Tea Party slashes police car tires and sprays "kill cops" on walls on the 4th of July, and the media is silent...

Ha ha! Fooled you!

It was the Occupy Movement that the media ignored.

If a leftist branch commits and act of violence in a media forest, does it make a noise?

Apparently not.

Spot the Idiots.

Occupidiots assault police at 2:45 minutes, apparently trying to provoke a reaction.

Notice the number of mask wearing Occupidiots?  Notice that Tear Partiers don't wear masks?

Question - why do peaceful protesters feel the need to wear masks?

More idiots wandering the streets in an unmedicated condition.

Zombie offers a photo-essay showing the level of psychosis at the OccupyMayDay protests.

What can you say about the kind of incoherence shown in the picture at right other than the person has an untreated psychosis? And, yet, this passes without notice among the Occupiers.

And in what universe does anyone think that there is a market for supporting Communism?   

But compare these pictures with the pictures of the San Francisco Tea Party rally.  And realize that it is the Tea Party that is branded as weird and extremist.                                                           

 

Thomas Sowell on the existential significance of the "Occupy Movement."

The Constitution promises equal treatment, even to people who aren't leftist dingbats.

The "Occupy" movement, which the Obama administration and much of the media have embraced, has implications that reach far beyond the passing sensation it has created.

The unwillingness of authorities to put a stop to their organized disruptions of other people's lives, their trespassing, vandalism and violence is a de facto suspension, if not repeal, of the 14th Amendment's requirement that the government provide "equal protection of the laws" to all its citizens.

I like this chart:

Not to point fingers, but those guys who wanted to blow up that bridge in Cleveland...

...were Occupiers.

Nah, forget what they posted on their own Facebook pages. That can't be right. Everyone knows that Occupiers are really angry and totally about rage, but only non-violent rage.

In case, you missed it, today is a "general strike" invited by the Occupy folks...

...which would make it a day off work, just like every other day for these people.

Solipsism never seemed so vapid.

At Salon, free-lance journalist Natasha Lennard engages in an existential stream of consciousness riff to explain that, basically, she is taking a "Me Day":

Tomorrow, during the Occupy-planned May Day general strike, if you come to Salon for live coverage, you will find no reports from me. If you want to follow my Twitter feed to check up on the action in New York, you’ll find the feed ends on April 30. On May 1, I’m going on strike — no reporting, no filing, no live tweeting; I’m leaving press identification at home.

You might expect a journalist-cum-supporter of Occupy like myself to cover the day’s action blow-by-blow, tweet-for-tweet, having written with enthusiasm about the calls for a May Day general strike for months now. But May Day is not just a planned day of action; the idea — although amorphous — is general strike. It is not a union-led general strike. The meaning of “strike” is complicated in this economy of financialization, information, service, effective and precarious labor. But on May 1, Occupy organizers and allies have invited us to think about what striking out, generally, might mean to us — and for me, this means no reporting or live tweeting. I will approach the day as a striker, and not as a story chaser trying to frame a narrative of every lived experience.

And:

I have also noticed on all too many Occupy actions that the fixation with coverage can detract from safety and group cohesion on the streets. I have numerous times felt that if 90 percent of the people with smartphones held high actually focused on their immediate environments, marches would improve tactically and participants would enjoy a very different experience.

For a solipsist, the thing about striking is the quality of the experience.

And, then, there is this:

It’s important to note that my striking is not a strike against Salon — I’m not leveraging withdrawal of labor against one employer; rather, hoping to take part in actions that rupture business and politics-as-usual. As I’m on a freelance contract, it’s far easier for me to take the day off than those in more formal work situations. However, as I have written here before, much organizing for May Day has focused around how an underemployed, freelance, precarious and regularly jobless workforce — as is the economic reality — might strike. If this is a precarious workers’ strike — I know which side of the picket line I belong on. And although I come from immense privilege — with degrees from Cambridge and Columbia — my working situation is precarious. I live from paycheck to paycheck with no benefits. Facing broken ribs and a serious knee injury this year, my husband could not go to hospital and feels constant pain — we are uninsured, he’s unemployed, we’re both angry; this is why we strike.

So, her beef is not with her employer who doesn't provide her with wages and benefits she feels it necessary to live on.

Rather, her beef is with her own lifestyle choice - she wants to be a free-lance journalist in the Big City.

Silence on Left Wing Lynch Mobs.

"Occupy DOJ" activists calls for "Occupiers" to "start killing motherfuckers."

Mob of African-Americans "lynch" white guy as "payback" for Trayvon Martin. As Treacher observes:

Hey, that’s what he gets for having a similar skin color to someone we’ve all been instructed to hate.

Well done, Spike Lee. Nice job, NBC. Keep up the good work, ABC. And to everyone else who’s been using a shooting in Florida to foment hate and divide people by the color of their skin, kudos. Don’t let this attack, and similar attacks across America, bother you. If you had a conscience, we never would’ve heard of you in the first place.

And, of course, the Justice Department has no comment when the New Black Panthers put a bounty on George Zimmerman.

So, when there is actual violence by the left stirred up in large part by a race-baiting media, there is no call for "civility," no furrowed brows under well-sytled news media talking hair pieces about "what it all means" and the "tendency of leftists to violence."

It doesn't fit the narrative.

It doesn't fit the need of the president to stir up his base.

Is the City of San Francisco engaged in a guerrilla "war on Catholicism"?

This is a follow-up on the post about the Occupy Movements attempt to steal property belonging to the Catholic Church. What I didn't notice was the fact that the San Francisco police escorted the Occupiers to the property and then backed off while the Occupiers broke into the building and tried to set up their commune.

Fund47 wrote:

Wrap-Up

The mainstream media picks up this story at the point the police surround the building, with competing quotations from the Archdiocese, Occupy and the police, fears that the building had been fortified, and the arrest of 75 Occupiers.

The media does not ask several important questions:

Did the SFPD know that Occupy intended to break into and take possession of a privately owned building?

Was the march unpermitted and illegal?

Why did the SFPD provide Occupy with an elaborate escort, involving at least 25–35 officers across 13 city blocks, closing each block to regular traffic, including the Van Ness thoroughfare? What did this cost San Francisco taxpayers?

Did the SFPD know Occupy’s destination and target?

Did the police withdraw in the final two blocks of the march, immediately prior to the violation of Archdiocese property? If so, why?

Is it police protocol to take no action when an incident like this is in progress? Why?

The PJ Tattler observes:

“Larry in SF,” the author of Fund47′s excellent photo essay, goes into great detail speculating as to why the San Francisco Police at first escorted the unpermitted march, facilitating their illegal blockage of street traffic, and then backed off and allowed the protesters to seize the unprotected building.

Since OccupySF did not publicly announce their destination ahead of time, it could be that they simply tricked the police and got inside the building before the cops knew what was happening. But the local rumor mill is speculating that the police stood down at the behest of the San Francisco City Council, who are on record as being actively hostile to the Catholic Church.

Here is a post on the SF's council's anti-Catholic Resolution.

Hmmm....since I posted at the original Fund47 site with my question about anti-Catholic prejudice, I wonder if I am the "local rumor mill" mentioned in the Pajama Media report. If so, then I may be in an "echo chamber," which doesn't make my question about the connection anti-Catholic bias of the San Francisco City government and the anti-Catholic actions of the San Francisco Occupy movement any less pertinent.

San Francisco Occupiers Attack Catholic Property.

Fund 47 documents the idiots in the Occupy Movement going into property owned by the Catholic Diocese of San Francisco and claiming it as the headquarters for the grand vision of society.

I highlight the Catholic connection for a reason. Within recent memory, the San Francisco City Council passed a resolution branding Catholicism/the Catholic Church as being an enemy of the mores and values that make San Francisco great. Is this attitude a part of the reason that property owned by the Catholic diocese was stolen? Certainly, the property in question represens a large chunk of empty space, but was there more to this action than that.

Riots in American cities ...

...and it's not news?

Glen Reynolds writes:

#OCCUPYFAIL: Occupy support drops more than 20 points in … San Francisco? You can tell that the movement has lost popular support because the press suddenly stopped the breathless coverage. As I predicted, once it became clear the movement was hurting the Democrats, the coverage dried up.

Here is the linked Hot Air piece:

According to this poll, Occupy support in the Bay area would have been 58/34 at one point. Now it’s 35/57, which is a flip of 46 points in the gap. Combining support and opposition numbers, Democrat support for Occupy is now 40/56, and even among self-professed liberals, where 27% have switched to opposition, it’s only 52/35. Among San Francisco adults. Note too that the movement has not gained converts in anything like the numbers they are alienating, which means that the longer they go, the weaker they are getting politically.

In San Francisco. Nancy Pelosi’s home turf. The city that banned Happy Meals because parents were being held hostage by their children. The mind boggles.

The notion of “occupying” vacant buildings for their operations as some form of social justice also doesn’t go over as well as one might expect in the area. Only 21% support the idea, eleven points lower than the movement’s remaining support, while 71% oppose it. Even the youngest demographic, which still has a very narrow plurality supporting the movement (43/41) opposes this idea by a wide majority, 32/59.

But the best is yet to come. No one in this area is ever happy with the police. Eric Burdon once hailed the city in “San Francisco Nights,” praising the Hells Angels while warbling, “Cop’s face is filled with hate; heavens above, he’s on a street called Love.” (Needless to say, the entire song is dreck.) They’re not happy with the police in this instance, though, because the police haven’t been harsh enough with the occupiers. Twenty-eight percent say the police have been too harsh, while 35% say they’ve been “just about right” … and 33% say they need to get harsher.

When the Great Progressive Event has a third of adults in San Francisco looking for a police crackdown, I’d call that nuking the fridge.

If Occupy is alienating San Franciscans, imagine how normal America would feel...if the Occupy riots received actual press coverage?

Stay classy, leftists.

Glen Reynolds notes:

IF YOU THREW BACON AT MUSLIMS YOU’D BE A RACIST: Occupy Providence Throws Condoms At Catholic School Girls.

More here.

From American Glob:

Occupy Providence Throws Condoms At Catholic School Girls

Because nothing says speaking truth to power like standing up to little girls. Right?

From LifeSiteNews…

PROVIDENCE, RI, January 30, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Demonstrators from the Occupy Wall Street movement threw condoms on Catholic schoolgirls, refused to allow a Catholic priest to give a closing prayer, and shouted down a pro-life speaker at a Rhode Island right to life rally on Thursday, according to its organizer. The event marked the third time protesters associated with the movement have disrupted a pro-life meeting in a week.

About two-dozen members of Occupy Providence hiked from Burnside Park to the 39th Annual Pro-Life State House Rally organized by the Rhode Island State Right to Life Committee on Thursday.

OWS Riots in Oakland.

The Oakland Police is firing rubber bullets and using tear gas and arresting hundreds of OWS protesters in Oakland, but it isn't a news story.

It's almost as if some corporate power wants to suppress the news in order to protect those evil, plutocratic Republicans Democrats from embarrassment.

Here's some video:



You just know that if this had happened at a Tea Party event it would have been front page news.

Occupy Wall Street forces Representative of the Forces of Faceless, Evil Capitalism to Knuckle Under!

Small Cafe shuts down because of 12 straight weeks of being under barricades - lays off 71 workers.

But the important thing is that the kids meant well.

No matter how many lives they destroyed in the process.

For the saddest, little Occupier there was a fleeting moment of self-awareness as he realized....

...."The Occupy Boston movement as a whole became fascist,” he said, adding he still believes in the Occupy idea but not the organization. "

Jeepers, how could a movement founded on the idea of using the power of the state to take things from people ever become "fascist"?

A different look at the UC Davis pepper-spraying incident.

OWS Exposed provides a completely different context to what we've been shown.  The police action appears to be professional and restrained and the pepper spraying occurred because the protesters had surrounded the police and lawfully arrested occupiers while chanting "let them free."  The Occupiers go so far as to tell the police that if they release the arrested, then the police will be "let free."

That's nothing less than false imprisonment.

The police also explained to the protesters blocking the walk-way that they would be pepper-sprayed if they didn't stop their efforts to falsely imprison the police, which, of course, they were doing in order to coerce the police to release the lawfully arrested Occupiers.

Here is the video -

Human Nature, Class, Segregation, Utopia and Occupy Wall Street.

Every time someone attempts to build a horizontal, leaderless, classless society they face-plant into the fact that the desire of people to associate with those who seem to be like themselves is hard-wired into human nature.  Dealing with that fact is one reason why pragmatic Marxists in the 20th Century had to rack up such a high body count as they tried to make their utopian omelette by mass murdering a few tens of millions of eggs.  As evidence of this truth, watch, this unintentionally hilarious video from the Daily Show.

[The video code seems to be "eating" my text.]

Get a job, you damn hippy...

...and no you can't maim the "1%" with your home-made fragmentation grenades.


Glenn Reynolds advises:

#OCCUPYFAIL: Occupy Portland domestic terrorists arrested with hand grenades. All the media myths about the Tea Party seem to have come true with regard to the Occupy movement, but the press doesn’t seem to care all that much.

Here is the story:

The deputy also found two gas masks, protective eye goggles and a safety helmet. All three men told the deputy that they had spent the night at the Occupy Portland demonstration, and they brought the mortars and safety equipment to the demonstration in preparation of the expected confrontation between police and protesters Sunday morning.


The three had been at the demonstration during the confrontation Sunday morning and had left about an hour before the vehicle was stopped. During that confrontation, a police officer was injured by a firework, but the three men denied being involved in the incident.

When asked about the explosives, the three men told authorities that they knew the canning jar would explode, causing glass shrapnel to fly and possibly cause injury.

So, the "grenades" are home-made, but let's give full credit to the Occupiers desire to maim.

Then if that isn't disturbing enough, there's this from James Taranto:

In covering the Tea Party, of course, the Times emphasized its supposed extremism and violence. Brisbane doesn't even mention these themes in his column on Obamaville, even though there has been a good bit of violence there, whereas Tea Party violence was a figment of left-wing imaginations. That tells you something about the agenda of the Times and other like-minded news outlets.


The media helped create and now helps sustain the Obamaville monster, but that doesn't mean they can control it. In recent days videos have surfaced from Oakland, Calif., and Portland, Ore., showing Obamavillians attacking local news crews attempting to report on the goings-on.

The Portland video is especially creepy. It shows an angry white man--his face obscured part of the time by a pink scarf--shouting obscenities at a newsman, and declaring: "We are the 99%, you're the 1%. . . . We don't want you in our society." The distinction between demonization and dehumanization is a very fine one, and media figures who have encouraged this foul and dangerous movement will have a lot to answer for if it continues to escalate.

More Occupier Craziness.

Megan McArdle writes:

I am shocked that anyone would make this argument. This is outrageous. I don't know any people on the left who would think that this behavior were "non-violent" if it were, say, aimed at abortion clinics. It's bad enough that many of the occupiers seem to put as little thought as possible into the space they share with many fellow citizens. A sizeable number of them now seem to have decided that physical intimidation is a legitimate tactic with which to express their rage and frustration.


I have no doubt that support for these tactics is a minority sentiment on the left. But where are the condemnations that our left-wing commentariat were so eagerly demanding from the right a year ago every time Michelle Bachmann or another tea party figure said something stupid?

No, I'm not interested in more Tu Quoque Kabuki. Rather, I think there is actually something dangerous afoot at some of these protests--something that is manifesting itself not in a worrisome undertone or overheated rhetoric, but in the actual use of force against fellow citizens. It is, of course, very nice that they haven't hurt anybody yet (as far as I'm aware, anyway), but that's no excuse for using physical force--and their own fear of hurting you--to blockade things run by people you don't like. Moreover, the more you up the physical confrontation, the higher the chance that someone will get hurt.

It seems to me that those on the left who oppose these tactics should be voicing their opposition loudly. These kinds of happenings are very bad for the movement. They're also, um, wrong. Yes, the cops have made mistakes, and I don't understand why the drivers of those cars aren't up on charges. But that's no excuse for averredly peaceful protesters to start acting like a mob.

* In fact, there was a real outrage: another luxury car owner ran his automobile at protesters who were blocking the street. But according to the police, witnesses, apparently including cops, it say the protesters stepped in front of the car right before they were hit. Protesters dispute this. I don't know which is right, so I propose that Occupy protesters stop attempting to "take the streets" and drivers refrain from hitting them with their cars.

More Occupier Hijinks.

Does the law apply to everyone or just to the little people.

San Diego occupiers attack street cart vendors with blood and urine

The coffee and hot dog carts were located in Civic Center Plaza, the same location as the Occupy San Diego protesters.

That group first settled in to the plaza Oct. 7 and set up a tent city which has since twice been taken down by police.

Coffee cart owner Linda Jenson and hot dog cart operators Letty and Pete Soto said they initially provided free food and drink to demonstrators, but when they stopped, the protesters became violent.

And according to one city councilman, bodily fluids were used in the attacks.

“Both carts have had items stolen, have had their covers vandalized with markings and graffiti, as well as one of the carts had urine and blood splattered on it,” said Councilman Carl DeMaio.

The damages will likely require at least a complete cleaning if not a replacement of the cart covers, DeMaio said.

In addition to the attacks, the vendors also said they recently received death threats.

Check out the video of Letty Soto's presentation to the San Diego City Council:


And in New York, Occupiers terrorize a small restaurant:
 

A business owner near the Occupy Wall Street encampment claims she has been repeatedly harassed and threatened with bodily harm by protesters after she and her employees refused to give in to their outlandish demands.

“I’ve been told, ‘Watch your back!’ 10 times,” Stacey Tzortzatos, owner of Panini & Co. Breads, located across from Zuccotti Park, told The Post yesterday.

She and her employees are terrified by the constant threats, which she said began after she demanded the protesters stop using her shop’s restroom as a place to bathe every day.

The final straw came about two weeks ago, when the demonstrators broke a bathroom sink, flooding the shop, and clogged the toilet -- setting her back $3,000 in damages.

She put up a sign that said the bathroom was out of order, but they tore it down shortly afterward, she said.

The common thread that seems to run through these stories is "entitlement."  These people seem to have the entitlement attitude of a four year old, which, they think, permits them to take what they want and get angry if they are denied what they want.

Any student of the 20th Century will see this as a 'bad thing.'

William McGurn writes:

The president is by no means alone. The mayor of Oakland, Calif., Jean Quan, issued words of support for the Occupy movement that sprang up outside her City Hall, claiming that sometimes "democracy is messy." Indeed it is: According to the San Francisco Chronicle, eyewitnesses claim her husband was among those who helped close the port down last week.


Ditto for Mayor Vincent Gray in the District of Columbia. On Friday a mob from Occupy DC attacked the Washington Convention Center where a conservative group was holding its meeting. The police did not protect them, and some who called for help claim 911 operators hung up. Earlier in the month, the D.C. government issued a press release boasting that "a fired-up Mayor Gray" had spoken in a freedom march that had "merged with separate demonstrations in support of DC voting rights and the Occupy Wall Street movement."

In short, instead of seeing "broken windows," too many of our urban leaders have persuaded themselves that the drugs, sexual assault and vandalism that have accompanied the Occupy movement are all "isolated incidents." In New York, Mayor Bloomberg says that he won't tolerate the kind of violence they had in Oakland. Of course, this is the same mayor who complains that the protesters have no right to erect tents when the whole of Zuccotti Park is blanketed with them.

Using mobs to attack other political parties is redolent of the tactics that destabilized Weimar Germany in the 1920s.