Posted on 10/16/2011 9:08:23 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Having failed abysmally in his day job, Barack Obama has rediscovered his community organizer roots. The day after the Democrat-controlled Senate voted down his jobs bill, he told an audience:
We will keep organizing and we will keep pressuring and we will keep voting until this Congress finally meets its responsibilities and actually does something to put people back to work and improve the economy.
How convenient then that a loosely knit and malleable agglomeration of angry protesters has suddenly emerged on the scene in the persons of Occupy Wall Street movement. Protesters’ demands, which vary depending on whom you ask, make them easy pickings for an experienced community organizer like Obama.
Which is why, after voicing lukewarm approval of the protest movement, Team Obama has gone “all in,” to borrow a term from the game of poker. Senior campaign adviser David Plouffe said in an interview:
We intend to make [the anti-Wall Street anger] one of the central elements of the campaign next year. One of the main elements of the contrast will be that the president passed Wall Street reform and our opponent and the other party want to repeal it.
I’m pretty confident 12 months from now, as people make the decision about who to go vote for, the gut check is going to be about, ‘Who would make decisions more about helping my life than Wall Street?’
Plouffe acknowledges that there is a risk in attempting to channel this anger, but it is clearly one that Obama is willing to take, considering the “lousy cards” he is currently holding.
But there is a risk as well for Republicans, who are counting on the Occupy movement to collapse of its own weight. If it doesn’t and the masses come to accept Obama as their savior, he could be swept into office for a second term, and for the same messianic reasons as in 2008—just by a different electoral demographic.
“Why do the press and the bloggers act as if this wasn’t an Obama construct in the first place?”
I just know that this is a rhetorical question. :)
“Community Agitators R Us”
I trust that God will see us through this as he has seen us through every bad administration and bad time, but I also keep a nice arsenal . . . just in case he needs my help. :)
We are witnessing the first generation of American socialists. Brought to you by the public school system. Students who, for their entire school years, have heard only one note from the choir.
exactly. I’m beginning the long term plan is to get the OWS mobs mobilized across the country and then he can sabotage the country with even more sinister detruction and when the Tea Party rises us they will use these mobs to try to destroy the Tea Party and then blasme the Tea Party as a violent racist angry bunch of bigots.
I've Got A Tiger By The Tail
I've got a tiger by the tail it's plain to see
I won't be much when you get through with me
Well I'm a losing weight and I'm turning mighty pale
Looks like I've got a tiger by the tail
Well I thought the day I met you you were meek as a lamb
Just the kind to fit my dreams and plans
Now the pace we're livin' takes the wind from my sails
And it looks like I've got a tiger by the tail
I've got a tiger by the tail...
[ guitar ]
Well every night you drag me where the bright lights're found
There ain't no way to slow you down
I'm about as helpless as a leaf in a gale and it looks like I've got a tiger by the tail
I've got a tiger by the tail...
This is all going to backfire on the President and dems.
If anybody know what type of violence these people are capably of it's Homey The President's administration.
Homey was mentored by people like Bill Ayers whose homosexual lover, Terry Robinson, blew himself up while building a bomb meant to detonate at a celebration being held at Ft. Dix.
Two other Weathermen blew themselves to pieces in the process of making bombs but I forget their names. Ayer's trophy wife, Bernadine Dohrrn, to this day recalls the thrill the thought of blowing people up brought her and her sick friends back in the 60s and 70s.
Homey knows better than to cross these people.
Not only does he need every single one of their votes next time around, he knows they are capable of turning on him like a rabid skunk.
Just another stepping-stone to declaring martial law and suspending the 2012 Presidential election.
"Rediscovered" my ars, its been a part of his plan all along... it is his Hope of Audacity which he believes will the the key to the re-making of America... over my dead body...
I see real danger in this attitude. Right now, the OWS movement is viewed favorably to unfavorably by a 2 to 1 ratio. Meanwhile, the GOP filibuster of the jobs bill is viewed unfavorably. The GOP-lead house has only 13% approval. I think there is some “burying the head in the sand” going on here today.
When American overwhelmingly believes that government is too interested in serving the interests of the 1%, having one party agree with them and the other party mock them, is going to lead to an inevitable result in November 2012.
Here’s the problem in a nutshell. In the period of 1940 to 1980, the top 1% got 10% of everything. Today they get 35% of everything. The extra 25% is killing us. If we didn’t have to support that, the price of everything would be 25% less. If we didn’t have to pay HMO CEO salaries of up to $65,000/hour (John Hammergren), our health care costs would drop from $800/month to $600/month. If we didn’t have to pay military contractors up to $20million/year salaries, our military budget would drop from $738billion to $553b. If we didn’t have to pay oil company owners up to $10million/day, the price of gasoline would drop from $3.60 to $2.70 per gallon. We are going broke supporting our top 1% like 18th century France went broke supporting Louis XVI.
What went wrong? Why are our top 1% so much greedier than the top 1% of America in 1940 to 1980? Two things: a change in the tax structure, and cheap foreign labor. My dad was a true conservative voting for Eisenhower when I was in diapers: the national debt was about the same back then as it is today, but the top tax bracket was 90%. That effectively capped salaries (since it made little point to earn more and give it all to the government). The capped salaries spread wealth throughout the country, and made us all prosperous, and paid down the debt. But today, not only has the removal of the cap unfettered the sixth deadly sin of greed, the advent of free trade and illegal aliens has led to reduced wages and a concomitant reduced political power. Why pay Americans $8/hr for what a Chinese or Indian or Mexican can do for $1/hour? It’s only good business.
This is a real problem, a real issue, and it’s not going away. The GOP has no solution except denial. We may well see ourselves snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in 2012 if we don’t address this real, economic drain of giving in too much to the top 1%.
See http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/generic_congressional_vote-2170.html Up until August of this year, the GOP had a pretty consistent advantage over the Dems (except for June for some reason). But since OWS, we have heard nothing except: Dems are for the regular guy, GOP is for the top 1%. And it is impacting the poll numbers. And doing stuff like filibustering the jobs bill didn’t help, neither did Romney saying “corporations are people,” neither does data showing Wall Street overwhelmingly chosing the GOP, neither does data showing CEO salary increases the last two years were 24% and 28%, neither does data showing that the Kochs’ wealth grew at $10million/day for the last 4 years while they were laying off 13,000, and neither does chat board mocking of the majority of Americans. We have got to wake up and recognize, this is an issue that could return the Dems to house, senate, and white house supermajorities.
The Occupiers are not a sign of failure to Obama. It appears to me that he is succeeding, if one judges accomplishments in the light of intentions.
Could we have elected anyone worse? Since Mao and Stalin died,no.
I would advise everyone who wishes to counter-protest to bring lots of video cameras and phones. The MSM will catch one of us throwing the second punch, but they will be blind to the lefty scumbag throwing the first.
Swept into office? Obama is not going to be vetted for the 2012 election?
Swept into office? Obama is not going to be vetted for the 2012 election?
One 16th Century writer's work strikes a familiar chord, as he explores the reasons why individuals will voluntarily submit themselves to a tyrannical leader.
The writer is Étienne de la Boétie, and, as the page in the LibertyFund Library indicates, he "provides one of the earliest and clearest explanations of why the suffering majority obeys the minority who rule over them; it is an example of voluntary servitude (1576)"
The following is excerpted from that page:
"La Boétie poses one of the thorniest problems in political philosophy: why the suffering majority obey the orders of the ruling few:
"For the present I should like merely to understand how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him.[3] Surely a striking situation! Yet it is so common that one must grieve the more and wonder the less at the spectacle of a million men serving in wretchedness, their necks under the yoke, not constrained by a greater multitude than they, but simply, it would seem, delighted and charmed by the name of one man alone whose power they need not fear, for he is evidently the one person whose qualities they cannot admire because of his inhumanity and brutality toward them. A weakness characteristic of human kind is that we often have to obey force; we have to make concessions; we ourselves cannot always be the stronger. Therefore, when a nation is constrained by the fortune of war to serve a single clique, as happened when the city of Athens served the thirty Tyrants, one should not be amazed that the nation obeys, but simply be grieved by the situation; or rather, instead of being amazed or saddened, consider patiently the evil and look forward hopefully toward a happier future."
"The . . . passage from which this quotation was taken can be be viewed below. . . :
" …"
The writer describes three methods of coming into power, and of the 'elected' method, he concludes:
". . . For although the means of coming into power differ, still the method of ruling is practically the same; those who are elected act as if they were breaking in bullocks; those who are conquerors make the people their prey; those who are heirs plan to treat them as if they were their natural slaves. …
"Let us therefore admit that all those things to which he is trained and accustomed seem natural to man and that only that is truly native to him which he receives with his primitive, untrained individuality. Thus custom becomes the first reason for voluntary servitude. Men are like handsome race horses who first bite the bit and later like it, and rearing under the saddle a while soon learn to enjoy displaying their harness and prance proudly beneath their trappings. Similarly men will grow accustomed to the idea that they have always been in subjection, that their fathers lived in the same way; they will think they are obliged to suffer this evil, and will persuade themselves by example and imitation of others, finally investing those who order them around with proprietary rights, based on the idea that it has always been that way.
"There are always a few, better endowed than others, who feel the weight of the yoke and cannot restrain themselves from attempting to shake it off: these are the men who never become tamed under subjection and who always, like Ulysses on land and sea constantly seeking the smoke of his chimney, cannot prevent themselves from peering about for their natural privileges and from remembering their ancestors and their former ways. These are in fact the men who, possessed of clear minds and far-sighted spirit, are not satisfied, like the brutish mass, to see only what is at their feet, but rather look about them, behind and before, and even recall the things of the past in order to judge those of the future, and compare both with their present condition. These are the ones who, having good minds of their own, have further trained them by study and learning. Even if liberty had entirely perished from the earth, such men would invent it. For them slavery has no satisfactions, no matter how well disguised. …
". . . By this time it should be evident that liberty once lost, valor also perishes. A subject people shows neither gladness nor eagerness in combat: its men march sullenly to danger almost as if in bonds, and stultified; they do not feel throbbing within them that eagerness for liberty which engenders scorn of peril and imparts readiness to acquire honor and glory by a brave death amidst one’s comrades. Among free men there is competition as to who will do most, each for the common good, each by himself, all expecting to share in the misfortunes of defeat, or in the benefits of victory; but an enslaved people loses in addition to this warlike courage, all signs of enthusiasm, for their hearts are degraded, submissive, and incapable of any great deed. Tyrants are well aware of this, and, in order to degrade their subjects further, encourage them to assume this attitude and make it instinctive. …
"But to return to our subject, the thread of which I have unwittingly lost in this discussion: it has always happened that tyrants, in order to strengthen their power, have made every effort to train their people not only in obedience and servility toward themselves, but also in adoration. Therefore all that I have said up to the present concerning the means by which a more willing submission has been obtained applies to dictators in their relationship with the inferior and common classes. …
"Still men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves, or as if anyone could possess under a tyrant a single thing in his own name. Yet they act as if their wealth really belonged to them, and forget that it is they themselves who give the ruler the power to deprive everybody of everything, leaving nothing that anyone can identify as belonging to somebody. They notice that nothing makes men so subservient to a tyrant’s cruelty as property; that the possession of wealth is the worst of crimes against him, punishable even by death; that he loves nothing quite so much as money and ruins only the rich, who come before him as before a butcher, offering themselves so stuffed and bulging that they make his mouth water. These favorites should not recall so much the memory of those who have won great wealth from tyrants as of those who, after they had for some time amassed it, have lost to him their property as well as their lives; they should consider not how many others have gained a fortune, but rather how few of them have kept it. Whether we examine ancient history or simply the times in which we live, we shall see clearly how great is the number of those who, having by shameful means won the ear of princes — who either profit from their villainies or take advantage of their naïveté — were in the end reduced to nothing by these very princes; and although at first such servitors were met by a ready willingness to promote their interests, they later found an equally obvious inconstancy which brought them to ruin. Certainly among so large a number of people who have at one time or another had some relationship with bad rulers, there have been few or practically none at all who have not felt applied to themselves the tyrant’s animosity, which they had formerly stirred up against others. Most often, after becoming rich by despoiling others, under the favor of his protection, they find themselves at last enriching him with their own spoils. …"
Note that the above are excerpts only.
Zer0 needs to let them occupy the White House, D0J, Dept. of Ed. and the rest of Big Gov’t.
So this is ALL he has left as a plan to hold power, BURN the Cities Down in order to save his stinking ass?
0bama, Daily, Jarret, Plouffe, et al will be serevly held to account if they incite the destruction of our society and burning of our cities.
This tactic seems to me to be somewhat of a threat to America, if you know what’s good for you all you had better damn well not get in our way and you damn well had better support us.
OR ELSE!
Logical as Obama started it! It serves his Hate the Rich, class warfare message that he hopes will see him re-elected to the White House. It just might work too. If he gets a second term—American will get what it deserves. Every right thinking American must work to oppose this movement and elect people who reflect real American Values. We can not afford to be purist —we can not let these elites rule or Mrs. Obama will be telling you what to eat, what to wear and what to drive.
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