Harassing cops at Occupy Denver with chants of, "The police are the army of the rich!" In reality the police are the army of civilized society that lives by the rule of law.
In the interest of being “fair and balanced” my family and I recently stopped by Occupy Denver at Civic Center Park across from the state capitol. Back in 2009, we also attended the pre-Tea Party stimulus bill protest at the capitol, then the follow-up Tea Party protest.
This time around we were in Denver for the Colorado Ski and Snowboard Expo to enjoy the fruits of capitalism provided by evil corporations like Vail Resorts and Intrawest. I’m pleased to report that Colorado ski resorts and ski and snowboard retailers were doing a brisk business.
It’s strange how the free market works: People provide a product based on demand and then compete to make that product as economical and accessible as possible in order to profit from said product. Everyone wins who wants to win in this system. The catch is that you have to work, and work hard, to succeed.
Meanwhile, just around the corner at Occupy Denver, the dregs of society were gathered to protest that same system. They claim it’s Wall Street in particular they’re protesting, but by and large they blame capitalism in general for society’s ills.
What they haven’t figured out is that while Wall Street is certainly a problem, especially its cozy relationship with porky politicians in Washington, D.C., it is not the poster boy for capitalism. The poster boy, among many other poster boys, is the person exhibiting at the Ski and Snowboard Expo working hard to deliver a great product.
In one of my earlier eyewitness Tea Party posts, I wrote the following:
Another striking thing about the protest was how orderly and well-behaved everyone was. This was in stark contrast to your typical left-wing protest, where profanity, invective, and mean-spiritedness prevail. My hope is that the hard-working, family-oriented American wins the day and wins back our country.
An f-bomb throwing evangelist exchanges pleasantries with f-bombing anarchists at Occupy Denver. Nice.
Some objected to these general characterizations as being unfair to progressives, but the dichotomy between the Tea Party and Occupy protests I witnessed proved the theory, at least at the Denver versions of the protests.
Immediately upon arrival at Occupy Denver the onslaught of “profanity, invective and mean-spiritedness” began in earnest. A group of anarchists was harassing the cops, who were merely hanging around to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. They chanted, “The police are the army of the rich!” I asked one of the policemen if he was part of the army of the rich, and he just shook his head as if to say, “Yeah, right.”
Then, an “evangelist” approached the anarchists, waving a Bible and punctuating every other word with the F-word. They yelled at each other for awhile, the anarchists matching every evangelical F-word with their own F-bombs and some sacrilege to boot.
That scene got old rather quickly, so we wandered into the heart of the beast, a motley collection of 911 Truthers, punks with spikes and tattoos, neo-Nazis, hipster dufus wanabees, the homeless and a lonely man with a Ron Paul t-shirt. The area in which they congregated was dirty, disheveled and disorganized. We didn’t stay long; there wasn’t really much to see, other than losers with nothing better to do.
Running with the Devil: The motley crew of anarchists, communists, neo-Nazis, punksters, 911 Truthers, the homeless and other losers at Occupy Denver.
My overall impression was that those who were first attracted to the movement and who may have had a legitimate beef about the abuses of Wall Street likely abandoned the protest to the fringe elements. This reinforces my theory that anyone who’s really serious about reforming Wall Street should join the Tea Party. Tea Partiers, at least this Tea Partier, very much resent the immoral and unethical relationship between Wall Street and the Federal government whereby the largest Wall Street donors are ensured bailouts when their risky, shady deals go south. Everyone else can go to hell.
The system is rigged, but it’s rigged by big government. Banking regulations, for instance, favor the existence of giant banks. The regulations are designed to make it difficult for small banks to be competitive, thus capital and the risk associated with it are concentrated in very few hands. If that risk was spread out among smaller banks, systemic crashes would be averted. Now, when one giant bank collapses it threatens to collapse the entire system, but that’s how porky politicians like it.
Now that's more like it... People buying and selling goods and services at the Colorado Ski and Snowboard Expo. These ordinary, hard-working people were decidedly happier, enjoying the fruits of their labors, than were the bitchy baby Occupiers around the corner at Civic Center Park in Denver.
Therefore, why would one who doesn’t like the games Wall Street plays want to make the Federal government larger? So that it can continue to consolidate its political power with economic power? This is a recipe that will ensure the poor get poorer while the connected few rich get richer, which is why the likes of Michael Moore, Alec Baldwin, George Soros and Warren Buffet are in favor of this disaster recipe arrangement.
There really is no rational reason to vote Democrat, the party dedicated to growing government at the expense of the individual. Leftist movements have historically left misery and destruction in their wake, from the French Revolution to the people’s revolutions in Russia, China, Korea and Cuba. The Occupy protest I witnessed was a microcosm of what happens when the left is in control, which is to say hell on earth.
At first I thought the video below was a parody, but no… it’s serious. College Democrats of America put a video together explaining why they’re Democrats. Let’s just say after watching it I still don’t have a clue as to why they’re Democrats.
- Hope is the stuff of dreams
- Patriot Act
- Because I’m a Christian
- Every child has a right to an education
- There’s no difference between a janitor and judge
- America is a democracy and not a theocracy
- Paying into an entitlement system that rips me off and bankrupts the country
Yeah, I added that last bullet point, but the rest are reasons these people gave for being a Democrat. Any young person who is a Democrat is woefully uninformed about the grave nature of our fiscal problems. The Democrats are the party of bankruptcy.
I had an interesting conversation this past weekend while riding a gondola to the top of Aspen Mountain for the resort’s last weekend of skiing with a local immersed in Aspen’s culture. It wasn’t a conversation as much as it was a soliloquy as our fellow gondola rider waxed poetic about the town and the four ski mountains that surround it.
So you really want dufuses like this to run our health care system? Okay then...
He said he was originally from Indiana, but the state was “too conservative” for his tastes; Aspen was just right for him. The ride ended before I could ask him if he was Federalist in his politics, meaning a belief that locals rule the details while the federal government manages the “general political interests of the nation,” as Alexander Hamilton put it in Federalist No. 84, not “the regulation of every species of personal and private concerns.”
The great thing about Federalism in theory and practice is that it allows someone who doesn’t like the political climate in his location to move somewhere else that better suits them. Do you want universal health care? Move to Massachusetts. Want to openly smoke pot? Move to Aspen. Don’t want the state to be on your ass all the time and regulate you into oblivion? Move to Texas or Indiana.
However, when those jokers in D.C. consolidate their power and begin to regulate every species of personal and private concerns, there is no escape. What does this have to do with Twitter Boy, Anthony Weiner? It’s just the latest example in a long line of bi-partisan examples that should warn all of us to limit, rather than enlarge, the scope and reach of the federal government.
But every time one votes for a Democrat they’re voting to give the federal government more power, concentrating that power in only a few hands, hands that are decidedly busy looking for ways to use their office to get into someone’s pants or pickpocket our money for nefarious purposes. I don’t really care what these people do in their spare time, but I sure as hell care when they do it on the taxpayer’s dime, a.k.a., my dime.
Then, they typically lie and obfuscate about their sins as they search for some way to retain the perks of their office, the aforementioned hands in the pants and pockets. And you really want them to run our health care system?
Let me be clear, to borrow a phrase… The only individual they care about is themselves, by and large. Where do you think you really stand in their world? Like most people the world over they have only their best interests at heart. This is human nature, the nature liberals deny in their unicorn-filled fantasy world.
America’s founders rejected this fantasy land, this brotherhood of man nonsense that they understood to be unattainable. They realized that allowing a small group of people the ability to regulate every species of personal and private concerns from a remote location would mark the end of the freedom they envisioned for the people of the United States.
Thus the Constitution is a document of limitations on federal power. It enumerates the necessary functions of a central government, while it gives states and localities the power to handle the details (please see the 10th Amendment in the Bill of Rights). If you think about it logically, it makes perfect sense. Our local and state leaders are far more accountable to the people than are a relative few thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C.
So why did the aptly named Weiner run for office in the first place? Was it a selfless dedication to protecting our liberties and freedoms through valiant public service? Or, was it to opiate the masses with hand-outs so that he could more easily pursue his primary passion… young ladies?
Bad hair? Yes. Racist? Not so sure. Future president? No way.
I haven’t really written about Trumpmania. It all seems so pointless. The press loves it because the press loves embarrassing GOP candidates for president. Since there really isn’t a race for the nomination yet Trump gets all the air time. Donald Trump the Republican is kind of like Charlie Crist the Republican except Crist was a more devout GOPer until last year. That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of Trump’s conservative credentials.
Anyway, it’s far too early for me to be ripping Donald Trump. Trump is a publicity hound. He’s always been a shameless promoter of the Trump brand. “Running for president” is a sure fire way to get noticed. I have a feeling, though, that if Trump had pulled this stunt in 2004 and ran against Bush he’d be greeted a lot differently. Take TechCrunch contributer Paul Carr, for example. He just dedicated an entire post to Donald Trump on a technology website. Here’s how Carr opens:
Let me start of by reiterating how much I hate Donald Trump.
Hate is, of course, a strong word. But then again so are “liar”, “crypto-racist” and “criminally-irresponsible publicity whore”. And there can be fewer more hateful blots on the current landscape of American politics than that of Trump – looking for all the world like a pugnacious Oompa-Loompa with a comb-over – dog whistling to the racist “birther” movement in order to promote his crappy reality TV show.
Wow! This might be the first full blown case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Carr’s logic is weak and irrational: Trump is a racist because he’s a birther? What about the people who questioned McCain’s citizenship? Are they racists too? Or, even worse, agists? One of the most annoying aspects of the Obama years is that any criticism of the President, either real or imagined, is simply dismissed as racist by the white guilt suffering left.
Being a “birther” is many things. It’s not smart. There’s no evidence. It’s a lot like all those liberals who are still convinced to this day that Gore won Florida despite numerous recounts. Or what about all those crazy “truthers” who believe Bush had something to do with 9/11? Or what about the liberals who are convinced that Iraq was a war over oil, but are apathetic over the oil conflict in Libya. These people aren’t racists, agists or Texanists… they’re just not very smart. There are plenty of ignorant people on both the left and right.
There’s nothing new about Donald Trump. It’s a big promotional push, but what about Paul Carr? Why is Carr writing on a technology site about hating Trump? Carr should stick to writing about subjects on which he’s an expert and leave the political stuff to people who can form logical, reality based points.
“We are simultaneously supposed to gasp in awe at teachers’ raw dedication and forced to listen to their incessant caterwauling about how they don’t make enough money. Well, which is it? Are they dedicated to teaching or are they in it for the money? After all the carping about how little teachers are paid, if someone enters the teaching profession for the big bucks, aren’t they too stupid to be teaching our kids?”
Ann Coulter, Godless
Since we’re randomly lobbing missiles for “humanitarian” purposes, why stop at Libya? How about Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and the Ivory Coast? At least when we blow up missiles someone has to make more missiles, which is a lot more productive than supporting the fat-ass government bureaucracy that produces nothing but regulations and kids who can’t read.
Do you really want to help teachers? Do you love teachers? Then let’s get rid of make-work BS six-figure government jobs like Climate Change Program Manager, pay teachers based on merit, fire those that need to be fired and make schools compete. In the process, you’ll help the children as well.
When faced with a choice of having to pay a little more for their own pensions and health care, public employees in Wisconsin basically rioted. Instead of doing the right and rational thing they chose to force Governor Walker to institute layoffs to help bring a modicum of sanity to the state’s budgetary Armageddon.
So let’s get this straight… When asked to fly a little closer to the reality the rest of us live in, teachers and their unions said, “Hell no, we won’t go.” I’d love to have a sweetheart deal like that, one that guarantees I can’t get fired for incompetence or laziness (or just about anything else), that pays more than most other professionals earn (you can look it up), basically free health care and pension plans, and about a third of the year off for vacation. It once again begs the question posed by Ann Coulter above, that given that, “aren’t they too stupid to be teaching our kids?”
Unfortunately, I live in a reality called the private sector, a sector being abandoned by more and more people as they realize that the crime of big, corrupt and crony government surely does pay. I discussed this problem earlier after reading a job description on one of the job boards for a Climate Change Program Manager at the National Park Service. I won’t rehash the whole thing, but this pointless make-work job brings in anywhere from $103,000 to $155,000.
When progressives protest budget cuts and clamor for more and more government, they cite the saints of public service – teachers, fire fighters and cops (the only time they like cops). I’m actually well and good with paying all of the above handsomely, though I must add that it should be merit based and they should be able to be fired.
The problem is that you can’t pay those who are actually rendering a public service handsomely when some Schmoe is pulling in six figures at a BS National Park Service job. The bigger problem is that there are literally thousands of the Schmoes at all levels of government with BS jobs raking in the dough at the taxpayer’s, and teacher’s, expense.
The following excerpt from the Dec. 11, 2009 edition of USA Today bears repeating here:
Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession’s first 18 months — and that’s before overtime pay and bonuses are counted. Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector… When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.
These disgusting statistics are merely the tip of an iceberg, with state and local governments aboard a federal Titanic steaming full speed ahead that isn’t equipped with enough lifeboats. And yet, progressives fight any budget cuts and limits on government tooth and nail, despite the fact that doing both would benefit their beloved teachers, fire fighters and cops.
Progressives are notoriously ignorant of economics. I don’t think progressives are stupid, by and large, but willfully ignorant. They are generally economically illiterate because any cursory knowledge of economics would explode their entire ideology and they’d have to become conservatives, or at least libertarians.
Progressives fail to realize that government monopolies are, by their very nature, resistant to any type of positive reform or innovation. Thus they ossify, becoming inflexible and of no practical good to anyone but those who work for the system. Modern liberalism is, in fact, illiberal and has become the worst kind of conservatism you could possibly imagine.
People try to put us down… Yeah, that’s because you screwed future generations with your My Generation crap, dumbasses. And, by the way, you didn’t die before you got old like you were supposed to.
Reform education? Hell no! It’s all about “the children,” so we must not improve it or allow any of the unwashed masses a choice. Rather, we should pour more money into it, most of which goes to the adults and their precious paychecks, pensions and health care. Reform entitlements? Hell no! They’re headed for a massive implosion, but I’ll have mine for my retirement and I’ll be dead by then, so let them drive clown cars!
My children are quite thankful for these selfless adults. Still, they wonder why the Worthless Generation didn’t take Roger Daltrey’s advice in My Generation to heart.
One of the consequences of pouring more manpower and money into government work and jealously guarding government monopolies in certain areas, like education, is either a negative or flat return on investment. But start providing data and evidence and a liberal’s eyes will start glazing over because there’s no emotion in numbers or logic. Stephen Moore laid it out in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial:
The employment trends described here are explained in part by hugely beneficial productivity improvements in such traditional industries as farming, manufacturing, financial services and telecommunications. These produce far more output per worker than in the past. The typical farmer, for example, is today at least three times more productive than in 1950.
Where are the productivity gains in government? Consider a core function of state and local governments: schools. Over the period 1970-2005, school spending per pupil, adjusted for inflation, doubled, while standardized achievement test scores were flat. Over roughly that same time period, public-school employment doubled per student, according to a study by researchers at the University of Washington. That is what economists call negative productivity.
The video below is a nice satire of the Anti-war Left who apparently are on vacation. There are plenty of people on the Right who disagree with our foreign policy in Libya, but nothing rises to the level of derangement that came from the Left during Iraq.
Tasty at the ballpark, but downright disgusting when packaged as news.
There are various ways to describe the traditional media in America. By traditional, I mean the media that dominated American newsgathering and dissemination for most of its history, first with the metropolitan daily papers, then radio and finally weekly newsmagazines and the big three television networks: ABC, NBC and CBS.
To some degree, the first all-news cable network, CNN, was and is part of this traditional media mix. But it was the forerunner of the New Media, which has successfully fragmented the monopolistic hold traditional media had on reporting news.
The most common term used to describe traditional media is Mainstream. This misses the mark, however, because it is increasingly irrelevant and no longer in the mainstream of American life. Conservatives derisively refer to it as the Lamestream Media, the Dinosaur Media and the Drive-By Media, among others. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to hang onto Mainstream. I suppose it’s comforting to hearken back to a day when news was controlled by the elite few whose opinions were developed in the vacuum of academia, Manhattan, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Well, that should be the real headline of today’s Supreme Court ruling on gun control. It is possible to debate whether or not it’s a good idea for every American to have a firearm. The same could be said about the Freedom of Speech. What puzzles me is that four justices on the Supreme Court and many liberals believe it’s the court’s place to limit a right given by the United States Constitution.
If liberals wish to remove the right they should repeal the second amendment. A repeal isn’t likely to happen, but it’s shocking that progressives seem so cavalier about the Bill of Rights when it suits them.
Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, each wrote a dissent. Stevens, in his final day on the bench after more than 34 years, said that unlike the Washington case, Monday’s decision “could prove far more destructive – quite literally – to our nation’s communities and to our constitutional structure.”
It’s unclear which constitution Justice Stevens is referencing. I’ve often wondered if he had his own version. So I guess this ruling would be destructive to Stevens’ imaginary constitution. What these four Justices believe is that the ends justify the means. In other words, they’ve put their own ideology over the written law of the land. If there is no law, there is no truth. If there is no truth, there is only anarchy, which will be fantastic.
I mentioned House Rep. Mel Watt last week in my post about the Gerrymandered Census. As I stated before Watt is one of the most liberal members of the Congress and the only way he continues to get elected is because of gerrymandered districts.
The National Journal has posted the top 10 most liberal and conservative members of the Congress. It’s no surprise that Watt is tied for first. Is Watt really representing the average voter in the state of North Carolina?
The 10 Most Liberal House Dems 1. Rush Holt (D-NJ) 1. Gwen Moore (D-WI) 1. John Olver (D-MA) 1. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) 1. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) 1. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) 1. Mel Watt (D-NC) 1. Henry Waxman (D-CA) 9. Kathy Castor (D-FL) 10. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL)
I deeply respect what Paul Krugman accomplished as an economist. His work in new trade theory earned a Nobel Prize in economics. However, he has become so partisan in his editorials that he is quickly diminishing his reputation. He was on This Week with George Snuffleupagus… I mean Stephanopoulos… and he claimed that in the climate change debate “there is tremendously more money in being a skeptic than there is in being a supporter.” This ridiculous statement earned Krugman the Watts Up With That? quote of the week. I guess we can give Krugman a break since it appears climate change is not his area of expertise.
I wish that was the only problem with Krugman. Last week he wrote an article about the Tobin tax that was odd. It’s odd because for someone who is supposedly an intellectual giant in economics, he’s completely naïve when it comes to tax evasion. Greg Mankiw was left scratching his head after reading Krugman’s claim that financial transactions will not be moved if there’s a Tobin tax.
This is the danger of extreme partisanship, especially in regard to economics. Krugman is basically just endorsing whatever stupid new plan the Democrats come up with. From an economics perspective the Democrats don’t have many bright ideas right now. For Krugman I guess he’s decided to sheath the sword and just deal with the fallout. As long as the Democrats keep dreaming up new ways to tax productive people investors are going to quit investing. Until investors have confidence again the economy is going to stall. It seems like Krugman would understand this simple concept, but it appears he can’t see through his political blinders.
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