We have only good times until the next time

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

I think it is fair to say that the principles that undergird the US have not been tried so heavily since the 60's, bot 1800s and 1900s version. The OWieS are trying mightily to establish a competing form of government, literally. They want their own taxes, social structure and decision-making insitutions. You'll never know how good your product is until you have to compete against Brand X. The OWieS are our Brand X.

It's ironic. The drummers are the OWS movement's main source of revenue apart from donations. Now, the donations are doing quite well with there being over $500k in their account after 1 month. A tidy sum, all things considered.

But the drummers are an actual revenue stream. They actually make money based on a thing they provide, albeit of dubious value, but whatver; it's a free country no matter how hard they try to pretend otherwise.

This is their conondrum, though. Donations are nice but revenue is the surer thing. By all that is right and holy the drummers are essentially the higher value. Worse still, for the movement, the drummers know this and they demand the be treated according to their value (how capitalist of them).

But they're also the ones most likely to destroy the movement's relations with the surrounding community.

To make things "worse" (for the idiot hippies, anyway) the General Assembly is charging the drummers upwards of 50-percent taxes on their daily take. Apparently, the drummers feel less socialistically-inclined these days as they have essentially turned into tax cheats by they under-reporting their daily receipts in order to keep more of the money they take-in to meet their own needs. Not only do they consider their taxes too burdensome they also found out that while they were paying all that money nearly $8,000 in equipment was stolen and vandalized. The drummers wanted that equipment replaced but the GA demurred.

Now this is most interesting because supposedly the revenue generators were paying into the fund that was supposed to benefit all but as soon as the revenue generators needed a small slice of the pie they were told to take a backseat. Why, they ask, should they support a centralized system that takes their money and disregards their needs to such an extent it doesn't even allow them to petition for a vote on the matter.

It practically reeks of the entire lead-up to Obamacare.

I'm rather enjoying this entire spectacle.

This movement will fragment within weeks; if not sooner. Those that are oblivious and uncritical will remain so but we have enough video of them to allow them to marginalize themselves. Others will stop and consider what they just went through and see that the society they created for themselves was actually worse than the one they criticize. In both instances there was stifling bureaucracy, ruinous taxes, tone-deaf leadership and redistributionism isn't for the needy but for the power of those who control the spigot. The more developed the ruling system the worse it became and they were only truly free when their proto-government was uninvolved. Moreover they will have learned that the only free society is a moral society where people mutally agree to its terms and those who refuse to agree should be marginalized for the good of all.

Our conservative principles were put on trial by the ascension of an opposing system and far from threatening everything we profess we have been found to be the genuine voice of freedom, justice and equality under the law. They discredited themselves and proved us right.

Keeping marching kids. We have only good times ahead.

At least until the next crop of morons decides to challenge us.

[Eupher]

OWS is a freak show.

The sad reality is, the freaks don't understand how freaky they are and how much they're being laughed at, scorned, and ridiculed.

When they stop picking their nose, when their iPod batteries wear out, and their teeth are chattering so loud they keep up the freaks in the next tent, it'll go away. They'll leave their detritus and life will go on as it had before.

And it'll STILL be a mystery what the freaks are demanding -- except for free shit.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Suddenly the OWieS learn there is such a thing as a welfare queen and the OWieS kitchen staff will be going on strike for 3 days to protest freeloaders eating the food meant for the protesters:

Some protesters threatened that the high-end meals could be cut off completely if the vagrants and criminals don’t disperse.

Unhappiness with their unwelcome guests was apparent throughout the day.

“We need to limit the amount of food we’re putting out” to curb the influx of derelicts, said Rafael Moreno, a kitchen volunteer.



Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/zuccotti_hell_kitchen_i5biNyYYhpa8MSYIL9xSDL#ixzz1c03CQIDy

Every day, bit-by-bit they learn that we have been right all along.

We're all Reaganites now.

We win.

[NHSparky]

They don't even recognize the irony, do they?

Sad when they become that which they have mocked.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Is this what we were supposed to fear?

Fights are erupting among Occupy Wall Street protesters, so much so that one corner of Zuccotti Park has emerged where protesters say they won't go for fear of their safety, the New York Daily News is reporting.

Police officers also have been warned of "dangerous instruments" being concealed in cardboard tubing, the News says it has been told by unidentified police sources.

"There is a lot of infighting in the park," a police source told the news organization. "There is one part of the park where they won't even go at night."

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/10/report-fights-erupt-between-occupy-wall-street-protesters/1

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

A self-selected group of OWieS is seizing power and with it the $500,000. Anyone speaking against it is being shouted down.

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/11/06/inside-the-orwellian-machinations-in-occupy-wall-street/

[DefiantSix]

A self-selected group of OWieS is seizing power and with it the $500,000. Anyone speaking against it is being shouted down.

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/11/06/inside-the-orwellian-machinations-in-occupy-wall-street/

I seem to recall Lenin doing much the same thing in 1917.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

I seem to recall Lenin doing much the same thing in 1917.

They always do. That's why we always win.


New story: "It's over."

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/my_in_tents_night_amid_anarchy_of_ush5s5NscUZincUN0tF0yO/0

There's nothing left but the absurdity.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Whether or not the Occupy Wall Street movement has a legitimate or coherent purpose and to what extent its ongoing “occupation” of lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park represents a violation of the law have been discussed and debated since the first tent was pitched on September 17. But we might put these questions aside for a moment and hope to agree on one thing: that, regardless of one’s views about its message, the camp itself has become a disgrace. If this is utopia, then deliver us from it, for imperfection has a fresh and heady appeal.
 
For an organization whose rhetoric casually claims “unity,” and which absurdly considers itself to be a mouthpiece for 99 percent of America, it is devastating that division and infighting increasingly mar OWS’s New York City franchise. The kibbutz has fractured. Walking around the site yesterday, it was clear that “one world” has become many. There are now palpable borders within the commune, and battle lines have been drawn.

The “original” protesters resent the “hangers-on” and the latecomers, as early fans of a rock band might hate those who discover their heroes only after they have become popular. As always, the hard-liners despise the reformers and those who would “compromise with capitalism,” and the anarchists predictably reject all such labels entirely. Meanwhile, an unfathomably asinine dispute rages over whether the movement should seek to represent the “100 percent” or the “99 percent,” with few taking the time to consider whether it actually does either. The homeless, much praised on placards and flyers, have clearly proven themselves useful only in the abstract, and have become a rather less attractive proposition now that they have joined the fray, bringing with them something of a crime wave.
 
Where unity does still exist, it is in the universal hatred felt toward the belt of “crazies” that surrounds the camp, even if the definition of “crazy” remains elusive to the vexed, and is largely reserved for anyone who “makes us look bad.” Fans of British comedy Yes, Minister will remember that “crazy” is an irregular verb: “I have an independent mind; you are an eccentric; he is round the twist.” Thus, in hushed tones, each faction complained to me about the others.
 
Moreover, OWS is discovering that it is by no means inured against the sort of political and economic problems that face all polities, utopian or not. A fistfight broke out yesterday on the testy northeastern side of the camp, when one protester fashioned and displayed a cardboard sign that read, “Food is for OWS only!” This, said some of those camped nearby, was “fascism.” “No, no,” came the rejoinder, “it’s only fair! We paid for it; it’s for us! You can’t just walk in and take our stuff!” And thus, in microcosm, the debate over welfare raised its head — as it always will.
 
Likewise, there is growing consternation over the group’s finances. The more than $500,000 that OWS has raised from supporters is in the hands of a shady eight-person finance committee, which is made up of “non-occupiers” who have a right of veto on proposals before they get to the General Assembly and are, thus, “becoming like the banks we are protesting.” Most of the money, the gripe goes, is “just sitting there doing nothing,” and “our ideas are not being listened to.” Worse still, some of this outrageous fortune has found its way into Amalgamated Bank, which has the temerity to deal with billionaires. To spend or not to spend, that is the question! It seems clear now that, however noble the protesters might consider themselves, and however unorthodox the community they have established, there will always be slings and arrows to suffer.
 
Then there is crime. Even as Zuccotti Park has become a sea of troubles, it has been regarded as unsporting to bring up its obnoxious elements, as if to report on the dark side is to tar all associates unfairly with the same brush. But the unpleasant are demonstrably in attendance, and are no longer necessarily in the minority. I asked a “press representative,” named Justin, how many of those in the park he considered to be genuinely part of his movement, and was surprised to hear him say “less than 50 percent.” Such a confession makes the “we are the 99 percent” chant seem somewhat comical. But then, it always has been. The idea that the camp represented something new by bringing a diverse group of people together was always solipsistic. Surely, I would ask, that is what America does? What is this country if not a grouping of different people who disagree, and who work out their differences through common institutions?
 
Every citizen has at least one gripe. There is something that abrades each and every one of us. But most of us do not join communes that earnestly and loudly pretend to be above the noisy and boisterous process we call democracy, even as our replacement society crumbles ignominiously around us.
 
— Charles C. W. Cooke is an editorial associate for National Review.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/283013/occupy-wall-street-starts-crumble-charles-c-w-cooke