Forum Post: Tea party Terrorism
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 5, 2011, 11:19 a.m. EST by aahpat
(1407)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
There are people who assert that Occupy Wall Street and the tea party should combine forces. Nothing would be more wrong. OWS is a non-violent social, economic and political justice movement seeking to protect Americans. The tea party is a violent right-wing GOP insurrectionist movement using violent and intimidating innuendo and threats against America's political leaders to coerce and intimidate them into capitulating to tea party and Wall Street dictates.
The tea party's repeated assertion of "Second Amendment remedies", as their presidential candidate and Congressional leader Michele Bachman puts, is a clear threat of assassination and insurrection against American political leaders who do not capitulate to tea party dictates.
Carrying assault weapons to presidential visits.
Holding Second Amendment rallies contingent with Nation Mall and carrying signs that say "We came unarmed - this time".
A tea party presidential candidate threatening "rough treatment" for a legally appointed and senate confirmed official of the government.
A tea party vice presidential candidate posting bulls eye targets on the districts of democratically elected members of Congress who do not tow the tea party line.
One tea party presidential candidate hates America so much that he makes repeated assertions about seceding from the Union.
The minority tea party caucus in Congress terrorizing the nation by using intentional debt limit default extortion, threatening to crash the U.S. government and trash America's credit rating, if the majority does not capitulate to their dictates.
Threatening to water your tree of liberty with the blood of American political leaders who you decide are "tyrants" is a terrorist threat of assassination.
These are all terrorist threats of assassination and insurrection against America's democratically elected government.
The tea party is a violent terrorist group.
Most people in the Tea Party are of the 99% but have been influenced by a lot of media-driven, right-wing propaganda pushed forth by corporate interests. In essence, they often support ideas presented by the 1%. They often rally against government regulation of all kinds, believing that environmental ideas are junk science, rallying against anything that interferes with a business' ability to maximize profits. We need to be careful here. Some of these people are rabid talkers and present a vehement angry streak at anything "liberal." There are some that may provide support to us, but we need to be careful in how we support.
if you claim to represent the 99% of the countries population you have to include the tea party as they are part of the 99% too. Perhaps you should claim to be the 50% or some other number more correct, or include everyone, like it should be. They must keep us fighting among ourselves or we might notice what evil they are doing and become focused on THEIR EVIL insider trading and such....“What better way to enslave a man then to give him a vote and tell
he is free to pay his loans".
I view the 99% as those who do not have the bargaining power to make the proper decisions in their lives. They are those that are kept under wraps by the 1%. For example, are teachers or doctors part of the 99%. I would say yes, but they have ideas that are not wholly representative of the working class. I am for the most part strongly supportive of the working class, which I believe ought to be the vehicle for economic change. I tend to group people with more bargaining power with that of a middle class, a coordinator class, which has more power to develop policy.
When it comes to the Tea Party, they appear to be strongly influenced by the managerial sectors of small business. I can't say for sure, but their constant use of "Joe the Plumber" heavily points in that direction. Small business is no better than big business from a corporate perspective. It is many forms of alternative business that matters. All big businesses were in fact smaller before they got big. Once they got big, they used more resources in attempts to co-opt and eventually corrupt the system.
Even managers, teachers and doctors are part of the 99%, but they have more leverage in bargaining with the 1%. They have the ability to actually influence social and economic direction, but are still at the mercy of the 1% in other respects. It is not that we should exclude these people but just to exercise caution. We can't allow ourselves to be co-opted by plans set forth by the 1%. Education can only go so far in many regards, but we need to resist the policies the 1% is behind.
I say, we let them come to us. If they don't want to, there is not much we can do about that. I don't really support trying to co-opt other groups, as much as they wouldn't support us doing the same.
if they come will you chase them off?, or listen to their ideas? big question, i used to support the tea party when it first began, but after it changed, i began to wonder. Look if you claim to represent 99% of the people, you BETTER represent 99% of them (and listen to them) or you are guilty of misrepresenting the TRUTH. And then you will lose all legitimacy and get kicked to the curb. Truth and honesty are missing from our gov, so you please show them the shining way by being truthful and all inclusive (minus 1%) and people will flock to your group. Find a way for people to get their ideas heard and CONSIDERED, and you will have surpassed the federal government by a country mile. People will flock to the group to be heard and considered.
It's about finding common ground. Ron Lawl wants to end the drug war and put an end to the Federal Reserve. So, that's common ground most of us likely will share. I suspect, though, that most people in the Tea Party would not agree with what's in the 99% Declaration. For us to hide that and not talk about it, I think, is misrepresenting the truth. I don't know if that is happening, but I suspect it may be to some degree.
lets get progress on the common ground stuff first, OK? don't hide everything, but get common ground first for momentum and to show porogress
Thanks. You just insulted one-quarter of america (the small business owners). So I guess you really only represent the 74%...... after you subtract the top 1% and the 25% that own their owns garages, stores, coffee shops, bookstores, and so on.
Damn those inconvenient truths.
It's an inconvenient, hard truth. It ought not be about small versus big, but rather irresponsible versus responsible. It is true that the majority of small businesses are more responsible than the majority of big ones. The facts do not change in regards to small versus big, however. There is a difference between the owner of a small business who takes the effort to pay decent wages and engage in a profit-sharing system than someone who decides to use the resources at hand to pay low wages as to generate a more rich life for himself, for example. The same is true of environmental matters, health care efforts, etc...
Another factor is that, despite all of this, the economic system naturally has highs and lows. Even if a small business owner does try whatever possible to make their employees' lives better, an economic downturn has the ability to turn even a responsible business into an irresponsible one. Competition also has the ability to drive down responsibility to even lower depths.
I do not have anything against small businesses, but to reckon that smaller firms are better than bigger ones is a bit misleading. They often try to be a lot better than bigger ones but are bogged down by economic downturns far more so than bigger ones. Working for a smaller business does not mean that your life is going to be any better than working for a big one, and in many cases even less so. Smaller firms can't afford to pay higher wages or even health care. That may not always be the case, but when it is not, maybe we ought to look at those to see what they are doing that allows them to continue operating.
A business operated by my neighbor is certainly better than the soulless entity that a multi-national corporation represents.
The guy operating a garage, or coffee shop, or bookstore is no different than the factory worker. Both are just trying to survive and earn enough money to support their families. The real power in this economy lies with the top 1% which would be happy to pass Congressional regulations that drive the garage, coffee shop, or bookstore owners into insolvency (because compliance costs money that small businesses don't have).
Basically like Walmart has done time and time again. Your anti-small business stance is aiding the top 1% in their goal to drive those citizen-run shops into non-existence. Way to side with the enemy.
I do not have an "anti-small-business stance." I might have come off that way, but I was talking more about the larger economy. Smaller businesses who opt out of the stock market are far better than those who opt in, and it has been proven that smaller businesses help boost the economy. There are a few large businesses that have sustainable practices, e.g. Ben and Jerry's. But there are far more smaller businesses that are sustainable. I don't necessarily look for whether a business is big or small to determine whether or not I should continue to do business with them. I rather look to see just how sustainable and responsible the business is overall. If I think they are offering something positive, I would be happy to do business with them.
It is a known fact that the big banks rarely support small businesses. Most of those are funded in part by local banks. It is the small businesses that I tend to overwhelmingly support, because they often have more to offer. It is not because they are small, though, but because they are doing something more responsible. They help foster community ties, links to community programs, act as advocates for local support groups, etc...
I live in an area that is heavily dominated by small businesses, and still the region is ripe with unemployment. The small businesses can only do so much and go so far in dealing with this. If we got rid of the few big chains in the area at once, then a lot more people would be out of work. I don't want to see that, either. I am not a person who believes heavily in the work ethic, but I do think people ought to have a chance to survive to his best ability. I would love to see Burger King and WalMart simply pack up and leave. They offer little to their employees. Very few people around here seem to have decent benefits. At the same time, people working there at least have money on hand to survive as best they could, better if they had much less. The smaller businesses can't hire anymore. They don't have the resources to do it.
I'm saying. We need alternatives. Sustainable, fair-trade principles. You find fair trade ideas more often aligned with smaller businesses. But it's not about being small, but rather about being innovative and responsible.
Most people in the Occupy Movement are of the 99% but have been influenced by a lot of media-driven, Democrat-leaning propaganda pushed forth by globalist interests (under the guise of ABC, CBS, MicrosoftNBC). In essence, they often support ideas presented by the 1% such as George Soros and company (Tides and Adwatch and ACORN).
The truth hurts. :-|
The Democratic Party and its media-driven comrades are of a business class that attempts to use community-oriented goals as a means to tie into the larger corporate structure. They believe in band-aid approaches to problems that are okay for a while but then begin to fail. They offer very little in restructuring much of the institutional framework but rather offer hope as long as you favor them.
The Republican Party offers little to no restructuring, because they feel that it is a patriotic and all American right to have the ability to become rich. They appear to operate on an "I don't care about anyone else but myself" attitude.
It would be interesting to see just what the thoughts of many people would be if there was never corporate money in politics. I suspect you probably would not even be thinking the way you do. Since you are bombarded in more than one direction by a wide range of materialistic incentives, you have learned to find comfort in the negatives of individualistic excess.
Wow. That's incredibly not true. Obama and the Democrats' best friends are RIAA (which sues grandmas and teenagers millions of dollars), MPAA (ditto), the Insurance Companies, and the automakers like GM and Ford. NONE of these are interested in anything other than padding their own profits.
Obama top donors also include Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Google, JP Moran, Citigroup, Time-warner, Sidney Austin, WilmerHale, Morgan Stanely, Lathan Walkins... none of which I would call "community oriented" businesses. -- Most of them are banks.... the jerks that ripped us off. Microsoft has been charged by both the EU and US for using its monopoly status to abuse competitors. And Google is a data collection site which knows virtually everything about you (your searches, your websites, your uploaded vids to youtube, and maybe even your name) and turns it over to the government under the auspices of the Patriot Act.
So basically what I'm saying is..... your first paragraph above is flat wrong. The Democrats and their corporate buddies are NO DIFFERENT than the corporate buddies the Republican hang out with.
Damn those inconvenient truths.
What I said was that the Democratic Party uses community-oriented goals as a means to tie into the larger corporate structure. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for example, involves itself within the community, even fights for a range of schools and even talks about trying to fighting malaria. Mainstream liberals are fine with this. This is what they want. They want Americans to be at ease with the rich, constantly showing just how they offer communitarian ideas. Yet, behind the scenes, they line up with some of the most infamous corporations, even owning stock in some. When they speak, though, they like to talk about community programs, about raising taxes to support community programs. Such taxes then help subsidize a part of the kind of programs organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation support.
Some people point to this as a positive contribution to society on behalf of corporations, like McDonalds sponsoring the Ronald McDonald House while chopping down forests and encouraging children to desire a junk food diet. Corporations want to get their hands in all aspects of our lives, and that does include our own community projects. I have heard that the tobacco industry has helped fund the fight against lung cancer.
Corporate confidants often set up foundations in order to try to take control of communities, usually with strings attached. The only difference amongst the Republicans is that they are far more open in their support of business, but the liberals have to walk a fine line. They are seen as deceitful, because the business culture and the common people rarely have the same interests at hand.
I say:
the State is monopoly on violence
let them keep their monopoly
"Those who staunchly advocate violence,...must be ostracized and disavowed."
I think you are beginning to get the idea . . .
The biggest threat to the Occupy movement from the inside is the "END THE FED" right-wing libertarians. They have ties to violent extremism and white-supremacists.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/end-the-fed-movement-has-ties-to-domestic-terroris/
And the tea party is simply libertarians by another name.
Racists and militias have infiltrated OWS in the name of "END THE FED". Please check out the link.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/end-the-fed-movement-has-ties-to-domestic-terroris/
Right-wing subversives infiltrate almost everything just to discredit anything that they themselves could never be as legitimate as.
Well said!!!
That doesn't mean that they don't pose a threat. One "END THE FED" activist appeared on network TV spewing anti-Semitism in the name of Occupy. Another brought an assault rifle to an Occupy protest. Another burned down an office building in the name of OWS! Try to have perspective, if the American public starts to believe that Occupy is violent and racist, we're in trouble.
Check out the documentation:
http://occupywallst.org/forum/end-the-fed-movement-has-ties-to-domestic-terroris/
Any large social movement that threatens or challenges the 1% will be infiltrated by hundreds and thousands of paid agents, regardless of whether a few right wing lunatics enter it or not. The public has to be warned of this, and taught it; so that they can differentiate between the movement and the embeded agents, provocateurs or lunatics.
Little else can be done, as this historically ALWAYS occurs . It is the infusion of good people, and real communities who adopt the movement, who ensure it's message, and it's continued survival...or not.
Infiltrations are impossible to prevent, and rather than targeting libertarians or EndTheFed people, many who are good people; I'd rather accept them, while keeping the tactic of non-violent resistance.
Yes, I would have preferred it if the EndTheFed people had developed their own movement, as the right wing does have some unique attributes which make them exclusive rather than inclusive; but they couldn't create that movement because of their personality and psychological issues; even amoungst themselves; so they came to OWS.In-fighting is not the answer.
And the difference between them trying to tie them in now and a month ago is............what? People denounce violence, they denounce the end the fed crap and a few other screwball notions. What would you have people do?
1) Remove "Ending the Fed" from the 99% declaration. The website itself links to Campaign for Liberty, a free market think tank.
2) Tell Alex Jones, Peter Schiff and Ron Lawl to back off. OWS already publicly distanced itself from MoveOn, citing petty differences. Yet, OWS allows itself to be overrun and co-opted by conspiracy theorists and free market interests. TAKE A STAND.
Taking a stand against fellow Americans will do nothing but create the divisiveness and in-fighting that brings down all social movements. Both the right and left wing comprise the 99%, and it's dangerous to allow the psyop tactic of divide and conquer to once again control us.
There is nothing harmful about OWS/ EndtheFed, two sides of the same coin. What is harmful is the traditional and time tested tactic of divide and conquer, which has always worked on the 99%.
Blah, blah, blah, right and left is a distraction, whatever. Do we really want these types of elements involved with OWS?
http://occupywallst.org/forum/end-the-fed-movement-has-ties-to-domestic-terroris/
The target is the 1 %, additionally you learn to work around or with these elements.Tactically, they cover your blind spots; and I'm referring to the sane, law abiding, principled one's; and vice versa. The left balances out the right, helps keep them stable and tolerant. There are ways of working together...unless you want to start some insane type of purging which will destroy everyone.
Domestic terrorism or other violence condoned by "Patriot" groups would destroy OWS. Period.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/end-the-fed-movement-has-ties-to-domestic-terroris/
The peaceful tactics OWS is using are considered to be low level terrorism by the pentagon and DHS. So pointing the finger at fellow Americans, as domestic terrorists isn't going to make it better for OWS, and what a horrible treacherous thing to do...saying Patriots condone domestic terrorism; building a case against your fellow citizens, in what is now a military police state.
The feds can destroy OWS, period; should they decide to go all out, and order their embeded agents to divide, provocateur, inform and attack from within and without. It's not patriots who are the threat; and patriots believe in constitutionally granted self defense.
I'm glad to have had this discussion, as I now realize a state of viciousness is equally shared by both left and right; as such I must find a solution apart from OWS and EndtheFed...maybe expatriation ?
I'm saying, it's a bad idea for OWS to associate with "Patriot" groups that promote actual violence. Why is this such a hard concept for you to grasp?
http://occupywallst.org/forum/end-the-fed-movement-has-ties-to-domestic-terroris/
What's wrong with a free market?
free markets are an ideal that don't withstand realities. free market theories make assumptions on behavior that an idiot could determine were against basic human nature. A true "free market" would implode on itself sooner, not later. That is why USA has generally always been some form of a mixed market economy, with some free market principles, but with government involvement. Our current recession is the result of the housing market veering too much into a free market side. While there should be freedom in a market, that does not equate to a free market. There, someone answered your question.
Free markets == Pro Choice. It is the purest form of democracy where the People "vote" with their dollars to support (or not support) the companies they like (or dislike).
Opposition to a free market is what corporations want (they desire monopoly). Opposition to a free market is opposition to Power for the People and democracy and freedom of choice.
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Hey D7ame2Uv, the phone is for you. It's the Tea Party. They say they miss you over at their blog, how you used to gush on like a school girl about free markets and the invisible hand. They sounded hurt, I really think you should go back over there.
Please answer the question.
Look around you. Do you see any, gosh, let me think,....oh yes, UNEMPLOYMENT around?
Hmmm, I think there may be something else,,,, gimme a minute.... Massive ECONOMIC COLLAPSE?
FORECLOSURES BY THE MILLIONS?
50 million people without access to HEALTH CARE without BANKRUPTCY?
How about OIL SPILLS in the Gulf of Mexico and ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION?
Have you noticed, by any chance, a CORRUPT CONGRESS, that doesn't represent your interests?
Have any JOBS been moved overseas, shuttering thousands of factories here?
Never notice any of these things?
Ask your question again, idiot.
Did you notice that the European socialist model is in an even worse situation than the US. They are truly on the edge of collapse and are looking to us to save them. People are rioting because they are losing their entitlements that they can not afford. Makes a lot of sense for us the then follow them down that path. I do see the corrupt congress and white house, I agree that we need to clean all of that up.
More right wing talking points. Europe Is NOT in crisis because of its social programs. Different countries are in crisis for different reasons (some of which have to do with OUR banks). But he whole of Europe is being puled down by the inflexibility of the Euro and the entire crisis is being made worse by the central bankers imposing austerity measures instead of investing in job creation and easing credit (sound familiar?).
Other than Greece, NO European country is experiencing difficulty based on on socialism, and it entirely unrelated to anything having to do with an absence or presence of free markets.
Paul Krugman addresses this consistently in the NY Times. You would do well to read his articles.
They are in trouble because they are deep, deep in debt.
They are deep, deep in debt because they spent their money like teenagers handed a credit card (free stuff, early retirement at age 55, et cetera). The stable country in the whole mess, the one the other ~20 States are turning to for help, is Germany because they AVOIDED having a debt. (Just like China which is also in great shape.)
I have read Krugman, basically just more left wing talking points. The problems in Europe have to do with the fact that they have too much debt. Italy is close to the same situation that Greece is, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Belgium. Politicians promised more than they could afford, everyone got soft, no incentive to actually work but now they expect to be taken care of by the government.
The reason we have economic collapse is because we have a CRONY market (also called corporate-government bribery), rather than a free market. It makes no sense to blame a free market when that is Not what we have.
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The "free" market is pernicious. The people of this country have wisely regulated it. The government's corruption has deregulated it.
The Libertarian solution is to deregulate it even further, as if a fire should be put out by throwing gasoline on it.
The market has been deregulated? So there are no more regulations whatsoever? Hmmm.
Not true. First-off one of the MAJOR market regulations was passed in 1998 and nicknamed Homestead Affirmative action. Basically it required banks to issue a mortgage to anybody who asked for one (or else be sued by the HUD and DOJ for discrimination against the poor). This regulation actually created the subprime housing bubble that burst in 2007 and 8. Ooops.
Anyway back to topic:
Deregulation? Nonsense. More than 50 agencies have a hand in federal regulatory policy, and together these agencies enforce almost 160,000 pages of rules. There were only 130,000 pages of rules when Clinton left office. That means regulations went UP during the George "duh" Bush's years.
Ooops again. So not only is your assertion of "deregulation" incorrect. We now have MORE regulations than we had back in 2000. I guess you'll need to find a different scapegoat, because the deregulation scapegoat simply isn't true.
Source
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2008/03/Red-Tape-Rising-Regulatory-Trends-in-the-Bush-Years#_ftn10 - http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/03/red-tape-rising-regulation-in-the-obama-era
I have seen all of the things you are mentioning. They have caused me untold anguish. They are what I spend most of my waking hours thinking of and about, and have been for many years. The question I have asked most is what are the causes? When asking that, the first things that come to mind do not suffice. It is the root cause that must be identified. In my view, the root cause is the ability of a worldwide, privately held banking cartel to create currency out of thin air, lend it at interest, and replace all real money with it. Most of the problems you cite would be either greatly diminished or impossible without this fraud having been perpetrated. This fraud was not permitted by deregulation. Human beings would never knowingly accept fake money without being forced to. We were forced to via regulations. The Federal Reserve act of 1913 was a regulation. Legal tender laws are a regulation. Fractional reserve was allowed through regulation. Notice that I do not consider these to be laws, as they are not part of common law.
I'm happy to discuss more, but I'd like to ask you to please refrain from name calling. As I've already stated, I'm well acquainted with the emotional charge around all of these things. Sometimes it's useful to just take a deep breath. Remember, I feel just as frustrated as you do. I'm not your enemy.
The ability to create money is one of the SOLUTIONS to the problem, not its cause.
The ability to increase or decrease the volume of money, and its corresponding value, can be used to create jobs, increase lending, and stimulate the economy as a whole Once that occurs, the money supply can by tightened again. In the past it has prevented or softened the impact of recession a dozen times since the 1930s, is is a tremendously valuable tool in economic regulation.
The ability is to create money is what caused the dollar to lose 95% of its purchasing power since 1913. The bank prints dollars like crazy, which destroys the private savings of the People. Paper currency is a tool of the 1% used to suppress the 99.
.The only way to stop that is to give paper currency a FIXED value, and stop the rampant printing of money (inflation), which destroys personal savings & labor.
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Don't let the forum dictate what it represent.
MoveOn.org is very well and alive in this thing. The proof will be in the summer...
I thought the sentence structure was a bit clunky. Glad the point came across. (;^>)
Racists and militias are not synonymous. So the minions of the bankers and 1% would now position us to fight our fellow Americans, rather than those who plan on enslaving us...the old, time tested, divide and conquer. Interesting that this is coming at a time when Americans are collectively saying Congress is treasonous.
This is out and out psyops=psychological operations on this board.
I would say that may have been true at one point. I think at this point it would be more apt to say that the Tea Party is NeoCons by another name.
Six of one half dozen of the other....
Not so much. For instance, most libertarians are not war mongers. NeoCons are. Most libertarians are against the erosion of liberty (such as via the suspension of habeas corpus and all of the rest of the ways due process has been compromised). NeoCons are for it. Most libertarians are against the expansion of executive power (such as via the suspension of posse comitatus act). NeoCons are for it. I would call these fundamental differences.
That is the libertarian talking points list. In reality the only liberty that libertarians really care about is their liberty to prey on anyone they want without the interference of government regulation or law enforcement.
Does OWS have a talking points list? If so, what is the reality? Does it contrast in any way? BTW, I'm not asking to be flippant or divisive. I just think self examination and knowing how others might perceive you are useful.
Libertarians are predators and con artists. Helping them to better craft their message is helping them be better predators and con artists.
No thanks.
Many of the problems in the world come from the tendency to paint others with a broad collectivist type of brush and making them somehow evil or subhuman in our minds. The ability to go to war depends on the so-called leaders ability to manipulate the population's and soldier's perceptions into thinking of the "enemy" in this way. In reality, the "enemy" is in most cases still a group of human beings, perhaps with many different types of dispositions, but united in the desire to be happy, regardless of whatever defilement of perception has taken place. Most people's bad behavior comes from fear. The more acute the fear, and the less the ability to confront it and deal with it constructively, the more unskillful the behavior. All self-proclaimed libertarians I know are just as sick and tired of the status quo as I assume you to be. I'm sure you must be aware that the controllers love the divide and conquer strategy. Why not focus on how we can defeat the controllers together, or even better, be agents of their awakening? Matching their energy will never accomplish that.
I am not as willing to smile at the person trying to pick my pocket.
I will never practice appeasement with people who do not respect my rights in the democracy or as a human being. Libertarians do not respect the rights of others as they claim to. They advocate rights that will give them an advantage in taking rights away from others more easily. the entire libertarian movement is a lie and a violent fraud. They are the religious fanatics of Wall Street practicing an extremist free market religion that they want only to IMPOSE on the rest of us.
Collectivist thought is bigotry. Racism is a type of bigotry. You have vehemently accused an entire group of people of being racist. Do you not see the hypocrisy?
Your style of communicating is what Marshall Rosenberg would call violent. I assume you consider me to be part of the group you have referred to as in your mind being hateful, violent & racist. You have repeatedly used red herrings and argumentum ad hominem and other tactics that are incredibly rude, inflammatory and not conducive to any kind of real dialog. I'm not asking you to appease me or anyone else. There is a big difference between appeasing and being civil and respectful. If you were not so abrasive, you might succeed in illuminating someone else's blind spot or perhaps even learn something yourself. If you don't want to have a dialog, you might want to at least try to refrain from being the pot who calls the kettle black. By your deeds shall ye be known. All I and the rest of the readers know about you is how you have behaved here. Yet I have compassion for you as I know that you want to be happy just like everyone else.
I don't see how freedom is something you can "impose". How is not giving you something you did not earn picking your pocket? I personally feel no entitlement to anything I didn't earn myself. If someone else does, I will resist their attempts to take from me. Now, I may very well feel charitable toward them, but how charitable I feel is likely to be inversely proportional to how entitled they feel. Charity on my part will likely involve contributing to a person's ability to be self-sufficient, i.e. I am more likely to give them a fishing pole and teach them how to use it than to give them a fish. Now, if the government has already taken and misappropriated most of what I earned, this type of direct action (which is the only reasonable action) will be less likely to occur. I have a hard time believing that you would find these to be strange concepts.
What I see is a tortured argument that would not stand any test of reason.
All the best to you my friend...
If we are going to have a collectivist discussion, what group or groups care about liberty without the desire to prey on anyone they want?
Most all civilized human beings who share a capacity for compassion. that excludes libertarians.
Libertarians want to be compassionate and act accordingly themselves. Socialists want to force someone else to do it for them. What is compassionate about forcing others to do what you are to lazy to do yourself?
Bullshit!
The libertarian solution to inequity and poverty is charity. It ignores all of history, and provides no solution. A government is obligated (at least a proper one) to take care of the most pressing needs of all its citizens. It does so via the assent of the people who elected them to office. The Libertarian reliance of voluntary charity would simply mean that people would die in the streets for lack of recourse.
What's more, it lends private interests the right to impose external costs onto the public, costs the public did not voluntarily enter into a contract about, such as polluting water that can poison communities. It eliminates the very concept of anti-trust, allowing the big fish to eat the little fish and actually stifle the very competition it holds dear. It eliminates all government regulation, including those that have to do with worker safety, the environment, and everything else people have fought for for generations. It even opens the door to Jim Crow, allowing for rampant racism in the private sector. i could go on, but that's enough all by itself.
Libertarianism is rightly labelled as heartless. It views the sanctity of private property above the value of human life.
Let's start from the beginning. Where do rights come from?
Rights are a mutually agreed to legally binding statement. They are a subset of the social contract.
Their scope or limitations arise from a dialogue within a given society, in our case a dialogue that takes place in the public sphere via representatives we elect expressly to debate and decide what those rights will be. Property rights, for example, are a purely legal construction. They have no basis in nature. Those rights, agreed to legislatively, are enforced by the judiciary.
Mutually implies all affected parties agree, correct?
All parties who agree to live there.
That always means compromise. Every society grants some rights or obligations and limitations that not everyone agrees to, but are bound by as the price of continuing to live in that society. Continued voluntary presence is in-and-of-itself, an agreement.
In democracies, one can also work to change those limitations on rights or expand them via the electoral process. But this activity does not abrogate the acquiescence to the contract implicit in voluntary continued residence.
If a person does not agree, can they leave?
If you give Libertarians a fair shot, you should give a fair shot to Socialists too. Socialists simply want to own the factory they are working for. They would rather the labor own the production, than production hiring labor out.
Not all Socialists believe in state or worker ownership of production.
And I know for a fact that not all Libertarians are compassionate
Oh yeah, that's a safe bet.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/end-the-fed-movement-has-ties-to-domestic-terroris/
Some socialists might be compassionate. I think those that are just haven't figured out how to properly give that expression yet.
Sounds good to me. I think workers voluntarily pooling their resources to buy or create a means of production is a great idea! I don't think all who would think so are necessarily socialists, as I don't see how a socialist form of government would be required to do so. I would in fact see it as an impediment. China, USSR and GDR are good examples.
Many Socialist gov'ts follow the idea that collective ownership belongs to the state, not to individual groups of labor. However, "worker owned" socialism is being implemented in pockets in parts of South America to the betterment of the society. People join together and occupy abandoned factory buildings which they once worked at but which have gone under. They then rebuild the company from the ground up. Its rather remarkable, you should check it out. Argentina is a good example.
I don't think "socialism" is the correct term for workers voluntarily pooling their resources to buy or create a means of production.
It is confusing, since many people conflate Capitalism/Socialism/Communism with a form of gov't. In actuality, they are simply economic systems. And any form of gov't could potentially be placed with each of these different systems.
I suppose all of these types could be government managed, which I would consider to be undesirable (all then being flavors of fascism).
Socialism is the term for a group who pools together resources in order to own means of production. So, voluntarily pooling resources to buy or create means of production is exactly what Socialism is.
I suppose my problem with it is what the word "socialism" implies with regard to forms of government. I would want to draw some kind of clear delineation between that and this type, which is clearly distinct, so that the reader does not conflate them. I suppose if the the distinction wasn't successfully made earlier in the conversation, it will have been by now. Though I do still wish there was alternate terminology to use...
Yeah my secret Libertarian desire is to collect Welfare and Medicare for the rest of my life, like a parasite off all my hard-workign neighbors.
No wait. That's wrong. In a libertarian society those things wouldn't exist (except for private charity). Damnit! I'm in the wrong party! I need to go join the Democrats and Republicans if I want to get free handsouts and be a human parasite
Thank You for awakening me to the truth aaahat
.
It's six to one, half dozen to another.
Oh good god! I drink tea every day and I ain't no goddam terrorist. Some of these posts are so stupid around here.
End The Fed right wing libertarians are the constitutionally armed backup that OWS will need when the 1% decide to indefinitely detain a peaceful social movement. It's absolutely stupid to identify fellow Americans as terrorists; and doing so is an act against OWS; and the Tea party. Yes the right wing has it's lunatics, just as does the left wing.
Armed back-up? You're out of your mind. You think some rednecks with AK47s are going to be able to hold off the Feds?
I just don't want this mess at OWS.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/end-the-fed-movement-has-ties-to-domestic-terroris/
There are nutball extremists on the right for sure. Mr. Paul the king of the libertarians has a point when he says the fed ought to open their books. They handed out an enormous amount of money to pay off wall street's gambling debts and gave nothing to the middle class who's money they are supposed to be keeping safe. There's also a right wing element that would agree about campaign finance reform. There's a lot of moderates out there -----------and moderates elect the politicians.
Sure, the Federal Reserve is ripe for criticism. Still, the belief that we can somehow do away with central banking altogether is insane. Anti-Fed demagoguery has a long history in the US, and is rooted in anti-Semitism. These hatriots have been hanging around OWS, and its a recipe for disaster.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/end-the-fed-movement-has-ties-to-domestic-terroris/
I don't want to sound like a R Paul defender here because I think %50 percent of his Ideas are recipes for disaster, the other %50 I find myself agreeing with. Getting out of the middle east and taking care of America --not a bad Idea. He does say that he would like to abolish the fed OR have more transparency. There's a pretty big mess we are trying to clean up here and it was %100 caused by our banking policies under the care of fed chairman Alan Greenspan inspired by Anne Rand. The Repeal of Glass Steagall ,the loosening of OTC derivative rules, and more leverage, more leverage and more leverage. I think The fed needs to answer to that, I feel bad for Bernanke because he got stuck with Greenspan's mess, but we need a system that's not rigged for high risk gambling disasters -------- we need wall street out of our retail banking system there plenty of room in the free market for them. Someone needs to explain to me how hedge funds get 15X leverage -------------hedge funds do nothing but make the rich richer, do they get that leverage from the same banking system that my savings are in ? Because I'd rather have that money going for small business loans.
Yes, all true, But Paul and his minions seek to deregulate the banks, and all other businesses, entirely. Making a big show of auditing the Fed is meaningless when you have all banks (and ALL other corporations) do exactly what they want without any oversight at all.
They already deregulated the banks ----------that's how we got into this mess. What they're saying is that without the fed, banks in their own self interest would be forced to act responsibly for their own survival. This is not what I think !!!!! BTW I like having my $ FDIC insured and I want it regulated better than it has been
I think we may be talking at cross purposes.
I do NOT want to continue to see banks unregulated. Paul does.
I do NOT want the elimination of the EPA. Paul does.
I do NOT want to see all worker safety regs eliminated. Paul does.
I do NOT want to see an end to Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, Paul does.
I do NOT want to see a return to permitting restaurant and business owners to bar Blacks and minorities. Paul does.
And so on.
Paul cleaves to the principle that private property has a greater moral and legal value than does human life. It is an ethically corrupt view.
Anne Rand died in 1982 -------to bad she didn't live long enough to see her Ideas destroy the global economy Ok I know, she would have found a way to blame someone else.
Funny. I keep hearing Ron Paul say he wants to re-legislate Glass-Stiegel. That doesn't sound like deregulation to me.
Maybe you ought to LISTEN to the man once in awhile, so you don't sound ill-informed
That's his lone exception. You should really listen to the man more often, and you will see how insanely dangerous he is.
Listening to Ron Lawl: "Why More Regulation Makes Things Worse" http://www.ronpaul.com/2008-11-10/ron-paul-why-more-regulation-makes-things-worse/
Just because he knows Glass-Steagal is a political issue and makes an exception does not invalidate ep1nter's point. Ron Lawl is an anti-regulation idealogue.
demcapitalist, by the sound of your beliefs you of all people should staunchly oppose Ron Lawl. Ron Lawl wants to abolish the Federal Reserve entirely and put us on the gold standard. He's also is against Glass-Steagal and all regulation, as far as I can tell. He will say things to the effect of "we just don't want to deregulate all at once because it would shock the system", etc. He also follows Austrian school economics, a libertarian strain far more extreme than Greenspan or Milton Friedman, who Bernanke follows.
I also don't see why you have sympathy for Bernanke. He is a follower of libertarian Milton Friedman to a tee. He thinks he can solve every problem with monetary policy, without stimulating demand through job creation or stabilizing things by regulating banks. How is he any better than Greenspan?
Also, how do you feel about Bernanke's assertion that a completely transparent Fed would lead to an unfair decreased consumer/investor confidence in the institutions who were recipients of bailout money?
For your last question I'd say we are in real trouble, we need transparency. When did he say that? I could see saying that in the middle of the meltdown when you really don't want runs on banks, even if you need to keep a 7 trillion dollar secret for a year or two . Now here's a guy I really like. http://www.dylanratigan.com/2011/12/06/leverage-the-dynamite-strapped-to-our-markets/ He's the only person on TV who understood the real math of the meltdown. I just said I find myself agreeing with R P on a lot of subjects, a lot I don't I really don't think shrinking government and turning America over to a bunch of huge corporations is a good idea. I think it's the worst idea out there, we would be able to light our rivers on fire again by 2014. I also don't think we need such a huge prescience in the middle east. We spend billions getting into everyone's business as though the oil market would just dry up without us there, but where I'd split with Paul I think a government sponsored program to really get alt energy off the ground would do a lot to rid us of our dependance on middle east oil
Funny.
The U.S. had no central bank from circa 1830 to 1915, and that was our most profitable period. We moved from a 3rd world agrariian country to the # 1 industrial might in the world.
ALSO the dollar experienced near-zero devaluation. The dollar of 1910 had the same purchasing power as the dollar in 1830. Why? Because there was no central bank running the printing press and destroying the personal savings of the Lbaborers!
We need to go back to that..... not the present condition where the paper dollar has lost 95% of its value due to the private central federal reserve serving the 1% instead of the 99.
Blah, blah, blah. More Austrian lies that overlook history entirely. What about 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893 and 1907? The US had a major crises about every twenty years during that period, and this was one of the main arguments for the Federal Reserve Act.
Since the Great Depression the Fed has done an amazing job at making sure that smaller problems don't turn into bigger ones. That is, until libertarian Greenspan deregulated everything.
Last, are you seriously going to argue that the 19th century was better for laborers? Those were the good ol' days, back before the liberal commies said you couldn't hire little girls to work 20 hour days for 2c an hour. But oh yeah, libertarians want to take us back to that, too.
There's many tea partiers here and the majority of them are **Trolls*. They show themselves just the way we would have expected. Full of vile hatred and a total lack of any respect. I agree these types are totally capable of violence. They have Glenn Beck to incite them along with Sean Hannity.* Their fearless lying leaders.
They do practice terror fed by their incessant hatred of anyone who disagrees with them. Turak is a good example of this. Others are Gileos, MVSN, and a new addition DoctorLove.
We have the trolls on the run
Sounds like a description of OWS to me.
Glenn Beck has a message for you!
I've carried firearms to political protests before. No problem whatsoever. Occupy individuals have said that these protests being ignored will lead to violence.
America's debt limit is a limit for a reason.
America's debt limit is a limit for a reason. ...until next week when they raise it again. Banks rule this country thru threat of money controlled against our country's goals
[Removed]
You'd be surprised at what that reason is. It was to finance America's entry in WWI, (the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917) and do it more cheaply than other methods. It had nothing to do with economic policy.
And if you carried a gun to an OWS event, you should be banned from participation for life. You endangered the lives of everyone around you.
That's nonsense. You are more likely to get killed by the cars driving past the park than by a gun. In fact the odds of death by car accident are approximately 1 in 1700. By gun accident is 1 in 500,000.
You need to adjust your thinking to fear the REAL dangers in life (cars, heart attacks, cancer) that are most likely to kill you.
Those numbers I cited were from confirmed studies. I don't care what you perceptions are, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO BRING A GUN TO ONE OF OUR GATHERINGS IN SECRET!
How dare you !
Actually if I have the proper permits I CAN carry a pistol concealed to your "event" and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Try reading the Constitution past the 1st amendment,it's our right to "keep and bear arms". Firearms are tools and should always be carried/used in the proper manner. Just because I carry my pistol concealed in no way means I put everyone in danger of losing their life.
Nothing I can do about it? That's appropriate: might makes right. Is that what OWS is about?
You might deny the danger you put everyone in. That is your purely subjective assessment. But the numbers ALL show you are wrong. Your denials mean nothing.
And, of course, you are doing good to violate the foundational belief of a movement while claiming to support it? That's hypocritical and self-serving.
I never claimed I supported OWS. You obviously didn't read my comment. "Actually if I have the proper permits I CAN carry a pistol concealed to your "event" and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.". Notice the words PROPER PERMITS? If I have the proper permits I can legally carry concealed and it has nothing to do with "might makes right". It's called being a law abiding citizen and perfectly legal. Therefore you have no way of stopping me short of assault and I wouldn't suggest assaulting a CCW permit holder.
You continue to confuse legality with ethics.
You are a moron bullet addict.
How typical,you don't agree with someone so you must insult them. Poor sad little scared thing.
How typical, you want what you want so so you use legality to replace decency, and willfully , pointedly ignore the difference. Poor little immoral thing.
You continue to confuse legality with ethics.
You never address that issue. You have been repeatedly reminded of it. How typical of someone who is scared of being wrong. Poor thing.
I did address it. You're trying to impose YOUR ethics on other people. Sounds unethical to me.
I never said I wanted to bring a gun to your gathering. I said that you are stupid to fear a gun when you are ~300 times more likely to get run over by a car. And that you should fear cars, heart attack, and cancer since there's a 99.999% probability you'll die of one of those. NOT a gun.
It is stupid to fear things (like rocks from space hitting you on the head) (or the supervolcano under yellowstone erupting) (or getting shot), that have a near-zero probability of ever happening. You are a human being. Use your brain not your fear, and think rationally.
As for my "rights"
They come from my creator, Nature, and nobody has any authority to take them away. They are an inalienable part of my being.
Your rights are granted by law alone. Human law. Nature grants no rights. Rights is strictly a legal concept.
In truth, I mistook your post with Febs, and was outraged he would bring a gun to an OWS gathering. Sorry for my error in ascribing your post to him.
America has a debt limit because the rate of paying a debt can rather quickly eclipse the ability to pay the dues on the debt (let alone principle). We are approaching that time now with our spiking debt load and the lowering of our bond ratings.
Yes I have carried to Occupy protests and I will continue to do so. Your belief about what endangers you come from your mind not statistics. CCW licensed individuals are 10 times less likely to be involved in felonies than the average citizen and 3 times less likely than a police officer.
You are a fucking asshole who endangers the lives of everyone around you. Carrying a gun to a public event puts everyone at risk.
A gun is 4 times more likely to be used in an unintentional shooting death or injury than to be used in a self-defense shooting.
People in possession of a gun are 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault.
Even keeping a firearm in the home increases the risk of homicide by a factor of 3.
There are 19,000 ACCIDENTAL injuries and deaths per year in the USA.
I didn't agree to your putting me in greater danger. That you would do so UNILATERALLY AND SECRETLY flies in the face of everything OWS stands for. You are an asshole for doing it.
No registered trained gun owner EVER put me in danger. Indeed all the times I was mugged, and severely injured came from armed criminals, and a bunch of gawking helpless useless unarmed citizen sheeple. I wish just once I had had the fortune to be around a sane law abiding gun carrying owner. I just might have to move away from the domesticated neutered masses, awaiting slaughter and enslavement.
YOU are the criminal for carrying a concealed weapon into a crowd that doesn't know it. You are a unilateral usurper of everyone else's rights and desire for non-violence.
If something went wrong in that crowd, and you fired you weapon, con you tell me you are 100% sure that you would not strike a bystander"? Can you guarantee that the police, if they happened to catch a glimpse of your weapon, would not start firing and possibly shoot bystanders? Are you so incredibly insane that you don;t see how you put everyone in greater danger?
If you are so sure that you are in the right, the next time you attend, why don't you let those around you know you're packing? You are a coward and a hypocrite for not doing so.
And you won't do so because you KNOW that you would be required to leave. You come concealed because you KNOW that you are not abiding by the will of the people you you claim to support.
That you do so in secret is the most morally corrupt thing I have ever heard by anyone who claims, in your case falsely, (OWS is founded on non-violence, remember? It is protesting the usurpation of the rights of everyone by a tiny minority, remember?) to be a supporter of OWS.
You came into my presence with a loaded gun. You did not ask me. I did not request your "protection". I gave you NO SUCH PERMISSION to endanger me.
If I ever discover who you are, (unlikely since your "right" depends entirely on your anonymity - how convenient) I would IMMEDIATELY get the police to arrest your ass.
HOW DARE YOU, YOU SON OF A BITCH?
I hope I'm answering the right post. Personally I have no problem with good decent people who carry legally or not. I think that comes from being attacked so many times, and almost crippled for life as a result. Any sane good decent person who wants to carry is not a problem for me; that one gun owner in a crowd might save me from a criminal.
I'm in an anti-gun state, and I'm considering moving out because of that and other reasons.
While I own no guns, nor have ever carried one...it's time to get into real American gun culture; and away from people who freak out at the thought of guns. People who become hysterical at the thought of gun carry are not the people I want to be around in a collapse.
No one has the right o carry a concealed weapon in a crowd, especially when that crowd is unaware.
No one ESPECIALLY has a right to do so in the midst of a movement dedicated to nonviolence without informing them.
Finally, the notion that guns make one safer is the opposite of the truth. Every SINGLE study, every SINGLE statistic, gives lie to that notion. It is a fantasy only. And a very, very dangerous one. NO ONE has the right to put their fellow protesters in that kind of danger without their CONSENT.
Doing so surreptitiously is, at best, an act of moral cowardice.
You sound like the whackjobs who say a woman doesn't have a right to an abortion. My creator, Nature, has given me the right to own my body and do whatever I desire to that body. Like abort a pregnancy. Or die my hair blonde. Or defend it from a rapist or killer.
No authority has any right to take away those inalienable rights of body ownership and defense of same from criminals.
As for the "concealed carry" issue, Occupy has no legal standing to overrule the permit issued by the duly-elected Legislature of the People. Just as Occupy has NO legal standing to tell a cameraman he is not allowed to videotape (as many, many occupiers have tried to do).
Sigh......
All rights are granted by law. Law is decided in this country by three branches of government.
Nature does not grant any rights, not even the right to keep breathing. Biology is not a maker of rights, but processes. Your cells don't have a right to multiply, they just do if you are healthy and growing. You don't have a right to not get eaten by a bear, although you have a biological impetus for avoiding that occurrence.
Rights are different among different societies, different countries, and they are arrived at via different mechanisms. Each society decides what those rights are. Your rights in China are not the same as your rights in the USA. In our country the debate over rights, and the determination of what they are are argued in a public forum called government. Our government is comprised of people elected (def: chosen) by a majority of the people who vote. Their terms are finite, so that if the people change their minds about what rights they want to have or deny, or disagree with how their representatives have decided, they can replace those representatives.
Those representatives are sometimes overruled by the judiciary if they pass a law that violates previous rights that have been granted by the legislature. The constitution provides the guidelines for both the mechanisms of adjudicating rights, and lays out what some of those basic rights are. That constitution is a document written by people, not nature, and has been amended from time to time, also by people, not nature, expanding and occasionally limiting rights.
Women have a right to abortion because the Supreme court decided they do. I agree with that decision. The supreme court also decided that corporations have the same rights as people. I disagree (strongly) with that decision. But until that decision is overturned by another law, an amendment to the constitution, or a different ruling by another panel of supreme court judges in the future, those corporations do indeed have those rights.
Nature has nothing to do with it.
As to the issue of legal standing, I never said it had such standing. I was addressing a gross violation of ethics, not one of law. You seem consistently confused by the two.
You're entitled to your views; my position comes not from studies, but from being a survivor; and having to survive and endure a perpetual state where I'm unarmed, yet the criminals are. Real life changes your perception on these things.
Society sought to indoctrinate me to have a fear of guns; and I've never owned one; concomitantly I have also been lined up within society as an acceptable and traditional victim; who is expendable both to the criminals; the police and the larger society.
I've been unarmed, and unprotected my entire life, and equally vulnerable; so your position hasn't worked for me. There is no need for you to repeat your beliefs again; I get it. It doesn't alter my reality as a victim and survivor, but I hear you.
Please look into taking the "First Shots" class that is available country wide. It is inexpensive and excellent beginner training.
Thank you, will do.
Please let me claify:
If one wants to own a gun, hunt, etc, fine. My problem is in bringing to a rally without the consent of those around you. All statistics in every study shows that this increases the likelihood of violence, as much as more than four fold. Aside from that there might very well be, in this case, some real emotional and ideologically objection.
Oh, and sorry for being so harsh with you in my previous response: I thought I was addressing Febs, whom I consider morally reprehensible and cowardly.
Disclosure and consent is required/
Point taken....apology accepted...thanks.
You haven't got the faintest idea what the gun laws are in your state I'm sure. Let me do my study. He said he has carried to several OWS events. He did not kill anyone. From this I deduce that concealed carry is safe when done properly.
It doesn't matter. that he didn't kill anyone. He increased the RISK to everyone. He has NO right to do that. I mean that in the ethical, not legal sense, as I have already made clear.
It is a base violation of everything OWS stands for. If one is so willing to disregard a basic, foundational principle of a movement, one should leave.
Talking to gun nut about statistical risk is like talking to a drug addict about health. They always think, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the realities will never effect them or those around them.
I've never heard OWS come out against law abiding citizens owning or carrying firearms but then who cares. Ethics huh? So you want everyone to abide by your ethics instead of their own? Who made you the grand poopah?
Non-violence, a publicly stated foundation of the movement, does not mean carrying a gun to an event. You can try to twist it any way you want, but guns are not loaded with feathers. They are the oppopsite if non-violent.
You're just too addicted to your bullets or too stupid to see that.
I
Lol firearms are not violent they are a tool. People however can be violent as seen by OWS's escapades. What is violent about a law abiding citizen with the proper training and permits carrying a concealed firearm? Nothing.
We would welcome you in Ohio.
And if he is carrying legally how would you get him arrested? In Ohio he could wear it openly and he doesn't even need a permit as long as it's openly displayed. You're just one of those "holier than thou" anti-gun nuts.
Was he in Ohio? Sounded to me like New York. And he clearly had it concealed.
You're just one of those, "I like my gun and fuck everyone else" pro-gun nuts.
Doesn't matter as long as he was properly licensed for concealed carry. Actually you described the OWS attitude,OWS is right and fuck anybody who doesn't agree or gets in our way.
If you don't like OWS, DON"T COME.
If you support it, don't come PACKING.
If I don't like the food in a restaurant, I don't go in.
If i do go in, i don't bring my own sandwich.
Jesus, you're stupid.
Lol I will come and I will "pack" and as I said there's NOTHING you can do about it. Your analogy was stupid and incorrect.
Might makes right. A perfect position of violence. Perfect selfishness.
And you wonder why people call you names.
I'm done with you. You are an idiot, a morally corrupt bullet addict who puts his own "rights" above those of everyone else. and sees no problem with that. Your mental and moral function is on the level of a child in his terrible twos.
Asshole.
You're really good at insulting people. How is my exercising my right to bear arms infringing on other people's rights? It isn't.
Oh yes pulling statistics up from that flawed study. You know there are reasons why studies need to be self-limited in order to remove bias but I won't get into that with someone who obviously doesn't care about the truth.
All you're doing is assigning your emotional reaction to firearms and assigning that colored view to me.
Statistically you driving puts everyone around you in much more danger than my firearm does. So this really isn't about some myth about danger - its about your deep seated and irrational fear and projection.
What flawed study? I didn't name ANY study. The fact that you dismiss it without even knowing which VARIOUS studies I cited shows you are predisposed to ignore ALL of them. It is clear who has no consideration of the truth. You have just lent my observation about gun-lovers more weight: you are addicts, unwilling and unable to look at what's real other than what they want.
And speaking of not caring, did you ask anyone permission to bring your gun? Did you care what others want? Do you care that doing so surreptitiously is unethical? Did it ever occur to you that this entire movement is about democracy, not unilateralism? Did it ever occur to you that it is about non-violence? Did the thought ever cross you tiny brain that your action represents the OPPOSITE of everything this movement stands for? A government plant could do no better in undermining the integrity of the movement than your action.
As to driving a car, the little nugget of fallacy is always vomited up by you guys. I didn't drive my car into a crowd. Your brought your gun into one. It doesn't matter that there are other dangers in the world. YOU were the one who INTENTIONALLY increased it for everyone around you with YOUR action. And you never even bothered to ask anyone if it was OK with them. That's not about cars, that's about YOU.
Since I have mentioned all these issues before, it's not that you aren't aware of them now, even if these things never crossed your mind before. So your defense of your totally self-involved, narcissistic behavior shows you just want to do what you want, and everyone else be damned. It shows your total arrogance.
Yet somehow I am supposed to trust that someone who ignores reality (dismissing studies before knowing what's in them) acts like a coward by hiding his action from everyone, and is completely arrogant by defending clearly unethical behavior even AFTER the nature of that ethical violation has been spelled out, acts unilaterally, without concern about other's wishes: that somehow I am SAFER with someone that idiot carrying a gun right next to me???? You are insane.
You are a fucking, psychotic, asshole bullet addict.
Don"t EVER come to an OWS rally again.
The study you name came out a few years ago and instead of looking at the general population as its baseline looked at those who has committed felonies thus not being a representative sampling. I know it well because I researched the methodology when it was first released.
You call me an addict and thus irrational however I have not insulted you (you have done to me), nor do I use an appeal to caps lock (as you do) in order to move the scope of the discussion from the facts to the emotion behind the emphasis.
I don't need anyone's permission to undertake a right on public property - just like Occupy doesn't need to ask permission to undertake the right to speech. No I usually don't go someplace and pre-survey random people what they think about how I undertake my rights - the very idea that anyone would do this is laughable. What exactly did I do that was pro-violence which is the assumption you make with only a fiat declaration.
Oh a "tiny brain" insult. How novel. If the movement stands for the 99% and since the majority of Americans support the second amendment it is logically impossible for the movement to stand for the 99% and be against carry of firearms. A government plant would simply need to get caught taking a shit on a police car or starting a fist fight to undermine the movement. I sat and talked with people and explained economic exploitation to passersby. Could you please tell me how either of those actions undermine anything the movement stands for?
We both exercised an action without causing any harm. The difference is you're statistically more likely to do so undertaking something that isn't a right than I am for undertaking what is one. You brought up endangerment yet dodge when called on the false statement. No - the point isn't about me - its about increased risk - at least that is the point you initially brought up. I suppose however when that line of attack is pointed out to be fallacious it behooves your goal to change the goalposts and attack the person.
So given that you find undertaking a right is immoral if the majority disagree with the right (currently not the case but it is your argument so lets go with that). If the majority voted to remove your right to speech would you bow to their wishes - also where in the philosophy of the rights of man do you find that rights are not unalienable and inherent but matters for the public to decide?
You don't have to trust me. It's obvious that you don't even though you've never met me. The only thing you have to do is respect other people's rights - even and especially the rights you disagree with. I know that for some people who feel the need to be in control and in power of every situation that this evokes a strong emotional fear over loss of control. This must be fought or otherwise a free society simply devolves into bands of people trying to restrict the rights with which they disagree of other bands.
I thank you for proving to be the perfect foil. Unreasonable and insultingly arrogant behavior only encourages individuals to move away from a person acting that way and towards the consideration of their opponent. In using such vile and acidic speech you've done more harm to your position than I could ever have done alone.
I NAMED NO STUDY!!!!! You are ASSUMING the study you cite is the same one I did.
You HAVE insulted me by carrying a firearm into my presence without asking.
You caused no harm but you increased risk of harm.
My right to speech is not equivalent to your right to endanger me and everyone else. If, however, it was determined that i could not exercise my right to speech, I would not attend. You, it seems, would scream.
What did you do that was pro-violence? Are you joking??? Is your gun loaded with feathers and soap-bubbles? My guess is that is was loaded with bullets. The purpose of bullets is violence. It does not mean that the bullets must be used, but that is their express function. They create the threat of violence. If they didn't they would be unnecessary and ineffective.
I do respect your rights. You don't respect the rights of others when you carry a gun into their presence WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT. If gathering consent is not possible, your obligation is to not carry. It is unreasonable and narcissitic hubris to simply assume that this gathering welcomed your gun. This wasn't a gun rally, it was one based on on non-violence. Context matters. Your unfounded assumption that it would be OK is based on nothing but your own wishes, and is utterly arrogant. And you can't tell me that you believe in your heart of hearts that if you could have gotten a vote, it would have been agree to. You KNOW it would be otherwise. Your defense is pure hypocrisy.
You accuse me of arrogance. I would never consider brig a gun into a crowd that does not want it. The arrogance is yours.
There was only one study which examined the chance of being in an assault based on gun ownership. So unless you were simply making up statistics you must have got those numbers from that study (directly or indirectly).
Oh please, I insulted you by undertaking a right that you didn't even know was occurring?
As I've pointed out everyone in the crowd who is not CCW actually is 10 times more dangerous than I am - statistically.
You don't understand rights if you believe that the majority has any input on the existence of rights.
Exactly how is being ready for violence violence itself? A tool and knowledge makes one violent? I have the tools and knowledge of martial arts - does that make everyone who does so violent? Your conclusions are not logically derived by your premises - instead you simply make fiat declarations and expect them to be accepted unexamined.
Making a threat creates the threat of violence. Tautology is a tautology.
Seeing as how CCW is less threat than non then using your argument you violate my rights by not carrying a firearm 10x more than I violate yours. Thus I suggest you start to carry a firearm to lower your statistical threat your presence means to others.
Arrogance is the presumption of correctness of a view simply because you are the one holding the view. Only one of us has cited resources that back up their position. The exercise of rights is not in and of itself an arrogant action. Your argument is terribly flawed.
http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/studies
http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/ficap/resourcebook/pdf/monograph.pdf
http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/ficap/resourcebook/pdf/monograph.pdf
http://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/TUTORIAL/GUNS/GUNSTAT.html
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/27/2/214.full.pdf
http://www.vpc.org/fact_sht/hgbanfs.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/pub-res/firarmsu.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States
ONE study? Wrong again.
The threat of violence is violence. That's a definition, not a tautology.
A threat creates a threat. Possessing the means is not a threat.
Unless you want to state that everyone with sexual organs is threatening rape against everyone else with sexual organs.
And yes one study.
Your first link takes me to the general search function. The second and third links are the same and they don't even include the original study in their body of works cited. The fourth does not cite the study either. The fifth is from a decade before the study came out and neither it or the sixth doesn't compare firearm ownership with assault likelihood at all (although neither do the others).
I stopped reading at this point because it became obvious you aren't citing studies that even attempt to examine what you stated regarding handgun owners being more likely to be assaulted.
I encourage you to read fully the materials you cite in order to see if they even relate to the issue at hand.
I frankly don't care if handgun owners are more likely to be assaulted. I don't care if gun owners strap Glocks to their dicks if they want to in the privacy of their own homes. I don't care if they attract more crime to themselves or not, or intentionally shoot themselves in the head or not. That's their business.
I care about the increased risk to the crowd around them due to intent or accident, or misjudgment. The presence of a gun increases the risk to THEM.
If you think your possession of a gun is entirely benign, you wouldn't feel the need to carry it. Is it jewelry? It constitutes the threat to do harm. It would not be effective without that latent threat, that latent violence. Legally and morally, a threat is violence. An overt threat is is a crime, some latent ones aren't. but that does not make them any less of threat.
Carrying a gun is a latent threat. Without that threat the possession is meaningless.
But you are merely parsing words. As I said, you knew that carrying a gun into that crowd would meet with serious, overwhelming objection when you did so. Your concealment of it is evidence of that. That you did so anyway is selfish and astonishingly unethical, and is as far from the spirit of OWS as one can possibly get.
If you don't care then why quote the statistic? I can understand that if you don't care you wouldn't have researched the origin of it but I cannot understand why you would use it in argument if you don't feel it has weight.
As I stated the increased risk of a CCW individual is less risk to the crowd than any random non CCW individual poses by a factor of 10. This may not fit with your assumptions but it is what statistical analysis shows to be true.
The possession of a gun allows the possessor an additional option. What makes any action a threat or a risk to others is the human mind that controls the possession. Carrying a firearm is not a threat to others in any way than carrying anything that could be used to harm another is a threat such as hands which can instantly turn into fists or choking weapons in less than a second. Which is to say - no threat at all.
No we aren't parsing words - you're insisting that your assumptions and beliefs are universal truths and quite frankly they are not.
You seem to have this severe irrational hatred of firearms and those who carry them. Once again,your life is not in danger from me carrying my pistol concealed. You should be more worried about OWS people than trained/licensed CCW permit holders. I'd venture to say you have never been around firearms and hence your great fear. Might I suggest taking a class called "First Shots". It's an introductory course in the safe,proper handling and use of a pistol taught by certified instructors. Everything is provided for you so it's a great class for someone who wants to learn before making the decision to buy a pistol. Here locally it only costs $25 and is a great deal. Maybe you would feel differently with some education. (of course probably not but it was just a thought)
You seem to have an irrational hatred of statistics and probabilities. I have fired a gun. I enjoyed it. I would NEVER have the BALLS to carry one into a crowd that 1) is kept unaware, and 2) EXPRESSLY insists on non-violence.
It is a moral violation of the core of the movement.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34849 http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp
You're welcome. Check out the Florida section which cites the investigation done with the help of Florida State Police which found that a CCW individual is 1/3rd as much as likely to commit any felony than a police officer and 1/10th as likely as any random citizen. Statistically you're existing without a CCW makes you 10 times more dangerous to others (without their consent) as I am.
I can give you many many more studies (with proper methodology) if you would like.
19,000 and injuries result in accidents involving legal hand guns every year in the USA.
Felony is not the issue. Danger is. Bringing a gun increases the likelihood of gun injury. Not felony. Injury.
You claim that carrying one into a crowd THAT GAVE YOU NO PERMISSION TO DO SO, an is a VIOLATION OF THEIR WHOLE MOVEMENT is safer is psychotic, and shameful.
You don't like OWS's stance on non-violence? Fine. THEN DON'T COME. No one is forcing you to attend. But if you do RESPECT their wishes.
The entirely of OWS is based on the fact that banks and government have usurped control of this country unilaterally, without the consent of the people. You acted in violation of its core principles unilaterally and without the consent of the people around you.
And yet you see no conflict Brilliant.
More appeal to caps lock.
19,000 accidents in a population of 360 million.
More likely to be harmed: By pools By stairs By household cleaners A hot day Driving
I doubt when you buy or undertake any of those activities you ask the population around you if you may. I doubt when you exercise any of your rights you believe your rights should be restricted by majority opinion.
I am a non-violent person (and I've already told you this) so your repeated claims that I am against a non-violent position, the idea, or that I am seeking violence is nothing but either a lie or a demonstration of an unwillingness to engage in a two-way exchange.
I've not seen a anti-gun plank formally stated by OWS - have you and if so can you cite it?
Sounds like a personal problem to me. You apparently don't know that CCW stands for Carry Concealed Weapon. You are meant to keep it concealed and honestly as long as you break no laws it's nobody else's business if you do.
Why does carrying a firearm require balls? Did you assume I am a man?
And also my state allows Open Carry and although I have CC'd to Occupy (it was cold) I would have OC'd in the summer.
I'm in Ohio and we have open carry here too. If you don't have your CC permit you can open carry but must be careful of the restrictions on transporting firearms whereas if you have your permit the only restriction is it must be on your person.
That was a reply to epa1nter - sorry I don't know why it nested under yours.
Yeah I knew it was. he seems to have an irrational fear of law abiding citizens exercising their rights that he doesn't lilke. He also seems to think he speaks for all of OWS when I'd venture OWS would say he doesn't. Anyway,carry and exercise your rights my friend! The bulk of the country supports you in this.
You as well. Have a good day.
When a person or any minority group like the tea party advocates the Second Amendment in order to imply that they are willing to assassinate political leaders and wage insurrection against the United States government they are intimidating with force and violent coercion politicians to do as that group dictates. Contemptuous of the democratic will of the majority.
Who gets to vote on when it is time to assassinate political leaders?
Who makes the lists of political leaders to assassinate?
Who shouts "fire" and points the finger when our police and military are obeying orders to protect and defend our government?
What happens to Americans who disagree with the call to kill American political leaders?
Is the Second Amendment a suicide clause for American political leaders, police and military? According to the tea party and libertarians all politicians, police and military must be kept under constant threat of assassination and insurrection to keep them in line. That makes the Second Amendment a suicide clause. I don't think that America's Founding Fathers were that nuts.
How many people have been arrested at Tea Party events? How many people havfe been raped at Tea Party events? How many people have died at Tea Party events? Sounds to me that the violence is limited to OWS and not the Tea Party.
Sounds to me like you don't know how to read for comprehension.
If we -- the Occupy Movement -- truly believe tht we are made up of the 99% of Americans who are at the mercy of the one percent, we have to stop excluding those with whom we disagree simply because we disagree with them.
I disagree with just about everything I have heard about or from Tea Party members or the organization. But that does not mean they should be excluded from this movement.
If we really want this to be a democratic movement and all-inclusive, we MUST welcome them into this movement and we must find ways of building bridges and finding common ground with them. If we do not, we are as guilty as the one percent of being elitist.
With that said, if the Tea Party wishes to be part of this movement, it, too, MUST find ways of building bridges with the rest of the movement and cannot seek to impose their will on the rest.
If we wish to be an inclusive society, we have to lay aside the partisan bickering and pwoer struggles that have brought our country to the place it is in now. What I see going on here between several people on the left and right of this issue is the exact same thng I see going on in Wahsington and state capitols throughout the country. Each side is taking a Ross Perot attitude of "My way or the highway." Either we put that attitude aside, or we admit that we do not -- and do not swish -- to be the voice of the 99% and focus our attention on that portion of the populace that marches in step with us.
The minority tea party uses Second Amendment threats of assassination of political leaders to coerce and intimidate those leaders into doing as the tea party minority dictates. This act is contemptuous of the will of the majority. They are violent anti democracy extremists and I will refuse to support any group that incorporates them. Not until the tea party leadership and elected politicians disavow, in no uncertain terms, Second Amendment threats of insurrection and assassination.
If we wish to exclude them we have every right -- but we can't call ourselves the 99% unless we include the whole damned 99% -- the math is pretty simple.
And either we find a way to live together and solve our differences like mature adults instead of bikcering kids, we are never going to move away from what we have in Washington right now. Plain and simple.
If we want them to respect our views, we have to respect their's. If we don't, they have no motivation to do so with us.
I don't consider it bickering kids behavior to not want to associate with people who 1. believe in the use of assassination and 2. do not believe in democracy.
In America the 99% represents, to me, the 99% participating honestly in the democratic process. People who are willing to intimidate political leaders into capitulation to their dictates are not being part of the 99%..
The tea party couldn't be a monolith if they tried.
Assassination and insurrection is ANTI democratic. It is forcing politicians, under threat of violence, to do your will regardless of what other Americans want.
The characterization fits their purpose. They intend to destroy America by destroying our most cherished values.
See my previous thread on how they will abolish SS:
http://occupywallst.org/forum/tea-party-leaders-say-they-would-absolutely-abolis/
And how Republicans fueled on tea bags can't keep a tax cut for the middle class but always bend completely over for tax cuts to the rich:
http://occupywallst.org/forum/gop-plan-protect-millionaires-raise-taxes-on-160-m/#comment-475223
...........................................................Enjoy!
The characterization fits their purpose. They intend to destroy America by destroying our most cherished values.
See my previous thread on how they will abolish SS:
http://occupywallst.org/forum/tea-party-leaders-say-they-would-absolutely-abolis/
And how Republicans fueled on tea bags can't keep a tax cut for the middle class but always bend completely over for tax cuts to the rich:
http://occupywallst.org/forum/gop-plan-protect-millionaires-raise-taxes-on-160-m/#comment-475223
...........................................................Enjoy!
People please be open to the reality that there are embeded operatives and agents within all social movements; whose primary function is psyop=psychological operations; their most effective and time honored tactic is divide and conquer. Don't assume this was the post of a OWS supporter vs a psyop agent whose paid to fragment the populace and create in-fighting.
I wish I were in a community of law abiding, constitutionalist, libertarian, gun carrying tea party people; backing up OWS...yeah..
It does not take a psy-ops agent to draw a valid distinction between an American who respects the rule of law and a crazy who believes in overtly and with innuendo threatening the lives of American political leaders, police and our military.
As someone who marched in the Civil Rights and anti Vietnam War marches I firmly believe that insurrection and assassination are the province of insane people in America. I don't support it and I denounce as crazy and dangerous anyone who does.
Had you been in the Third Reich, at what point would you have sought self defense ?
Is this devide and conquer ? The Tea Party are told that OWS is the great communist red scare; as OWS is coached that the tea party is a violent terrorist group. All divisive scare tactics to divide Americans as the treasonous Congress through the National Security Authorization Act of 2012; SB 1867 which has provisions for indefinite detention by the military for suspected citizens and non-citizens. Worse case scenario it's the second ammendment gun carrying patriots who may have to rescue OWS from being water boarded in fema camps or worse.
You do believe that you have a Second Amendment right to assassinate American police, military and political leaders if they displease you.
I speak only for myself.
The Second Amendment is not a suicide clause for American political leaders, police and military.
I do not believe that there is a Second Amendment right to assassinate American political leaders, police or military. I do not believe that there is a Second Amendment right to plan for an insurrection against the United States government and democracy.
I believe that people who say there is some Second Amendment right to assassinate American political leaders, police and military are dangerous and deranged sociopaths.
I am not trying to divide people. I am trying to bring together civilized Americans of good will who should not be slandered by their being wrongly associated with dangerous and deranged tea party and libertarian sociopaths who believe in threatening violence against our government to intimidate and coerce our political leaders into undemocratically doing as the dangerous people dictate.
There are psychotics and sociopaths in every social movement; as well as an infusion of agents, informants, and provocateurs. It's impossible to keep them out. You're the danger, and I've taken careful notice of that declarative 1st sentence you made. Don't tell me what I believe, nor place words in my mouth.
To state that the Tea Party are terrorists is unacceptable; and it is you who are the greater threat. Some people learned from Nazi Germany, yes I said it; clearly some of us didn't.
If you want to be herded up, that's your business. At the point where a government terrorizes, plunders, imprisons, and brutalizes it's populace; seeks world domination; self defence is justified. Now pardon me, because I'm not interested in engaging those planted to undermine and destroy the American people from within; which is clearly your assignment.
You are a paranoid sociopath.
We call that projecting aahpat. I think people from the right and left can see you're a menace; to all Americans; you're hateful, divisive, using psyops against OWS and EndtheFed; and using entrappment posts and techniques....a real agent of the 1 %...right ?
The Tea Baggers are both silly and sinister enough without counter-silliness such as that in the thread-starters assertions. Are any of the individual assertions factual? Possibly, but that misses point. The Tea Party isn’t a terrorist activity in any common way. Their danger isn’t that they’re about to blow-away every American, man, woman and child with automatic weapons. It is in fact the opposite. They are a generally well-organized and heavily funded, methodical group (Sound like the opposite of anything?) with objective of returning America to era of 19th Century robber-barons. The real agenda of the powers behind this is to remove any governmental restraint on corporatism doing unrestricted harm to Americans whenever they deem it to their advantage. (And there’s damn little governmental restraint left!)
They began at the instigation of the health insurance companies, and are bank-rolled by the corporatists, notably the Koch brothers. I sincerely believe that many in this movement are well-intentioned, but to be blunt, they’re stooges of the corporatists. They’ve been lied to that if only they can get government out of the way, America will miraculously return to mid-50’s middle class economic prosperity and order. It’s not an accident that many are older, and frankly, have a rather limited understanding of cause and effect regarding the issues they’re espousing. If the world they’re advocating ever becomes a reality, they’ll find themselves bereft of social programs upon which they depend, while their children and grandchildren are left to the meager leavings of the corporatist elite.
Tea party AND OWS should BOTH be in front of the Federal reserve right now, but BOTH movements were co-opted by rich people with agendas and then taken over by the masses, whom arent very educated, THEN manipulated by the media on top. Altho the media and the ones who are buying these movements out are probably all the same people at the top. Dont worry, im not bashing non education, in this world you have freedom to do whatever, its a sad day when the criminals take over a republic that has laws in place to protect it from criminals. Its called tyranny, and many people dont often live thru it.
THIS is a non-issue. We don't need to argue about this topic. The government and the federal reserve are the problem.
No. Take your tea party anti government anarchy and shove it.
It's funny because you say that and you probably know nothing about how the federal reserve works. I personally don't care for the lot of what the tea party stands for, but I'm not going to waste my time with people that hold no power. They are just citizens with a point of view. Attack the Koch brothers instead. They hold more weight than the entire tea party.
I have no idea what you are talking about. Please respond to me about what I write not about what is swirling through your head.
"Take your tea party anti government anarchy and shove it."
this is what you said.
My response is you have to be foolish to think the federal reserve system is legitimate. They used our tax dollar bailouts as an excuse to create 7.7 trillion dollars.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2011/11/fed-gave-banks-trillions-in-bailout-bloomberg-reports/
and the billionaire Koch brothers own the tea party politicians.
Occupy is NONPARTISAN. We will not endorse the tea party. Those tea party members that want to join should feel free.
What if someone said we should or should not join with the democratic or republican parties?
The problem is that the tea party and libertarian fanatics don't come to OWS to embrace OWS values but to shove tea party and libertarian Wall Street values down the collective throat of OWS supporters.
I have the same concern. Don't worry. The tea party can't take over OWS. They don't have the numbers. Never did. Most won't join anyway.
They want to end the government and all of its services as if the progress of the last 235 years was all a wash. They're anarcho-fascists and they don't even know it because someone else wrote the script and they're just acting out roles.
I have been calling the Tea Terrorist just that since they hijacked the Tea Party movement from the Paul fanatics.
The Tea Terrorist need to be treated like Terrorists because that's what they truly are.
And for any Tea Terrorist that replies to me and tries to defend your terrorism, Ignorance is not an excuse.
Threatening to collapse the credit rating and government budget if the Congress did not capitulate to the minority tea party dictates was economic warfare against the middle class of America. Terrorism. And it had a greater and longer lasting negative effect on the stock markets than the 9/11 attack.
And what about the "austerity" measures being imposed by the EU and central bank upon the member states. Isn't that economic terrorism too?
I would call it basic common sense : Don't spend more money than you have (unless it's for a damn good reason, like self defense during war).
So if you need your car to get to work and have no cash in your pocket you prefer to stay home from work rather than put the bill on a credit card for when you have a paycheck and are better able to pay the bill.
The government can cut spending a throw even more people out of work while extending the economic downturn or it can put money into the economy and start the economic engine running again. then pay the credit card later when there are more taxes being payed by more people.
Actually I think they are a bunch of cowards generally, most of whom rarely have the courage of their convictions to stand upon them while standing alone.
I did invite any and all tea partyers to Burlington, to protest with their weapons.
I made it plain that they could bring them, though I do not believe weapons belong on the picket line.
Bring them I said.
And I will bring mine . . . .
and around the corner, out of sight
silent friends with M-80s
to be ignited on cue
and we will see who is left standing
when the smoke clears. ... ...
and
and I'll fly mine on yours.
ZENDOG REVEALS THE TRUE FACE OF THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT.
Invite the tea partiers to Occupy Burlington.
And then kill them. (Reread his little poem.)
You probably think I was kidding. Let me repeat.
If the fucking right wing fools and whack jobs want to assemble, with their arms then I say let them.
I do not mind standing alone in opposition to such protest. In fact, I find it preferable.
It is inevitable that where weapons are on display, at an event that will predictably raise emotion, especially in a nation where radicalization has become so prevalent, someone will get killed.
this is inevitable.
I have no objection to engineering the inevitable.
I note that not one of them accepted my kind offer.
You should perhaps take careful note, that offer was made long before the Occupy Movement drew its first breath.
I am not ashamed at having taken such a position. I note that shortly thereafter, the appearance of armed protestation seemed to vanish like so much mist under a summer sun.
OP is fucking delusional.
QUOTE:
Thanks. You just insulted one-quarter of america (the small business owners). So I guess you really only represent the 84%...... after you subtract the top 1% and the other 15% that own their owns garages, stores, coffee shops, bookstores, and so on.
Damn those inconvenient truths.
OWS reveal their true colors.
YOu've revealed your own prejudice by saying that one person's mistake or bias represents the whole of a very wide and diverse moevment.
Congratulations -- you've mnanaged to go even farther! You've insulted the 99%
If it was just one person I'd agree, but I've seen this same anti-small business comment from several people. The idea that the only legitimate citizen is one who is a worker runs rampant. The owners of business don't count.
25% of Americans do not own small businesses. Even if you count businesses with 0 employees. Not even close. Why is it every time someone says some bullshit on here they just say the word truth at the end as if it magically makes it so.
You're right. Allow me to correct my post..... of course it doesn't change my point. If most Occupiers are anti-small business owners, then you don't really represent the 99%. You represent a number much smaller than that.
Random trivia: 52% of Americans works for small businesses. You harm the owners of these businesses, then you harm approximately half of the citizenry.
Your point is still crap. You are assuming things that are based off of few biased observations you have made. I doubt you have personally discussed this with all people identifying with this movement so how could you know who is anti-small business or not? The tea party is not monolithic and neither is the ows movement. Grow up please.
What portion of the tea party are you speaking of? The Seniors that supported this because of what they feared was happening to their Social Security? The young couple that were watching their dreams of owning a home go up in smoke?
By blanketing the Tea Party with the things that a radical few said or did, is just as wrong as what is being said about the OWS. There are some in the OWS that have said some pretty outrageous things. We all know that OWS is not made up of "lazy hippies", or people who want everything for free.
The Tea Party is not any happier with what is happening than OWS is, the few hardliners in Congress have lost the support of the everyday people that once supported them.....
If OWS intends to continue to say they are the 99% we cannot exclude the Tea Party or any other group that is willing to join in growing the movement.
nothing compares, nothing compares to youuuuuuuu
Parsing that finely is effectively denial.
No it isn't ......... How is branding everyone in the Tea Party any different then what the MSM has done to the OWS?
It's not different.
Like the parties the tea party is a herd beast group think organization. Their narrow perspective unifies them as it denies the validity of any alternatives.
I don't like herd beast group think in any form.
Really? Then how do you justify support of the OWS? They may appear to be varied but they all have the same thoughts and goals......in regards to what needs to be done.
Again, excluding people based on their differences makes you no difference than the 1% who exclude others.....
And if you are not willing to include them.... then we are not the 99% .... as even the Tea Party are a part of that number.
Then you don't like OWS? It doesn't get anymore "group think" than the famous OWS chant/repeat.
OWS is much more individualistic than are you mindless tea party ditto-heads.
separate and conquer you people keep divided so the 1% who are not divided can control you like slaves
LOL!
You would try to bring together Hitler and the Jews.
I'm sure the Jews would like their "price tag" payback on the Gentiles for WW2 treatment of them. But many gentiles helped the Jews to survive so why do they enslave us ALL anyway? blood thirsty? cold blooded evil money changers? seeking to use the gentiles as slaves? could it be? someone peeked, someone told
Pretty nice personal attack there. We don't agree so you call me names? Come on aahpat I thought better of you than that.
Typical right-wing give it but can't take it. Only right-wingers are allowed to be aggressive and insulting. Everyone else must adhere to higher standards and rules of civility while being abused by the right-wing.
I am not your willing victim.
When did I insult you? When did I abuse you? Your attempt to justify your incivility is sad. Apparently I was wrong in thinking you a rational person one could discuss things with. Keep your hate to yourself.
aahpat mis-spelled his name.
It's actually supposed to be asshat and if you thought he was "better than that" then you've not been reading his posts. I've been butting heads with aahpat for weeks now, and he is impossible to reason with. Even when I showed him direct video evidence he refused to watch it.
His brain is as hardwired as the circuits in your stove. His mind is not open to other ideas, even when given direct evidence to refute his own viewpoint.
Maybe aahpat is one of our paid minions ?
You see that a lot with OWS.
[Removed]
Called the people's mic, because megaphones aren't allowed in NY; so people amplify the speakers words so it will reach to the back.
More like Simon Says. Mindless drones repeating everything they are told to.
Actually a very clever way to overcome the restrictions placed there by the NYPD. I think your position is called bias; you're so biased and intolerant you can't even acknowledge the truth that people's mic was a creative solution to megaphones being prohibited....bias to the extent of excluding truth.
Truth? You say it was made as a solution to no megaphones and that may be so but it doesn't change the fact that you mindlessly repeat what ONE person tells you to. You can't even memorize your lines and you think you have the answers to our countries problems? OWS is just like Obama,without a teleprompter you can't speak intelligently.
PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT THESE VIDEOS OF VIOLENCE PERFORMED BY THE TEA PARTY PROTESTERS. Ooops I mispsoke. There are NO videos of tea party violence because it never happened. Maybe once or twice over the course of four years, but that's about it. THESE ARE VIDEOS OF THE SO-CALLED "non-violent" OCCUPY PROTESTS AFTER ONLY TWO MONTHS EXISTENCE.
Destroying Oakland windows - http://youtu.be/v7UpfBYb3-s
Occupy DC surround the Convention center - http://youtu.be/VI0AfusvucY
Imprisoning/ grabbing people at the DC Center and Blocking a Father/son from leaving a parking lot (to go home) - http://youtu.be/prgkEAuSQT0
Occupy holds wheelchair woman & others imprisoned - http://youtu.be/Cl0BODD0K5c
Occupy Mom uses Children to Block Cars http://youtu.be/dYyJerd1t6U
Occupiers assaulting a Girl trying to escape (1:30). And trapping a Father from going home (1:50). And promoting terroristic speech: "If we have to be violent, then we will be violent to get what we want" (2:10)
Damn those inconvenient truths (and people with videocameras). YOUR TURN. Please show me similar videos of Tea Party violence where building were destroyed/damaged and people assaulted. I don't think you'll find any.
4 years of Tea protests
No destruction or damage
Learn to read for comprehension.
A father whose sons constantly quarreled, asked them to bring him a bundle of sticks and then challenged each in turn to break the bundle over their knees, which they found impossible. He then split the bundle and showed how each individual stick could easily be broken. "United you are strong; quarreling and separated and you are weak," he said. ~Aesop fable
”A lot of people tried to paint this movement as not unified and we do not have a cohesive message, but as far as I can see we have one message and it is corporate greed and we are not standing for it anymore,” she declared. “No matter what your sign says, it all stems from the same source and that is corporate greed running amok.”
http://rt.com/news/occupy-message-simple-success-543/
this movement is about people, not parties - not what your sign says. it's about getting rid of corporate greed and restoring power to the people.
Note, however, that long before Aesop this principle was exemplified in the Roman fasces - symbols which adorn many American institutions, including the backdrop of the House of Representatives, but also after which fascism is named. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces ) The merits of unity depend entirely on its purpose!
The more interesting question is whether these isolated sticks of individual belief and power can be organized into some other sturdy structure, a bridge for example, which is not designed to be wielded by one person against another, but to bring all people together with a common purpose. Occupy movements and the Tea Party and many other modern political groups owe much of their success to the distributed, non-hierarchical publishing structure of the Internet, as contrasted with the government licensing and corporate auction of the electromagnetic media. Of course, many here will rather justifiably deride the Tea Party as an organization due to the role of the Koch brothers and "astroturf" organizing, but this doesn't change the sincerity of some of its members.
Nor does it change my desire to see the Second Amendment preserved as much as the others. A democratic, egalitarian society requires that weapons not be limited to a privileged elite, especially when everything and anything is potentially a weapon.
Thanks for expanding on the fable. I agree with your observations, they seem very objective and accurately portray some of the sour grapes from Occupy regarding the Tea Party. Hope some read this and change their minds a bit. Both groups have some common ground to unite around imo.
on second amendment rights, I have always walked down the middle of the road on the issue. As a lifelong Texan, I don't see firearms in a bad light at all. The people's rights to bear arms should always be preserved, but common sense measures like criminal background checks and proper training make sense to me.
The Ayatollah or Iran ALSO thinks free speech is "terrorism". He's uses it to justify arresting Christians and other dissidents.
aaahat's idea runs along the same irrational thought process
.
I don't even know what you're talking about. nothing you said is related to my comments. you people just make up anything about anything in someone's words and then compare it to something bad in the world. talk about irrational. maybe more like ridiculous. nice try though.
The Aesop fable is the perfect example of what I mean.... excluding anyone from this movement because of perceived ideas of what they are is wrong. Just look at the people that are active in the movement now.... there is a variety of political beliefs among them...they may have different ideas of how things should be done, but each of these people are there for the same reason.
there is a variety of political beliefs. that's putting it subtly. lol.
Well, no use in getting everyone's knickers in knots...... ! ;)
ooooh noooooo, political wedgie !!!...... :P
this kind of terrorism is well known
Tea Party Terrorism – Economy hostage – eco terrorism
> The tea party’s terrorist tactics By: William YeomansThe tea party’s terrorist tactics etc etc at http://terrorismbreedsterrorism.wordpress.com/tea-party-terrorism-economy-hostage/
Thanks for that.
The TP and their Wall Street masters have been waging economic warfare on middle-class America for too damned long.
Oh so now instead of hating just the 1% you now hate people associated with the Tea Party? Sad aahpat.
Turn about is fair prey.
You get what you give in this world.
The tea party/libertarians/KKK are a hate group. A terrorist group that threatens violence, assassination and insurrection. As an American I have a duty to hate people who imply that they are willing to use assassination and insurrection to coerce and intimidate my elected government.
I will do my Second Amendment duty to protect and defend my government from any and all gun toting right-wing secessionists, assassins and insurrectionists.
You really are a hateful person in the end aren't you? 2nd amendment? So you think you would be justified in killing someone you disagree with? Sounds like you're a hate group all on your own.
You need to learn to read for comprehension. I am saying the direct opposite of what you are claiming me to say.
If you can't read you need to admit that to yourself and stop responding to your own fantasies as if it is what others are writing.
You said "I will do my Second Amendment duty to protect and defend my government from any and all gun toting right-wing secessionists, assassins and insurrectionists." Just what did you mean by that? I take it as a threat of violence which I thought OWS was against but once again we see that's not true.
No. I emphatically did not ay what you are intentionally mis-characterizing me as saying.
I said that I would be justified in taking up arms to defend my government against those falsely claiming a Second Amendment to bring the government down. Those, like you, who assert a right to assassinate America's elected leadership. The violent right-wing minority who use Second Amendment threats to coerce and intimidate America's elected leadership into doing as you dictate.
man you are tripping today my friend. Where did I assert anything? This is conversation is pointless since all you want to do is spew hate. Have a better day.
we must be divided if the masters (banks) are to stay in power....“What better way to enslave a man then to give him a vote and tell
he is free".
End The Fed [Taschenbuch] Ron Lawl (Autor)
Produktbeschreibungen Pressestimmen "Rarely has a single book not only challenged, but decisively changed my mind. " --Arlo Guthrie
"Everyone must read this book -- Congressmen and college students, Democrats and Republicans -- all Americans." --Vince Vaughn Kurzbeschreibung In the post-meltdown world, it is irresponsible, ineffective, and ultimately useless to have a serious economic debate without considering and challenging the role of the Federal Reserve.
Most people think of the Fed as an indispensable institution without which the country's economy could not properly function. But in END THE FED, Ron Lawl draws on American history, economics, and fascinating stories from his own long political life to argue that the Fed is both corrupt and unconstitutional. It is inflating currency today at nearly a Weimar or Zimbabwe level, a practice that threatens to put us into an inflationary depression where $100 bills are worthless. What most people don't realize is that the Fed -- created by the Morgans and Rockefellers at a private club off the coast of Georgia -- is actually working against their own personal interests. Congressman Paul's urgent appeal to all citizens and officials tells us where we went wrong and what we need to do fix America's economic policy for future generations.
No one gives a shi_t about the Tea Party on this website your wasting your time!
I think that drawing the distinction between the terrorist tea party and the social justice OWS is a valid discussion.
I think the least discussion about the tea party the less legitimized they become, but go ahead have fun! I think all the GOP candidates have tea party genes in them to some extent!
Generally I agree. But I thought the Second Amendment issue needed airing.
You don't believe in the 2nd Amendment? Perhaps you'd like to have it repealed?
I believe in the Constitutional intent of the Second Amendment. A citizen militia trained by the government and available for quick deployment against enemies of the state. Both foreign and domestic.
Your saying that the Second Amendment somehow give citizens the right to threaten the lives of political leaders is ludicrous. what sane person would volunteer to be a political leader with the potential of any crazy deciding that politician has become a "tyrant" and taking a shot at them? What people would become police or military knowing that citizens feel it is their right to assassinate police and military when the citizens dislike what the government is doing?
I think to an outsider, they both have more in common than you think. They werent serious enough, and ended up being co-opted by the machine.
We'll see if OWS is willing to make a stand against Obama
I believe that many of the disaffected people in OWS are in the movement because Obama incited them to participate in our democracy in 2008 only to betray their investment in him. They won't make that mistake again.
The other thing that incited these people to get out into the streets was the minority tea party in congress threatening America's full faith and credit clause of the Constitution with their debt limit default extortion of the majority in Congress. This is why there are not a lot of OWS people expressing sympathy with the TP.
Between the Obama Democrats and the GOP owned tea party OWS has had its fill with political parties in America. A healthy anti party cynicism could be the one significant long term outcome of OWS coming into being.
Just so you know, the defualt stuff was all PR nonsense.
If you have X amount of debt, and our interest payments account for 5% of income, and then your not allowed to get more credit cards, it forces you to make some hard choices.
You can decide to not make your credit card payments, or you can decide that maybe you dont need x amouint of consultants, x amount of cars, x vacations, etc.
It was a near perfect PR campaign that led the majoirty of the people to think that if we didnt get another credit card, we wouldnt be able to pay the interest on the others (instead of maybe reigning in the military, cutting gov spending, dealing with the massive fraud of medicare, etc).
For most Americans it looked like the tea party extorting the nation and willingly planning to crash the national credit for their political gain.
Americans don't like being extorted whether its a game or not.
We pay our debts and the tea party looked like it was willing to welch on our debt. Creeps with no respect for the nation.
"It looked" is hte key. And trust me, the establishment has one thing on its mind- crash the economy, create chaos, and rebuild how htey want it. Not even really that they want it, but anyone worth his.her weight knows this thing is going down.
Those are the types of games they play, through the media, that the people never take the time to actually disect and think about. The entire nation has become very reactionary, reciting media points with no thought as to what they are saying.
Just think, how would saying no to another credit card, and focusing on paying off the current ones, lead to a decline in credit rating?
Credit card WANT you to be able to pay, albeit slowly. The last thing they want is a bankruptcy. If it werent for our ability to blow a hole in anyone or anything, we would already be there.
No. I will not trust you.
Ha. I dont mean literally dude.
During the revolution, the British viewed the members of the colonies as "terrorists" as well. I suppose you would argue that the colonies should never have fought for their independence?
Then you admit that you support terrorism against the United States of America.
Please answer the question.
There is no comparing the pre-democracy founding of America and the tea party threats of terrorism against the democratic government and the people of America today.
It is pretentious and idiotic to say there is.
You have still not answered the question. We can discuss applicability afterward.
aaahat will never anser the question because then he'd have to admit his hate towards the Tea party is illogical and emotional, not based on any kind of rational thought.
Ron Lawl - End the FED!
http://www.bilderberg.org
"Threatening to water your tree of liberty with the blood of American political leaders who you decide are "tyrants" is a terrorist threat of assassination."
Well at least they care if the United States becomes a tyranny. Most people don't care.
The trick there is, "who is the 'you'?" A tyrant to me is a benefactor to someone else. There are people who say Nixon was a tyrant Others say Clinton was. Who is right? Is anyone right?
Revolution has its place in history and, unfortunately, in the future of events in many places. But as long as there is such a thing as an election and as long as those elections are monitored independently, then where is the need for armed revolution?
The other problem I have with your statement is that it is completely one sided. "Well at least they care if the United States becomes a tyranny. Most people don't care."
This states clearly that you do not beleive that most people in this country are concerned about it and I think the growth of the Occupy Movement shows that they do care. One of the things we MUST confront in this country, as I've stated in other threads here, is this idea that, because someone disagrees with us, they are "the enemy" and need to be eliminated. The whole idea of democracy is that all sides involved work toward a compromise that will benefit the largest number of people; no one gets everything, but everyone gets something.
As long as both sides want total dominance, there is, in this country, merely a struggle between two would-be tyrants, and that is what has to be eliminated.
Well according to the tea party a tyrant is someone who would take away their guns.
Gun ownership is something that I have debated from both sides. At one time I was a very staunch 2nd amendment supporter, but, over time, I saw that, while I might be a responsibile gun owner who would never pull a gun on someone who cut me off on the highway, there are those who simply do not have that self control.
My reply to Tea-Party 2nd Amendment Rights advocates is, "If you feel it's your right to carry a gun wherever you want, what about my right to feel secure from possible violence when I go out?
This is a very difficult and real issue that, previously to the current gun carrying activism we see, was, I thought, pretty well balanced. Now, I think it is far too weighted -- on a civil rights basis -- toward those who want to carry guns.
And what happens if our guns are taken away and the government/corporations decides it needs more obedient slaves? They have more obedient slaves.
I used to ask the same question. After years of thought and a little bit of simply looking round to see the realtiy of the world, the answer I came up with I shall put to you in the form of a question:
Do you truly think that the massive amount of superiority maintained by the government (inlcuding police and other security forces) along with the network of intelligence gathering can be defeated by untrained citizens using assault rifles and side arms?
I ahve talked with so many pro-gun advocates who use that as an excuse -- as I did -- for walking around feeling like they are a tough guy or that they are somehow a "lean, mean, killing machine" like they always wanted to be. Now, I'm not saying that you are like that -- I don't know you and I'm not in a position to judge you -- but you must admit that such people do exist. During my journalism days, I had the opportunity to attend some militia "training" centers. I was in the military and saw combat, and, I'm telling you, the ones that I witnessed were jokes. They had nothing to do with reality. I began referring to them as G.I.Joe camps because they were, really, just playing at all this. All they talked about were tactics that were (basically) suited for taking a single house. They had no idea of strategic planning or how to mount a strategically sound offensive (or defensive). Now couple that with the fact that there is no overarching leadership in any of these militia movements -- in fact, most of them spend most of their time fighting each other politically and ideologically, and exactly what sort of rebellion do you think you can stage?
People love to point to the American Revolution as an example of a rag-tag citizenry overcoming the greatest empire on the earth. The problem with that is that is simply isn't true. The colonies had a militia that would compare to today's National Guards, had very pwoerful allies, and there was not the disparity of weaponry ebtween the armies and the militia that you see today. How many citizens or militia have tanks? How many have figher and bomber aircraft? Ineed, how many even have reliable transport or logistics systems?
Just because you ahve a few million people with semi-automatic rifles does not mean you can put on an effective rebellion.
And once the rebellion has succeeded, what plans are there for anything to take its place? What unity of vision do any of the militia or self-styled freedom fighters have? What is the goal of thei rebellion and what kind of society will they have? What sort of government will takew the place of the corrupt one displaced? Who will be in charge and how with that position be decided? There was already a functioning political body in the 13 colonies long before the Revolution, and an electoral system to feed it. Nothing I have heard anyone inside the revolutionary community say has led me to beleive that they ahve even given it a single thought.
to say that we need a revolution is one thing, but how far have you or anyone else truly thought it out.
My personal opinion is that your time would be better spent trying to find ways of fixing the problems without trying to destroy the system.
So you want to take away our guns? You realize your comment before this was against gun ownership? That will be a very bad thing with the direction of society when we don't have the option to change it from the inside.
I've already addressed this point directly above and see nothing of benefit in repeating it.
You did nothing of the sort. You advocated both points.
Just FYI, the IRA fought the highly modern British army to a 30-year standstill, and they did it with maybe a thousand people armed with rifles, pistols and home-made bombs. And that's because they didn't line up and try to fight the Brits toe to toe. They won through attrition and assassination and ambush, like guerrilla armies have for centuries. Just saying that there are more ways than one to skin a cat, even a big cat...
The iRA was a terrorist organization that killed civilian noncomabtants including children and the very people it said it was fighting for.
The Vietnamese fought a 40 year war against the French adn teh US and won using guerrilla tactics as well.
However, in both cases, each of these examples were backed financially and logisitcally by powerful outside forces supplying them not only with money but with arms, training and personnel.
In each case as well -- the IRA and the Vietnamese/Viet Cong were organized armies with a command infrastructure, as well as agenices for logistics, intelligence, acquaisitions and all the other elements needed to support a militry campaign. The American Militia movement -- and particularly not the individual "sovereign citizen" who is most vocal about revolution -- do not have these elements.
I also state clearly that I do not beleive that any revolutionary group in the US has the dedication for a 20-40 year guerrilla war that would be necessary in order to accomplish their goals. This is evidenced by the fact that -- to date -- no militia movement has been able to maintain an internal cohesion for more than a few years at a time. Even the fabled Aryan Nations neo-nazi group, who were under the same leadership for about 20 years, immediately feel apart and splintered into at least four -- and possibly more -- groups after that leader's death.
But my main point you avhe failed to recognize and that is how best to affect change. Is it a better path to carryin on a 20-30 year terrorist war destoying lives, property and resources; or is it wiser to work within the system to reform it and create change?
I think there is a sort of romanticism right now with revolution and rebellion that is born of anger and frustration and I think that people who advocate this path are not, in most cases, truly interested in creating a new nation as much as they are with the idea of being a revolutionary and -- quite frankly, in many cases -- becoming the very kind of doctator they say they are fighting against.
"Is it a better path to carrying on a 20-30 year terrorist war destroying lives, property and resources; or is it wiser to work within the system to reform it and create change?"
Violent revolutions aren't driven by wisdom--they're driven by desperation and a lack of options. It certainly may be wiser to work within the system to reform it and create change, but when that option disappears (and I'm not saying it has in the U.S., at least not yet), then people automatically move to plans B, C, or D, which are usually much less pleasant than Plan A.
Also, while the IRA had become an organized army with a command structure by the mid to late '70s, that was not the case when the Provos first emerged in '69--any weaponry that the organization happened to have on hand had basically been left to rust after the '56 to '62 Border campaign. They were essentially starting from scratch...
But, as you say, by the early 70s that was not so. I would challenge their effectiveness against the Brits while using those beat-up rusty weapons.
But again, my point is that the IRA, before going into any paramiltary action had a command structure and a complete operational system. remember, even though they were called by several names, the Irish Rebellion began even before th Easter Uprising of 1913, so by the time they got to 1969, they were a very well-organized paramilitary group. Again, I will state that does not exist here and, with the non-cooperations between the militia groups in this country, it doesn't look like it ever will, so an armed rebellion would be maybe a few hundred people in one town doing their things, a couple of dozen in another doing their's and so on.
Uh, corporations have not paid Americans any more money this year than they did in 1980. Wages have fallen since 1979 and you really think we're not "obedient slaves" already? How has owning guns stopped this decline of wages and/or what's it going to take for you to decide enough is enough and act on your philosopy?
My comment was a reference to physical force. Sorry, for this misunderstanding. What are your thoughts, now?
That's obviously false. I'm not making the same $3.25 an hour that I made back then.
Well, if you're making $8.50 an hour now (and I'm not saying you are) then you are, in fact, making the $3.25 an hour you made in 1980, because that's what $3.25 in 1980 dollars is worth in 2011 dollars. Just thank Mr. Inflation, the U.S. government's 80-year backdoor tax on every American man, woman and child...
You're right.
But even adjusting for the private central bank's devaluation of the dollar (inflation), my wages did NOT drop.
Well if somebody threatens somebody with a gun with no probable cause they'll get arrested. Simple.
Besides the bill of rights is not negotiable.
A Gun Prohibition would be as ineffective as the Alcohol Prohibition and Marijuana prohibition. i.e. Not effective at all.
The 2nd amendment is predicated upon the idea that I have a right to protect myself from being harmed or killed by criminals (i.e. a most basic right). It is also based upon the idea that someday, like Libya, we might need those guns to overthrow a Ghaddafi-like dictator in the White House.
You have no more right to that, then you have a right to "not be offended" by my Freedom of Speech. Or as Thomas Jefferson wrote, "I would rather deal with the inconveniences of too much liberty, than the oppression of too little." It's pretty ridiculous to be afraid of the very very small risk you might be shot, when there's a 1 in 700 chance of dying in a car accident.
Shall we ban Cars simply to give you peace of mind? No. That's ridiculous. So is it ridiculous to ban guns for the same reason.
Funny, they make it work in Canada. Cross the border, and the risk of being shot plummets.
Funny, I've been to Canada multiple times and met lots of people with guns. Just as I said, outlawing guns doesn't work any better than outlawing marijuana stop me from getting it.
When cities on each side of the border are paired, the gun deaths are very sparse on the Canadian side, even when the numbers are quite high on the U.S. side.
The fact of the matter is that ther is a huge difference between your being able to say something offensive and you being able to kill me or a loved one, intentionally or not.
To speak, one needs no special training and it does not require a coolness under extreme pressure. When one has a firearm these thigns are essential and there is no training to my knowledge that teaches these things. All the conceal/carry lawas I know of deal merely with theory and the basic precautions of making sure the safety is on, the gun is kpoet out of reach of kids, etc. There is no trainnig whatsoever concering how to handle yourself in times of threat to you, so I cannot trust you to do what is correct.
For example:
I used to drive race cars. I was fairly good at it and so were most of teh drivers I raced with. We knew what we were doing and we knew what each other woudl do under any given circumstances. But every once in a while, there would be some wannbe come along who ahd enough money to buy a race car and thought he could come out and drive like he did on the highway. NO verteran driver trusted these people. We didn't know how they would react in a panic situation; we didn't know how they would react in tight racing or in stressful situations and, honestly, most of the time, they proved us right.
I do NOT consider it my responsibility to wear a Kevlar vest when walking down my hometown street just a group of people are paranoid about crime.
I have no problem with you owning a gun -- I own one myself. But the argument that it is simply for the purpose of self protection against crime doesn't work. Your weapon, I would dare say, is not in your hand but in a holster and (hoepfully) on safety. So if you are robbed, you avhe to first get to yoru weapon without the criminal seeing that you're going for a weapon, then get the gun out, flip off the safety and then react to the situation. The fact of the matter is, by that time, the robber has either fled or has slit your throat with his knife -- or, as is more common these days, shot you.
The conceal carry laws are a farce because, looking at it from the point of view of a criminal, that is going to convince me to use force prior to committing the crime. People do not commit crimes with the idea in mind that they are going to be caught; if they did, they wouldn;'t commit the crime. So any measure you take to protect yourself, the criminal is going to meet with increasing force to assure his or her success.
As I stated in my comment, the way to cofront crime is to remove the causes of it. There will always be crime, certainly, because there will always be unscrupulous people. But we know that punishment is not a deterrent to crime because it has never worked. Likewise, using violence against crime has -- and you can look this up historically -- always -- repeat ALWAYS -- resulted in an escalation of the level of violence within crime. Find me an example where that is not true and I will be glad to discuss with you the merits of carrying a weapon to protect yourself from cirme.
So wrong.
There's lot of training available. As for "danger" all one has to do is look at the statistics. The number of cases where guns accidentally killed someone is just a few per year. Now contrast that with the ~40,0000 killed by car accidents every year. If you a TRULY and honestly concerned about savings lives, instead of wasting time with guns, you should be petitioning to Ban the automobiles.
I agree with you in principle that preventing the causes of crime is a good method to prevent it. But there will always be those who are just plain evil, and then people will need to defend themselves. Like last month in Philly when some black men rammed open a Hispanic guy's front door, and started swinging metal rods against the homeowner, his wife, and his kid. The owner shot and killed the immediate threat, and the other people fled.
No matter how much Welfare and Food Stamps you hand-out, you will never be able to stop this kind of hatred of one human towards another.
False. Many, many criminals have testified that their greatest fear was that the victim might have a concealed gun & use it. That fear of getting shot often deterred them from acting. (Versus if all victims are unarmed, then it's like a wolf among sheep... no fear or deterrence.)
I have long been an advocate of safer cars and MUCH stricter driver's education and licensing laws. I drove race cars for four years -- on a small time level -- and whenever I get a new car, the first thing I instal in it are the five-point seat/shoulder belts I used in my last race car -- although I am about due to get a new set.
My major problem with gun ownership stems from two issues: 1) conceal carry and 2) ownership of large magazine semiautomatics.
To me, if I want to deter someone from committing a crime around me, I want that weapon clearly visible so they know I'm not someone they want to mess with. It also lets everyone else know that the person is armed and if they -- like myself -- choose not to be round that person, they can leave. to me, the only reason to carry a concealed weapon is the purpose of taking someone by surprise and either threatening them or shooting them, neither of which, to me, has anything to do with self-protection.
As far as so-called assault rifles -- I will concede a resentment when semiautomatic rifles are referred to as "assault rifles." A true assault rifle is fully automatic and carries a 40 round magazine on the average. Now, I was in the military and was completely trained in all small arm weaponry from knife through M24, and I was expert in all of them. If I want to protect myself from, say, a home invasion, the very LAST weapon I want is a long gun. I want something that is maneuverable, flexible and quickly aimable, none of which fits a an AK or Ar15. Those weapons are made and meant for outdoor use and are not protective weapons, at least not for indoors. Adding a 40 round clip on it says to me that what someone wants to do, rather than simply protect themselves, is to blow the hell out of someone and that, in my mind, signals the possibility of some anger issues the person should look into.
It may surprise you to learn that I own a weapon or two. I have two handguns that I've had since I was in the military and I even have a long gun. I kept them because, as I mentioned in my previous post, I was a very strong 2nd amendment advocate. I just never got rid of them but they are stored and safely tucked away and I feel no need to carry a weapon under normal circumstances. When I go camping or am out in the wilderness, I have my service camilus that is always with me. If I can't handle something with that, I'll hoof it the other way.
I am not entirely against ownership of guns, as I said above. But the idea that we need to be armed for safety simply doesn't get it with me anymore. There are too many idiots and crazies out there and, with Ohio as an example -- it was recently discovered that somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 people who are mentally ill were able to somehow attain a conceal/carry license in that state. Put on top of that the fact that in most states, licensing laws do not cover weapons sold from one individual to another or those purchased at gun shows. I think you'll agree that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine killers should not have been allowed access to a weapon, particularly not the kinds of weapons they had. But until we can find a way to at least minimize these oversights and loopholes, I cannot support general ownership of high-powered weaponry.
I agree and you are free to do that. You dont even need a license in open-carry states.
As for the rest of your post, we're generally in agreement. Except the Columbine thing. There was nothing in their previous history that would have made the Colorado gvernment block ther purchase of guns.
BTW did you know they have school shooting over in Europe too? Those countries have the strictest laws in the world, and yet it still happens. Even in the UK where guns are essentially banned, people still get killed.
Actually there was, though not directly to do with the government. All the classic signs of suicidal teen depression and disenfranchisment were there, as was later admitted by both the administrative and classroom staff of the school -- even the students said they should have seen it coming. That's not the fault of the government or the gun laws and I didn't mean to imply it was. My point was merely that there are crazies out there who can get a high powered weapon without having to get a license or be registered in any way, and that needs to change in my opinion.
The weakness and fatal flaw in the Tea Party is their reliance on blindly believing the 1% will somehow administer justice or that it doesn’t really matter if there is justice, it is their reliance guns, illegal wars, illegal torture, atomic bombs, and worse to keep the peace.
What they fail to realize is that "truth," when the physical properties and Calculus equations are properly understood, is orders of magnitude more powerful than the Tea Parties pathetic pea shooters.
I can assure you that criminals have held guns on me several times in my life. What I learned was that "truth" is what got me out of the circumstance each and every time. I could have pulled a gun to kill the criminal(s), but then I would have failed to utilize a more powerful non-lethal weapon. For a party that claims to have the almighty corner on the truth they most certainly like to resort to violence as a first option.
I'd be interested in hearing more about those situatinos and how you survived them. I think that might be a very powerful story that you should share with others.
It requires that I disclose a secret that I've kept for 27 years. It's a scientific model that I developed to describe the properties of "truth." I have tried during that period to get a proper legal framework so that I can publish. However, there is just too much corruption in our government. So, it appears that I'll be taking this one to the grave. I simply will not risk having bankers and finance managers get their hands on this model. It is just too powerful.
I understand and agree on all levels -- thanks.
It seems to me that people have this crazy notion that law and order are not enforced with the threat of violence.
Authority and power are enforced with the threat of violence. A just government has no need of fear or intimidation to provide for security because citizens are involved in the society and are invested in it. It's only when there is a breakdown within that society and (some) people decide to step outside of the rules that it becomes violent.
I can point to studies going back to 18th Century England -- literally several hudreds of them -- and in each one, there is a direct -- repeat DIRECT -- corealtion of the rise of poverty and the rise of crime, violence, general cruelty, and disregard for societal norms. Any society that allows a portion of its citizens to be set above all others and that allows that elite to have power over the lower masses, whether it be politial, economic, religious, or in the supply fundamental necessities, will, indeed, as you say, find themselves in the position of enforcing law and order through the threat of violence.
You should also remember that there is a tremendous difference between a lawful, orderly society and just one. IN fact, no society that puts law and order first can ever be a free society. This is one of the thigns that law and order people forget. As was said in the days of Vietnam, "We must destroy freedom in order to preserve it." Freedom is, by its very nature, a very risk-filled way of life. And as Franklin said (to paraphrase) any people who are willing to trade a degree of freedom in exchange for security deserve neither.
I point out that Hitler, Stalin, Hussein, Marcos, Pol Pot -- all of them had very orderly, very secure, and very lawful societies. But their citizens paid for that order and that security with freedom. So I am always very cautious when someone thinks first about law and order rather than freedom. Law and order, particluarly when "enforced with the threat of violence" is a very direect and very short path to tyranny and despotism.
Actually law and order IS enforced the threat of violence. You obey. Or else. If you chose not to obey a cop will grab your arm, twist it round the back of your body, and handcuff you. Then he will throw you into a car, so he can lead you into a jail, and slam the door in your face.
Government IS violence (force). It uses violence to enforce its Law.
I would say the Dictator Julius Caesar certainly qualifies. Also Dictator Hitler. I wouldn't hesitate to kill him or any other person that tries to suspend the legislature and kill a Democratic republic.
Of course the Founders had an even lower level of tolerance. They considered the UK Parliament to be a tyrant, because they ruled without having ever been elected (by the colonials), and the Founders executed the Parliament's generals and soldiers with gunfire. You probably consider them to be "terrorists" for that act.
.
You actually prove my point: there is no single definition of what constitutes a tyrant. I ahve heard some call Barack Obama a tyrant. I have heard others call Geogre W Bush a tyrant. To say that we must ahve an armed public to prevent tyranny actually creates a tyranny of the public. It's called Social Darwinism -- the idea that those who are the strongest have the right to survive and rule the society.
As to your attempt to make this discussi n personal by implying an ignorance or stupidity on my part for having the opinions I have, I ahv stated before that, if a conversant here is incapable of discussion the posts or comments solely on the merits of the comments without resorting to the childishness of making personal dispersions, then I feel justified in my feeling that they are simply not of a maturity and intelligence to do so and therfore not really worth my time.
Yea.....keep setting your fellow Americans up as terrorists ...that's smart.
EVEN after MSNBC ....created.....incidents to report about . . . and Repeated . . .and repeated . . .and . . .repeated . . . . No one was spit on . . .no one pooped on police cars . . . No one was raped . . . robbed . . .molested . . .or arrested . . . They paid rentals, insurance . . . and picked up their trash when THEY LEFT. They generated a platform . . .supported candidates . . .and began to change some things . . . I know . . .all this seems unfair to you . . .who simply want to cry over the mess you have made of your life . . . And even when 85 percent of the media supports and elevates you beyond reason . . .you make NO progress. It is so unfair of the world to single you out for failure . . .after all . . .youre Just like the successful TEA party . . .except . . .you aren't.
The Second Amendment is a right.
What about the violence of the OWS?
Multiple arrests for failure to respect basic laws.
Rioting against Police.
More than 16 Rapes reported to have taken place at OWS encampment sites across the nation.
8 Deaths associated with OWS:
Death #1 – Oklahoma occupier found dead in tent
"From NewsOK A man thought to be a protester was found dead Monday inside a tent at Kerr Park, police said. The man’s name has not been released by police, but he was thought to be in his 20s, Oklahoma City police Capt. Dexter Nelson said. The man is part of Occupy OKC, a group "
Death #2 – 20-year-old Vancover occupier dies of drug overdose.
"From Newsvine A woman at the Occupy Vancouver camp died Saturday after being discovered in an “unresponsive” condition, police say. A Canadian protest organizer said it appeared to be due to a drug overdose. The cause of death has not been determined but there is no evidence to indicate foul play, police "
Death #3 – this time in New Orleans
From Nola.com A 53-year-old man was found dead Tuesday inside a tent pitched at the Occupy New Orleans encampment at Duncan Plaza across from City Hall. He appears to have been living in the tent inside the occupation zone, said John Gagliano, chief investigator for the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office.
Death #4 – this time in Bloomington, Indiana
A total of 4 occupiers have now died in encampments across the nation. From Indiana Public Media A report from the Monroe County Coroner’s office says a local homeless man died of natural causes early Saturday. Occupy Bloomington protestor Aaron Pollit was one of the first to discover the man
Death #5 – man shot in Vermont
This shooting brings the death toll to five across the nation since the start of the start of the OWS movement. Vermont occupiers turn their anger against the police. From Burlington Free Press Occupiers are clashing with police in City Hall Park this evening after police tried to close down the encampment
Death #6 – man shot near Occupy Oakland over bag of weed
While some mainstream media outlets, such as the Associated Press, reported that the man killed in this incident was not a part of the Occupy Oakland camp, PJ Media reports today that he was, in fact, an occupier PJ Media reported: The victim was indeed an Occupier: Slaying victim slept at Occupy Oakland
Death #7 – Salt Lake City occupier found dead in tent
A total of 7 deaths associated with the OWS movement. From KSL.com A dead body was found in a tent at Pioneer Park Friday morning. The body was identified as a male member of the Occupy SLC group,
Death #8 – Texas occupier dies of likely drug overdose
From Fox News Police on Sunday identified a man found dead in a tent at the “Occupy Denton” protest campsite on the grounds of the University of North Texas (UNT). Darwin Cox, 23, died at around 4:30 p.m. local time Saturday, according to a police press release. University and city police found his body
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No, this is a violent terrorist group.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/make-a-stand-join-the-clan/
The Revolution starts here!
100,000 thiefs = OWS
200 rapes = OWS
sure you are not violent.
Learn to read for comprehension.
How does the OWS expect to get anything done if no political party supports them?
Op needs some books to read. Mouth shut, eyes open and looking at a book op.
If you cannot embrace the tea party people, then you clearly are not the 99% because most of the people in the tea party movement are not among the rich. Thus, all their members (other than the 1% of tea party members who ARE rich) have to be subtracted out of your 99%.
I've seen violence promoted right here on this web site by OWS members, too. The promotion of violence within the tea party is just as small in terms of expression of violent thought as it is here.
--Knave Dave http://thegreatrecession.info/blog/2011/11/occupy-wall-street-now-unoccupied-but-stronger/
The Tea Party is an astroturf of WallSt
I agree.
The Queen will be quite upset that we shouldn't have a tea party. And I brought the crumpets and everything!
The Tea Party a fringe group. Most Americans do not agree with the Tea Party at all. And, in the end, the OWS movement is much more aligned with the real interests of these people, whether they know it or not.
aahpat You could be a good person but you seem to be a person that is carrying around a lot of hate. All Americans despite their color or whether they are dem or rep, etc should and need to get along. As long as we continue to go back and forth with each other in these forums or etc. Then the longer it is going to take for our Country to heal.
The Tea Party is violent? You guys are the ones getting into fights with the police. How many Tea Partiers have been arrested? That's what I thought, assholes.
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You are doing the same thing that the media is doing concerning OWS. You point ouit the extremists.
Why do people point to the extremists in both groups and pretend that they hold the views of the majority of the group. The media loves to show the extermists because they get better ratings, The man shitting on a police car, the folks with hitler signs...
Most of the people in both groups are normal Americans that are fed up with the behavior of our politicians.
Factis about the USA and China
http://www.china-intern.de/
http://www.china-intern.de/page/wirtschaft-hintergrund/1318019478.html
100 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.
15 Mind-Blowing Facts About Wealth And Inequality In America. Information Clearing House, Grafiken über Einkommens- und Vermögensverteilung in den USA
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25399.htm
http://www.pauljorion.com/blog/?p=11384
http://elboheme.blogspot.com/2010/05/die-wahren-ursachen-der-krise_12.html
LaRouche Movement
http://www.larouchepac.org
http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/project_paperclip.htm
I do not agree totally with you...
Lyndon LaRouche and his LaRouche Movement are moderate and progressive tea party members...with good ideas for protectionism and against free trade!
http://www.larouchepac.com
And there are lots of tea party members, who are against the FED and the income TAX!
If you don't like the message leave the forum.
If you stay and keep reading/posting then we win!
Yea us!
LOL!
Characterizing LaRouche as "moderate and progressive" is like characterizing Hitler as a human rights activist.
No!
He is and always WAS against the Nazis and Hitler - but he also is against Zionismus (ZOG) and US-Imperialism and against Britisch Liberalism as a postmodern Liberal Free Trade and Hegde Fond Ideology! He is against free trade and for protectionism! That is very good!
He is against eugenic and euthanasie!
Like Ron Lawl he wants to end the FED!
http://www.bilderberg.org
Michael C. Rupperts Peak Oil Blog
http://www.fromthewilderness.com
Anti-Jewish racist
You are not welcome to stand next to me at the Teaparty protest, anymore than I would welcome a member of the KKK. In fact if I ever witnessed You or a KKK person attacking a Jew or Black person, you might as well plan for your future life in hell, because I will defend that jew or black from harm.
The Truth is neither criminal nor racism....!
I am no racist and do not have anything against black people...
But the jewish Zionists (ZOG) and Talmudists are partly racists (see the books of Coudenhove Kalerghi or the wise Jew Israel Shahak) and believe in jewish supremacy----
The jewish zionist supremacy in media and racist ideology of NWO must be stopped, for the sake of whole mankind! And all people, be they black or yellow or red or white...!
Disinformation from the OWS propaganda team - OWS is peaceful ? Looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool 7,000 arrests, millions dollars in property damage, many killed and you are peaceful? lol
I got an idea....turn off the FOX tea party misinformation machine.
It is really easy. Just glance at the off button. Yes. That one. Now press that button. I promise. Nothing bad will happen. You will just hear silence as the lies in your head stop confusing you.
Now start learning to identify and process real facts. I know this may take a few years due to the brain damage caused by FOX news, but you can do it!
Now. Keep reading the truth presented on this forum. There is lots of good source information being posted. Learn how to identify a source document and think for yourself. It may be painful as the brain muscle gets sore. It will get easier with time. I promise.
Cheers!
Now Occupy is targeting CEO's with mail bombs! nice try twit!
http://news.yahoo.com/deutsche-bank-ceo-target-suspicious-envelope-police-001039090.html
This is exactly what I'm talking about. FOX news has its audience so brainwashed that they cannot even read. For example, the article referenced by teaoccupyunited clearly states, “….The FAI previously claimed responsibility for a parcel bomb that injured two people in the offices of the Swiss nuclear lobby group…”
Later in the article the author notes, “…..Earlier, Frankfurt's offshoot of the Occupy protest movement, which is critical of banks and has been staging protests in New York, Washington, London and many other cities, denied any connection with the attempted attack. "We condemn any action that is linked to violence," said Frank Stegmaier, an activist in the Occupy Frankfurt group, which has been camping outside the ECB since mid-October…”
Teaoccupyunited failed to read the entire content of the article, just like FOX news does, to determine what is actually factual.
MS NBC is also a propaganda machine. You should turn that off as well.
Disinformation.
None of what you write in any way mitigates the violence and terrorism of the tea party.
No all tea party members...the moderate and progressive LaRouche Movement against free trade and for protectionism is O.K. - End teh FED!
http://www.larouchepac.org
LOL, retired guys in Polo shirts and chubby moms with baby carriages, project much? :)
Thousands of red necks who were refused entry into D.C. for the Glenn Beck tea party rally and so had to hold their threatening "Second Amendment" rally in a Virginia park the morning of the Beck rally. They then went to D.C. with signs saying"We came unarmed - this time". A clear and unequivocal threat of insurrection and assassination against America's elected government.
The same government where 97% of Senators voted to end run around the 4th amendment and Posse Comitatus and in so doing betray the public trust by raping fundamental rights of a free people.
Are you suggesting American's can only protect their rights with force when the military comes in the middle of the night in their house?
What I am saying I have said.
Threats and innuendo of political violence is never acceptable toward a democratically elected government. The tea party's making threats of political violence, assassination and insurrection is what leads Republican and Democratic senators, together, to believe they need to have military force available to protect themselves and the nation from people like you.
I am sorry you disagree with the document stating the moral case of our nation: "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. "
The people have a right to the government they desire. The only just function of a government is to protect the rights of the people. When the government not only fails to protect those rights but becomes the agent by which those rights are infringed - you find that protection of rights is somehow immoral? You also assign the motive for the infringements on those who only seek their own protection?
Causality is not your friend in this case.
America's elected government is a terrorist, right now.
aahpat writes, "....political violence is never acceptable toward a democratically elected government..."
What makes you think this government was democratically elected? We have a republic. This is not a democratic government. In this republic, there is supposed to be a guarantee of a balancing of interest when a legal framework is created. No such thing is possible when the 1% control access to the elected officials. What we have now is a framework created by the 1% that literally allows capitalism to be used as a weapon.
The casualties are now in the millions. Millions of innocent humans around the world suffer at the hands of the inhumane 1% is literally laughing at the 99%’s demand for justice. Odd how the Tea Party goes along with this so long as they experience none of the suffering. When it happens to them then they wonder why somebody isn’t using their “second amendment remedy” to correct the situation.
For this reason alone, it is invalid to claim that this government is legitimate in any way. The U.S. Government lost its legitimacy when the 1% (criminals) got off without any prosecution for their crimes against humanity.
America is a democratically constituted Republic.
The 1% have the small narrow winning margin of control over our politicians that they do only because too many disaffected dissidents use their disaffection as an excuse to not be a part of narrowing the 1% winning margin by voting against them.
I firmly believe that a concerted effort, by the OWS, to vote out those corrupted by the 1% would go a long way toward fixing the mess.
NOT. For over thirty years the public has chosen the lesser of two evils. That has now devolved to the point where the lesser of two evils will result in an even greater evil.
We have tried writing the letters to our representatives and senators.
We have tried being politically active.
We have tried suggesting how to balance interests to our representatives.
The result is that the 1%, because they control Congress, literally crafted a legal framework that permits capitalism to be used as a tool to commit mass-murder….or hadn’t you noticed the massive increase in homeless families who starve and die do to a lack of medical attention. Oh. I forgot. You are defending the ignorant Tea Partiers who have turned a blind eye and choose to defend the 1%.
The only thing left is to demand justice without compromise. What that is going to look like is first halting the progress of the machine. If that is insufficient, it may be, we will see to the destruction of the machine and replace it with a machine that balances the interest of the people and delivers justice.
Voting doesn't cut-it any more. We tried that and it failed due to the power of the 1% to send in armies of lobbyist that are writing law without consideration for the interests of the 99%.
My gad! The Tea Partiers couldn't be any dumber if they tried.
The long disaffected social justice community in America returned to their idealism to elect Barack Obama in 2008. His blatant betrayal of their trust is, I believe, one of the elements that led to the not so spontaneous combustion that we now call the OWS.
The point being that these Americans did make a difference in getting Obama elected.
They have, until this fall, not followed through by holding Obama's feet to the fire. Now they are acting but not focusing on making their massive political power effective where it counts, in the political process. OWS is allowing its disaffection to get the better of it and overwhelm its very real potential to effect change.
Voting does cut it. The tea party showed this in their taking advantage of the off year elections to get their people into congress with no more than 20-25% of the vote in some cases.
I believe that the OWS represents a much larger body of vote potential. Unlike the TP the OWS represents the massive body of Americans who have been hurt by the Congress being subverted by Wall Street. And they represent what was Barack Obama's winning margin that is today, with its disaffection, posing a very real threat to Obama's re-election.
If OWS organized around dissident candidates in a national Write-In in the Democratic primary we could replace Obama with someone who reflects and respects our social, economic and political justice values. People like Elizabeth Warren and Russ Feingold. Drafting them in a Democratic primary Write-In campaign could, at the least, force Obama to acknowledge OWS values and try to distance himself from his Wall Street masters.
Well said.
Does one sign make a movement? If so OWS is the most violent, racist organization since the SEIU. I understand the theory of the big lie but do you ever get embarrassed?
tea party are the 99%
They are a small extremist fringe group who have no manners just like the trolls here who represent the Tea Baggers!
The Tea Party are certainly AMONG the 99% -- that are NOT the 99%
One of my problems with the Tea Party movement is their insistence that they are the voice of everyone. They are not.
The whole idea of there being a movement of the 99% is that everyone is included and everyone has a voice. The Tea Party is, indeed, one voice among the others, but it is only one. Do not confuse inclusion with mandate.
The Tea Party never insisted that they are the voice of everyone,that's what OWS is doing. They don't even come close to 10% let alone 99%.
Dear aahpat: PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT THESE VIDEOS OF VIOLENCE PERFORMED BY THE TEA PARTY PROTESTERS. Ooops I mispsoke. There are NO videos of tea party violence because it never happened. Maybe once or twice over the course of four years, but that's about it. THESE ARE VIDEOS OF THE SO-CALLED "non-violent" OCCUPY PROTESTS AFTER ONLY TWO MONTHS EXISTENCE.
Destroying Oakland windows - http://youtu.be/v7UpfBYb3-s
Occupy DC surround the Convention center - http://youtu.be/VI0AfusvucY
Imprisoning/ grabbing people at the DC Center and Blocking a Father/son from leaving a parking lot (to go home) - http://youtu.be/prgkEAuSQT0
Occupy holds wheelchair woman & others imprisoned - http://youtu.be/Cl0BODD0K5c
Occupy Mom uses Children to Block Cars http://youtu.be/dYyJerd1t6U
Occupiers assaulting a Girl trying to escape (1:30). And trapping a Father from going home (1:50). And promoting terroristic speech: "If we have to be violent, then we will be violent to get what we want" (2:10)
Damn those inconvenient truths (and people with videocameras). YOUR TURN. Please show me similar videos of Tea Party violence where building were destroyed/damaged and people assaulted. I don't think you'll find any.
4 years of Tea protests
No destruction or damage
theaveng, re: no tea party damage...Just 4 years more brainwashing and psychological damage. I don't agree with destruction of property but there are different kinds of violence.
When you learn to read for comprehension I will respond to you.
Bullshit.
Rand Paul Supporters Rough Up MoveOn Activist: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-6992358.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody
Oklahoma Man Arrested for Twittering Tea Party Death Threats: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/twitterraid/
Top Tea Party organizer arrested for soliciting prostitute: http://abaldwin360.tumblr.com/post/10940098162/top-tea-party-organizer-arrested-for-soliciting
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/teabaggers-try-to-shout-down-health-care-reform-at-town-halls.php
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/sc_tea_party_leaders_arrested_for_selling_pirated.php
Tea Partiers aren't the perfect little boys and girls you think they are.
And ZERO arrests in 4 years of protests. ZERO destroyed property.
If the poster is talking about William Kostric-who carried a 9mm pistol in a holster strapped to his leg-a) there is no proof the pistol fit the description of an "assault" weapon. b) it was proven William Kostric-who also carried the sign about watering the liberty tree with blood-is a member of an extreme right wing movement of birthers.
Oh...and one more thing-it was a symbol that looked like crosshairs, not a target, that was on the map referenced above. If your rational is that crosshairs made someone shoot Gabby Giffords, then the fist on the OWS websites is making the cops hit OWS protesters. Sheesh
He's probably talking about the BLACK man who wore a rifle (not assault) over his shoulder and was several blocks away from our president. He was interviewed and had never fired his gun at any person and had no desire to kill Obama. - But you know, who cares about facts? It's easier for aaahat and other people to just swallow the propaganda that Democrat-funded Microsoft NBC feeds them.
Oh and you probably could find one or two Teaprtieres that were arrested. But still that's a really good record for four years time... about 1/2 person arrested per year.
Occupy's had what? Hundreds arrested in just 3 months? A lot of them probably didn't deserve to be arrested (free speech is a right), but a lot of them also DID deserve to be arrested for their VIOLENT behavior.
aaahat:
He is trying to claim Occupy is non-violent but the video evidence shows otherwise. His brain's circuitry is as hardwired as my stove. He is incapable of altering that circuitry or changing his ideas, even when presented with evidence that nullifies those ideas. Mr. aaahat is a poster boy for cognitive dissonance made manifest.
I'm all about facts. If someone finds 1 or 2 Tea Partiers-and not some fringe idiots trying to pretend to be Tea Party members-who were arrested FOR their actions while attending a Tea Party function...I'd love to know about it.
Speaking freely is not illegal. Speaking freely WHILE blocking traffic, camping within city limits, ignoring police officers-IS. Singing a song in public is not illegal. Singing a song in public while doing something else that is illegal will get you arrested. But singing the song will not be what they are taking you in for. No matter how much you INSIST to others that is was.
The truth doesn't matter to OWS, they represent the 99% even if 99% don't agree with them.
They claim to represent the 99% but reality is maybe 3% to 5%.
Please, must you exaggerate so?
Wait a minute... is this an anti-gun rant or an anti-party rant? And you are with what and who, the descendants of Malcolm?
Get real...
9.11. and Peak Oil
http://www.fromthewilderness.com
Michael C. Ruppert "Crossing the Rubicon - the decline of the American empire at the end of the age of oil"
Lyndon LaRouche - progressive and moderate Democrat and Tea Party Member against free trade and for protectionism!
http://www.larouchepac.org
LaRouche Movement
http://www.larouchepac.org
The First amendment is Free speech. This law was put here to ensure that we could speak up against injustices. The second amendment is for when the first one fails. Expect US.
You are overtly threatening assassination and insurrection.
Proving my point about the willingness of tea party right-wingers being willing to coerce and intimidate the rest of the nation with political violence.
You tea party nuts are just more Timothy McVeigh's.
So too did Thomas Jefferson, the founder of your Democrat party. In fact he said there should be a revolution every 20 years (though he later changed his mind), and that ownership of guns keeps politicians obedient to the populace, if only from fear.
Damn those inconvenient truths.
Damn these inaccurate assumptions.
I am not a Democrat. I am an Independent.
What Jefferson said and what is in the Constitution are two different things. Not everything said and written by each and every Founding father is embodied in the constitution. You are conflating the rhetoric of individuals with the signed Constitution And Bill of rights of the United States of America.
Riiiight. An independent who voted Democrat in almost every election. In my book that's a "democrat". Same as how I am technically independent (no registered party) but voted republican in almost every election so far. It's pretty obvious to me that you hate right-wingers and would never ever vote for the R party.
Way to miss the point.
You forget that the Men who founded this country ALSO engaged in violent rhetoric and insurrection. The fact that this generation would want to follow in their footsteps, in order to preserve freedom, should not surprise you. It's no different than when the Egyptians and Libyans rose-up in insurrection. You supported them didn't you?
Ha ha I m not a tea party nut I just dont take peoples shit. Anybody that knows the constitution knows the second amendment is not about sporting. I dont kill animals. If you and all your little day care friends wanna get maced and tear gassed by the cops fine, but if chaos breaks out in the streets you might be real happy to see somebody like me show up to protect you from the military dictatorship. You left wingers are dumb to suggest giving up our right to protect ourselves from tyranny. Dont bash second amendment it is there to protect your rights when the first one fails. expect It
Feel free all you militias and gun owners to protect me from military dictatorship. Git er done lol
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Anyone who knows the constitution knows that the second amendment was about national defense, arming well regulated militias to do so. It was not a follow up to the first amendment.
Anybody who knows the constitution also knows it is a right of the PEOPLE, not soldiers, and that has been upheld by the Supreme Court when they overturned the City of D.C.'s ban against guns by individual citizens.
That interpretation is subject to change, being contingent on the most right-wing makup if the court in two generations.
"The People" clearly referred to the people's right to join and contribute to a WELL REGULATED militia, an official body. which was the National Guard of its day.
If, of course you want to really go with an originalist's argument, I would grant that everyone has the right to own a ball musket.
The rights in the Bill of Rights are written in plain English. The words MEAN what they say, with very little interpretation needed (except understanding basic english). When someone make ludicrous claims it demonstrates grammar illiteracy.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The right of trial by jury shall be preserved. The accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation. The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Funny how you misquote the constitution you claim reverence for. Intentionally distorting the constitution does not further your credibility.
The passage in question is: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Because the grammar is mangled and essentially nonsensical, including the placement of various commas, the phrase has led to debate among judicial and constitutional scholars about its meaning for decades.
The implication of the words is decided by judges INTERPRETING their meaning. Not all judges, including those on the supreme court, agree to what the proper INTERPRETATION is. Previous Supreme courts have ruled differently than the current one. It is likely that a future court will rule differently again.
You are claiming a right to shoot at American police and military if they do not please you.
You are claiming a right to assassinate United States government officials who you unilaterally decide are "tyrants".
You are a sociopath.
You're trying to entrap on here ...no one is talking about violence but you spinning an entrappment post. Now I see..entrapment is your goal . Psyop=psychological operation from agent ashpat.
Nothing so grandiose.
aaahat is just a dumbass. Maybe he smoked too much pot, and now his brain lost all ability to think logically. I showed him VIDEOS of Occupiers being violent, and he claimed the videos didn't exist. He's sick in the head.
So you just go ahead and lay down and let them kill you. Let them take everything from you. What if there was a police check point every mile. What if you could not tell the difference between police and military. What if they randomly strip searched people in the streets. What if they jailed people for years with no charges ever being filed. How far is to far. When dose it go from a job to oppression. When do we have the right to strike back?
I think aapat is seeking to create entrapment on here. He keeps goading about violence and assasination until someone might say yea we'll do it. He's goading seeking to entrapp and snare. This isn't an unhappy OWS person; this is psyops=psychological operations trying to ensnare...he's hunting, seeking to entrap. Possible agent on duty here.
No aahpat is just a dumbass.
Maybe he smoked too much pot, and now his brain lost all ability to think logically. Hell I showed him VIDEOS of Occupiers being violent, and he claimed the videos didn't exist. He's sick in the head.
If they start rounding us up and feeding us into the "showers", then I would support an armed insurrection. Just like the Jews did in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
Or if the president suspended the Congress (thereby killing democracy), then I would again support armed insurrection. That's about the only circumstances I can think of.
I'm sure you wouldn't just stand-by and watch people being "showered" in gas chambers or our democratic Congress be suspended. You'd probably grab a gun too aaahat.
Don't worry, some of us, not only expect you, we need you. Don't think all OWS thinks as a monolithic entity. I for one give you my consent NOW to recue me from any concentration camp or waterboarding session. LOL I'll return the favor, as I have skills but not in fighting and combat lol
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Only a fuckin fool thinks that more debt helps a credit rating. You buy all the media garbage, and then expect the world to look at OWS with an open mind.
Try living by your own experiences.
Only an Alfred E. Newman libertarian economics idiot is so linear as to think there is never a use for credit in government.
When the economy declines and industry is not investing in the economy it is the government that has the capacity to keep the economy from sinking into depression by investing in long term growth projects like roads and infrastructure.
Then, as the economy benefits from these investments with more tax payers the tax burden to pay the debt is shared over a broader base.
That is true to a certain extent. We are past that point. Doesnt matter if we spend or if we cut, its going to lead to bankruptcy and game over.
If we just let it fail in 08, we would be almost 4 years into a real recovery. But everyone was too scared to. Now the cliff is higher.
It wont be fun, it never is, but better to get it done and over with.
Denial does not negate the rules of good economics.
Getting back to sound economic theory is the way to correct us out of this debt trap. No matter how much debt the Fed makes available people and businesses don't want to borrow because they don't see demand. the only way to restart a demand economy is to have more people working and demanding product. since business is not willing to invest in growing the labor force the government needs to grow the labor force enough to start the demand cycle.
As long as both business and government are reducing employees there will continue to be a decline in demand resulting in a decline in the economy.
The laws of supply-demand do not change. Reducing the demand reduces the need for supply resulting in even greater reductions in demand.
We have to reverse the cycle. The only way to do that is for the government to invest in growing the economy.
Iceland left their banks fail in 2008.
And now they are recovering with a growing economy.
Iceland has proved the validity of the "let it fail and clean out the bad businesses" model.
Iceland's GDP ranks 115 out of 183. the U.S. GDP is #2 in the world. Their banks were so small that they were merged and bought out without a blip in the global economy.
The U.S. and Iceland are not comparable.
No one is lending us money to do that, in case you havent noticed. We curretnly own more of our debt than any other country.
How many of our own credit cards should we create, to make jobs?
We already did the stimulus- 1T, the bailouts 7.7T, and QE1 and 2 -1.2T.
Globalization, along with out of control military, and 15T of debt entering the biggest entitlement era ever, is a recipe for destruction.
Better to realize it, and plan your life and business accordingly (what employers are doing) than to think its gonna come back before it breaks all the way down.
We did not do the stimulus. Only one thing of the package went to stimulus. The right-wing insisted that the largest part go to tax braks for the rich and they pocketed the money.
Our debt is still the most attractive on the planet. Even with the downgrade.
U.S. agencies buy U.S. treasury debt to manage and reduce costs of doing business.
Government is not a business. government must consider the interests of all of the people not simply stock holders or landed gentry.
cutting the military would help. also ending the counter-productive War on Drugs would save the federal government $42-billion a year. the combined states another $63-billion a year. And legalization would give the combined states and federal government more than $60-billion a year in new tax money. More than a trillion dollars in savings and new revenue over ten years from just ending the War on Drugs.
"most attractive on the planet" is like judging a beauty contest of trolls.
Its not US agencies buying the debt, its the US people.
Its a scam, has been since 1971, and the bottom is about to fall out.
Almost a third of stimulus went to tex breaks. That still leaves a fuckin huge sum of 700b injected into local projects, etc.
Its just keeping the dollar floating. The final nail in the coffin is coming soon, dont worry. There has never been a country who has become this wreckless with their money- from the poor to the rich to the gov- that pulls out of it. Ever.
There are all manner of websites that show the Stimulus Bill breakdown, and most of it was SPENDING MONEY for various government agencies to oversee projects like Solyndra. It was pork, not tax cuts.
The official government tracking web site: http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/default.aspx
Tax cuts: $300.1 billion
Contracts, grants and loans: $216.9 billion
Entitlements(extending unemployment): $214.9 billion
http://useconomy.about.com/od/candidatesandtheeconomy/a/Obama_Stimulus.htm
They cant focus on making jobs with the fake money, its all going to just propping up the dollar. When the currency isnt worth a shit, and they are just trying to hold onto the dollar and Brenton Woods as long as possible, in a global environment, it doesnt matter how many jobs they try to create. Its going down, because quite honestly, thats what the globalists want.
You're correct.
Iceland left their banks fail in 2008.
And now they are recovering with a growing economy. Iceland has proved the validity of the "let it fail and clean out the bad businesses" model.
Sounds like a Corporate-created theory to me. What you basically just described is corporate welfare.
Nothing of the sort.
It is called Keynesian economics.
How does supporting the limiting of debt help Wall Street?
How does borrowing more money help America's (sic) credit rating?
If you don't know the answers to those questions you do not understand or accept established Keynesian economics. There is no talking with you.
I understand Keynesian economics very well. It's what got us into this mess.
Especially at this stage, "There is no talking with you" is a cop-out, as (on your part) no real attempt to have a discussion has been made.
Keynesian economic theory holds that the wealthiest members of society are taxed for the building of infrastructure and other necessities, in order to create jobs and stimulate demand , as well as towards the ends of civilized society. Is this the state of the economy and the society as you see it?
No, it is not.
So then, what got us into this mess? I'll tell you, among other things, supply side economics did. America worked pretty well under Keynesian economics. That ended completely with the election of Reagan and this country has gone to hell one step at a time ever since.
What got us into this mess is the debasement of currency. If you study instances in history where this was done, the results have always been the same, regardless of epoch or place. The only thing that has varied is the time frame, i.e. how long it took for the effects to be felt and/or the system to collapse. The main factors in this variability have to do with how rapidly the debasement was perpetrated, and the "velocity of money" (I put that in quotes, because "money" and "currency" are not synonymous), meaning the rate at which it circulated.
No it's not. It's the corruption of the human soul, and the periodic need to throw out the corrupt, the viscious and the psycopathic, who seem to be the people who always make their way into power while other people's backs are turned, and I would include "Dr." Paul in that catagory. (See Thomas Jefferson.)
Thomas Jefferson would LOVE Ron Paul. They are almost identical in their views. Espeically the 10th amendment which Jefferson considered the most important sentence in the Constitution, and Paul agrees.
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Indeed. It's the corruption of the human soul that leads the people with the power to do so to think to debase a currency. Indeed, I would consider calling the people who debase a currency vicious and psychopathic.
You cannot expect to be able to successfully order people to find love and compassion in their hearts. That is one reason why government regulation does not work. The other is that government is composed of people, and that those who seek government office are not automatically morally or intellectually superior to those who do not (I would say quite to the contrary), leading to scenarios akin to the fox guarding the hen-house.
Freedom, rather than manipulation and control, is the antidote to the corruption of the human soul.
I don't understand your categorizing Dr. Paul as vicious and psychopathic. Can you cite examples? I also don't understand you reference to Thomas Jefferson. Can you elaborate?
The government of a republic can be held accontable to the people. That is why Republican government was created. That is what we are attempting to enforce. In the absence of such government, no one can be held accountable. You either have anarchy, which simply doesn't work and rapidly evolves into dictatorship, or you just get dictatorship outright of one form or another. All the Ron Lawl people keep talking about is individual liberty, and the they say we should all follow Ron Lawl - see any contradiction here?
Ron Lawl's people attacked the Yippies, people who's views were very similar to OWS, in the 60's with clubs. His willingness to resort to viloence is documented. The refference to Jefferson is self-explanitory, if you read Jefferson, and his presentation of the argument I am now simply paraphrasing. He thought through these things long before I was born.
Good.
Now please document it. Show us the links so we can read this for ourselves. (Or retract the attack as unfounded.)
Keynesian economic theory holds that governments should hand-out corporate welfare during tough times.
It has been proved invalid during the 30s, and again during Japan's "lost decade" of the 90s. Keynesian theory looks good on paper, but has failed again and again in the reality of recessions.
Nope. Please find a reference to Keynes advocating bailouts and corporate welfare.
Demand-side stimulus worked in the 30s and 40s. Japan's problem was on the demand side, which is where Keynesian stimulus would go (see above). Helicopter money and monetary policy alone is "pushing on a string" which is precisely what Keynes said wouldn't work.
Good piece: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/774c0920-fd1d-11dd-a103-000077b07658.html#axzz1fnBWDaCa
Attempting to reason with right-wing libertarians is pushing on a string.
False. Libertarians actually lie in the middle between Republicans and Democrats. They share the republican view of small government, but oppose the moral police aspect, and instead side with the Democrat view of social freedom (same sex marriage, freedom of expression, right to abort pregnancies, et cetera).
Lying propaganda from predators.
You'rethe predator
Nice argumentum ad hominem.
No - there are also the democrats and progressive and constructive moderarte Tea Party Members of Lyndon LaRouche...
http://www.larouchepac.com
"OWS is a non-violent social, economic and political justice movement seeking to protect Americans. The tea party is a violent right-wing GOP insurrectionist movement using violent and intimidating innuendo and threats against America's political leaders to coerce and intimidate them into capitulating to tea party and Wall Street dictates."
wild, i think I have my pictures backwards. let's see.
here is a tea party gathering : http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/20090419/washington-crossing-crowd-500.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/003105.html&h=323&w=500&sz=40&tbnid=C8FCjrxEGy3vJM:&tbnh=94&tbnw=146&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dpictures%2Bof%2Btea%2Bparty%2Bcrowd%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=pictures+of+tea+party+crowd&docid=fACa2SkAG0_VlM&sa=X&ei=zvLcTuLALKrW0QG1k6XmDA&ved=0CCQQ9QEwAQ&dur=3520
and Here is an OWS gathering: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3rbCnP5_YLY/Tp4HbpyFLuI/AAAAAAAADFA/y-52zS32Yjk/s400/OWS_protestor-460x307.jpg&imgrefurl=http://peakoil.com/forums/occupy-wall-street-demonstrations-spread-pt-2-t63477-165.html&h=267&w=400&sz=43&tbnid=YxG61cOe7Vj2AM:&tbnh=88&tbnw=132&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dpictures%2Bof%2BOWS%2Bmob%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=pictures+of+OWS+mob&docid=qVuPjXK6tv7jkM&sa=X&ei=YvPcTvvrCurn0QHIn7XrDQ&ved=0CEsQ9QEwDQ&dur=242
yea, dang that Bush must have swaped the pictures.
As a retired professional photographer I know how out of context images can mislead and misrepresent reality. Just a lot of empty propaganda.
yes, as opposed to forum posts in text, which could never mislead anyone.
like This gospel of truth we are replying to.
Excellent PepperGirl. You are following the agenda exactly as planned.
I see OWS has captured your attention. Excellent!
You're a fucking idiot. Talk about exaggeration. What a lame attempt at what the Dumocraps tried but could never do,.....bring down the Tea Party. OWS is a violent and disgusting entity that has no hope of accomplishing anything except spreading disease,poverty,class envy and hatred.
Bilderberger
http://www.bilderberg.org/