star. 311 was the date upon which the Japan quake was caused. 1-8-11 (1+8=9) is the date Loughner shot and killed a number of people while under MK programming. The World Trade Center was one giant eleven. This year being 2011, we are presented with an overabundance of “coincidences” linking the number 11 in the date to a terrible “terrorist attack” or “natural disaster”. Coming up here in just a few days will be the most eleven-y date possible: 11-11-11. With all the rumblings going on in the middle east regarding Israel, Lebanon, Iran and Pakistan, I would not be the least bit surprised if this were indeed the chosen date whereby military aggressions began resulting in the triggering of World War Three, or Armageddon. At the very least I expect it to be a date upon which either another shooter will go on a murder spree, or a nuke will go off in a US city blamed on Pakistan, or perhaps a “major earthquake” could happen to us here in Northern California [we just had two on the same day a few days ago]. Only time will tell. Place your bets now please, who wants to wager that nothing will happen on that day, and it will be business as usual and noneventful; anyone?

Satanic Hollywood is releasing a horror film on that date with the same title. Remember the film they released on 3-11-11?

In the context of Dr Ott’s piece above, it is significant to note that also Oct 29 is an eleven-y date (2+9=11).

You see, I have the bad habit of reading the entire site

That's some weapon grade stupid, you better wear full hazmat gear when reading it

Originally posted by mjmsprt40:

.....if the people come to the conclusion that the only way to get redress is by violent revolution--- it could happen. Then again, maybe this time the powers-that-be might learn from history, decide to do what's right and so defuse a potentially bad situation.

Tall ask from the Powers-That-Be, one that they actually hear a cohesive list of demands/requests------understand what OWS is actually after.

Hell, so far they got what the people want all wrong on Health Care, TARP, the Bailouts, the Stimulus, Global Warming/Climate Change, jobs...etc..etc..

Hopefully your right, & they finally get it.

Actually, I think that might start with OWS really knowing first about what it wants, but hey, formalities, formalities, formalities.

If all else fails the SEIU, CODE PINK, THE TIDES FOUNDATION, etc...etc will probably educate OWS on what they want, & craft them a list of coherent demands.

Oh did anybody else notice the anti-semitism in the article, or was I the only fool to actually read it (including Smiley himself)

The Czar didn’t realize that the Khazar Jew BANKERS he was so deeply indebted to, would manipulate world markets and thus restrict cash flow, resulting in default and empire destruction.

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

Tall ask from the Powers-That-Be, one that they actually hear a cohesive list of demands/requests, etc

You're actually trying to defending that rubbish? I think he already gave the only reasoned response to it. The rest of us are incapacitated with hilarity. :rofl:

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Oh did anybody else notice the anti-semitism in the article, or was I the only fool to actually read it (including Smiley himself)

The Czar didn’t realize that the Khazar Jew BANKERS he was so deeply indebted to, would manipulate world markets and thus restrict cash flow, resulting in default and empire destruction.

Yep, the Bolsheviks were known to frown upon most religions too.

BTW....they weren't right, but they did.

Seems the OWSM isn't alone when it comes to antisemitism in today's world, or in history for that matter.

And today 1-11-11, almost three 11s That was hardcore conspiratorial lunacy there, pal

Huh, I never knew NAZI Germany conquered America and that OJ Simpson was a NAZI. Learn something new everyday, I guess. So if you start to piece the site together 1) The OWS is trying to overthrow America but 2) That's a good thing because America is NAZI Germany refounded on the other side of the Atlantic?

I don't know if the bankers at present are Jewish, and it really doesn't matter either way if they are or not. A large part of the reason we are where we're at today is because of decisions made by today's bankers. Some people just won't learn from history, and it seems bankers are no different.

We had many of the regulations on the banks that we did because of the Crash of '29. In recent years, government was persuaded to remove some of those regulations, the bankers said they had learned from past mistakes and wouldn't do that again. Well, they made those same mistakes, plus maybe a few new ones, and we had the Great Recession we're still suffering from now.

You will get what we have now each and every time short-term profits are allowed to take preference over long-term goals.

I dare say that there are a great number of Jews in the financial and banking world there always have been due to money and money experience being high in their lives. As for Tsarist Russia, a goodly number of Jews were involved in leadership at both the 1917 and 1918 Revolutions. In the Civil War that followed October 1918 even though Britain, USA, Japan had troops stationed in Russia tentatively on the White side (but in fact doing little) the USA bankers were secretly going behind Allied backs dealing on matters of finance behind the scenes with the very Bolsheviks they were against! Anything for a fast buck, morality doesn't count,

Meanwhile, back in the Utopia known as Zuccotti Park:

Protesters living in Zuccotti park are dealing with an escalating security problem, which some say could threaten the sustainability of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

There have been multiple incidents of assault, drug dealing and drug use, rape and attempted rape, according to conversations with numerous protesters. And the problem, they say, is getting worse.

In the past several weeks, the cluster of tents at the west end of the park -- the farthest section from the bustle of working groups and activity near Broadway -- has grown increasingly dangerous, many say. The sanitation team has reported finding needles in tents, and reports of crack and crystal meth use have surfaced. But the most serious concern most protesters say, is the risk of assault, especially for women and at night.

In an attempt to maintain peace and institute some measure of security, park-dwelling occupiers convened on Monday to discuss safety and security concerns. Among the issues discussed: What sorts of incidents should the police be involved with? How should the security working group -- one of nearly 80 groups to have sprung up since the movement's inception -- handle violence or theft in the park? What role should the community watch working group play? Should OWS welcome anyone who wants to join them in the park, no matter how unstable his or her behavior appears? ...

But disruptions abounded during Monday's meeting, illustrating a concern for many occupiers: Can the current consensus-driven decision-making process function as the group in Zuccotti grows larger.

"These people are telling you what to do!" an agitated man with a mohawk shouted out. "There are many dangerous things being spoken right now!"

The crowd was torn over how to handle the disruption. Some people wanted to hear his argument, while others shouted, "This is an example of disrespect to the community!"

It might be time to end the Occupy-a-palooza before there are some murders. (The story is in that notable right-wing rag known as the Huffington Post, by the way.)

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Oh did anybody else notice the anti-semitism in the article, or was I the only fool to actually read it (including Smiley himself)

The Czar didn’t realize that the Khazar Jew BANKERS he was so deeply indebted to, would manipulate world markets and thus restrict cash flow, resulting in default and empire destruction.

Khazar Jew BANKERS?
Goodness, is there any idiotic conspiracy theory they don't reference?

Now why is this not surprising somehow...

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/11/01/mafia-takes-over-publicly-traded-company/

Mafia Takes Over Publicly Traded Company

As Occupy Wall Street protestors chant about the criminals in the boardroom, actual thieves -- including men associated with the mafia -- have spent years quietly running FirstPlus Financial Group (FPFX), a Texas-based company and a one-time subprime lender that boasted former Vice President Dan Quayle as a board member, and used NFL Hall of Famer Dan Marino in its ads.

On Tuesday, Nicodermo S. Scarfo, a made man within the Lucchese organized crime family, was arrested at his home. He's one of 13 men charged with the illegal takeover of the publicly traded company, among other racketeering charges. "The defendants gave new meaning to 'corporate takeover,' " said U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman.

"Criminal activities have evolved from the back alleys to the board rooms," said Michael B. Ward, special agent in charge of the FBI's Newark Field Office. Still, the tactics remain the same, he says: "physical threats and intimidation to gain leverage and loot lucrative businesses."

....

According to the indictment, Scarfo and Pelullo lived lavish lifestyles. Scarfo had a $850,000 yacht and a luxury mansion. Pelullo owned a Bentley and loads of expensive jewelry gifted to his wife. In contrast, FirstPlus and its shareholders lost at least $12 million due to the criminal activity.

"Particularly in these economic times, investors should be free to invest in public companies without fear that violent criminal organizations are their puppetmasters," said U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman. "And the public deserves to rely with confidence on corporate officials and professionals whose positions require them to act in the best interest of shareholders, not members of organized crime."

As for the company, the FirstPlus website states that "beginning with the efforts of a newly reconstituted Audit Committee, the Board of Directors is working to ensure shareholder interests are protected and preserved."

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Meanwhile, back in the Utopia known as Zuccotti Park:

Yes, there are security concerns. That's why in other cities, officials have started meeting with Occupy organizers to deal with it, instead of sending police in riot gear. In other news, the sun rose this morning and Fanfaron failed again to slam to Occupy movement.

Originally posted by Macallan:

Goodness, is there any idiotic conspiracy theory they don't reference?

Oh, OK. I wondering what that site's obsession with the Khazars was. Damned medieval tribesman continue to be trouble to this day or something.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Oh did anybody else notice the anti-semitism in the article, or was I the only fool to actually read it (including Smiley himself)

The Czar didn’t realize that the Khazar Jew BANKERS he was so deeply indebted to, would manipulate world markets and thus restrict cash flow, resulting in default and empire destruction.

I didn't. The contrived "mere coincidence" from the first few paragraphs felt mostly like trying to take advantage of a possible lack of knowledge of the February and October revolutions on the part of the reader. The number of remarks someone with only a passing knowledge of the subject might let slip is substantial. I don't mean to imply I have more than that, but apparently I've got a greater knowledge of it than the author anticipated I did.

The question that must be examined thoroughly at this point, my friends is: WHO WERE THESE “PEACEFUL PROTESTERS” – LENIN AND TROTSKY – HOW WERE THEY FUNDED AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, WHO BANKROLLED THEIR OPERATION?? (The MONEY had to come from somewhere!)

For one thing, Lenin stated he wanted to overthrow the czar with a worker-peasant alliance since the early 1900s, if not the late 1800s. I can only assume the author is trying to imply that Lenin was a peaceful protester on the surface with revolutionary plans kept secret, and that the OWS people are the same.

An objective analysis of Czarist Russia’s economics in early 1900 shows that a singular event occurred that led to Russia’s destruction in 15 short years – the Czar accepted UNLIMITED CREDIT from the House of Rothschild’s CENTRAL BANK OF AUSTRIA!!! The Czar needed gold to build his world empire, after all. He needed to buy machinery and equipment. He needed to buy modern weaponry and needed to build ornate palaces and resorts worldwide. In short, the Czar embraced the infernal demon named MAMMON without realizing that DEBT CYCLES are DEATH CYCLES. The Czar didn’t realize that the Khazar Jew BANKERS he was so deeply indebted to, would manipulate world markets and thus restrict cash flow, resulting in default and empire destruction.

It is critically important to realize the most important truth called the “Hegelian Dialectic”. It is the Modus Operandi of the Jewish Central Bankers since King Nimrod and is symbolized by the Oroboros – the ancient Babylonian symbol of the Serpent swallowing its own tail in an eternal cycle of Problem – Reaction – Solution. (PRS). In short, the MONEYCHANGERS create the problem to begin with, (Mountainous, Usurious DEBT – causing chaos and unemployment) – they then use their “money” to create and control the REACTION to the Problem (Protests and Revolutions), and in the end achieving the realization of the initial goal – POWER AND CONTROL OF WORLD GOVERNMENT.

Wow, you weren't kidding. This could've been taking straight from Mein Kampf.

Now there are some pundits and minions, like Zionist Shill Glen Beck, who want you to believe this is all orchestrated by corrupt, organized labor unions such as the AFL-CIO, or the SEIU. At least according to the “Leader” I talked with, this is not the case. The SEIU has supported their activity somewhat, he said, but it is not the orchestrator of the event. That honor belongs to “ADBUSTERS”.

Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would've said.

TIDES FOUNDATION! What a name. Tides are governed by the MOON Cycles you see. Moon cycles also influence DATES, astrology, scrying, and all forms of WITCHCRAFT sabbats. Tides also affect the psyche of humans – for the term LUNACY comes from Lunar – the MOON CYCLES. The “Illuminati” declared their worldwide influence can and often does “turn the tides” of the planet. Get the drift?

Ooh, witchcraft. I thought everyone had forgotten about that these days.

Don’t forget George Soros has publicly declared that China will rule the U.S. economically – so the U.S. has to collapse first. To this end, George Soros’ PET PROJECT is to implement a 1% TRANSACTION TAX (called a Tobin Tax) on all stock and bond buys and sales. This would, without a doubt, put the nail in the U.S. Stock Exchange. Soros and Rothschild have already secured their trillions. Now they selfishly want to save the world from the human scourge??? Sick.

Perhaps the author isn't aware of how the US came to "rule" the UK economically, or how the situation in the UK is right now. What lunacy to say the US economy has to collapse first. Chances are the rest of the world — including China — would go down with it.

Make no mistake, eventually, just like the Bolshevik’s “peaceful protest” of 1917, this will undoubtedly turn very bloody. There is no other course it can take.

Sanguinemoon, you owe me 10 minutes back.

It just occurs to me it could be satire, though it doesn't read like A Modest Proposal.

Y'all know we're just gonna have to get the author of that piece away from Granpappy's "White Lightnin'". That moonshine will make you believe doggone near anything.

I just had to. I just couldn't resist, being all those poor urchins are freezin' their rumpilstilskins off out there in the park!

Ohhhh, & those fascist pigs are confiscating all their heating equipment citing health & safety! Oh, soooooo bad!

Ya gotta love it, now God hates 'em too, not just the bankers & the Jews!




Such an impishly self-important look on his face, don'tcha think?

Once again Smiley doesn't understand simple concepts like weather. Oh well, you don't need to understand it, its beyond your capacity anyway.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

It just occurs to me it could be satire, though it doesn't read like A Modest Proposal.

Poe's Law certainly applies, in more than one way

Originally posted by Muttsfan:

Once again Smiley doesn't understand simple concepts like weather. Oh well, you don't need to understand it, its beyond your capacity anyway.

Nor does he understand the concept of actually believing in something, like making the world a little better instead if just standing there in the warm weather "protesting" for the continuation of the failed status quo.

Ahhh, another beautiful day in Paradise.


The biggest question today is a toughie-----sailing, or deep sea fishing.


I think I'll try my luck at fishing.

I didn't do that bad the other day.

So it's decided..it's Reef fishing.

I'll leave ending world hunger to you guys...later

Here's the running blog of the Oakland General Strike

so far:

5.45pm: Here's a summary of events today.

Thousands of people have been marching in Oakland, California, where an attempt by police to break up an "Occupy" camp a week ago led to Iraq veteran Scott Olsen suffering a serious head injury. The day has so far passed off with good humour and without trouble. But the protesters' desire to "shut down" the city with a general strike appear not to have materialised.

Rumours that the Port of Oakland had been shut down by the protests proved unfounded. There were longer lines at the port after workers walked out yesterday over a separate issue relating to safe working practices. But most workers turned up for work today.

In New York, army veterans have marched through lower Manhattan to the Occupy Wall Street Camp at Zuccotti Park. The march passed off without incident, and veterans have been speaking in support of Olsen and the Occupy movement at Zuccotti Park.

It seems the blog is slightly out of date....

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/11/02/state/n170716D20.DTL

(11-02) 17:07 PDT Oakland, Calif. (AP) --

A crowd of hundreds of people are marching to the Port of Oakland as they try to disrupt the flow of goods at the nation's fifth-busiest port.

The crowd left downtown Oakland a little before 5 p.m. on Wednesday as they join several busloads of demonstrators who left for the port a few minutes earlier.

Organizers say they want to stop the "flow of capital." The port sends goods primarily to Asia, including wine as well as rice, fruits and nuts, and handles imported electronics, apparel and manufacturing equipment, mostly from Asia, as well as cars and parts from Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Originally posted by Muttsfan:

Once again Smiley doesn't understand simple concepts like weather. Oh well, you don't need to understand it, its beyond your capacity anyway.

Nor does he understand the concept of actually believing in something, like making the world a little better instead if just standing there in the warm weather "protesting" for the continuation of the failed status quo.

Well, to be fair, if you reply to obvious trolling you created half the problem. If I had a nickel for every right wing internet money bags I've come across trolling from their gold yacht in the bermudas, I'd be as rich as they claim. I know the first thing I do when on vacation in paradise is take the time to log in and try to cheeze off strangers on the internet. Same goes for tough guys that could kick anybody's ass that 'wouldn't say that stuff to their face', or cassanovas that get laid by playboy models every night.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

It seems the blog is slightly out of date....

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/11/02/state/n170716D20.DTL

(11-02) 17:07 PDT Oakland, Calif. (AP) --

A crowd of hundreds of people are marching to the Port of Oakland as they try to disrupt the flow of goods at the nation's fifth-busiest port.

The crowd left downtown Oakland a little before 5 p.m. on Wednesday as they join several busloads of demonstrators who left for the port a few minutes earlier.

Organizers say they want to stop the "flow of capital." The port sends goods primarily to Asia, including wine as well as rice, fruits and nuts, and handles imported electronics, apparel and manufacturing equipment, mostly from Asia, as well as cars and parts from Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai.

At least it doesn't get that cold in Oakland. In New York, the cops were ordered to take people's heating devices away. Still, blocking commerce is not going to be ignored and let go. I get the feeling things might get real if they succeed in blocking any of it.

Originally posted by xyzoneon:

If I had a nickel for every right wing internet money bags I've come across trolling from their gold yacht in the bermudas

…you wouldn't have a nickel, would you? But maybe you're (sic) use of the language is confusing me: Did you mean "while you were trolling"?

Originally posted by xyzoneon:

Well, to be fair, if you reply to obvious trolling you created half the problem. If I had a nickel for every right wing internet money bags I've come across trolling from their gold yacht in the bermudas, I'd be as rich as they claim.

According to this poll, (check item #38) such a person would be far more likely to support OWS than a lower-income working stiff. Shocka!!!!! Damn peasants never can tell what's best for them without some help, huh?

Top-down and going nowhere.

By the way, @Sanguinemoon, check out some of the other items in this poll and tell me how relatively "mainstream" OWS is.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Nor does he understand the concept of actually believing in something, like making the world a little better instead if just standing there in the warm weather "protesting" for the continuation of the failed status quo.

By the way, are you referring to those 'baggers? I thought they were despised precisely because they were going against the usual lib orthodoxy which in many ways IS the status quo and has been for nearly 80 years. In other words, TPers were protesting the application of 1930s "recovery" strategies in the present day and were heretics for doing so. Not to mention the fact that they were violent racists, remember? Now, though, violent racists are OK so long as they carry "we are the 99%" signs.

So, OWS is all about complaining about the Banks on Wall Street (All Banks) because they claim the Banks have stolen their fair share of American wealth & prosperity?

I sincerely doubt that 50% of those self-proclaimed victimized urchins complaining the loudest ever worked a day in their lives to deserve any wealth or prosperity, but demand that the so called 1% be forced to give them a piece of their pie!

Well my predictions are coming to fruition. The violence & anarchy I predicted has taken over from the few peaceable protesters, who were duped into being the fronts for the hired thugs, criminals, & Marxist anarchists who are now free to reign over the OWS Mob Movement & do what they do best---- Destroy & Plunder.

No longer can the OWS Mob claim that they are peaceful & non-violent. That dubious claim of innocence is dead & gone forever!!

The Occupy Wall Street movement (effectively endorsed by the Democrat Party) has predictably combined with the cowardice, fecklessness, and collusion of liberal bureaucrats to result in all hell breaking loose in Oakland.

Occupy Oakland protesters claimed victory after they shut down one of the nation’s busiest shipping ports… In a five-hour stand-off protesters vandalised businesses and smashed bank windows, as they tried to shut down the city — and police appeared to respond using tear gas and flash bang grenades.

The California demonstrators blocked operations at the city’s port and stopped traffic on Wednesday in protests against economic inequality and police brutality, marred by scattered vandalism. …riot police arrested dozens of protesters who had marched through downtown to break into a vacant building, shattering windows, spraying graffiti and setting fires along the way. …

They blocked off city streets with dumpsters and other large rubbish bins, starting bonfires that leapt 15ft in the air.

According to city officials, the Occucommies threw “rocks, explosives, bottles, and flaming objects at responding officers. Several private and municipal buildings sustained heavy vandalism.” Other activities included arson.

Oakland has exposed the naked face of modern liberalism for all to see.

Peaceful Assembly? Love & Respect? Justice & Fairness?














I can't wait to hear from the bleeding heart OWS apologists now!



This is what happens when you express vague & incoherent objectives & demands to an impressionable group of urchins with plenty of spare time to wreak havoc.

All you do is gather dead wood, splash it with gasoline, & now the match is lit.

Like I said earlier:

No longer can the OWS Mob claim that they are peaceful & non-violent. That dubious claim of innocence is dead & gone forever!!

There ain't no turnin' back.

Those authorities responsible for protecting society & it's property, if not before, will now find themselves justified in responding to the lawlessness, destruction, & violence.

OWS was forewarned.

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

The Occupy Wall Street movement (effectively endorsed by the Democrat Party) has predictably combined with the cowardice, fecklessness, and collusion of liberal bureaucrats to result in all hell breaking loose in Oakland.

What's the matter, can't refer back to your "source" because you know it's so ridiculously right-wing that's it's an auto-discredit. I guess you managed to learn that I check your sources better than you do . Of pictures, the second one was a splinter group breaking the windows of a Wells-Fargo bank. That was completely the wrong thing to do by people not associated with the main Occupy movement. We do need to grow the ability to work with the police to end the Black Bloc idiots that show up from time to time. Of the last one, though, are you guys so desperate to find violence that you fail to understand the concept of metaphor. Those were tough words at the end of your post, but most people that aren't simply rabidly against the Occupy movement understand the difference between a political firestorm and arson. Thanks, though Oh yeah, did you see on the sign the hand is holding a pen, not a match; clearly it's a reference to the pen being mightier than the sword.

Originally posted by xyzoneon:

Still, blocking commerce is not going to be ignored and let go. I get the feeling things might get real if they succeed in blocking any of it.

They did succeed. The Port of Oakland was shut down for at least a shift. But now operations at the port have been resumed without incident. This actually isn't the first time the port has been shutdown. In 2002, it was shutdown in labor despite. In 2004, there was huge labor shortage, not a strike or anything, just they didn't have enough people to work the port. Still you're not wrong. It could have gotten real ugly and one wonders what would happen if the NY group shuts down the port (which is technically in NJ) I also wonder what Obama's response would be. In the great sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan the police and unions busters responded so violently that FDR had send in the National Guard, not against the protesters, mind you. He had to send them in to keep the police in check. Would Obama have the balls to follow suit, if it was required? I doubt it.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

. In other words, TPers were protesting the application of 1930s "recovery" strategies in the present day and were heretics for doing so.

And if some of those 1930's recovery strategies were kept in place, likely the economy would not have gotten to this point and those Occupy movement would never had happened. An example of this was Glass-Steagall act, which was keeping the banks from being "too big to fail" and laws against the credit default swap derivatives. I know, your brain is unable to connect the dots between the repeal of regulation, the financial collapse and the subsequent recession (if not a full blown depression in some places) and the Occupy movement. That's not to mention that the TP was also "protesting" for the status quo, such as continued lowering of taxes on the rich. What occurred to me was that the tp supported "anti-establishment" politicians. But when you look at the positions of the politicians, they were more radically pro-establishment than the moderate Republicans they opposed; you know the ones with actual ability to govern. Let me explain before you knee-jerk. Too late, you already knee-jerked I'll explain anyway. By being so anti-tax, by taking the Laffer Curve more seriously and more as gospel than Arthur Laffer himself did* you guys were radically pro-financial sector establishment, a position further solidified by taking millions from the Koch brothers and attending "anti-establishment" rallies put on by the....establishment.


* I already showed OakDaleFTL an article in which Arthur Laffer himself said the Bush era tax cuts by and large did not create economic growth and generate revenue. The one exception Laffer pointed out was the Capital Gains tax cuts. I wonder how many of you guys even knew the name of the economic theory you subscribed to, much less understood it.

And if Laffer disagrees with your interpretation…

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

I already showed [OakdaleFTL] an article in which Arthur Laffer himself said the Bush era tax cuts by and large did not create economic [elipsistic Sangism] and generate revenue.

Well, who'd know better?

[ + ] posted by ignored OakdaleFTL on Thursday, 3. November 2011, 18:31:2

What misinformation and personal attacks is blathering about now? :shrug:

Anyway, another neighbor is about to have to walk away from his home. It wasn't a sub-prime mortgage or anything like that. But in the course of the financial sector led recession, the value of him his home halved and so he's deeply underwater. The bank won't even talk to him about the issue. That's a small example (in the context of a global problem, not for him obviously) of why people are fed up with the banks.

Meanwhile the real Occupiers condemn any and all violence and even the Oakland police say the protest were largely peaceful and the violence was conducted by a small group.

Brenda Jamison, a mother of four who lives downtown, watched the disturbance from her window, and prayed for it to stop. She said the police acted appropriately when they tried to separate the disruptive protesters causing damage from the peaceful masses.
"I don't feel like I'm home," she said. "It's not an issue of black and white. You just have these people who come out looking for an excuse to tear up everything. It's not right."

Yup, hence why I say the main Occupy movement and the police need to work together, instead of the police descending on all the protesters in riot gear just for sitting there or the protesters automatically feeling hostile to the police.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

And if some of those 1930's recovery strategies were kept in place, likely the economy would not have gotten to this point and those Occupy movement would never had happened. An example of this was Glass-Steagall act, which was keeping the banks from being "too big to fail" and laws against the credit default swap derivatives. I know, your brain is unable to connect the dots between the repeal of regulation, the financial collapse and the subsequent recession (if not a full blown depression in some places) and the Occupy movement. That's not to mention that the TP was also "protesting" for the status quo, such as continued lowering of taxes on the rich. What occurred to me was that the tp supported "anti-establishment" politicians. But when you look at the positions of the politicians, they were more radically pro-establishment than the moderate Republicans they opposed;

Those "1930s recovery strategies" are what helped put us here, and they've been around ever since, along with the spending associated with the Great Society and the War on Poverty. What about the New Deal ended the Depression? None of it. The greatest service the New Deal did was to steal the thunder of the 1930s version of OWS freakazoids and populist freaks on the right as well. World War II with its increased industrial production was what finally ended the Depression.

What do you think should've taken place, a $3 trillion stimulus package? More bureaucracies "putting people to work" for a few weeks at a time? How many jobs did the initial "stimulus" create, and at what cost? (Take a look at "weatherizing" houses in Seattle for a clue.)

Recent college graduates whining about the evil banks because those graduates have $100,000 in student loan debt when they could've gone to a state school for maybe a little more than a fifth of that price is pathetic. It's (dare I say it) "greedy". Why aren't they protesting outside the admin buildings of the pricey colleges they attended? The colleges are the ones setting the prices, not the banks.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

the credit default swap derivatives.

Your brain is too frail to recognize what brought about the credit-DEFAULT swap derivatives in the first place. It was...ta da! Government regulation. "Affordable housing". Fannie and Freddie are as "establishment" as it gets, as is the IRS. So is the current structure of the American "welfare state", which chugs along with the help of the establishments of both parties.

The status quo is ever-increasing government spending, bureaucracies, the labyrinthine tax code and massive government. The TP therefore was anti-status quo from the outset, which was why it was instantly demonized and vilified. They wouldn't have been called dangerous racists and a violent mob if they had been out there waving their placards for the status quo. OWS meanwhile is still pretty much whitewashed as some sort of genuine grassroots movement. There's your status quo. "Useful idiots" and completely clueless.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Of pictures, the second one was a splinter group breaking the windows of a Wells-Fargo bank. That was completely the wrong thing to do by people not associated with the main Occupy movement.

Give me a break. During those 'bagger shindigs you and other moonbats would scour pictures for misspellings on placards so you could paint the entire thing as a bunch of idiots. If a Democratic congressman was threatened, then it was the responsibility of EVERYone in the Tea Party. If a black congressman says he was spat upon by a TPer, with no evidence, then all the TP was responsible. TPers were said to have shouted the "N-word", with no evidence, and that was enough to brand the entire thing as racist. Now when OWS types engage in violence, it's "well, those aren't REALLY part of the movement". Good Lord, what hypocrisy and absolute dishonesty.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

We do need to grow the ability to work with the police to end the Black Bloc idiots that show up from time to time. Of the last one, though, are you guys so desperate to find violence that you fail to understand the concept of metaphor.

Hilarious. "Let's burn this city" on an OWS placard = clever metaphor. Poster of Obama with Hitler mustache at TP rally? Violent racism.

Originally posted by Macallan:

Goodness, is there any idiotic conspiracy theory they don't reference?

Maybe progs should police their own ranks before throwing any stones.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Those "1930s recovery strategies" are what helped put us here, and they've been around ever since, along with the spending associated with the Great Society and the War on Poverty.

Now you're just being stupid. Those banking regulations had nothing to do with "The Great Society" or anything like that. They were designed to to keep the financial system in check and worked well until they were repealed. They were repealed and look what happened. Jesus, guy. Anything to try to blame the government for bank behavior, right? Oh yeah, no economist at all seems to be blaming the "Great Society." Now some economists are starting to use the "d word" (depression) to describe what happened in 2008. A a quick link because I have to go for the night.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Your brain is too frail to recognize what brought about the credit-DEFAULT swap derivatives in the first place. It was...ta da! Government regulation. "Affordable housing".

Oh my God. The CRA didn't create those. It was re-regulation that allowed them to happen.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Recent college graduates whining about the evil banks because those graduates have $100,000 in student loan debt when they could've gone to a state school for maybe a little more than a fifth of that price is pathetic

Guess what? If you go graduate schools, even a state school, it's easy to get 100,000. I wound up with like $30,00 without graduate school. Tuition for graduate schools is often multiple times higher.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

The status quo is ever-increasing government spending, bureaucracies, the labyrinthine tax code and massive government.

This complaints are mainstream GOP ones, especially on the financial side of the party. Sure, we can trim the bureaucracies, etc; the tp took it too far.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

. Now when OWS types engage in violence, it's "well, those aren't REALLY part of the movement". Good Lord, what hypocrisy and absolute dishonesty.

Good thing the very police department that came down so hard on the protesters didn't finally note that for large part it was peaceful with a few troublemakers that need to be dealt with. Oh wait, they did.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Oh my God. The CRA didn't create those. It was re-regulation that allowed them to happen.

The CRA coupled with private banks acting under government regulation allowed it to happen. That didn't take place until 1994, and now the chickens have come home to roost.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Guess what? If you go graduate schools, even a state school, it's easy to get 100,000. I wound up with like $30,00 without graduate school. Tuition for graduate schools is often multiple times higher.

No one forced you or anyone else to get into that debt. If you want to protest against someone, head to your campus admin building.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

This complaints are mainstream GOP ones, especially on the financial side of the party. Sure, we can trim the bureaucracies, etc; the tp took it too far.

"Mainstream GOP" despises and ridicules the TP as much as you do. The TP "took it too far" in what way? By being against the health care law, by being against raising the debt ceiling, by being for cutting spending and cutting taxes -- all of which represent the MAJORITY OPINION in the country? By recognizing that Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress absolutely pissed away $800 billion in so-called "stimulus" and now he wants billions more to fix "roads and bridges" that we thought were being taken care of in the first stimulus? I thought you said they were "status quo". How do you take the "status quo" too far?

No, you see, the "status quo" is your blessed public-sector unions feeding funds to the Democratic Party so that they can hand it back to the public-sector unions to feed back to the Democratic Party ad infinitum. The TP and others were threats to that "status quo" and they had to be demonized pronto.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Good thing the very police department that came down so hard on the protesters didn't finally note that for large part it was peaceful with a few troublemakers that need to be dealt with. Oh wait, they did.

So are they part of OWS or are they not? Get your story straight.

Would any of you like to get extra cash when you get paid? Join the negative tax income bracket!



And if you think that's entertaining, you should see the lawyers spin the numbers harder than banksters decorate derivative formulas.

Originally posted by xyzoneon:

Would any of you like to get extra cash when you get paid? Join the negative tax income bracket!
...
And if you think that's entertaining, you should see the lawyers spin the numbers harder than banksters decorate derivative formulas.

So what, when 49% of people who file tax forms pay no income tax at all?

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Originally posted by xyzoneon:

Well, to be fair, if you reply to obvious trolling you created half the problem. If I had a nickel for every right wing internet money bags I've come across trolling from their gold yacht in the bermudas, I'd be as rich as they claim.

According to this poll, (check item #38) such a person would be far more likely to support OWS than a lower-income working stiff. Shocka!!!!! Damn peasants never can tell what's best for them without some help, huh?

Wikipedia might be something to consider, but I have seen very recent polls where the majority of people with incomes above $1 million support higher taxes on their tax bracket. If true, then it makes sense since many of them would be educated and aware of the long term consequences or are small business owners directly affected by economic disassembly among customers. Either way, it is true that only a relatively small amount of billionaires and corporate leeches are making huge impacts on policy through lobbying, the principal reason OWS happened.

To those apologists howling random, open-ended nonsense not getting behind getting money out of politics. Well good luck with that but I doubt you're one of those billionaires.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Originally posted by xyzoneon:

Would any of you like to get extra cash when you get paid? Join the negative tax income bracket!
...
And if you think that's entertaining, you should see the lawyers spin the numbers harder than banksters decorate derivative formulas.

So what, when 49% of people who file tax forms pay no income tax at all?

And how much are they taking, anyway? Elaborate. What's your source for all this?

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

They did succeed. The Port of Oakland was shut down for at least a shift. But now operations at the port have been resumed without incident. This actually isn't the first time the port has been shutdown. In 2002, it was shutdown in labor despite. In 2004, there was huge labor shortage, not a strike or anything, just they didn't have enough people to work the port. Still you're not wrong. It could have gotten real ugly and one wonders what would happen if the NY group shuts down the port (which is technically in NJ) I also wonder what Obama's response would be. In the great sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan the police and unions busters responded so violently that FDR had send in the National Guard, not against the protesters, mind you. He had to send them in to keep the police in check. Would Obama have the balls to follow suit, if it was required? I doubt it.

Oh, well I was under the impression that they would block the port indefinitely. But it will be interesting to see how this develops. If general strikes spread beyond Oakland, I think something bad will happen because powerful people will start to panic.

Is this picture supposed to be alarming? I don't know if right wingers are deaf when the 'class warfare' topic gets brought up and always replied in the same way.

It IS class warfare, started by the bailout taking, lobbyist army deploying billionaires VS. everyone else.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

The CRA coupled with private banks acting under government regulation allowed it to happen. That didn't take place until 1994, and now the chickens have come home to roost.

How so? I have yet to see a coherent argument government regulation caused this recession/depression. That document from 1994 you should me only says you can't discriminate in housing based on race,gender,ethnicity, etc not to loan to people that are otherwise unqualified. If a person is a black woman with credit score of 500 and an income of 15,000; of course the banks could turn her down. Oh and that wasn't the CRA. The CRA happened in 1997. Section 02 of the CRA says the following:

SEC. 802.
(a) The Congress finds that—
(1) regulated financial institutions are required by law to demonstrate that their deposit facilities serve the convenience and needs of the communities in which they are chartered to do business;
(2) the convenience and needs of communities include the need for credit services as well as deposit services; and
(3) regulated financial institutions have continuing and affirmative obligation to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered.
(b) It is the purpose of this title to require each appropriate Federal financial supervisory agency to use its authority when examining financial institutions, to encourage such institutions to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institutions.

We're looking at section B. "consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institutions." In other words, looking to people otherwise unqualified was against regulations. No, the CRA didn't cause this nor did it "cripple" the banks. The sub-prime loans were another dodgy, predatory financial product of the banks. Than, of course, were the types of derivatives that absolutely nothing to do with sub-prime loans in the first place.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

"Mainstream GOP" despises and ridicules the TP as much as you do.

By having every GOP candidate kiss their ass? By taking it too far is that you made a caricature of conserve economic policies. For example, the Laffer Curve isn't completely unsound. Yeah, you tax people at 80% or whatever and there's little incentive to go out and generate more wealth. But you guys seem to think that every single tax hike is a "job killer." It isn't. There are situation when NOT raising taxes is the job killer and slashing government is, but not every time still. You have to look at the dynamics of the situation.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

So are they part of OWS or are they not?

That's just silly, of course not. But higher ups on the OPD analyzed the situation and made that determination. It's not always a matter of being part of the OWS; it's a matter of law enforcement tactics. Overreacting and tear gassing the innocent masses of protesters is bad law enforcement tactics, instead isolate the real trouble-makers and arrest them. The truth is often ideology agnostic.

Originally posted by xyzoneon:

Oh, well I was under the impression that they would block the port indefinitely.

I don't think that was ever the plan. It was more like proving that it be done.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

So what, when 49% of people who file tax forms pay no income tax at all?

So you're trying to compare GE to a lower income person barely scrapping by? How does that work?

A little more on derivatives (which were not a government product or the result of federal regulation, Fanfaron )
Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/optioninvestor/08/derivative-risks.asp#ixzz1cmTD2f3W

But not everyone had a good feeling about this financial instrument. In his 2002 Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BK) letter to shareholders, company chairman and CEO Warren Buffett expressed his concern with derivatives, referring to them as "weapons of mass destruction," a term popularized by George W. Bush to describe nuclear arms

In Buffett's 2002 letter to shareholders, he describes derivatives as "time bombs" for all parties involved. He goes on to temper this statement by saying that this generalization might not be judicious because the range of derivatives is so great

Buffett's Prophecy
Since Buffett first referred to derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction" in reference to derivatives, the potential derivatives bubble has grown from an estimated $100 trillion to $516 trillion dollars in 2008, according to the most recent survey by the Bank of International Settlements.

Again, having nothing to do with the 1977 CRA or that law in 1994 that says you can't discriminate on race, gender, etc Fanfaron...

In addition, 2008 was marked by Société Générale's Jerome Kerviel's orchestration of the largest bank fraud in world history via derivatives trading (a £3.6 billion loss). This makes previous rogue trader incidences pale in comparison:
Nick Leeson at Barings Bank in 1995 (a £791 million loss and bankruptcy for his employer)
National Westminster Bank PLC in 1997 (a $125 million loss)
John Rusniak at Allied Irish Bank in 2002 (a $691 million loss)

Not to mention AIG, Lehman Brothers, etc..

Even in other derivatives arenas, the stakes appear to be increasing at an equally alarming rate. For example, Orange County, California lost $1.7 billion in 1994 from debt and derivatives used to expand its investment fund and Long Term Capital Management lost $5 billion in 1998. In addition, the subprime credit meltdown of 2007 is estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars

Now Orange County should have simply not been cutting property taxes under the delusion that the tax cuts would generate growth (often they just wind up undermining school funding) instead of taking these kind of risks with taxpayer money.

Financial Trickery Easy To Do
Buffett references the dangers of derivative reporting on and off the balance sheet. Mark-to-market accounting is a legal form of accounting for a venture involved in buying and selling securities in accordance with U.S. Internal Revenue Code Section 475.Under mark-to-market accounting, an asset's entire present and future discounted streams of net cash flows are considered a credit on the balance sheet. This accounting method was one of the many things that contributed to the Enron scandal.

It's truly amazing that anti-discrimination laws made them cook the books, huh?

Does Anyone Know This Rabbit Hole?
Did Buffett, one of the world's richest men and an investing icon, foresee a future that others chose to ignore? Say what you will about Buffett's folksy, simple attitude toward finance, the bottom line is that he has outperformed nearly every investor alive while growing his company into one of the world's largest corporations. In his March 2007 Condé Nast Portfolio article, Jesse Eisinger poses the question, "If Warren Buffett can't figure out derivatives, can anybody?" Markets have become vastly more complex over just the last 100 years and are increasingly linked in ways that regulators and even folks of the highest financial caliber struggle to understand.

This goes back a little to what xyzoneon said about "banksters decorate derivative formulas." They're so complex that nobody can really figure them out. We have "risk management" based out something financial and mathematical geniuses can't figure out. Is it truly any wonder that it came crashing down like a house of cards. No, Fanfaron, it still had nothing to with non-discrimination. Sorry if it that seems like I keep digging you on this, but you can't simply point at the government every time.

Parting Thoughts
Buffett's 2002 description of derivatives as financial weapons of mass destruction may have been more of a prophecy than anyone could have realized at the time. The key here is that there are many different types of derivatives; they aren't all equally destructive. Therefore, it is extremely important to understand exactly what one is dealing with before an intelligent assessment can be made.

And those destructive ones had been illegal until George W Bush and Congress deregulated them under lobbying pressure from the financial industry. So once again, it's only the government's fault to the extent that they were overly trusting of these institutions to do the right thing. Crap, now Fanfaron is gonna say "what institutions" again under the delusion that he thinking critically. AIG, Lehman Brothers, etc

Establishment already fighting back against the threat by not covering it in state news.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/03/bofa-foreclosure-missing-1-already-sold-home_n_1074538.html

How could a home be repossessed when it's no longer in the homeowner's possession? One family in Utah asked itself the same question.

Shantell Curtis and her family were threatened with foreclosure months after they had sold their Vernal, Utah house. What's more, the problem revolved around a single dollar, Connect2Utah.com reports (h/t The Consumerist). Months after the Curtises sold and moved out of the home in August of last year, their lender, Bank of America, reportedly sent them a foreclosure notice.

Bank of America claimed the family owed months of missed mortgage payments, before realizing a $1 coding error had held up the Curtises' title transfer. While BofA has taken months to resolving the issue, the Curtises' credit report has taken a beating since then.

The episode is far from the first foreclosure mishap BofA has dealt with in recent months, and not even the smallest dollar amount related to foreclosure threats. In June, BofA tried to foreclose on a man living in Massachusetts over a missed mortgage payment totaling $0.00.

So the worm turns........


American voters have an UNFAVORABLE Opinion of OWS

Source

A sign that the Occupy Wall Street movement isn't the best long-term vehicle for Democrats to connect themselves with: A new Quinnipiac poll, showing a plurality of voters viewing the group unfavorably
The poll, released today, show 30 percent of voters surveyed view the movement favorably, 39 percent unfavorably.......

By a 39 - 30 percent margin, American voters have an unfavorable opinion of OWS

What's very interesting is the breakdown:

-Republicans are 67% unfavorable; 10% favorable; 23% haven't heard enough.

-Democrats are 45% favorable; 19% unfavorable; 36% haven't heard enough.

-Independents are 29% favorable; 42% unfavorable; 28% haven't heard enough

- College educated are more likely to have heard enough than those without college; college educated are more favorable (38%) than their less educated counterparts (26%), but a majority are still unfavorable (42%).

- A majority of all income groups are unfavorable, including those with incomes under $30k, but 42% of those with incomes under $30k haven't heard enough.

-Large percentages of blacks (43%); hispanics (42%); and those aged 18-34 (45%) haven't heard enough, but majorities of those who have heard enough in all three groups are favorable (35%, 32% and 30% respectivley).

-the most strongly unfavorable groups Born Again Evangelicals (54%); Military Households (48%); incomes over $100k (45%); whites (44%); 55+ (43%); men (43%).

It's interesting that, based on this poll, being a Democrat is the stongest predictor of support of the OWS movement.

This poll differs from an earlier poll showing a plurality supportive of OWS movement. It will be interesting to see if subsequent polls confirm a shift away from support of the OWS.......

NY mayor lashes out at Occupy Wall Street protesters


Source

(Reuters) - New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg lashed out at anti-greed Occupy Wall Street activists on Thursday after reports of self-policing, his patience seeming to wear thin with the seven-week old movement.

The mayor said there were sexual assaults and a possible rape at the protesters' gathering place in Zuccotti Park.

"There have been reports, which are equally as disturbing, that when people in Zuccotti Park become aware of crimes, instead of calling the police, they form a circle around the perpetrator," Bloomberg said.

People in the park then "chastise him or her and chase him or her out into the rest of the city to do who knows what to who knows whom," the major said.

Bloomberg called that "despicable and ... outrageous" behavior which makes "all of us less safe."

An Occupy Wall Street kitchen worker has been charged with sexually abusing an 18-year-old activist in her tent. Bloomberg said the man was also a suspect in a rape at Zuccotti Park.

Protesters set up camp in the park in mid-September to protest a financial system they believe mostly benefits corporations and the wealthy. Similar protests against economic inequality have since sprouted globally.

A growing chorus of residents, politicians and newspapers is pressing Bloomberg to clean up the park. They complain that the proliferation of tents has spurred crime, sexual assaults, drug dealing and mischief.

And two polls showed support for the protests waning.

Police made three arrests on Thursday at Zuccotti Park on charges of loitering and resisting arrest.

The New York Post ran a front page editorial under the headline "ENOUGH! Mr. Mayor, it is time to reclaim Zuccotti Park -- and New York City's dignity."

BACKLASH AGAINST PROTEST GROWS

The Post urged Bloomberg to evict the protesters. The protesters cannot be removed unless the park owner complains.

"Occupy Wall Street has its own well-trained internal security force, but this team does not substitute for the police when it comes to criminal activity that threatens our community or local residents, " Andrew Smith, described as a member of OWS' overnight Community Watch, said in a statement.

"Occupy Wall Street participants have called upon police on occasions when people with predatory intentions have come into the park and engaged in illegal and destructive behavior, and have in fact turned over criminals to the NYPD," Smith said.

"The Mayor should get his facts straight before he calls responsible citizens protecting our community 'despicable.'"

Protester Bill Dobbs said while Bloomberg as mayor wants to honor freedom of speech, "as a billionaire, he's under constant temptation to squelch protest."

Bloomberg's comments came after police in Oakland, California, clashed with protesters overnight.

A Quinnipiac University poll on Thursday showed 39 percent of U.S. voters have an unfavorable view of Occupy Wall Street and 30 percent favor it. The October 25-31 survey of 2,294 registered voters had an error margin 2.1 percentage points.

A Marist Poll found 50 percent of registered New York state voters oppose the protests and 44 percent support them. That survey of 1,030 people had a 3.5-point error margin.

Georgetown University history professor Michael Kazin, an expert on social movements, said Bloomberg might be prompted to end the encampment in Manhattan after the violence in Oakland, "if he is looking for an excuse."

But Kazin, co-editor of Dissent magazine, said it does not ultimately matter when the New York protests end because they have already "changed the conversation about economic inequality in the country."

Than when you follow think provided in the article, it shows the TP worse off. What's interesting is that the OWS shares a support characteristic with TP.

Poll: OWS least popular among lower income groups

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Originally posted by fanfaron:

The CRA coupled with private banks acting under government regulation allowed it to happen. That didn't take place until 1994, and now the chickens have come home to roost.

How so? I have yet to see a coherent argument government regulation caused this recession/depression. That document from 1994 you should me only says you can't discriminate in housing based on race,gender,ethnicity, etc not to loan to people that are otherwise unqualified. If a person is a black woman with credit score of 500 and an income of 15,000; of course the banks could turn her down. Oh and that wasn't the CRA. The CRA happened in 1997. Section 02 of the CRA says the following:

Caused it by itself? No. But then "greedy banker bastards" didn't either. The CRA dated from 1977 (not '97) and was given much more teeth during the Clinton administration. As follows:

But what if government encouraged, even invented, those "abusive practices"?

Rewind to 1994. That year, the federal government declared war on an enemy — the racist lender — who officials claimed was to blame for differences in homeownership rate, and launched what would prove the costliest social crusade in U.S. history.

At President Clinton's direction, no fewer than 10 federal agencies issued a chilling ultimatum to banks and mortgage lenders to ease credit for lower-income minorities or face investigations for lending discrimination and suffer the related adverse publicity. They also were threatened with denial of access to the all-important secondary mortgage market and stiff fines, along with other penalties.

Bubble? Regulators Blew It

The threat was codified in a 20-page "Policy Statement on Discrimination in Lending" and entered into the Federal Register on April 15, 1994, by the Interagency Task Force on Fair Lending. Clinton set up the little-known body to coordinate an unprecedented crackdown on alleged bank redlining.

The edict — completely overlooked by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and the mainstream media — was signed by then-HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, Attorney General Janet Reno, Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, along with the heads of six other financial regulatory agencies.

"The agencies will not tolerate lending discrimination in any form," the document warned financial institutions.

Ludwig at the time stated the ruling would be used by the agencies as a fair-lending enforcement "tool," and would apply to "all lenders" — including banks and thrifts, credit unions, mortgage brokers and finance companies.

The unusual full-court press was predicated on a Boston Fed study showing mortgage lenders rejecting blacks and Hispanics in greater proportion than whites. The author of the 1992 study, hired by the Clinton White House, claimed it was racial "discrimination." But it was simply good underwriting.

It took private analysts, as well as at least one FDIC economist, little time to determine the Boston Fed study was terminally flawed. In addition to finding embarrassing mistakes in the data, they concluded that more relevant measures of a borrower's credit history — such as past delinquencies and whether the borrower met lenders credit standards — explained the gap in lending between whites and blacks, who on average had poorer credit and higher defaults.

The study did not take into account a host of other relevant data factoring into denials, including applicants' net worth, debt burden and employment record. Other variables, such as the size of down payments and the amount of the loans sought to the value of the property being bought, also were left out of the analysis. It also failed to consider whether the borrower submitted information that could not be verified, the presence of a cosigner and even the loan amount.

When these missing data were factored in, it became clear that the rejection rates were based on legitimate business decisions, not racism.

Still, the study was used to support a wholesale abandonment of traditional underwriting standards — the root cause of the mortgage crisis.

For the first time, Washington's bank regulators put racial lending at the top of their checklist. Banks that failed to throw open their lending windows to credit-poor minorities were denied expansion plans by the Fed in an era of frenzied financial mergers and acquisitions. HUD threatened to deny them access to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which it controlled. And the Justice Department sued them for lending discrimination and branded them as racists in the press.

"HUD is authorized to direct Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to undertake various remedial actions, including suspension, probation, reprimand or settlement, against lenders found to have engaged in discriminatory lending practices," the official policy statement warned.

The regulatory missive, which had the effect of law, advised lenders to bend "customary" underwriting standards for minority homebuyers with poor credit.

"Applying different lending standards to applicants who are members of a protected class is permissible," it said. "In addition, providing different treatment to applicants to address past discrimination would be permissible." ...

HUD also pushed Fannie and Freddie, which in effect set industry underwriting standards, to buy subprime mortgages, freeing lenders to originate even more high-risk loans.

"Lenders should ensure that their loan processors and underwriters are aware of the provisions of the secondary market guidelines that provide various alternative and flexible means by which applicants may demonstrate their ability and willingness to repay their loans," the policy statement decreed.

"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac not infrequently purchase mortgages exceeding the suggested ratios" of monthly housing expense to income (28%) and total obligations to income (36%).

It warned lenders who rejected minority applicants with high debt ratios and low credit scores to "be prepared" to prove to federal regulators and prosecutors they weren't racist. "The Department of Justice is authorized to use the full range of its enforcement authority."

It took a little more than a decade for the negative effects of the assault on prudent lending to be felt. By 2006, the shaky subprime mortgages began to default. In 2008, the bubble exploded.

There you have it. More good intentions leading to more unintended consequences. Now I ask again, how were those eeevilllllle banks supposed to absorb guaranteed losses mandated by government regulation?

Source.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Than when you follow think provided in the article, it shows the TP worse off. What's interesting is that the OWS shares a support characteristic with TP.

The TP is only a few points lower than OWS, and the TP had pretty much uniformly bad press from status-quo-loving media from the word go ("racist, unruly mobs"), while until the Animal Farm routines from OWS started to appear, the "Occupiers" were pretty much hailed in the media.

'Coon you just can't handle it.........Face the fact............the OWS is dying a slow, but sure death!

Mate, as far as the Tea Party polls, I'm not at all concerned....the only poll I care about is the 2012 Nov, 6th election poll..

Why, because the lower they go the harder the TP rank in file work on affecting the outcome of the 2012 Elections towards a more Conservative Government ever cogent of the principals of our Founding Fathers, ones that the US was founded on--------Reduce Excessive Levels of Government Taxation--------Reduce the Size, Scope and Reach of Government--------Reduce Government Spending----------Ensure Government Adheres to the U.S. Constitution

So, as I watch the OWS's popularity drop like a sinker from afar, I'll be sitting on the beach throwing back a few cold ones.


The ATPM wants to build & improve America, for Americans, where as all the decrepit OWS wants is to destroy everything America was meant to stand for!

By the way, Sanguinemoon, in case you want to impugn my source as a right-wing rag, here's a portion of a review by Robert Reich of a book called Reckless Endangerment by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner.

The authors, Gretchen Morgenson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning business reporter and columnist at The New York Times, and Joshua Rosner, an expert on housing finance, deftly trace the beginnings of the collapse to the mid-1990s, when the Clinton administration called for a partnership between the private sector and Fannie and Freddie to encourage home buying. The mortgage agencies’ government backing was, in effect, a valuable subsidy, which was used by Fannie’s C.E.O., James A. Johnson, to increase home ownership while enriching himself and other executives. A 1996 study by the Congressional Budget Office found that Fannie pocketed about a third of the subsidy rather than passing it on to homeowners. Over his nine years heading Fannie, Johnson personally took home roughly $100 million. His successor, Franklin D. Raines, was treated no less lavishly.

To entrench Fannie’s privileged position, Morgenson and Rosner write, Johnson and Raines channeled some of the profits to members of Congress — contributing to campaigns and handing out patronage positions to relatives and former staff members. Fannie paid academics to do research showing the benefits of its activities and playing down the risks, and shrewdly organized bankers, real estate brokers and housing advocacy groups to lobby on its behalf. Essentially, taxpayers were unknowingly handing Fannie billions of dollars a year to finance a campaign of self-promotion and self-­protection. Morgenson and Rosner offer telling details, as when they describe how Lawrence Summers, then a deputy Treasury secretary, buried a department report recommending that Fannie and Freddie be privatized. A few years later, according to Morgenson and Rosner, Fannie hired Kenneth Starr, the former solicitor general and Whitewater investigator, who intimidated a member of Congress who had the temerity to ask how much the company was paying its top executives.

All this gave Fannie’s executives free rein to underwrite far more loans, further enriching themselves and their shareholders, but at increasing risk to taxpayers as lending standards declined. A company called Countrywide Financial became Fannie’s single largest provider of home loans and the nation’s largest mortgage lender. Countrywide abandoned standards altogether, even doctoring loans to make applicants look creditworthy, while generating a fortune for its co-founder, Angelo R. Mozilo. Meanwhile, Wall Street banks received fat fees underwriting securities issued by Fannie and Freddie, and even more money providing lenders like Countrywide with lines of credit to expand their risky lending and then bundling the mortgages into securities they peddled to their clients. The Street, Morgenson and Rosner say, knew lending standards were declining but maintained the charade because it was so profitable. Goldman Sachs even used its own money to bet against the bundles — making huge profits off the losses of its clients on the very securities it had marketed to them. Eventually, of course, everything came crashing down.

That's how it worked. Review here.

Oh, and this is from another review, not very favorable, of the same book:

And there lies the greatest problem with Reckless. Though it will once again serve well those with political agendas on the left or right, the analysis underlying the reporting was just so weak. This showed up most notably in the authors’ frequent snarky comments about “deregulation” as the driver of so much that went wrong.

There are so many examples in a book full of major contradictions, but the basic narrative from the authors was that a “free market philosophy that had taken hold during the Reagan years and became even greater during the Clinton administration” led to a deregulatory mindset that created the mess they set out to write about. That’s a nice bit of rhetoric, but the problem for the authors was a lack of evidence supporting their claims.

Sure enough, and as the authors reported early in the book, “Because housing finance was heavily regulated, government participation was vital to the homeownership push.” Far from an episode of deregulation, it was precisely because housing finance already had the government’s fingerprints all over it that so many errors were made. Much as many may want to blame the private sector for all that’s occurred, does anyone think all these egregious errors would have been made in an unregulated environment marked by the all-important natural non-regulation that is the freedom to fail?

Deregulation is always and everywhere a pejorative in Reckless, but then as the authors report, it was Andrew Cuomo’s HUD that in 1999 mandated that Fannie and Freddie purchase 50% of the “mortgage loans to benefit low- and moderate-income families”. Later on, as subprime grew hotter and hotter, the authors noted “federal regulators had blessed them [subprime mortgages] as relatively low risk from a capital standpoint.”

Source, and note carefully the words I bolded above.

Here's more info, which I shared here before that's worth repeating, from a short article from the NY Times, another right-wing rag.


At Freddie Mac, Chief Discarded Warning Signs

The chief executive of the mortgage giant Freddie Mac rejected internal warnings that could have protected the company from some of the financial crises now engulfing it, according to more than two dozen current and former high-ranking executives and others.

That chief executive, Richard F. Syron, in 2004 received a memo from Freddie Mac’s chief risk officer warning him that the firm was financing questionable loans that threatened its financial health.

Today, Freddie Mac and the nation’s other major mortgage finance company, Fannie Mae, are in such perilous condition that the federal government has readied a taxpayer-financed bailout that could cost billions. Though the current housing crisis would have undoubtedly caused problems at both companies, Freddie Mac insiders say Mr. Syron heightened those perils by ignoring repeated recommendations.

I've covered all this plus the Barnie Frank associations, but it seems smashing bank windows & vandalizing ATM's are more trendy than blaming the D.C. Government, & their insane regulations.

The government heavily pressured the Fannie & Freddy to 'eat' a heartier fill of sub-prime loans they effectively forced the banks to make, but OWS seems to not want to pursue the problem at the roots, it seems to want to focus on the leaves.

OWS would rather 'crash' the system, than fix the root cause------all courtesy of their ignorance & the ultimate objectives of their Marxist & anti-capitalistic handlers & benefactors.

OWS supporters are merely puppets to the more clandestine efforts of a surging Marxist movement, desiring the end of American values, & the American way of life that generations have enjoyed the fruits of.

Bitterly deny it they surely will, but facts are surely facts.

With that in mind, these radical mindless urchins should know one thing, if they want to start a Marxist revolution, we, the American Majority, will crush them like cockroaches that they are.

Never, ever underestimate the American Citizens combined might, or our determination, when threatened.

Europe is mostly unarmed, but here in the good ole U.S. of A. we have a right to bear arms, & we also have a right to defend our way of life.

We will exercise both if absolutely necessary, & never concede.

Communism, Marxism, of Socialism will never prevail in United States of America. That's not a threat. That's a blood oath.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Oh, and this is from another review, not very favorable, of the same book:

A review of a book on forbes.com

CASE CLOSED!

No, wait, maybe we need to hear what CNBC and Jim Cramer has to say about it all.

Bank Transfer Day

November 5, 2011

Say & accomplish something loud & clear, louder & clearer than any bunch of stoned out, self-centered, parasitical, leeching, good-for-nothing kiddy-commies could ever say or accomplish in their wildest wet dreams!

Originally posted by xyzoneon:

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Oh, and this is from another review, not very favorable, of the same book:

A review of a book on forbes.com

CASE CLOSED!

No, wait, maybe we need to hear what CNBC and Jim Cramer has to say about it all.

What, it doesn't count if it's not in Mother Jones or The Nation or the People's World or the latest pronouncement from Chomsky? Argue the facts and lay off the logical fallacies like "poisoning the well".

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

'Coon you just can't handle it.........Face the fact............the OWS is dying a slow, but sure death!

And yet I woke up to sunshine and a fresh coat of snow on the mountains. It's clear what you're doing, trying to use my words against the tea party against me. But the thing is, that I don't think the OWS even should last too much longer. I've seen what's happened to the tea party, how it became a clearinghouse of some sort for GOP candidates (ie part of the establishment) and that's not what I want. Protest and get the message out and leave and not become a corrupt thing whose ass the politicians feel they need to kiss. If the tp ever had a message, it's lost to " (insert GOP candidate) tried to get Tea Supporters to back him."

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

(Reuters) - New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg lashed out at anti-greed Occupy Wall Street activists on Thursday after reports of self-policing, his patience seeming to wear thin with the seven-week old movement

His patience worn thin after about 2 minutes.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Deregulation is always and everywhere a pejorative in Reckless, but then as the authors report, it was Andrew Cuomo’s HUD that in 1999 mandated that Fannie and Freddie purchase 50% of the “mortgage loans to benefit low- and moderate-income families”. Later on, as subprime grew hotter and hotter, the authors noted “federal regulators had blessed them [subprime mortgages] as relatively low risk from a capital standpoint.”

Now why would that have happened? Because the banks were making all these subprime loans and the writing was already on the wall. That was the wrong thing to do, though. What was needed additional regulations against sub-prime loans, instead of shifting the risks to Fannie and Freddy. Now firms such as Country Wide were done in by their own greed and predatory lending practices, not because the government made them do a damn thing.

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

Bank Transfer Day

November 5, 2011

Drum circles are fun and bonding experience and don't upset sane people. Other than that, your friend does have a point. He just needs to settle down a little, and by a little I mean a lot. Every time he talks, he looks like he's about to have stroke. Maybe he should have a Valium or take up yoga or mediation or something.

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

OWS supporters are merely puppets to the more clandestine efforts of a surging Marxist movement, desiring the end of American values, & the American way of life that generations have enjoyed the fruits of.

What Marxist movement is that? I know, you'll come up with random protester with Socialist sign, the only in the hundreds (if not thousands) in that particular demonstration. The Red Scare has been over for half a century, brah.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

What Marxist movement is that? I know, you'll come up with random protester with Socialist sign, the only in the hundreds (if not thousands) in that particular demonstration. The Red Scare has been over for half a century, brah.

Yet Obama has been implementing commy favors...

that should tell you plenty

Originally posted by Virusboy:

Yet Obama has been implementing commy favors...

that should tell you plenty

Yup.It's tells me some people don't know Communism is dead.

And maybe Smileyfaze's Tea party pals are a front for the John Birch??! Indicating a Socialist or Communist - so what? If a member of the KKK was a Tea party supprter what then?

What Sanguinemoon said about the red scare is similar to what I have claimed. Anything out of the right as seen as un-American. And what's this guff about saying that generations of Americans have enjoyed the fruits of theplace. Yes generations have but Smileyfaze quite neatly shunts out the millions of poor. Of course the rightist always sneers and tells us that if you are poor it is your own fault. Indeed I listened to that clown Cain actuly saying what i have! How legions of the middle class (not the traditinal poor) out of hiomes and work can be blamed is beyond any reasonable person's common sense. No wonder internal politics over there is in such a damn mess. The US has been a controlled state for so long and titt-bits and using patriotism and flag waving as a cover. Now as more and more of the thinking people who paid the major tax burden are realsing what has been going on they are labelled with an ism or qworse.

And while millions lose homes and jobs and on the streets the rich gaet away with tax murder. Last night I just caught a news item about a State Governor diddling in the money manipulation but do such and others like him end of suffering for it? Nope it is the increasing dis-enfranchised middle class. People can be gas chambered or shocked or needed to death for murder but the financial barons will never get that for murdering the financial lives of so many decent Americans. Obama is in a hopeless muddle. On the other side the Republicans are all jostling to be a candidate but none of them could run a jumble sale. I fear for you good people over the pond. You have been conned, lied to, cheated, paid taxes, got dumped. and the greedy?

They continue to get away with that financial murder because they control the media, police, political pygmies on the 'Hill (who are essentially funded by the barons). I think you may have seen nothing yet when it comes to protests and maybe about high time.

Originally posted by rjhowie:

Indeed I listened to that clown Cain actuly saying what i have!

Cain's finished anyway. Not even directly because of the sex scandals, but how he handled it. (In case news hasn't reached the UK, three women have accused him of sexual harassment) He changed the story of what happened several times a day and went on a media blitz against the accusations before he even had the story straight.

Originally posted by rjhowie:

How legions of the middle class (not the traditinal poor) out of hiomes and work can be blamed is beyond any reasonable person's common sense.

And that's what's been happening in Las Vegas. People with six figure incomes being put out of their homes in upper middle-class neighborhoods. It's one thing to say "Well the poor or working class person didn't have the income for home ownership in the first place" and quite another to not notice what's happening to upper-middle class people. Anti-"redlining" laws and whatnot had nothing to do with it.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

What Marxist movement is that? I know, you'll come up with random protester with Socialist sign, the only in the hundreds (if not thousands) in that particular demonstration. The Red Scare has been over for half a century, brah.

Oh come on, anyone to the left of Rotting Ronny is a veritable Che Guevara or Leon Trotsky reincarnate, didn't you know that? Smiley's wrong though, shelling the White House and shooting the tsar is due on November 7th.

Originally posted by Macallan:

Oh come on, anyone to the left of Rotting Ronny is a veritable Che Guevara or Leon Trotsky reincarnate, didn't you know that?

Oh, I dunno. There probably are a lot of Marxists in the OWS bunch. Why would that be a bad thing? Are you saying that the Marxian viewpoint is reprehensible?

A lot of progs probably are a little butthurt though. Many of them thought they were voting for Che in 2008 and that those nasty RethugliKKKans would disappear for at least 1,000 years or so. They appear to have been wrong on both counts.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

There probably are a lot of Marxists in the OWS bunch.

And it's not hard to find idiots in the tea party bunch, either. So what exactly is your "point?"

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Many of them thought they were voting for Che in 2008 and that those nasty RethugliKKKans would disappear for at least 1,000 years or so.

I dunno. There are times I want the Democrats to disappear for about 1,000 years, too. The two party system is like dealing with Tweedledee and Tweedledum. The Democrats are 20% better though because they tend to not have factions that actively work to discriminate against groups of people or try to raise taxes taxes on the middle class (Cain's 9-9-9 plan and Perry's 20% flat tax will do exactly that. Let's reduce the purchasing power of the middle class in a consumer driven economy..that will really get the economy going, not)

Originally posted by Macallan:

Smiley's wrong though, shelling the White House and shooting the tsar is due on November 7th.

Oh noes! That's the day after tomorrow! The OWS will cause the perfect Socialist storm and lock us in a communist ice age, while at the same time, stretching metaphors beyond the breaking point!

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Originally posted by fanfaron:

There probably are a lot of Marxists in the OWS bunch.

And it's not hard to find idiots in the tea party bunch, either. So what exactly is your "point?"

It seemed pretty clear: there probably are quite a few Marxists in the OWS bunch. Not any hard words there. Are you saying Marxists are idiots? How exactly would YOU disagree with the Marxist viewpoint? Class conflict, greedy rapacious capitalists exploiting the masses, the need for direct action, the desirability of state control over enterprise (the "regulation" fetish), blahblahblah.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

The OWS will cause the perfect Socialist storm and lock us in a communist ice age, while at the same time, stretching metaphors beyond the breaking point!

What's wrong with socialism? Why object to being called a "socialist" if you pretty much agree with that viewpoint?

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

I dunno. There are times I want the Democrats to disappear for about 1,000 years, too. The two party system is like dealing with Tweedledee and Tweedledum. The Democrats are 20% better though because they tend to not have factions that actively work to discriminate against groups of people or try to raise taxes taxes on the middle class (Cain's 9-9-9 plan and Perry's 20% flat tax will do exactly that. Let's reduce the purchasing power of the middle class in a consumer driven economy..that will really get the economy going, not)

Awwww, come on. What you want is some Super Lefty Moonbat Party that will tax anyone to death that makes over, say, $200,000 with pretty much absolute "community" (read "state") control over private enterprise.

By the way, how is the "middle class" being benefited by Democratic party tax policies and proposals? I thought it was the Republicans who generally are for lower tax rates across the board. Neither Cain's nor Perry's proposals are law, so it's irrelevant.

Anyway, Mark Steyn pretty much nails OWS here:

America is seizing up before our eyes: The decrepit airports, the underwater property market, the education racket, the hyper-regulated business environment. Yet curiously the best example of this sclerosis is the alleged “revolutionary” movement itself. It’s the voice of youth, yet everything about it is cobwebbed. It’s more like an open-mike karaoke night of a revolution than the real thing. I don’t mean just the placards with the same old portable quotes by Lenin et al., but also, say, the photograph in Forbes of Rachel, a 20-year-old “unemployed cosmetologist” with remarkably uncosmetological complexion, dressed in pink hair and nose ring as if it’s London, 1977, and she’s killing time at Camden Lock before the Pistols gig. Except that that’s three and a half decades ago, so it would be like the Sex Pistols dressing like the Andrews Sisters. Are America’s revolting youth so totally pathetically moribund they can’t even invent their own hideous fashion statements? Last weekend, the nonagenarian Commie Pete Seeger was wheeled out at Zuccotti Park to serenade the oppressed masses with “If I Had a Hammer.” As it happens, I do have a hammer. Pace Mr. Seeger, they’re not that difficult to acquire, even in a recession. But, if I took it to Zuccotti Park, I doubt very much anyone would know how to use it, or be able to muster the energy to do so.

At heart, Oakland’s occupiers and worthless political class want more of the same fix that has made America the Brokest Nation in History: They expect to live as beneficiaries of a prosperous Western society without making any contribution to the productivity necessary to sustain it. This is the “idealism” that the media are happy to sentimentalize, and that enough poseurs among the corporate executives are happy to indulge — at least until the window-smashing starts. To “occupy” Oakland or anywhere else, you have to have something to put in there. Yet the most striking feature of OWS is its hollowness. And in a strange way the emptiness of its threats may be a more telling indictment of a fin de civilisation West than a more coherent protest movement could ever have mounted.

I'll take Che Guevara (selfless revolution) over Ronand Reagan (aloof plutocratic imperialism). I love it how they try to smear a man that died by his own volition following a cause he believed, while the suits deploying storm troopers and bombs from thousands of miles away, killing many, many more people than Guevera ever did, creating banana republics by propping up businessmen masquerading as government leaders, oppressing and sometimes killing yet more people, as well and putting embargoes on anyone that challenges their imperialism is supposed to be a good, justified and admirable thing just because they lacked the fortitude to do it in person instead of brainwashing goons to be their enforcers.

Originally posted by xyzoneon:

I'll take Che Guevara (selfless revolution) over Ronand Reagan (aloof plutocratic imperialism).

Well, there ya go. Case closed, Sanguinemoon.

I hope the guy can handle the disappointment that the red scare conditioning wasn't all that pervasive and plenty of people discarded that nonsense long ago, just like any other faith based ideology.

Originally posted by xyzoneon:

I hope the guy can handle the disappointment that the red scare conditioning wasn't all that pervasive and plenty of people discarded that nonsense long ago, just like any other faith based ideology.

You sit around spouting mindless moonbat drivel and talk about "faith-based". That's my problem with lefties: they adhere to their dogmas as firmly as any Christian fundie and have to set up their own home-grown demons to hate and attack. It's their religion.

IOW, I know you are but what am I?

You got me there.

Now if you'll excuse me, your blind hate is making me a little ill.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Not any hard words there.

No, there aren't. You said "probably", which means you don't know. In other words, you're making it up.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

What's wrong with socialism?

And what's wrong with Fascism. Oh you, never said you were a fascist and aren't one. Come now.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

I thought it was the Republicans who generally are for lower tax rates across the board. Neither Cain's nor Perry's proposals are law, so it's irrelevant.

No, they aren't. But if either of those two gets elected, they'll work hard to make it law and nearly every economist will tell you those proposals would increase taxes on the middle class, Perry's more so. Luckily, those guys are pretty well sunk by their own ignorance. Oh yeah, did you not watch Fox News when they were advocating for middle and working class tax hikes? There's plenty of video of it.

Originally posted by fanfaron, via some random guy:

....America the Brokest Nation in History:

I guess the guy never heard of Somalia, Haiti, less extreme cases would be Argentina, possibly even Ireland and Greece, etc... That stupid hyperbole is enough to discredit whoever that random person is already. A lesson that you and OakdaleFTL need to learn is that when your excuse for a source say something that incredibly stupid, it throws everything else they think they have to say into doubt. OK, I was dumb enough to look up who that person is. He's a random Canadian conservative political commentator. I wonder if you knew that yourself If you did know, it shows your problem; you read all this political commentary without bothering to look at the world and see what's really going on.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Originally posted by fanfaron:
What's wrong with socialism?

I'm not going to answer until you demonstrate that you fucking know what socialism is, much less the forms of it. Not all socialism is created equal.

Fanfaron, I pity you, so I'm going to help. It's not the "government's" fault because of the CRA and anti-discrimination laws and to say so shows the blackhole of your ignorance.

It is partially the government's fault because of crony capitalism, which is the incestuous relationship between the state and certain, usually massive, corporate interests. This led to over-deregulation of certain businesses, especially the financial sector. The financial sector collapse was in part because of newly legal dangerous business practices.

Let's see what the Austrian economists have to say real quick.
http://mises.org/daily/3098

It begins with the Republican-controlled Federal Reserve, which, under Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, has flooded the economy with money and credit and bailed out every economic crisis since 1987. Greenspan's admonitions against "irrational exuberance" apparently were not intended to restrain the Federal Reserve's irresponsible monetary policy. Who in their right mind could honestly say that the Fed had nothing to do with the housing bubble after driving the nominal interest rate to 1% and proclaiming that the mortgage market was well regulated?

But an insidious form of "market-based policy" is also a real culprit in the current mess. In 1999 a bill was passed by a Republican Congress and signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton that rescinded the Depression era's divorce of commercial banking activities from investment banking, called the Glass-Stegall Act of 1933. That opened a floodgate of "creative" financial instruments backed by notes and other commercial paper

Why did they do this? Crony capitalism.

....

The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 would make perfect sense in a world regulated by a gold standard, 100% reserve banking, and no FDIC deposit insurance; but in the world as it is, this "deregulation" amounts to corporate welfare for financial institutions and a moral hazard that will make taxpayers pay dearly. Such government privileges are nothing new to Republicans — consider the effective subsidies to the pharmaceutical, sugar, and steel industries — but this particular gift to financial institutions is what allowed the credit bubble to expand to such absurd proportions, because it allowed banks of all types to engage in increasingly risky transactions and to greatly expand the leverage of their balance sheets. As the crisis unfolds, credit continues to contract, the risk of bank failures increases, and the possibility of far more serious economic consequences become more apparent. The S&L crisis cost the taxpayers a few hundred billion, but this crisis has the potential of saddling the taxpayer with several trillion in bailouts.

Note, this paper was written in 2008 and the prophecy of bailouts in the trillions did materialize. [/quote]

....

While Democrats certainly facilitated these economic actions as fellow travelers, Republicans, most especially George W. Bush, acquiesced. (His only objection was a $4 billion grant to states and cities to "refurbish" foreclosed homes). The economic choice is clear: either maintain a fiat-money-creation system and reinstate the asset proscriptions of the Glass-Stegall Act or abandon or modify the existing system of money and banking altogether, possibly including elements of a gold standard. Without some basic alteration in rules, the entire economic system will continue to be at risk, as will America's predominance in the world of finance.

Notice the oddity here. Here is an eminent economist from the Austrian school criticizing the deregulation. Also notice, my position on this issue is not a primitive "Banks are evil, government is good" one. The establishment politicians on both sides of the aisle as well as the Fed made very poor choices, which allowed the financial institutions to make the same. You're all paying for those mistakes.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Originally posted by fanfaron:
What's wrong with socialism?

I'm not going to answer until you demonstrate that you fucking know what socialism is, much less the forms of it. Not all socialism is created equal.

There's good socialism and bad socialism and you're part of the good socialists? What do you have specifically against socialism as generally defined? You spout all sorts of socialistic slogans and cliches and hoary old class warfare ideas that are at least as old as the 19th century Ultraromantics and then you get your panties in a wad if someone mentions the word. I know pretty well what socialism is.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Fanfaron, I pity you

Spare yourself the effort and put it where it might be more useful, like in forming a coherent idea.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

It's not the "government's" fault because of the CRA and anti-discrimination laws and to say so shows the blackhole of your ignorance.

It is partially the government's fault because of crony capitalism, which is the incestuous relationship between the state and certain, usually massive, corporate interests. This led to over-deregulation of certain businesses, especially the financial sector. The financial sector collapse was in part because of newly legal dangerous business practices.

How idiotic. "It's not the government's fault that the government put a structure in place that made credit default swaps legitimate and secure financial instruments with the backing of the taxpayer-funded GSEs." Talk about "blackholes of ignorance".

Originally posted by fanfaron:

There's good socialism and bad socialism and you're part of the good socialists?

What in the world gives you the idea that I'm a socialist. But there are very different types of socialism and it doesn't simply break down into "good" and "bad." Case closed. You don't even know what socialism is There are ideas in the more left political parties that are similar to socialism, just like there are ideas with further right parties that are similar to fascism. But that doesn't make a Democrat a Socialist nor a Republican a Fascist and its idiotic to suggest so. The old smear was that any Democrat is an ultra-Liberal (some are, some aren't) and the new one is that any Democrat is Socialist. Knee-jerk, monkeys, knee-jerk.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

How idiotic.

Better go tell your GOP that they're idiotic as well

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Spare yourself the effort and put it where it might be more useful, like in forming a coherent idea.

My ideas, backed both by conservative, Austrian school economists, and liberal ones is that deregulation resulted in "creative" financial instruments and the whole house of cards collapsed. The few voices in the financial wilderness that warned that the market free-for-all was unsustainable were ignored. Where's your billions if you're smarter than Warren Buffet?

Originally posted by fanfaron:

secure financial instruments with the backing of the taxpayer-funded GSEs.

I already critiqued the GSE for using dodgy derivatives to back the securities because they were less regulated than other financial institutions. It's amazing that you throw "blackholes of ignorance" back at me, while repeated what I said. It must be hard for you having the memory of a mentally challenged goldfish. Maybe you can see a neurologist for surgery? At least that statement of yours was a step back from moronically saying the anti-discrimination laws were the cause of this (and yes, you did say at when you presented that 1994 document. If that's not what you meant to say at the time, maybe read or at least skim through documents before to present them.)

Why is hard for you to understand that there are multiple causes the what's now starting to be called The Lesser Depression? Yes, there were home loans that shouldn't have happened. As part of the culture of homeownership, Presidents Clinton and Bush tried to expand the homownership rates and those loans were made by banks. Do remember, however, that I showed how unsound loans did continued to be in violation of the CRA. The 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act (FSMA) was more directly responsible for the meltdown. This is where crony capitalism comes in; the financial industry scratched Washington's back and Washington was scratching their's through the deregulation and the repeal of Glass–Steagall. Again, it was the fault of both Washington and the banks; the banks somewhat more so for offering bizarre and dangerous financial instruments out that were not foreseen at the time of the FSMA being signed into law. Why weren't they foreseen? I guess because financiers are supposed to know what they're doing and not let greed get the best of them

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Originally posted by Macallan:

Smiley's wrong though, shelling the White House and shooting the tsar is due on November 7th.

Oh noes! That's the day after tomorrow! The OWS will cause the perfect Socialist storm and lock us in a communist ice age, while at the same time, stretching metaphors beyond the breaking point!

Here, I fixed that for you

Originally posted by Macallan:

Here, I fixed that for you

Maybe it wasn't a silly metaphor after all. It did snow only a few hundred feet up the mountains...damn OWS! Even now, one county over, there's a winter weather advisory! The socialist ice age is coming after all; all asses assets will be frozen because of Obama

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Originally posted by Macallan:

Here, I fixed that for you

Maybe it wasn't a silly metaphor after all. It did snow only a few hundred feet up the mountains...damn OWS! Even now, one county over, there's a winter weather advisory! The socialist ice age is coming after all; all asses assets will be frozen because of Obama

It has been unseasonably cold around here too, must be because Obama made all the businesses stop hiring, apparently he's trying to prevent christmas from happening

Originally posted by Macallan:

It has been unseasonably cold around here too, must be because Obama made all the businesses stop hiring, apparently he's trying to prevent christmas from happening

The Unholy One Socialist One stops at nothing!

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Originally posted by fanfaron:

There's good socialism and bad socialism and you're part of the good socialists?

What in the world gives you the idea that I'm a socialist. But there are very different types of socialism and it doesn't simply break down into "good" and "bad." Case closed. You don't even know what socialism is

I know quite well what socialism is. I asked in what ways you disagree with Marxism. Show off some of that dazzling knowledge of yours that puts you such a cut above everyone else, will ya?

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

I already critiqued the GSE for using dodgy derivatives to back the securities because they were less regulated than other financial institutions. It's amazing that you throw "blackholes of ignorance" back at me, while repeated what I said.

...

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

It must be hard for you having the memory of a mentally challenged goldfish. Maybe you can see a neurologist for surgery? At least that statement of yours was a step back from moronically saying the anti-discrimination laws were the cause of this (and yes, you did say at when you presented that 1994 document. If that's not what you meant to say at the time, maybe read or at least skim through documents before to present them.)

Can't you read? I said the government set up a situation which all but required the toxic financial instruments about which you're bitching and moaning constantly.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Why is hard for you to understand that there are multiple causes the what's now starting to be called The Lesser Depression?

It seems that you're the one who's been bleating on about Wall Street to the exclusion of what role government played in all this EXCEPT by not regulating enough. Your typical ignorant-but-blustery bullshit.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Yes, there were home loans that shouldn't have happened. As part of the culture of homeownership, Presidents Clinton and Bush tried to expand the homownership rates and those loans were made by banks. Do remember, however, that I showed how unsound loans did continued to be in violation of the CRA.

It couldn't have been in violation of the CRA -- or violation of the CRA was irrelevant -- when HUD and a raft of other government agencies were decreeing those loose, "flexible" lending policies in that document from 1994 which had the force of law as far as the banks and other private institutions were concerned.

Anyway, let this one sink in for you as you cheer on those tent-dwelling fellow useful idiots:

For Blue Wall Street the conflict between the interests of the private sector and the power of the government does not really exist. The symbiosis between Blue Wall Street and the state is strong and deep. The pension funds, bond issues and other financial transactions that blue city and state governments need helps nourish Blue Wall Street; Blue Wall Street helps integrate the policy agenda of other government focused interest groups with larger national priorities and movements. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the archetypes of this symbiosis: they are government-backed forces in the capital markets built around support for the single most important American social program of the blue period: home ownership. The securitization of home mortgages was one of the driving forces in the development of American capital markets after World War II; when the blue system was working, Fannie and Freddie promoted Wall Street profits and the economic well being of the middle class.
The explosive bursting of the subprime bubble has drawn attention to the role of the housing agencies; less attention has (yet) been paid to the other linkages between the blue social model and Wall Street. Health care, agricultural subsidies, infrastructure construction and the municipal bond market link Wall Street and government at many levels, all with important consequences for Democratic politics. That link between progressive social goals and the financial system isn’t just one of many features of the Democratic policy agenda: the essence of American progressive social policy since the New Deal has been to achieve “social” purposes through the financial system, linking important groups in society at large to powerful financial interests and firms. ...

Blue, government-oriented Wall Street; the professional do-gooders and the progressive intellectual and foundation establishment; the unionized government workforce; and the beneficiaries of social programs: this is the blue coalition. Many blue partisans don’t fully get this; they think of Wall Street as the enemy without fully grasping the essential role that the financial community plays in the creation and administration of blue policy. The participation in and support of blue social and economic policies by American finance both enables and shapes those policies, and it was the belief on Wall Street in the 1940s and 1950s that the blue social model provided the most effective path for national economic development that created the postwar commonwealth, which many blue activists today hope to restore.

BINGO! Here.

I got a little tired of Fanfaron and Smiley calling everyone who disagrees with them Marxists. I don't think the term means quite what you seem to think it means.

Originally posted by mjmsprt40:

I got a little tired of Fanfaron and Smiley calling everyone who disagrees with them Marxists. I don't think the term means quite what you seem to think it means.

You see, anyone who isn't in favour of no holds barred, deregulate everything & get the Pinkertons to deal with uppity workers who think they have rights kind of capitalism is obviously a Marxist .
The irony ( which without a doubt will fly a mile or ten above their heads ) is that the kind of capitalism Marx was writing about in the first place, Britain & the US in the mid to late 1800s 'Gilded Age' of robber barons, was pretty much just like that.

Originally posted by Macallan:

The irony ( which without a doubt will fly a mile or ten above their heads ) is that the kind of capitalism Marx was writing about in the first place, Britain & the US in the mid to late 1800s 'Gilded Age' of robber barons, was pretty much just like that.

So, just like these days? The more things change....

Originally posted by mjmsprt40:

I got a little tired of Fanfaron and Smiley calling everyone who disagrees with them Marxists. I don't think the term means quite what you seem to think it means.

Good. You've gotten over it, & have gone on to better things.

As far as what I, or anyone else thinks the term means, is completely subjective to that persons life experiences.

My views on Marxism will most probably differ from that of Leszek Kołakowski, but I may be closer to Edward O. Wilson's view on Marx, where as he explains "Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species", meaning that while ants and other eusocial species appear to live in communist-like societies, they only do so because they are forced to do so from their basic biology, as they lack reproductive independence: worker ants, being sterile, need their ant-queen to survive as a colony and a species and individual ants cannot reproduce without a queen, thus being forced to live in centralized societies. Humans, however, do possess reproductive independence so they can give birth to offspring without the need of a "queen", and in fact humans enjoy their maximum level of Darwinian fitness only when they look after themselves and their offspring, while finding innovative ways to use the societies they live in for their own benefit.

As far as I'm concerned, all Marxist social experiments should be faultlessly proven to be adaptable to large populations for over 150 years before any findings are implemented in the USA. Until then, I'll be happy with Capitalism thank you very much.

You make & keep yours, & I'll make & keep mine. We both can share, but sharing is totally voluntary.

How successful we are is an unknown from the onset, but we are free to experiment until we find out what works best for each of us. Reward success, & appreciate failure as merely a stepping stone to success based on the implementation of one's own imagination & desire, & the timetables one uses.

While a hand-up is always appreciated, hand-outs are unacceptable. No one person, or any society, has any absolute right to the fruits of another's labor, unless given voluntarily, & in holding with the terms of the giver.

Rewarding failure is not an option, & is absolutely forbidden

Originally posted by mjmsprt40:

I got a little tired of Fanfaron and Smiley calling everyone who disagrees with them Marxists. I don't think the term means quite what you seem to think it means.

I didn't call anyone a Marxist. I said there are no doubt a lot of Marxists in the OWS campgrounds and I asked some of the OWS supporters here how specifically they disagree with Marx. And anyway, why is calling someone a Marxist such a horrible thing?

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

As far as I'm concerned, all Marxist social experiments should be faultlessly proven to be adaptable to large populations for over 150 years before any findings are implemented in the USA.

"All plans of government which suppose great reformation in the manners of mankind, are plainly imaginary." --David Hume

Originally posted by fanfaron:

......why is calling someone a Marxist such a horrible thing?

Exactly, unless there is some sort of negativity derived solely by being Marxist, or Marxism itself is inherently evil.

Originally posted by Macallan:

You see, anyone who isn't in favour of no holds barred, deregulate everything & get the Pinkertons to deal with uppity workers who think they have rights kind of capitalism is obviously a Marxist .

Who said they're in favor of such a thing? Yet another one of your specialties: the strawman. Point me out one comment I've ever made against private-sector unions.

Originally posted by Macallan:

The irony ( which without a doubt will fly a mile or ten above their heads ) is that the kind of capitalism Marx was writing about in the first place, Britain & the US in the mid to late 1800s 'Gilded Age' of robber barons, was pretty much just like that.

The thing that apparently will fly right over your head is that Marx wouldn't have been satisified just with having Barney Frank rap the knuckles of some offending eeeevillle banker while spouting suitably proper populist junk...while at the same time taking some nice contributions from that same eeeevillle banker. It's a farce.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

The thing that apparently will fly right over your head is that Marx wouldn't have been satisified just with having Barney Frank rap the knuckles of some offending eeeevillle banker while spouting suitably proper populist junk...while at the same time taking some nice contributions from that same eeeevillle banker.....

Which the ever so limp wristed, lisping charismatic Mr. Frank did:

*

His buddy, Mr.Dodd, took in a few shekels too

Originally posted by fanfaron:

I asked in what ways you disagree with Marxism.

You don't even know what you asked me at this point.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Can't you read? I said the government set up a situation which all but required the toxic financial instruments about which you're bitching and moaning constantly.

Yes, I read that idiocy. But you failed utterly in demonstrating how all the government is responsible for all the toxic financial instruments of AIG, Lehman Brothers and others. It wasn't all Freddie and Fannie by stretch of your deranged imagination (now don't get me wrong. I can appreciate and respect a good deranged imagination, but we're talking the financial history of the Recession/Depression.)

Originally posted by fanfaron:

Blue, government-oriented Wall Street; the professional do-gooders and the progressive intellectual and foundation establishment; the unionized government workforce; and the beneficiaries of social programs: this is the blue coalition. Many blue partisans don’t fully get this;

And neither do non-partisan to somewhat conservative economists, like I showed you. Welfare, food stamps, etc had nothing to do with. With housing, it was Clinton and Bush and Bush was anything but Blue. But since you have the memory of slug, it wasn't even all housing. Everyone else besides you and maybe SF remembers that I said that a paragraph ago, but you evidently forget things from second to the next (still see a doctor about that. Write a note to that effect, event though there's a danger you'll forget how to read entirely.)

In his time period, Marx's observations of the state of affairs was pretty much spot on.

Originally posted by Macallan:

The irony ( which without a doubt will fly a mile or ten above their heads ) is that the kind of capitalism Marx was writing about in the first place, Britain & the US in the mid to late 1800s 'Gilded Age' of robber barons, was pretty much just like that.

Originally posted by fanfaron:

And anyway, why is calling someone a Marxist such a horrible thing?

Why is wrong to call Sarah Palin and the tea party fascist? You'll find some agreement with what they say and Fascism. Now, they aren't Fascist, but that question is no more silly than you calling anyone to the left of Reagan a Socialist or a Marxist.

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

Which the ever so limp wristed, lisping charismatic Mr. Frank did:

Bit of the old homophobia, is it?

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Bit of the old homophobia, is it?

Inferiority/victimization complex, is it?

Like a fucking idiot, I went back to find where Fanfaron specifically asked what's wrong with Socialism (not Marxism) Very different things.

http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=10721852

Originally posted by fanfaron:

What's wrong with socialism? Why object to being called a "socialist" if you pretty much agree with that viewpoint?

The man doesn't even know what he said two days ago, but less has any knowledge of the subject matter

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

Inferiority/victimization complex, is it?

The eternal excuse for bigotry

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

Inferiority/victimization complex, is it?

The eternal excuse for bigotry

The eternal excuse for playing the "Victim Card"

If all opinions are equal, how come a liberal who disagrees with a conservative is open-minded,
but a conservative who disagrees with a liberal is a bigot?

Originally posted by Smileyfaze:

If all opinions are equal, how come a liberal who disagrees with a conservative is open-minded,
but a conservative who disagrees with a liberal is a bigot?

1) how the hell do opinions=fact, how the fuck does that work AT ALL?

2)You do know what the difference between bigotry and ignorance, right?

3)Never trust a liberal.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

Like a fucking idiot, I went back to find where Fanfaron specifically asked what's wrong with Socialism (not Marxism) Very different things.

Of all the times you, mac, and few others have argued with me about socialism, i think you had a blond moment