Posted on 02/21/2008 10:08:41 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
he brouhaha sparked by the Berkeley City Council these past couple of weeks demonstrates again that you can be within shouting distance of one of the world's great educational institutions and still be terminally stupid.
The council, as almost everybody not in a deep trance must know, voted to send a letter telling the U.S. Marine Corps to, in effect, get the hell out of town. The particular target was a Marine recruiting office on Shattuck Square.
Predictably, that got the right-wing bloggers knee-jerking right back, sending them into paroxysms of righteous indignation.
It also – and justifiably – upset more than a few decent people, including a lot of area residents, many of them strong opponents of the Iraq war, who were personally embarrassed and/or offended.
A week after the vote, as the besieged council met to reconsider, it generated the equally predictable street face-off between a group called Code Pink and other conspicuous peaceniks (on one side of the riot cops) and veterans and others, including the parents of some killed in the service, who believed that the Marine Corps deserved a better shake (on the other). The bill for the cops is still being toted up.
By last Tuesday night, the council had more or less reversed itself, with some members confessing, in effect, that they hadn't seen all this coming, making them the only people this side of Djibouti who hadn't.
The proposal originated with the council's Peace and Justice Commission – doesn't every city have one? – but, according to a couple of the members, they just hadn't read the thing before they voted on it.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
The petition
We, the undersigned condemn the Berkeley City Council’s treasonous attack on US Marine Recruiters stationed in their city. We ask that Congress cut off funds from any and all municipal entity within the confines of the city of Berkeley, California, until such time as the city council withdraws it’s action.
The City Council has voted to tell the Marines their downtown recruiting station is not welcome and “if recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome guests.”
The measure passed last week by a vote of 8-1.
The council also voted to explore enforcing a city anti-discrimination law, focusing on the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
In a separate item, the council voted, also 8-1, to give the Marxist protest group Code Pink a parking space in front of the recruiting office once a week for six months and a free sound permit for protesting once a week.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/cutoffberkeleynow
If you wish to, please share with your friends or e-mail to your address books. You DO NOT have to donate at the petition site, there will be a page asking for one for the site after you sign, just back out or exit. Your signature will already be on the petition.
http://www.fourfriedchickensandacoke.blogspot.com
Peter Schrag is a tired old hag who has forever been a leftist shill...in the class of an unrepentant David Horowitz.
Hey, why can’t I be offended and decent too? Who is this twit who decided that I’m neither?
Sounds about right. I write him an email but it’s fairly obvious he couldn’t read or comprehend it.
Some liberal knuckledragger with all the political savvy of a five year old.
Take it from someone who attended -- You can be "terminally stupid" and be a student at this supposed "great educational institution". In fact, a large majority of the students and practically the entire faculty are "terminally stupid"
Doughty, did you read the comments? One comment bemoaned the fact that other posters were making “snarky” comments about B Boxer’s favorite little gardening project for school kids. Hell, the program may be the best ever devised, but WHY are FEDERAL TAXPAYERS having to pay for it? If Californians want to institute their cute little programs for schoolchildren, or anyone else, they should pay for it THEMSELVES-—a concept that is, obviously, foreign to them!
A “Peace and Justice Commission”? ROTFLMBFAO! That is one of the funniest things I’ve heard in a long time! Talk about twisted self-righteous delusions of grandeur.
There. Fixed it.
Personally, I am grateful for Berkeley. I live in Massachusetts, and even though we have the likes of Kerry, Kennedy and Frank in public office here, it in no way compares to the overwhelming and abject arrogant stupidity of Berkeley citizens.
I once heard in a movie (which I cannot recall, I think it was really REALLY bad though) the saying "You're my Mississippi..." which basically means "I live in Arkansas, but since we are next to Mississippi...nobody notices that we are the stupidest and worst state." (Personally, I believe that "honor" should go to Louisiana, not Mississippi, and by a wide margin...)
That said, as a Massachusetts resident, I can comfortably say to someone in that context "You're my Berkeley..."
See "Thomas Sowell", The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation As a Basis for Social Policy
Couldn’t agree more...
You’re absolutely right. Berkley makes the least intellectually endowed of the rest of us look like Einstein’s brilliantly gifted kin.
A bill for what? If I recall correctly, they did nothing.
ping for viewing after work...
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