Republicans have been positively beside themselves trying to throw off our President any way they can. Problem is, THEY look like the petty idiots.
Queen of these petty idiots is Michele Bauchmann, who insists she is “serious candidate for the Presidency of the United States”! What serious candidate even has to say this?
New Line’s “New Year’s Eve,” a PG-13-rated ensemble comedy featuring many of the biggest stars in Hollywood, grossed only $13.7 million, according to studio estimates.
Even with that disappointing number — the studio had expected the movie would debut to $20 million — “New Year’s Eve” was No. 1 at the domestic box office…full story
Tattoo artist, Ryan L. Fitzjerald was hit with a $100,000 lawsuit last week by his ex-girlfriend Rossie Brovent. She claims that her boyfriend was supposed to tattoo a scene from Narnia on her back but instead tattooed an image of a pile of excrement with flies buzzing around it.
Apparently Ryan found out that she had cheated with a long-time friend of his and this was his way of getting even. Originally Rossie tried to have Ryan charged with assault but it turns out this crafty tattoo artist got her to sign a consent form prior to the tattoo and it said that the design was ‘at the artists discretion’, she claims; “he tricked her by drinking a bottle of cheap wine with me and doing tequila shots before I signed it and got the tattoo”. “Actually I was passed out for most of the time, and woke up to this horrible image on my back.”
Fundamentally: Newt Gingrich’s Favorite Word
By Dan Amira
Facebook Twitter ShareThis Counter Email By now, we’ve all become familiar with Newt Gingrich’s habit of using a few choice adverbs to make the things he says sound just a bit more intelligent to his listeners. Profoundly. Deeply. Frankly. But none of them are as vital to the Gingrich lexicon as fundamentally (along with its cousin, the adjective fundamental). While this appears to be Gingrich’s favorite word in the English language, you could also argue that he uses the word so often, and so reflexively, that it’s become virtually meaningless to him. In a single 2008 address to the American Enterprise Institute, he used the words fundamentally or fundamental a total of eighteen times.
Newt Gingrich, you might say, is the world’s most hard-core fundamentalist.
To give you a more complete understanding of how compulsively Gingrich abuses his favorite words, I searched Nexis transcripts and news accounts with the goal of plucking out every single phrase in which he uttered them. I started in the present day, and made it all the way to the beginning of 2007 before I had to stop, for my own health and sanity, which, according to my editors, was beginning to suffer in noticeable ways. The list below contains only unique usages — for example, if he said the phrase “fundamental change” five different times, we only included it once — and, obviously, we only included remarks that were public and recorded in some way. Scroll onward, if you dare, to behold all loosely alphabetized 418 entries. (We’ve bolded our favorites.)
“fundamentally a falsehood”
“fundamentally a lie”
“fundamentally a violation of international law”
“fundamentally about reassessing our entire strategy in the region”
“fundamentally across the entire system”
“fundamentally against the American tradition”
“fundamentally alien to American tradition”
“fundamentally alien to historical American experience”
“fundamental analytical question ”
“fundamental and certain”
“fundamental and more profound”
“fundamentally and radically change”
“fundamentally anti-America and certainly anti-American government”
“fundamentally anti-America”
“fundamental approach to fixing Medicare”
“fundamental assault on the core values of the American Constitution and a fundamental assault on the core values of the Founding Fathers”
“fundamentally better future”
“fundamental blow to our capacity to lead the world and to create jobs”
“fundamentally break his word with the American people”
“fundamentally break the Senate”
“fundamental break with the last eight years”
“fundamental breakthrough”
“fundamental breakthroughs”
“fundamental breakthrough in Alzheimer’s”
“fundamental breakthrough in the Royal Navy’s ability to go around the world”
“fundamentally broken”
“fundamentally brought about improvement”
“fundamentally center power in Washington”
“fundamentally challenge the survival of America as we have known it”
“fundamentally challenge the survival of America as we know it”
“fundamental challenges”
“fundamental change”
“fundamental change, which created what we now think of as modern government”
“fundamental change from twenty years ago”
“fundamental change if we’re ever going to win the war on terror”
“fundamental change in our policies and in our institutions”
“fundamental change in the Budget Act”
“fundamental change in the payment system”
“fundamental change in Washington”
“fundamental change it takes to rebuild America”
“fundamentally change a state like this by having a shallow campaign”
“fundamentally change America”
“fundamentally change America is really hard”
“fundamentally change his foreign policy”
“fundamentally change how we’re doing things”
“fundamentally change in education even if it made the unions uncomfortable”
“fundamentally change Medicare”
“fundamentally change our system as we know it”
“fundamentally change people’s behavior”
“fundamentally change that is to go step by step”
“fundamentally change the city”
“fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America
“fundamentally change the current congressional behaviors”
“fundamentally change the government”
“fundamentally change the rules”
“fundamentally change the state”
“fundamentally change the system”
“fundamentally change the trajectory of America
“fundamentally change the trajectory of America”
“fundamentally change the trajectory of care”
“fundamentally change the underlying system”
“fundamentally change the way we deliver — and administer — care”
“fundamentally changed the Iowa constitution”
“fundamentally changed the mood of the Republican party and he fundamentally changed the story of 2008.”
“fundamentally changed the national debate.”
“fundamentally changes America in ways that will make it unrecognizable”
“fundamentally changes American life.”
“fundamental changes that are big enough”
“fundamental changes they deserve”
“fundamentally changing our space policy”
“fundamentally changing unemployment compensation”
“fundamentally changing Washington in a decisive way”
“fundamentally cheating”
“fundamental choice for America”
“fundamental choice here”
“fundamental choice to make in this election”
“fundamental choices about our future as a people and as a nation.”
“fundamental conflict with Shari’a”
“fundamental contract renegotiation with their unions”
“fundamental conversation as a country”
“fundamental conversation that begins I believe with American exceptionalism”
“fundamental cultural change”
“fundamental cultural decision for this country to decide”
“fundamentally dangerous”
“fundamental debate”
“fundamental debate for the next three years”
“fundamentally decentralizing it”
“fundamental, deep rethinking of our education programs”
“fundamentally destroying jobs and fundamentally weakening our economic future”
“fundamental difference about strategy”
“fundamental difference between the modern world”
“fundamental difference between trying to solve the problems of this country from the top down”
“fundamental difference in how you think about doing this.”
“fundamental difference with me”
“fundamental differences here”
“fundamental differences in America’s future”
“fundamental differences in Gallup data”
“fundamental differences with Fidel Castro?”
“fundamental different analysis of how reality works”
“fundamentally different America.”
“fundamentally different and they mature and change”
“fundamentally different approach than just this fighting over insurance”
“fundamentally different approach to being positive”
“fundamentally different attitude”
“fundamentally different campaign than my staff did”
“fundamentally different environmental solutions agency”
“fundamentally different from anything you’ve seen”
“fundamentally different from the historic America”
“fundamentally different he was from the news media’s portrait of him”
“fundamentally different in cooperating with business”
“fundamentally different model than Albany and Sacramento”
“fundamentally different model”
“fundamentally different models”
“fundamentally different model, a fundamentally different culture and a fundamentally different approach”
“fundamentally different question”
“fundamentally different should trouble every American”
“fundamentally different standards”
“fundamentally different than America has been for the last 400 years”
“fundamentally different than his words”
“fundamentally different than the kind of phony stimulus approach”
“fundamentally different than the tea party”
“fundamentally different than the way the modern left thinks about America.”
“fundamentally different than the way Washington thinks”
“fundamentally different than us, in ways we don’t understand”
“fundamentally different than Washington thinks about”
“fundamentally different that it is literally irreconcilable with modernity”
“fundamentally different theories of how the economy works”
“fundamentally different today”
“fundamentally different view of how politics works”
“fundamentally different view, Greta”
“fundamentally different visions of America”
“fundamentally disagree with Senator Obama”
“fundamental disagreement”
“fundamentally dishonest”
“fundamentally dishonest and fundamentally dangerous”
“fundamentally dishonest and impossible to implement”
“fundamentally dishonest bills”
“fundamentally dishonest he is”
“fundamentally dishonest her position is.
“fundamentally dishonest pattern”
“fundamentally dishonest the liberal media was”
“fundamentally dishonest way”
“fundamental dishonesty”
“fundamental dishonesty of that machine”
“fundamental dishonesty of the system”
“fundamentally disrupt it”
“fundamentally disrupting and replacing the left in Washington, D.C.”
“fundamental disservice to the American people”
“fundamental disservice to the country”
“fundamental disservice to the United States”
“fundamental division between most Americans and the secular socialist people around Obama”
“fundamentally edifying experience so far”
“fundamental educational campaign”
“fundamentally eliminating right to work”
“fundamental error in its conception”
“fundamentally exceptional system for human liberty”
“fundamental fact here”
“fundamental facts”
“fundamentally, factually wrong.”
“fundamentally false model of American government”
“fundamentally false speech”
“fundamentally false”
“fundamental fight with the party of big government”
“fundamentally flawed”
“fundamentally flawed system”
“fundamentally flawed understanding of reality”
“fundamentally flawed way of running this country”
“fundamentally goes against everything we know”
“fundamentally, he’s not up to the job”
“fundamentally how to reformulate it”
“fundamental human values for millions and millions of people”
“fundamentally hurtful and so fundamentally false”
“fundamentally immoral for a society”
“fundamental impediment to freedom”
“fundamentally improved”
“fundamental improvements in government”
“fundamentally insist on changing large bureaucracies”
“fundamental institutional problem”
“fundamentally irresponsible and dishonest”
“fundamental issues that matter deeply to the future of the country”
“fundamental level change the power of the left”
“fundamental local changes”
“fundamentally look at the scale of the challenge we face”
“fundamentally make this country competitive and healthy”
“fundamentally misinterpreted the Constitution”
“fundamentally misleading about the nature of America”
“fundamentally misleading about the nature of reality and fundamentally misleading about the world”
“fundamentally misleading that it is damaging to our national security”
“fundamentally misleading the Senate”
“fundamentally misreading the economy”
“fundamental mistake”
“fundamental mistake about the nature of what you do in a country”
“fundamental mistake in Washington to misread the 1990s”
“fundamental mistake to focus on whether or not he is qualified”
“fundamental mistake made”
“fundamentally mistakes made”
“fundamental misunderstanding of television”
“fundamental misunderstanding of the dynamics of the war that we’re in”
“fundamental misunderstanding of the whole nature of intelligence”
“fundamental misunderstanding of warfare”
“fundamentally misunderstands the world”
“fundamentally misunderstands why institutions like this were created”
“fundamentally misunderstood what happened with the shutdown”
“fundamentally modernize the processes of the federal government”
“fundamentally, morally wrong”
“fundamental national conversation”
“fundamentally new approach to how we think about learning in America.”
“fundamentally new contract with the union”
“fundamentally new models”
“fundamentally new tax code”
“fundamentally new thought”
“fundamentally not true”
“fundamental of all Islamic laws”
“fundamentally off-base in very profound ways”
“fundamentally opposed to Bush’s policies.”
“fundamentally opposite of everything”
“fundamentally opposite of the current FDA”
“fundamentally out of touch with America”
“fundamentally out of touch with how the world works”
“fundamentally out of touch with the reality of the real world”
“fundamentally out of whack about our whole process of choosing candidates”
“fundamentally outdated and should be put to rest.”
“fundamental overhaul”
“fundamentally overhaul”
“fundamentally overall our learning system”
“fundamental overhaul of the tax system”
“fundamentally overhaul our learning system”
“fundamentally overhaul the national security system”
“fundamentally overhauling and changing the Federal Communications Commission”
“fundamentally overhauling the Corps of Engineers”
“fundamental part of the American constitutional system”
“fundamental personnel reform”
“fundamental philosophical basis for America”
“fundamental philosophy”
“fundamental policy change”
“fundamental problem”
“fundamental problems they have competing today”
“fundamental problems we have in our economy”
“fundamental, profound change”
“fundamentally profoundly ignorantly anti-American the current judicial model is”
“fundamentally, profoundly change Washington”
“fundamentally, profoundly wrong”
“fundamental question about can we do it better”
“fundamental question of identity”
“fundamental question of the nature of America”
“fundamentally question the current social contract with Native Americans”
“fundamental questions”
“fundamental questions about how badly the system is failing”
“fundamental questions about this case”
“fundamental questions of morality”
“fundamental questions we have to rethink”
“fundamentally readdress as Americans”
“fundamental real change”
“fundamentally re-approach how we think about disabilities”
“fundamentally rearranging their lives”
“fundamentally re-center the system”
“fundamental reexamination of the war strategy and where we are”
“fundamental reform”
“fundamental reform candidate in the race”
“fundamental reform of the bureaucracy”
“fundamental reform of the Fed”
“fundamentally reform and overhaul the federal government — fundamentally — ”
“fundamentally reform the Food and Drug Administration”
“fundamentally reform the government, they had to fundamentally change the rules so that people had more gasoline at a lower price”
“fundamentally reform the system”
“fundamentally reformed the Bureau of Land Management”
“fundamentally reformed the Department of the Interior”
“fundamental rejection of the establishment in both parties”
“fundamentally re-organize American politics”
“fundamentally replace a lot of failing systems”
“fundamentally replace our core values”
“fundamentally replace the current civil service laws”
“fundamentally replace the Detroit school system with a series of experiments”
“fundamentally replaced their current failed education system”
“fundamental replacement of America”
“fundamentally replacing the entire Civil Service process”
“fundamentally replacing things that don’t work”
“fundamentally reset American government and American politics”
“fundamentally reset the country”
“fundamentally reshape how we invest in science”
“fundamentally reshape the NLRB”
“fundamentally reshaped the spiritual and political landscape of the 20th Century”
“fundamental restatement that the academy has to do something”
“fundamental restructuring”
“fundamentally rethink an investment budget as opposed to an annual budget”
“fundamentally rethink disability in America”
“fundamentally rethink education in America”
“fundamentally rethink how we exploit brain science across the board”
“fundamentally rethink how we treat and rehabilitate our prisoners”
“fundamentally rethink how we win that”
“fundamentally rethink our national defense system”
“fundamentally rethink prisons”
“fundamentally rethink that area”
“fundamentally rethink the budgeting process at that level”
“fundamentally rethink the entire federal government system”
“fundamentally rethink the entire way we approach disabilities in America.”
“fundamentally rethink the federal government”
“fundamentally rethink the payment and funding of health care”
“fundamentally rethink the role of the member of Congress”
“fundamentally rethink unemployment compensation”
“fundamental rethinking of the American government”
“fundamental rethinking of the federal government”
“fundamentally rethinking our entire health care system”
“fundamentally rethinking the current system.”
“fundamentally rethinking the presidential selection process”
“fundamentally rethinking the system”
“fundamentally rethinking”
“fundamentally rethought if we are going to get this country back to stability”
“fundamentally revisit how we deal with judges”
“fundamentally rewriting it”
“fundamentally rig the game”
“fundamentally shake up their cost structure”
“fundamentally shift back to a much more conservative government”
“fundamental shift back to personal responsibility”
“fundamental shift in the way medicine is practiced”
“fundamentally shifting resources towards families.”
“fundamentally shifting the direction of the United States government”
“fundamentally sinful from the standpoint”
“fundamental social conservative reform in 70 years”
“fundamental strategic assessment”
“fundamental, strategic difference”
“fundamental than anything going on in Washington right now”
“fundamental than the current political system seems to be able to have”
“fundamental the problem is”
“fundamentally the wrong direction”
“fundamental thinking of our policy overseas”
“fundamental threat his ideology is to the country”
“fundamental threat to freedom in this country”
“fundamental threat to the survival of America as a country”
“fundamentally transform government”
“fundamentally transform government from the world that fails to the world that works”
“fundamentally transform litigation, regulation, taxation, education, health, energy, infrastructure, and our national security apparatuses”
“fundamentally transform the state through a series of targeted strikes”
“fundamental transformation of government”
“fundamental transformation of the State Department”
“fundamental truths”
“fundamentally try to learn, where are we?”
“fundamentally trying to change this country”
“fundamental turning point”
“fundamentally unconstitutional”
“fundamental underlying institutional reform”
“fundamental understanding today of the changes we need to be successful”
“fundamentally undisciplined”
“fundamentally unfair to America’s future”
“fundamental values, our fundamental belief systems”
“fundamentally very dangerous”
“fundamentally violate the Constitution”
“fundamentally violate the federal government”
“fundamental violation of legitimate government”
“fundamental violation of the Constitution”
“fundamental violation of the Constitution and a fundamental violation of the executive branch’s power”
“fundamental violation of your rights as given you by your creator”
“fundamental vision of extending Sharia across the planet”
“fundamental way what happens to you when you are 65″
“fundamental ways he’s disappointing the left”
“fundamentally with Rush on this question”
“fundamentally wrong about a guy who had years of tax violations”
“fundamentally wrong about that”
“fundamentally wrong about the way we’re measuring the current market value”
“fundamentally wrong about this entire process”
“fundamentally wrong and fundamentally against the American tradition”
“fundamentally wrong and, I believe, unconstitutional”
“fundamentally wrong as a model”
“fundamentally wrong because it distances a member of the House of Representatives”
“fundamentally wrong because now you’re into personal enrichment”
“fundamentally wrong because trickle-down bureaucracy doesn’t work”
“fundamentally wrong for a military commander”
“fundamentally wrong for the president to delegate strategic thinking”
“fundamentally wrong for the speaker of the House to have a military aircraft”
“fundamentally wrong for the survival of this country”
“fundamentally wrong from the standpoint of most Americans”
“fundamentally wrong if you’re in a war”
“fundamentally wrong in talking about more quantitative easing”
“fundamentally wrong the left is”
“fundamentally wrong this process is”
“fundamentally wrong to build a mosque at ground zero”
“fundamentally wrong to create a precedent”
“fundamentally wrong to give people money for 99 weeks for doing nothing”
“fundamentally wrong when the big three are not willing to negotiate”
“fundamentally wrong when the president … appoints people so radical”
“fundamentally wrong with how Washington works, and there’s something fundamentally wrong with how the Congress is currently working”
“fundamentally wrong with it”
“fundamentally wrong with the current system”
“fundamentally wrong with the system”
“fundamentally wrong with weakness in America”
by: Jonathan Larsen , story highlighted on “Up w/ Chris Hayes”; Ken Olshansky is a producer for the show.
firm’s memo spells out plan to undermine Occupy Wall StreetBy Jonathan Larsen and Ken Olshansky, MSNBC TV
A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by the MSNBC program “Up w/ Chris Hayes.”
The proposal was written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association.
CLGC’s memo proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it says Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead.
According to the memo, if Democrats embrace OWS, “This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street. … It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.”
The memo also suggests that Democratic victories in 2012 should not be the ABA’s biggest concern. “… (T)he bigger concern,” the memo says, “should be that Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street companies.”
Two of the memo’s authors, partners Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, previously worked for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Geduldig joined CLGC before Boehner became speaker; Cranford joined CLGC this year after serving as the speaker’s assistant for policy. A third partner, Steve Clark, is reportedly “tight” with Boehner, according to a story by Roll Call that CLGC features on its website.
Jeff Sigmund, an ABA spokesperson, confirmed that the association got the memo. “Our Government Relations staff did receive the proposal – it was unsolicited and we chose not to act on it in any way,” he said in a statement to “Up.”
CLGC did not return calls seeking comment.
Boehner spokesman Michael Steel declined to comment on the memo. But he responded to its characterization of Republicans as defenders of Wall Street by saying, “My understanding is that President Obama is the single largest recipient of donations from Wall Street.”
On “Up” Saturday, Obama campaign adviser Anita Dunn responded by saying that the majority of the president’s re-election campaign is fueled by small donors. She rejected the suggestion that the president himself is too close to Wall Street, saying “If that’s the case, why were tough financial reforms passed over party line Republican opposition?”
The CLGC memo raises another issue that it says should be of concern to the financial industry — that OWS might find common cause with the Tea Party. “Well-known Wall Street companies stand at the nexus of where OWS protestors and the Tea Party overlap on angered populism,” the memo says. “…This combination has the potential to be explosive later in the year when media reports cover the next round of bonuses and contrast it with stories of millions of Americans making do with less this holiday season.”
The memo outlines a 60-day plan to conduct surveys and research on OWS and its supporters so that Wall Street companies will be prepared to conduct a media campaign in response to OWS. Wall Street companies “likely will not be the best spokespeople for their own cause,” according to the memo. “A big challenge is to demonstrate that these companies still have political strength and that making them a political target will carry a severe political cost.”
Part of the plan CLGC proposes is to do “statewide surveys in at least eight states that are shaping up to be the most important of the 2012 cycle.”
Specific races listed in the memo are U.S. Senate races in Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Mexico and Nevada as well as the gubernatorial race in North Carolina.
The memo indicates that CLGC would research who has contributed financial backing to OWS, noting that, “Media reports have speculated about associations with George Soros and others.”
“It will be vital,” the memo says, “to understand who is funding it and what their backgrounds and motives are. If we can show that they have the same cynical motivation as a political opponent it will undermine their credibility in a profound way.”
An angry Rhesus monkey is apt to defecate in its hands and throw its feces at you. I think this accurately sums up the debating skills of the current crop of Republican cartoons currently vying for The Top Job. All except Rick Perry of course. He’s taken the deer-caught-in-the headlights stylings of George W. Bush to a whole new level by simply soiling himself on national television. But he’s not as smart as Mitt Romney et al because he doesn’t know what to do with his ammunition once he’s made it.
After watching the Republican Gong Show it’s obvious to anyone smarter than a goldfish that any one of these “leaders” of the Republican Party, if elected, will take this country straight to hell at roughly the speed of sound. The Democrats are the obviously prudent choice. Obama proposes proceeding down the road to perdition at the stately rate of only 55 miles an hour. Thank God our country has a two party system. We have the freedom to choose how fast we want to die.
Seemingly switching topics for a moment … did you know massive numbers of migrating lemmings do not commit mass suicide by flinging themselves off cliffs to drown in the sea below?
That particular fake fact was implanted in my brain because I grew up watching Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color on a black and white Zenith television set. The 1958 Disney documentary, White Wilderness, staged the footage of lemmings jumping to their death during faked scenes of mass migration. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary, Cruel Camera, found the lemmings used for White Wilderness were flown over 500 miles from Hudson Bay to Calgary where they did not jump from the precipice, but were launched off the cliff using a specially built turntable. Years and years later a couple of video games reinforced the notion that lemmings were prone to snuffing themselves but …
Lemmings do not commit mass suicide.
We do.
We’re in the process of doing it right now. And we’re more ambitious than the misunderstood arctic rodents. We’re taking as much of the planet as we can … with us.
We’re all marching steadily up to the edge of the cliff, surrounded by friends, family, and everybody else trapped in this insane culture. We’re at the point now where we can see where we’re going, and what’s going to happen once we get there.
We’re going to jump.
All of us.
Whether we want to or not … We’re going to jump.
It’s the classic nightmare. We’re going to our doom but we can’t seem to stop putting one foot in front of the other. Some of us are telling the others that we shouldn’t keep walking up to the cliff. And some of us agree that we should stop … but we just keep walking in the same direction.
Every day … all day … some yahoo like Rush Limbaugh pulls out a bullhorn and tells us to walk faster. This is the direction we’re supposed to be heading and we’ve got to pick up the pace to get there even quicker. Anyone who says otherwise is a dirty rotten liberal jihadist terrorist. And then a conciliatory voice from the liberal community advises us that we should possibly consider slowing down. Many of us agree. And the endless argument about speeding up or slowing down ripples through the crowd walking relentlessly towards the cliff.
As we march toward oblivion we can see, if we choose to look, the destruction we’ve caused everywhere we’ve been. Wherever we’ve walked, the fertile land has become a desert. With every step we can see it’s getting worse.
A tour of Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry begins with a small placard on a wall stating the Native People who greeted the American settlers had lived in the region for “… thousands of years.” To be more precise, they had been living there since the end of the last glacial period over 10,000 years ago.
The Native People looked around and saw their home … and lived there for 100 centuries. The men who founded Seattle looked around and saw dollar bills. They brought the old-growth forests and salmon from unimaginable abundance … to scarcity … to near extinction in less than 100 years.
Derrick Jensen wrote in his book Endgame, “Do you believe that our culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living? For the last several years I’ve taken to asking people this question, at talks and rallies, in libraries, on buses, in airplanes, at the grocery store, the hardware store. Everywhere. The answers range from emphatic nos to laughter. No one answers in the affirmative. One fellow at one talk did raise his hand, and when everyone looked at him, he dropped his hand, then said, sheepishly, “Oh, voluntary? No, of course not.” My next question: how will this understanding that this culture will not voluntarily stop destroying the natural world, eliminating indigenous cultures, exploiting the poor, and killing those who resistshift our strategy and tactics? The answer? Nobody knows, because we never talk about it: we’re too busy pretending the culture will undergo a magical transformation.”
And yet we walk on. Stopping is not an option. Anyone who thinks we should stop is delusional. The only societally acceptable argument is … what is the correct speed? Once that is determined everything will be just fine. But we know that’s not true. Regardless of what the feces flinging monkeys screech or the placating voices of liberals murmur … it’s not true at all.
So step by harrowing step the panic starts to build. Why doesn’t somebody do something? Why doesn’t somebody stop us?
Maybe if we change our lifestyle we can stop marching to the cliff. What if we all ran to our hardware stores and bought energy saving light bulbs? What if we all took shorter showers? Left the car in the driveway and took a bus? And if that’s not good enough … what if we went over to the breaker box and turned our houses … off … for 12 out of 24 hours each day? Would that finally work if we cut our energy and water consumption in half?
No.
Each day a Palm Springs golf course consumes as much water as a family of four uses in four years and a U.S. navy destroyer uses the same amount of oil in a week that Huntington Beach California, a city of 200,000 people, uses in a year.
To paraphrase Bill Clinton, “It’s the Dominant Culture, stupid.”
We may have seen the beginnings of a way to stop The Dominant Culture. It’s going to take Occupy … Everything.
Now.
Occupy Everything. It’s as simple as Not Buying Anything for God’s birthday and Staying Home on a national strike day … and the next day … and the next … until the psychopaths understand we’re not walking up to that cliff any longer. We’re going to stop. And talk about where to go from here.
Anyone who doesn’t agree had better come up with a different plan pretty quick. Because the feces flinging monkeys and the placating liberals are going to grab you by the throat and shove you off that cliff if you don’t voluntarily jump.
Welcome to the revolution. Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They can talk but they cannot speak. They are as dead and useless to us as the water-soaked books, tents, sleeping bags, suitcases, food boxes and clothes that were tossed by sanitation workers Tuesday morning into garbage trucks in New York City. They have no ideas, no plans and no vision for the future.
Our decaying corporate regime has strutted in Portland, Oakland and New York with their baton-wielding cops into a fool’s paradise. They think they can clean up “the mess”—always employing the language of personal hygiene and public security—by making us disappear. They think we will all go home and accept their corporate nation, a nation where crime and government policy have become indistinguishable, where nothing in America, including the ordinary citizen, is deemed by those in power worth protecting or preserving, where corporate oligarchs awash in hundreds of millions of dollars are permitted to loot and pillage the last shreds of collective wealth, human capital and natural resources, a nation where the poor do not eat and workers do not work, a nation where the sick die and children go hungry, a nation where the consent of the governed and the voice of the people is a cruel joke.
Get back into your cages, they are telling us. Return to watching the lies, absurdities, trivia and celebrity gossip we feed you in 24-hour cycles on television. Invest your emotional energy in the vast system of popular entertainment. Run up your credit card debt. Pay your loans. Be thankful for the scraps we toss. Chant back to us our phrases about democracy, greatness and freedom. Vote in our rigged political theater. Send your young men and women to fight and die in useless, unwinnable wars that provide corporations with huge profits. Stand by mutely as our bipartisan congressional supercommittee, either through consensus or cynical dysfunction, plunges you into a society without basic social services including unemployment benefits. Pay for the crimes of Wall Street.
The rogues’ gallery of Wall Street crooks, such as Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs, Howard Milstein at New York Private Bank & Trust, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers and Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase & Co., no doubt think it’s over. They think it is back to the business of harvesting what is left of America to swell their personal and corporate fortunes. But they no longer have any concept of what is happening around them. They are as mystified and clueless about these uprisings as the courtiers at Versailles or in the Forbidden City who never understood until the very end that their world was collapsing. The billionaire mayor of New York, enriched by a deregulated Wall Street, is unable to grasp why people would spend two months sleeping in an open park and marching on banks. He says he understands that the Occupy protests are “cathartic” and “entertaining,” as if demonstrating against the pain of being homeless and unemployed is a form of therapy or diversion, but that it is time to let the adults handle the affairs of state. Democratic and Republican mayors, along with their parties, have sold us out. But for them this is the beginning of the end.
The historian Crane Brinton in his book “Anatomy of a Revolution” laid out the common route to revolution. The preconditions for successful revolution, Brinton argued, are discontent that affects nearly all social classes, widespread feelings of entrapment and despair, unfulfilled expectations, a unified solidarity in opposition to a tiny power elite, a refusal by scholars and thinkers to continue to defend the actions of the ruling class, an inability of government to respond to the basic needs of citizens, a steady loss of will within the power elite itself and defections from the inner circle, a crippling isolation that leaves the power elite without any allies or outside support and, finally, a financial crisis. Our corporate elite, as far as Brinton was concerned, has amply fulfilled these preconditions. But it is Brinton’s next observation that is most worth remembering. Revolutions always begin, he wrote, by making impossible demands that if the government met would mean the end of the old configurations of power. The second stage, the one we have entered now, is the unsuccessful attempt by the power elite to quell the unrest and discontent through physical acts of repression.
I have seen my share of revolts, insurgencies and revolutions, from the guerrilla conflicts in the 1980s in Central America to the civil wars in Algeria, the Sudan and Yemen, to the Palestinian uprising to the revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania as well as the wars in the former Yugoslavia. George Orwell wrote that all tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but that once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force. We have now entered the era of naked force. The vast million-person bureaucracy of the internal security and surveillance state will not be used to stop terrorism but to try and stop us.
Despotic regimes in the end collapse internally. Once the foot soldiers who are ordered to carry out acts of repression, such as the clearing of parks or arresting or even shooting demonstrators, no longer obey orders, the old regime swiftly crumbles. When the aging East German dictator Erich Honecker was unable to get paratroopers to fire on protesting crowds in Leipzig, the regime was finished. The same refusal to employ violence doomed the communist governments in Prague and Bucharest. I watched in December 1989 as the army general that the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had depended on to crush protests condemned him to death on Christmas Day. Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak lost power once they could no longer count on the security forces to fire into crowds.
The process of defection among the ruling class and security forces is slow and often imperceptible. These defections are advanced through a rigid adherence to nonviolence, a refusal to respond to police provocation and a verbal respect for the blue-uniformed police, no matter how awful they can be while wading into a crowd and using batons as battering rams against human bodies. The resignations of Oakland Mayor Jean Quan’s deputy, Sharon Cornu, and the mayor’s legal adviser and longtime friend, Dan Siegel, in protest over the clearing of the Oakland encampment are some of the first cracks in the edifice. “Support Occupy Oakland, not the 1% and its government facilitators,” Siegel tweeted after his resignation.
There were times when I entered the ring as a boxer and knew, as did the spectators, that I was woefully mismatched. Ringers, experienced boxers in need of a tuneup or a little practice, would go to the clubs where semi-pros fought, lie about their long professional fight records, and toy with us. Those fights became about something other than winning. They became about dignity and self-respect. You fought to say something about who you were as a human being. These bouts were punishing, physically brutal and demoralizing. You would get knocked down and stagger back up. You would reel backward from a blow that felt like a cement block. You would taste the saltiness of your blood on your lips. Your vision would blur. Your ribs, the back of your neck and your abdomen would ache. Your legs would feel like lead. But the longer you held on, the more the crowd in the club turned in your favor. No one, even you, thought you could win. But then, every once in a while, the ringer would get overconfident. He would get careless. He would become a victim of his own hubris. And you would find deep within yourself some new burst of energy, some untapped strength and, with the fury of the dispossessed, bring him down. I have not put on a pair of boxing gloves for 30 years. But I felt this twinge of euphoria again in my stomach this morning, this utter certainty that the impossible is possible, this realization that the mighty will fall.
C-SPAN battle: Historian shouts down congressman at hearing
Funny Stuff