Slouching Towards Oblivion

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

OWS Meme

Officer Pike has won himself a place in Mike's American Liberties Hall Of Shame.
(hat tips: Balloon Juice, facebook)

OWS Anthem Nominee

"Too many hungry people losing weight"

This Is A Justice System?

Via Crooks and Liars, Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone:
Apparently in this country you become ineligible to eat if you have a record of criminal drug offenses. States have the option of opting out of that federal ban, but Mississippi is not one of those states. Since McLemore had four drug convictions in her past, she was ineligible to receive food stamps, so she lied about her past in order to feed her two children.
The total "cost" of her fraud was $4,367. She has paid the money back. But paying the money back was not enough for federal Judge Henry Wingate.
To hear some people tell it, you'd think OWS was nothing but spoiled kids gripin' about their allowance.  Taibbi's story serves to point out a few things that really are just flat wrong with the way we've been doing things here in the USA for a good long time.  And it isn't only about "the rich get richer and the poor get children".  There are real problems with the basic structure of our system.  So I don't know what all we need to do to fix it, but maybe we could start by addressing the concept of equal protection under the law.

Monday, November 21, 2011

And Jesus Wept

Another Good One

...From Mr Fallows at The Atlantic:
What is going on is a war of ideas, based in turn on moral standing. This engagement, which started in Minute 1 with police over-reaction and ended in Minute 8 with nervous police retreat, was a rout.





Not News

This cannot be considered any kind of news - not after almost 2 generations of constant and concerted efforts to chip away at every democratic tradition anybody cares to name.































I'm NOT saying CongressCritters haven't contributed greatly to their own crappy image by doing things that everybody thinks are stupid; and by not doing things that everybody thinks are smart.  What I'm saying is that on top of all that, you don't get to spend 35 years and a gajillion dollars trashing each other in very public ways and then wonder why everybody's looking at you like you've got scabs on your dick.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

What's Up With OWS

A good re-cap, and some decent analysis from Garance Franke-Ruta at The Atlantic:


And yet it is all too American. America has a very long history of protests that meet with excessive or violent response, most vividly recorded in the second half of the 20th century. It is a common fantasy among people born in the years since the great protests movements -- and even some not so great ones -- that they would have stood on the bold side of history had they been alive at the time and been called to make a choice. But the truth is that American protest movements in real time -- and especially in their early days -- often appear controversial, politically difficult, out-of-the-mainstream, and dangerous. And they are met with fear.
Even decades later, acts of protest can be the subject of heated debate and lead people to question (as well as celebrate) the moral standing of those who put their bodies on the line during moments of historic tumult -- as Sen. John Kerry, Vietnam veteran and former anti-Vietnam protester, learned during his presidential bid in 2004.
 (hat tip = JR)

Saturday, November 19, 2011

More Tim Wise

via GRITtv

On Things Authoritarian

One of the better bits from Theramin Trees. At about 11:00, there's a great parallel with how some city governments are trying to deal with OWS protests. Makes a lot of sense to me in that context.