Michael Tomasky:
I want to stipulate up front that I am firmly on OWS’s side. I don’t really know who its leaders are, and I don’t especially care. I don’t know its exact goals—a subject on which the movement has been roundly, and in my view pointlessly, criticized.
He then goes on to lecture a movement he already supports — regardless of its agenda and its leaders – about how to succeed (short version: Put normal-looking people out front to convince Americans that Occupy Wall Street is something it isn’t). I find the whole thing hilarious. Tomasky is the quintessential liberal sucker. His only advice to the left is on tactics and public relations. It’s advice they won’t take and he’ll keep supporting them anyway. Why? Because protests are just awesome when they’re from the left regardless of their agenda or leadership (but super scary from the right no matter the agenda or leadership).
Occupy Wall Street is a sinkhole and it’s not done growing. All sorts of folks are going to be pulled into it before this is over. At this rate, I expect the White House to go ass over tea kettle around Thanksgiving.
WTO-like anarchists + union goons = this isn't going to end well
"Look! Come see the violence inherent in the Leftist system!"
Pray for the NYPD and the businesses in the Wall St. area.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe Wall Street occupiers have issued a radical manifesto. It's values are not "populist," they are "revolutionary." Obama and the Democrats have lined up behind this group and what they stand for. Keep 'em talking, so all can hear.
I'd say get as many liberal progressives to join in with the Wall Street occupiers. It's the first clear enunciation of the goals of the Democrat Party, and the end-state they wish for America.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis afternoon, they post this:
"The opponents of this movement are using the demands posted in this forum as the official lists. And some of these lists regardless of how right or wrong are extreme points of view and will only hurt our cause by making us look like extremist nut jobs."
"nut jobs" ? Who would do that ?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn the immortal words of Fred Thompson, "This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI get the idea that OWS is just the natural itching of the Left to get out and protest SOMETHING. They could safely protest Bush en masse because he was a Republican. But they can't do the same with Obama, even though he continues almost everything that was supposedly so onerous under Bush.
And even though they've had a little bit of their brand of fun with Jan Brewer and Scott Walker, state protests only get you so far, and this is a Big National Thing.
So no, obviously, nothing like goals or a coherent message matter.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Ass over teakettle" - I haven't heard that phrase in ages. Love it! And appropriate too.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhy the jovial attitude Jonah? This is scary stuff to me. Are we just glad to see people show themselves for who they are?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo what's the critical mass, the Chandrasekhar limit if you will, of progs before OWS collapses into a singularity? Whatever it is, I want to be a safe distance away when the collapse happens. I do want to see the video, though.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJonah, IMO Tomasky is the quintessential modern liberal fascist.
I read him regularly and he fills his writings with so much propaganda that I'm convinced he studied at the Goebbels school of journalism.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is hilarious. How exactly does one come out in support of a movement without knowing either its leaders or its goals? Isn't that the sort of information a responsible journalist should determine before publicly supporting a movement?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEvery lefty I know jumped in with both feet knowing as little or less than Thomasky did on the first day. I don't think the Obama admin. will be able to hold out until Thanksgiving, its in there nature to join this kind of nonsense.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseShorter Tomasky:
"Be everything you aren't, and you might have a chance."
Gee...thanks.
I'm still waiting, by the way, for the liberal theme that "deregulation" caused the financial crisis to be backed up. Which deregulation, specifically (the Staggers Act?) and how?
Seems to me that the problem was not deregulation, but lack of regulation. That is, nobody had ever bothered to write a regulation specifically forbidding banks to approve stated-income loans with low initial teaser rates. Because that would be like a regulation that said "don't set your bank headquarters on fire."
What the banks did was so monumentally stupid, that I really do think that's why it was never specifically proscribed.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseactually the banks who made the loans where never at risk ... they sold the rotten loans to Fannie and Freddie who packaged them up into CMO Bonds. Now if you invested in THOSE bonds, as many big banks did becasue the Government made holding those securities extra special, then you got hammered.
The government required the banks to make these kinds of loans to "prove" they weren't redlining and then the government allowed Freddie and Fannie to gobble up all of the risk and package it up to spread the risk the the rest of the financial world. Making these loans was a good business decision based on the pressure from government regulators and the banks ability to shift the risks to Fannie and Freddie.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'd like to agree wholly with this, but I'm not sure it's all the way true. Certainly it was true after 2006. But, IIRC, Fannie and Freddie weren't extensively buying subprime paper prior to that year. The banks were merrily originating and selling these things before Fannie and Freddie decided to jump in.
Now, the GSEs' jumping into the bubble just when it probably was about to pop under its own weight, multiplied the problem greatly, and probably made the difference between "correction" and "epic financial crisis." Which is consistent with my theory that whereas private industry can be stupid and consequently wind up covered in poop, It Takes A Village to brew up a genuine calamity. Only government can be that kind of force multiplier.
If I'm wrong, and the GSEs were heavily involved in buying securities in the early stages of the bubble, please correct me. In any case, I think that they were, also, involved in that market via their guaranty business.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI've seen a number of stories in the last couple of weeks, describing how Wall Street types are leaving The Won in droves.
Seems to me this OWS thing is the Chicago response.
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