#OWS News- Occupiers Booted Out Of Richmond's Kanawha Plaza

By Susan Duclos

These folks could teach New Yorl Elected officials and Mayor Michael Bloomberg a thing or two about how to handle illegal Occupiers.

At 1am Richmond, Virginia police told Occupiers to vacate Kanawha Plaza and one hour later, the police removed those that did not comply.

Despite occupying the park illegally, demonstrators said they weren't given enough time to collect stuff--and not as much as they were officially told they would have.

"They come here unannounced to come and raid the camp, just saying we have a few hours just move everywhere we have which is quite a lot," said one demonstrator. “Then once we start moving it out and after we’re getting a good bunch of it out they kick out and start arresting people.”

Bulldozers were deployed to scoop up the assorted tents, signs, and debris left behind into dump trucks.The operation took more than four hours.

After that work was completed, Kanawha Plaza was closed off with fences.

A city spokesperson sent out a release that said Kanawha Plaza Park would be closed to the public "today" while the Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities inspects and cleans the park.

Nine arrests were made, five of which were given summons and four were taken into custody.

Mayor Dwight Jones later stressed the importance of following city laws which prohibit people from camping out in the park.

Note to Mayor Bloomberg of New York- Sir, this is how you enforce the law.

You can find all WuA's Occupier antics posts at the class warfare label page here.

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And They Said Bush Was Bad.......

By Susan Duclos



Remember this?

All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.-- from Obama memo from January 2009.

Well we have an article at LA Times which speaks for itself:

One of the most disappointing attributes of the Obama administration has been its proclivity for secrecy. The president who committed himself to "an unprecedented level of openness in government" has followed the example of his predecessor by invoking the "state secrets" privilege to derail litigation about government misdeeds in the war on terror. He has refused to release the administration's secret interpretation of the Patriot Act, which two senators have described as alarming. He has blocked the dissemination of photographs documenting the abuse of prisoners by U.S. service members. And now his Justice Department has proposed to allow government agencies to lie about the existence of documents being sought under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.

At present, if the government doesn't want to admit the existence of a document it believes to be exempt from FOIA, it may advise the person making the request that it can neither confirm nor deny the document's existence. Under the proposed regulation, an agency that withholds a document "will respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist."

This policy is outrageous. It provides a license for the government to lie to its own people and makes a mockery of FOIA. It also would mislead citizens who might file an appeal if they knew there was a possibility that the document they sought was in the possession of a government agency. Such an appeal would allow a court to determine whether the requested document was covered by an exemption in FOIA.

Even without the new rule, federal law enforcement agents have denied the existence of important documents. In a lawsuit involving surveillance of Muslim organizations in Southern California, the FBI was reprimanded by a federal judge. "The Government cannot, under any circumstance, affirmatively mislead the court," wrote Judge Cormac J. Carney. The FBI justified its misrepresentation by citing national security.

Read the entire piece.

I have only one thing to add, see billboard photo at the top.

Others discussion this, via Memeorandum:

The Heritage Foundation, The Political Carnival and Hot Air

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US Cutting Funding For UN Agency After Palestinian Vote

By Susan Duclos

Voice of America reports:

The United States says it is cutting off financial contributions to the United Nations cultural agency following its vote Monday to grant Palestinians full membership.

The State Department said Washington will not make a $60-million November payment to UNESCO because of a longstanding U.S. law that prohibits American support for any U.N.-affiliated body that accepts Palestinian membership.

Washington currently is UNESCO's biggest funding source, supplying 22 percent of the agency's budget.

Earlier Monday, the Paris-based UNESCO voted to approve the Palestinian membership bid by a vote of 107 to 14, with 52 abstentions.

Fox News:

"We are not going to be able to continue contributing to the budget," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. "Palestinian membership as a state in UNESCO triggers longstanding legislative restrictions which will compel the United States to refrain from making contributions to UNESCO."

More:

The U.S. funds about 22 percent of UNESCO's budget, or roughly $80 million annually. Nuland said the $60 million was scheduled to be sent in November.

"We obviously have to comply with U.S. law, to comply with U.S. restrictions. That said, we will have a conversation with Congress on moving forward," she said.

Nuland said that if the U.S. ends up in arrears it could challenge U.S. membership status.

The US should boot the whole UN headquarters out of New York and not give them a penny for anything, ever again.

Giving any agency within the UN or corrupt and scandal ridden UN itself, money is like burning it. A big waste.

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Video- 'Rick Perry is a Doer, Not a Talker' Campaign Ad

By Susan Duclos

New Rick Perry campaign out, short and sweet:



Text of Rick Perry is a Doer, Not a Talker:

"If you're looking for a slick politician or a guy with great teleprompter skills, we already have that--and he's destroying our economy.

I'm a doer, not a talker.

In Texas, we created 40% of the new jobs in the entire country since June of 2009, and we cut a record $15 billion from our state budget.

Now they say we can't do that in Washington. Well, they're wrong, and they need to go.

I'm Rick Perry, and I approve of this message.

This is Perry's second ad to be launched in Iowa.

More at CBS, LA Times and Washington Post.

Other Perry News includes a new poll from Rasmussen showing that among likely Wisconsin voters Perry earns 46 percent support to Obama's 42 percent.

[Update] More Perry news, via WSJ, reporting that SuperPAC Make Us Great Again "has purchased air time in the Columbia, S.C., media market, said Scott Sanders, general sales manager for WIS TV. Mr. Sanders estimated the Columbia ad buy at $50,000. It was unclear whether the group bought ads in other markets."

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#OWS- NY Occupiers Complain That NYPD Sending Them More So-Called 99%'ers

By Susan Duclos

The NY Daily News has a piece out that is so entertaining in it's entirety that I am finding it hard to know where to start.

So, let us start with the words of Wall Street Occupier Jeff Smith, a member of the OWS press working group, who said "What we’re trying to build here [Zuccotti Park] is a model for the bigger society we’d like to see.”

(Left- Photo Richard Drew/AP)

I make way less than the $300,000 plus that makes up the 1 percent, so I guess that makes me part of the 99 percent,although I vehemently deny that any Occupier in Zuccotti Park speaks for me or represents my views, because they do not.

With that said, as one the 99 percent they claim to represent, I could not be paid enough to live like they are willingly choosing to live in the Occupied Park. (See photo above) If that is their example of a "model civilization" these people are more disturbed than I originally thought.

Moving along...

And there’s the rub: The “model” civilization that’s sprung up at Zuccotti is itself increasingly divided between the stakeholders in the nascent movement who feel invested in the emerging economic, social and cultural causes of “the 99%,” and hangers-on, including a fast-growing contingent of lawbreakers and lowlifes, many of whom seem to have come to Zuccotti in the last week with the cynical encouragement of the NYPD.

That alleged encouragement is discussed much lower in the piece where another Occupier, Daniel Zeta, says "The police are saying ‘it’s a free for all at Zuccotti so you can go there."

If police are saying that, then they are right, it is a free for all.

Occupiers do not have permits. Occupiers are breaking the Park's rules by sleeping there and erecting tents. Occupiers are endangering their own and any visitors lives as evidenced by the letter Brookefield sent the police department asking for help and stating there were safety issues and repairs to be made that they cannot make because the Occupiers refuse to leave.

It seems that the 99%'ers that the police are allegedly sending to Zucotti Park are not welcome by the other 99%er's.

The punchline here is that the NY Daily News actually has the audacity to call the second group of 99'ers, get this.... "freeloaders and disturbed characters."

Freeloader from Wiktionary:

One who does not contribute or pay appropriately; one who gets a free ride, etc. without paying a fair share

Definition of Freeloader via Dictionary.com:

to take advantage of others for free food, entertainment, etc.

All the Occupiers are freeloaders by it's very definition!!!!

Now for the disturbed part, we do not have to look at the second group of 99'ers to find disturbed individuals, we simply go back to a previous Wake up America piece and grab a video of original Occupiers.



Reminds me of that saying about stones and glass houses.

The entertainment doesn't end there though.

Down further in the piece we see this paragraph:

The watch, though, has only powers of persuasion and pressure to try and enforce the rules, and no way to remove people from a public park. The police, whom many occupiers see as the enemy and who work under a mayor who’s made no secret of his distaste for the occupiers, have little reason to help them maintain order, and rarely seem to have entered the park over the last week for anything short of an assault. When officers have gone in, a wave of people carrying drugs (or with other reasons to fear arrest) moves away from them while others circle tightly around, cameras out. Even when organizers have requested their intervention, police enter to a mixed chorus of “brutality” and “pig” calls side by side with chanted reminders that “you are the 99%.”

If anyone needs me to explain the idiotic irony of that emphasized portion of the paragraph, they are too stupid to even bother with.

The final kicker here and the best quote of the day comes from the writer's claim that he heard three different cops, when asked to intervene with troublemakers inside the park, say "He’s got a right to express himself, you’ve got a right to express yourself."

Cops sense of humor:

“The first time I’ve heard cops mention our First Amendment rights,” cracked one occupier after hearing a lieutenant read off of that apparent script.

“A lot of you people smell,” a waggish cop shot back later after an occupier asked if he might be able to help find more appropriate accommodations for a particularly pungent and out-of-sorts homeless man.

If this NY Daily News piece isn't satire, and it isn't, it should be because this was the most amusing article I have read in a long time.


You can find all WuA's Occupier antics posts at the class warfare label page here.


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Really? Is This The Best They Can Do Against Herman Cain?

By Susan Duclos

The Politico breathlessly titles their piece "Exclusive 2 women accused Herman Cain of inappropriate behavior," then proceeds with a four-page piece using multiple "unnamed" sources that supposedly confirm a story about two "unnamed" women that claim Herman Cain, in the late 1990's, had conversations filled with "innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature" and "physical gestures that were not overtly sexual," that made those women "uncomfortable."

On page two of The Politico piece they allege that a "source" with ties to the restaurant association said one of those women suffered "an unwanted sexual advance."

The source said the board member asked the woman directly about the episode and was told that Cain had invited her up to his suite at a prior association event.

Is that the unwanted sexual advance? Really? A quick no thank you deals with that. Thankyouverymuch.

The women received received separation packages and went their own way according to the story.

Even assuming all the unnamed sources are being truthful for a second, the allegations say nothing of touching, no coercion, no pictures, nothing, zip nada, zilch.

After reading the first three pages of this fluff piece, I was left thinking big f*cking deal.

Then comes the fourth page:

Ron Magruder, Denise Marie Fugo and Joseph Fassler, the chairman, vice chairwoman and immediate past chairman of the National Restaurant Association board of directors at the time of Cain’s departure, said they hadn’t heard about any complaints regarding Cain making unwanted advances.

“I have never heard that. It would be news to me,” said Fugo, who runs a Cleveland, Ohio, catering company, adding such behavior would be totally out of character for the Cain she knew. “He’s very gracious.”

Fassler, who helped bring Cain on board as CEO of the restaurant association, said any inappropriate behavior was not brought to his attention and that he would be upset to learn it had gone on and he was not made aware of it.

“That’s a shock to me,” Fassler said. “As an officer during all of Herman’s years there as a paid executive … none of that stuff ever surfaced to me. Nobody ever called me, complained about this, nor did I ever hear that from Peter Kilgore, nor did I ever hear that from Herman Cain.”

Fassler — who ran a Phoenix food-service company and finished his term as chairman the month before Cain’s June 1999 departure but remained on the board’s executive committee — described Cain as treating men and women identically and asserted it was “not within his character” to make unwanted advances. “It’s not what I know of him,” Fassler said.

Much like Fassler, almost all board members remember Cain fondly and say he left on good terms.

Cain was “extremely professional” and “fair” to female staffers at the restaurant association, recalled Lee Ellen Hayes, who said she “worked fairly closely with” Cain in the late 1990s, when she was an executive at the National Restaurant Association Education Fund, a Chicago-based offshoot of the group.

Cain’s treatment of women was “the same as his treatment of men. Herman treated everyone great,” said Mary Ann Cricchio, who was elected to the board of the restaurant group in 1998. She said Cain left such a good impression on the organization that when he spoke at a group event in January of this year, as he was considering a presidential bid, “he had unanimous support in the room.”

Yes, The Politico waits for the fourth and final page to admit that this was such a big deal that the top echelon of the National Restaurant Association board of directors were completely unaware of it. Also on that last page other females that worked closely with cCain described his treatment of women as "fair" and "extremely professional".

Herman Cain's campaign headquarters has released a response to The Politico hit piece:

Inside the Beltway media attacks Cain

Fearing the message of Herman Cain who is shaking up the political landscape in Washington, Inside the Beltway media have begun to launch unsubstantiated personal attacks on Cain.

Dredging up thinly sourced allegations stemming from Mr. Cain’s tenure as the Chief Executive Officer at the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, political trade press are now casting aspersions on his character and spreading rumors that never stood up to the facts.

Since Washington establishment critics haven't had much luck in attacking Mr. Cain's ideas to fix a bad economy and create jobs, they are trying to attack him in any way they can.

Sadly, we’ve seen this movie played out before – a prominent Conservative targeted by liberals simply because they disagree with his politics.

Mr. Cain -- and all Americans, deserve better.

Cain himself has addressed this issue as well:

“I have never sexually harassed anyone,” Cain told Fox News in an interview this morning. “Yes, I was falsely accused while I was at the National Restaurant association and I say falsely because it turned out, after the investigation to be baseless.”

Asked if he had ever settled in response to sexual harassment charges, Cain denied that he had done so, although he acknowledged the National Restaurant Association might have.

“Outside of the Restaurant Association, absolutely not,” Cain said. “If the Restaurant Association did a settlement, I wasn’t even aware of it, and I hope it wasn’t for much, because nothing happened. So if there was a settlement, it was handled by some of the other offices that worked for me at the association, so the answer is absolutely not.”

“If more allegations come, I assure you, people will simply make them up,” he added. “I was aware of the false accusation that took place at the Restaurant Association and then when we were asked for me to comment, they wanted it to be from two anonymous sources. We weren’t going to go and chase anonymous sources.”

In a statement from National Restaurant Association's head of public affairs, Sue Hensley, she is quoted as stating "The incidents in question relate to personnel matters that allegedly took place nearly fifteen years ago."

Allegedly.


From the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) we find that sexual harassment laws do not "prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious, harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted)."

Also from the FAQ page:

When investigating allegations of sexual harassment, EEOC looks at the whole record: the circumstances, such as the nature of the sexual advances, and the context in which the alleged incidents occurred. A determination on the allegations is made from the facts on a case-by-case basis.

These women were not fired or demoted, they quit. Obviously anything that has been alleged isn't something that was frequent or severe if the upper echelon of the Association hadn't even heard about it. Other women who have worked with Cain have stated that Cain's actions have "never even bordered on inappropriate in the slightest."

The Politico didn't bother to offer "context" nor the specific nature of the advances other than a supposed offer to come to his room.

So by the very rules which sexual harassment is investigated and prosecuted, absolutely none of Cain's alleged actions as told by The Politico, would have been considered actionable.

With Cain's denial of any wrongdoing and since the settlements did not come from him, this leaves the burden of proof directly on The Politico to produce details, the women and/or actionable harassment claims.

Without that they have exactly what the published, a sloppy smear job on a GOP presidential candidate.



[Update] Despite holding the burden of actual proof, the lead author of the sloppy smear job, Jonathan Martin, has publicly stated "we're just not going to get into the details of exactly what happened with these women." (H/T NewsBusters)

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The Social Security 'Trust Fund' Myth and SS Is Cash Negative

By Susan Duclos

Lori Montgomery at Washington Post's Business section has a comprehensive four-page piece explaining how Social Security went ‘cash negative’ earlier than expected and how some believe the Social Security "trust fund" has become "fiction of accounting."

IRS explains what a trust fund tax is:

A trust fund tax is money withheld from an employee's wages (income tax, social security, and Medicare taxes) by an employer and held in trust until paid to the Treasury.

Montgomery explains how Social Security went It went “cash negative.”

For most of its 75-year history, the program had paid its own way through a dedicated stream of payroll taxes, even generating huge surpluses for the past two decades. But in 2010, under the strain of a recession that caused tax revenue to plummet, the cost of benefits outstripped tax collections for the first time since the early 1980s.

What have our politicians done with that money paid into the trust fund?

Social Security is hardly the biggest drain on the budget. But unless Congress acts, its finances will continue to deteriorate as the rising tide of baby boomers begins claiming benefits. The $2.6 trillion Social Security trust fund will provide little relief. The government has borrowed every cent and now must raise taxes, cut spending or borrow more heavily from outside investors to keep benefit checks flowing.

Note: One reason tax revenue has plummeted is because unemployment is above 9 percent, less of a percentage paying into the system compared to an increase of those being paid out of the funds.

From page 4:

Hard numbers tell the story. Social Security supports about 55 million people. By 2035, that figure will swell to 91 million. Today, for every person claiming benefits, there are three workers paying into the system. By 2035, there will be two.

(Chart of the estimated decline of workers per beneficiary from 5.1 in 1960 to 2.1 in 2035- Source: "The Future of Social Security," www.ssa.gov, Aug. 2009)

They had a plan:

Congress foresaw this as early as 1983. Inflation had driven the program’s costs through the roof. After decades of expansion, Congress finally had to scale back the program, choosing to tax wealthier retirees’ benefits and gradually raise the retirement age to 67.

Those changes, along with other adjustments, restored solvency and promised yearly surpluses that would build up the trust fund in preparation for the retirements of the baby boom. The surpluses were invested in special Treasury bonds, which, by law, must be repaid with interest.

Assuming they are, Social Security can pay full benefits through 2036. Once the trust fund is depleted, the system would rely solely on incoming taxes, and benefits would have to be cut by about 25 percent across the board.

Plan failed.

Several factors have disrupted even that timetable. The recent recession caused the program to go cash negative years earlier than expected. The payroll tax holiday is depriving the system of revenue. And 10 years of escalating debt have crippled the government’s ability to repay the trust fund.

Certner, of the AARP, said it is unfair to cut Social Security benefits to solve that problem.

“The federal government is saying, ‘We’re in the red right now and we’re having trouble paying back Social Security, so we’d like to cut Social Security benefits,’ ” Certner said. “But that’s not the deal.”.

So much for workers being forced to pay into a trust fund and then trusting the government to manage the surplus to ensure it is available to them as promised when they retire.

Montgomery explains more:

Others argue that the deal has long since been abandoned and that the trust fund has become a fiction of accounting. “We can debate until the cows come home whether there’s really a trust fund or not,” said Olivia Mitchell, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School who served on a 2001 presidential commission to study Social Security. “But the fact is, there’s no money available to pay for those benefits. And the system is short on cash now.”

This is why there is a public debate on whether Social Security should be privatized giving retirees the option and the freedom to invest their retirement money in the stock market as they wish, theoretically earning higher returns than with government-invested funds.

Via Social Security Pro-Con.org, we see that critics of that plan claim that privatizing Social Security is risky because individuals can lose their retirement safety net through bad decisions.

Safety Net? The trust fund that may or may not be there? That is like having a bank account with no money in it, you can claim you have that account but you still cannot write checks from it to pay bills because there is no money!

Shouldn't that be up to the individual as to whether they want the government deciding how to risk that money or if they wish to take the personal responsibility of themselves?

Quick facts:

• Over 40 million post-World-War II baby boomers will reach the retirement age of 65 between 2010 and 2040.

• Since Social Security is an entitlement program and Congress can change the rules regarding benefit eligibility at any time, workers paying into the Social Security system do not have a right to receive Social Security benefits.

• In the past, budget surpluses in Social Security were used by the federal government to fund other government spending.

Politicians cannot continue to ignore addressing Social Security reform.

(Headline change made for clarity and grammatical changes made to post)

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Obama Thinks Pelosi Was 'One Of The Best' Speakers, American Voters Disagree

By Susan Duclos


Barack Obama seems to make a habit of taking up a position that goes against the majority of American voters and The Hill reports that at the National Italian American Foundation gala after Nancy Pelosi introduced him, he stated "I think Nancy was one of the best Speakers of the House this country ever had."

In March of 2010, while Pelosi was still speaker of the House, a CBS News poll found that she had hit new lows in popularity with Americans where only 11 percent gave her a favorable rating and 37 percent gave her unfavorable ratings. The only person that rated worse than her was Senate majority leader, Harry Reid (D-NV).

That was a year after the debate on Obamacare, a bill Pelosi and Reid jammed through the House and Senate against the opposition of the majority of Americans. A bill that still has over 50 percent of Americans opposing it.

By November 2010, right before the midterm elections that garnered Republicans control of the House of Representatives and a net gain of seats in the Senate, giving Harry Reid less of a majority, Pelosi's popularity had dropped even further according to a Washington Post-ABC News Poll, which found that 58 percent had an unfavorable view of Nancy Pelosi.

Voters toppled House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from power Tuesday, four years after she became the first female speaker in history, handing the majority of the House of Representatives to Republicans in a landslide surpassing the historic election of 1994.

With polls closed but returns in the West still not tallied, Republicans had won 233 seats to the Democrats' 174. Republicans defeated 58 incumbent Democrats, a stunning blow to President Obama and well more than the 39 seats they needed to seize control of the House, walloping Democrats from Florida to Michigan as voter frustration with the anemic economy, near double-digit unemployment and the ballooning federal debt boiled over at the polling booth.

Almost a year later, multiple polls find that Pelosi is still the "most unpopular Congressional leader" with Rasmussen finding 63 percent of likely voters having at least a somewhat unfavorable opinion of her.

Even Democratic pollsters find her disapproval rating at 58 percent.

Obama publicly calling Nancy Pelosi "one of the best Speakers of the House this country ever had," when Americans rated her one of the worst (Gallup), shows a glaring disconnect by Obama from the American public as a whole.

Obama is living in his own little world, his own bubble, creating his own reality which has little if anything in common with the majority of voter's reality and hopefully in November 2012, those same voters will pop that bubble and replace him with anyone but Obama.

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Question For Nancy Pelosi On Obamacare Waivers- 'Is McDonalds a "Small" Company'? ... What About The Others?

By Susan Duclos

Via RCP: (click link to watch video)

"They're small. I couldn't speak to all 1,800 of them, but some of the lists that I have seen have been very, very small companies. They will not have a big impact on the economy of our country," Nancy Pelosi said in an interview with CNBC.

McDonalds, one of the nation's largest employers in recent years, has received a waiver.

USA Today:

Nearly a million workers won't get a consumer protection in the U.S. health reform law meant to cap insurance costs because the government exempted their employers.

Thirty companies and organizations, including McDonald's (MCD) and Jack in the Box (JACK), won't be required to raise the minimum annual benefit included in low-cost health plans, which are often used to cover part-time or low-wage employees.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which provided a list of exemptions, said it granted waivers in late September so workers with such plans wouldn't lose coverage from employers who might choose instead to drop health insurance altogether.

Without waivers, companies would have had to provide a minimum of $750,000 in coverage next year, increasing to $1.25 million in 2012, $2 million in 2013 and unlimited in 2014.

Big unions also were granted waivers.

McDonalds got a break Thursday -- as did the 351,000 members of the United Federation of Teachers -- when the federal government gave waivers to high-profile companies and organizations letting them opt out of a key mandate in the new health care law.

Other big companies include Waffle House, Universal Orlando, Ruby Tuesday and AMB Bowling Worldwide.


Nancy Pelosi just thinks she can publicly lie and that Americans are just too stupid to recognize those lies and call her on them.

(Corrections and additions made to this post and headline)

#OWS News: Leaflets Dropped On Occupy Chicago: 'We Are Wall Street'

By Susan Duclos

Via The Daily Caller who gives credit to Lady Liberty and iOwnTheWorld we find there was a leaflets dropped on top of the Chicago Occupiers from someone at the Chicago Board of Trade.

The DC went ahead and transcribed the letter so the text is available online (thanks).

Transcript below:

We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.

Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.

Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work until 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.

For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime, and double time and a half. I’ll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.

So now that we’re going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We’re going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.

The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it’s really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.

We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? and will they?”

From what I am reading, this is not the first leaflet dropped on the Occupiers heads either.

The last ones said "“We Are The 1 Percent Paying For This, You Are Paying For 1 Percent Of It.” (H/T TP)

(Front)


(Back)



Other occupier headlines:

USA Today- Fights erupt among Occupy Wall Street protesters

"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."

Meantime, Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, is warning protesters at Zuccotti Park in Manhattan that he will pursue civil suits against anyone who assaults a union member.

Guess most of us knew they would start eating their own soon.

NYT- Occupy Protesters Down on Obama, Survey Finds

Dr. Panagopoulos described the protesters as “disgruntled Democrats.” Sixty percent of those surveyed said they voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and about three-quarters now disapprove of Mr. Obama’s performance as president. A quarter said they were Democrats, but 39 percent said they did not identify with any political party. Eleven percent identified as Socialists, another 11 percent said they were members of the Green Party, 2 percent were Republicans and 12 percent say they identified as something else.

Questionnaires handed out by Dr. Panagopoulos’s team of 15 interviewers throughout the park were completed by 301 adults from Oct. 14 to Oct. 18. “I followed the academic protocols that colleagues of mine adopted in the past to survey demonstrations,” he said.

In the survey, 80 percent described themselves as liberal; half of those said they were extremely liberal.

They are mostly self described liberals, WOW, big surprise there. I mean if they were conservatives the press would be all over the consistent violence and threats, if they were conservatives they would have permits for their gatherings, if they were conservatives they wouldn't complain that they "want their college tuition paid", if they were conservatives we wouldn't be seeing news reports of public masturbation, if they were conservatives..etc.... well damn, they would be the Tea Party!


Boston Herald- South Station’s users rail vs. Occupy

Commuters and merchants in South Station say they are fed up with Occupy Boston squatters who are hogging electrical outlets and taking sponge baths in bathroom sinks, turning the bustling terminal into a unsanitary locker room.

Union Leader- Woman charged with pimping teen recruited at Occupy NH rally

A city woman is accused of pimping a 16-year-old girl she met in Victory Park during the Occupy NH demonstrations.

Justina Jensen, 23, of 341 Hanover St., is charged with felony prostitution. Police allege Jensen met a teen at the local protest, which is an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street, and used the Internet to arrange a first liaison for the girl with a man who turned out to be an undercover police officer.

FYI- OWS Exposed is back online after days of battling hackers, so visit, show support and take a look at all the other Occupier news.

You can find all WuA's Occupier antics posts at the class warfare label page here.

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Biden: ‘We can’t win without Florida’: Obama Disapproval In FL At 57%

By Susan Duclos

The Hill reports that VP Joe Biden gave a speech at the Florida Democratic Party convention where he told the crowd "“We plan on winning Florida. We can’t win without Florida."

If that is indeed the case, then Barack Obama is already way behind with a September Quinnipiac University poll showing that 57 percent of Florida voters disapprove of Obama's job performance with only 39 percent approving.

53 percent believe Obama does not deserve a second term.

Obama's Florida numbers are worse than his national numbers. IBD/TIPP's polling, in October 2011, shows that by a 51 percent to 41 percent margin the majority of Americans also do not think Obama should be reelected.

According to Democratic leaning Democracy Corps, in October, 53 percent of registered voters disapprove of Obama with 42 percent registering "strong" disapproval. 40 percent approve with only 21 percent listed as "strong" approval.

If Biden is right and Florida is a must-win for Obama's reelection chances then he is in worse shape that previously thought.

Biden also told the crowd he would be concentrating on Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire and Iowa along with Florida.

In Pennsylvania, according to a Franklin and Marshall College poll, 52 percent of Pennsylvania voters say they do not want Barack Obama reelected with 41 percent thinking he deserves a second term.

In Ohio, via an October 2011 Quinnipiac University Poll, 51 percent of Ohio voters disapprove of Obama's job performance with 43 percent approving and by a 49 percent to 44 percent margin they do not believe Obama deserves a second term.

In New Hampshire an October 2011 WMUR Granite State Poll, 53 percent of New Hampshire adults disapprove of how Obama is handling his job with 41 percent approving.

In Iowa, the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion found for October that Obama is underwater with just 42 percent of registered voters in Iowa approving of the job Obama is doing in office while 47 percent disapprove.

These are the states that Joe Biden are going to focus on.

Now, if you were Barack Obama and you were underwater in all these states, would you choose to have Joe Biden, the man who just this month was asked if the Republican party was strong enough for it's nominee to beat Obama in 2012 and he answered "Oh, absolutely! Absolutely, it’s strong enough to beat both of us....", (video of Biden at that link)would you trust him to concentrate on those states to help garner support for your reelection campaign?

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#OWS- Shoot A Cop Fliers At Occupy Phoenix

By Susan Duclos

So the wrong state for Occupiers or Occupier supporters to pull this crap.

Hot Air has confirmed with the Arizona Department of Public Safety that fliers have been found at Occupy Phoenix instructing people on when to shoot police officers. First reported by the Jon Justice show on 104.1 FM in Tucson, the flier resulted in a counterterrorism alert issued to all law enforcement agencies in the state:

Read the rest at Hot Air.

More at Arizona's KTAR.

Consider this #83 on the Occupier rap sheet.

#OWS- Occupier Rap Sheet To Date

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Video- Rick Perry: 'Cut, Balance and Grow'

By Susan Duclos

Video below from Rick Perry 2012 about his recently released "Cut, Balance and Grow" tax and spending reform plan for America.



You can find a downloadable PDF of the plan, Summary, Press Release and the Sample Tax Return, which is one page. Perry's site provides an embeddable version as well.

H/T Hot Air@Twitter.

Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: Support For Obamacare Down

By Susan Duclos

Remember when Nancy Pelosi spoke about passing Obamacare, against the opposition of the majority of Americans and with no support from Republican lawmakers?

She said "We Have to Pass the Bill So That You Can Find Out What Is In It"

Video below for those that did not see her say it.



Well, she was right, people did have to wait for the passage of Obamacare to find out what was in it.

Now that the general public is starting to see what is in it, support is dwindling even more, according to the latest Kaiser Health Tracking poll:

After remaining roughly evenly split for most of the last year and a half, this month’s tracking poll found more of the public expressing negative views towards the law. In October, about half (51%) say they have an unfavorable view of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), while 34 percent have a favorable view, a low point in Kaiser polls since the law was passed. While Democrats continue to be substantially more supportive of the law than independents or Republicans, the change in favorability this month was driven by waning enthusiasm for the law among Democrats, among whom the share with a favorable view dropped from nearly two-thirds in September to just over half (52%) in October.

Americans are more than twice as likely this month to say the law won’t make much difference for them and their families as they are to say they’ll be better off under the law. Forty-four percent say health reform won’t make much difference to them personally, up from 34 percent in September. Meanwhile 18 percent say they and their families will be better off, down from 27 percent last month. (The share who thinks they’ll be worse off personally held steady at roughly three in ten, where it has been since the law passed in 2010.) Here, too, changes in views among Democrats helped shape the overall change.

This is before the general public start feeling the effects of many of the 20 separate tax increases embedded into the Obamacare health law, some of which will not even go into effect until after the 2012 presidential election.

In 2010, White House senior adviser David Axelrod said on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, "I think that health care, over time, is going to become more popular."

As recent polling suggests, that was no more than wishful thinking on the part of the Obama administration.

Should Americans vote to replace Obama with a Republican president in 2012, repealing Obamacare is promised to be an uphill battle and may end up having to be repealed in pieces.

[Update] The Hill reports more bad news for Obama and Democrats regarding Obamacare:

The poll caps several weeks of bad news relating to the law.

Late last month, Kaiser released its annual report on healthcare premiums showing a 9 percent hike in family premiums this year. Rather than driving premiums down by $2,500, as President Obama promised during the 2008 campaign, the healthcare law is responsible for about one sixth of that increase, according to Kaiser.

And earlier this month, the administration announced that the law's long-term-care CLASS program was unsustainable and that it was dropping it. The move has infuriated many of the law's supporters, who feel the Department of Health and Human Services hasn't been honest about its intentions.

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#OWS Occupier Email: 'Push youngest/oldest to the front lines'

By Susan Duclos


"Push youngest/oldest to the front lines….This is a battle over images, not just over the park."--- Charles Lenchner, Occupy Wall Street activist, Oct. 13, 2011

Inciting deliberate confrontations with the police in order to garner sympathy for the Wall Street Occupiers has every chance of backfiring as Wapo's The Fix explains, but what will damage the movement more as a whole is the tactics of using the young or the elderly as human shields once Occupiers have instigated a police confrontation, simply to create an environment where they can take pictures and videos to display. (Embeddable links to those emails found at link above)

I keep seeing First Amendment rights being quote by Occupiers or Occupier supporters, yet I see nothing in the First Amendment that allows for private or public parks to be occupied, rules about camping there violated, rules forbidding sleeping in the parks violated, drumming all day and night and creating noises disturbances, gathering without permits for protests, etc...

Here is the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The right to peacefully assemble does not give the right to break the law. Once any laws have been broken, then the police have every right, in fact, an obligation and responsibility, to address those violations and if the Occupiers resist arrest or removal, then the police in any state have the right, again, the obligation, to enforce the law.

Further more, now public resources are being used to protect the general population from some of those violations, evidenced by firefighters and police having to enter Zuccotti Park this morning to remove generators and gas canisters because they pose a fire and safety hazard.

While some Democrats and Barack Obama have embraced and in Obama's case, deliberately created the narrative for the Wall Street Occupiers in order to distract from his dismal polling numbers and failed policies, there are others that have not commented or have spoken out against the continued illegal occupation of the Parks.

One example is Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein (CA) who stated "I don’t think the protesters have the right to ‘Occupy’ forever. I don’t think people, for example, can sleep in a square for weeks on end. You have to have some order to it."

There is no doubt that there are Occupiers that have legitimate grievances and would like the protests to be peaceful, but the ones using terrorist tactics, inciting violence so they can capture an "image" they believe will garner them sympathy, are the ones making headlines.

SFGate provides an example of the two factions within the Occupy movement:

Debate on tactics

But the street confrontations are bringing focus to a central question that those in the Occupy Oakland camp debated repeatedly during their 15 nights outside City Hall - whether demonstrators should opt for violence against police, meeting force with force.

The majority has supported nonviolence, and many are frustrated that some in the crowd threw bottles and paint at police. But some protesters favoring aggression are determined to continue the tactic. At the heart of the debate is what message the movement wants to project and in what way.

David Hartsough, who helped lead civil rights sit-ins and marches in the South in the early 1960s, said he has urged Occupy participants in Oakland and San Francisco to redouble nonviolence efforts.

"If people had fought back when police put the dogs on them in Selma and Birmingham, they wouldn't have gathered the support they got," said Hartsough, who founded the San Francisco-based Nonviolent Peaceforce.

When Tuesday's protest devolved into a volley of rocks and tear gas, some organizers took to bullhorns. "If you throw something, you're as bad as a cop," one speaker said to the applause of several hundred people.

A chant followed, conveying the same message, but then someone from the back of the crowd lobbed a glass bottle that shattered on police helmets. Officers responded, lobbing tear gas again.

Occupy Oakland protester Casey Jones, 28, wore a T-shirt Wednesday reading "thrash and burn," and skateboarded up and down Broadway yelling, "Bring it on!"

"I'm all about the riot - we need to be violent," he said. "We need more numbers. We'll just keep marching on."

If a protester is going to lob something at the police, expect to get something lobbed back.

If those that are encouraging a peaceful protest want their statement to be heard, they need to get a handle on those that are fomenting violence, because if the violent antics are the only thing making the headlines, then violence is all that will be associated with the Occupy movement in the end.

[Update] You can find all WuA's Occupier antics posts at the class warfare label page here.

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Military Post Offices in Iraq to Close Nov. 17

From the DoD:

By Cheryl Pellerin
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26, 2011 – Because U.S. forces are coming home from Iraq by the end of the year, the U.S. Postal Service will stop accepting mail addressed to military post offices in Iraq starting Nov. 17, Defense Department officials said today.

Military post offices in Iraq also will stop processing mail Nov. 17, and service members there should begin now to advise those who send them mail about the Nov. 17 deadline.

Mail still in the postal system through Nov. 17 will be processed and delivered to service members in Iraq, officials said.

In November, U.S. military postal service responsibilities in Iraq will transition to State Department embassy or consulate post offices for service members assigned to Office of Security Cooperation or the Chief of Mission in Iraq.

These sites will provide letter and parcel mail services to service members assigned to the Office of Security Cooperation or the Chief of Mission in Iraq.

The transition will be closely coordinated with the U.S. Postal Service Agency, which will delete ZIP codes for Iraq military post offices from the USPS database to prevent undeliverable mail from entering the postal system after Nov. 17, according to defense officials.

If APO mail arrives in Iraq after a service member departs, mail will be redirected to the new mailing address provided or, if no mailing address was provided, returned to sender.

Any mail mistakenly accepted by a USPS post office after Nov. 17 will be returned to sender once it reaches the International Gateway in New Jersey.

U.S. service members in Iraq who do not receive an absentee ballot by Nov. 17 should contact their U.S. Local Election Office to change their address. Unit voting assistance officers can provide state-specific voting details.

Service members who are remaining in Iraq after Nov. 17 and who are there on behalf of or are assigned to the Office of Security Cooperation or the Chief of Mission in Iraq should coordinate with their chain of command and the servicing State Department mail location to receive a new mailing address.

According to defense officials, conditions and situations in the Iraq transition change often. Officials recommend that service members check the Military Postal Service Agency website and USPS Postal Bulletins frequently for updates.

#OWS Occupiers Complain About 'Freeloaders' And Forced To Eat Peanut Butter And Jelly Sandwiches

By Susan Duclos

Seems the volunteers that do the cooking for the Wall Street Occupiers have a few complaints, feeling they are “overworked and underappreciated,”and are tired of working 18-hour days to provide food for “professional homeless” people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters.

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

A security volunteer added that the cooks felt “overworked and underappreciated.”

Many of those being fed “are professional homeless people. They know what they’re doing,” said the guard at the food-storage area.

Today, a limited menu of sandwiches, chips and some hot food will be doled out -- so legitimate protesters will have a day to make arrangements for more upscale weekend meals.

Protesters got their first taste of the revolt within the revolt yesterday when the kitchen staff served only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chips after their staff meeting.

Here is the kicker though:

Organizers took other steps to police the squatters, who they said were lured in from other parks with the promise of free meals.

NewsFlash: The Occupiers themselves are squatters!!!!


So, the Occupiers (original squatters) don't want the homeless squatting on the land that they themselves are squatting on, and a subset of the Occupiers, the cooks, do not wish to cook and provide food for the actual homeless, people that truly do not have a home, but would rather only provide food for those that choose to live as homeless people.

Let me get this straight- The Occupiers are protesting "greed", they believe the rich should be taxed more to "share the wealth" via wealth distribution, by taking from those that have and giving it to those have not.

Does this mean they are now protesting against themselves?


Others discussing this:

William Teach over at Pirate's Cove calls this "Sweet, Sweet Irony":

This is like Lord Of The Flies on steroids. Child-like Marxists living like the proverbial pigs, though pigs tend to not live in their own “filth”, and are actually rather fussy eaters. They just like mud. And now they’re learning that people are going to try and take advantage of “the government” and get stuff for free because they feel entitled because “the government” is just there to help. The massive amounts of irony cannot be put into words.

NewsBusters points out in their headline "Occupiers Don't Like Redistributing Their Own Wealth."

Sister Toldjah sends out the hypocrisy alert on tent searches by Occupier "security" without warrants and Occupier requests for winter items to be donated and she notes that it is "absolutely shameless for these *voluntarily* “homeless” people who really aren’t “needy” to be pleading for the type of assistance that the truly homeless and poor desperately need in this city, especially at this time of year around the holidays."

JammieWearingFool wonders if now the Occupiers see "where the Tea Party is coming from" or if the person reported in the Post now "understands how the 53% who pay the freight in this country feel." He doubts it.

Don Surber gets the quote of the day with "In their protest against greed on Wall Street, the dirty, smelly hippies are telling the destitute: Mine, Mine, Mine."

Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit says "The squatters at Camp Poopstock are protesting that they are wasting their time, energy and resources preparing gourmet meals for ex-cons, homeless people, drug addicts and other freeloaders. Welcome to the real world."

From the Crawdad Hole "Irony so thick you could cut it with a knife and serve it to the homeless. Next thing they’ll be yelling “Get a job you smelly hippies!“"

Needless to say, we are all having a little bit of fun with this and the fact that the Occupiers are completely oblivious to their own hypocrisy here.

[Update] You can find all WuA's Occupier antics posts at the class warfare label page here.

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