Month: November 2011
Lt. John Pike Casually Pepper Sprays Fine Art
Grover Is Taxing
The GOP’s stance toward the super committee was defeatist.
Now they’re followers of Ayn Rand, the self-centered elitists.
So it’s certainly their fault
If they ask, Who is John Galt?
When they should ask, Who the hell is Grover Norquist?
Gingrich Calls Congressional Budget Office ‘Socialist’
The CBO is a reactionary socialist institution which does not believe in economic growth, does not believe in innovation and does not believe in data that it has not internally generated.
— Newt Gingrich, offering some tough words for the Congressional Budget Office, CNN reports.
Former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a Republican, called the allegation “ludicrous.” Said Holtz-Eakin: “I think if you parse that phrase carefully, he got one out of three right. I do agree it is an institution. If you’re playing baseball, that’s a decent batting average.”
Ailes Pissed at Palin
I paid her for two years to make this announcement on my network.
— Fox News chief Roger Ailes, expressing his anger at Sarah Palin because she didn’t make the announcement she wouldn’t run for president on Fox News, Gabriel Sherman reports. Instead, she made the October 5 announcement on Mark Levin’s radio program with Fox getting a follow-up interview on Greta Van Susteren’s 10 p.m. show. Golly, and we always thought he hired Sarah for her looks ….
Trump Discloses Finances
+$7 billion
Donald Trump’s net worth, of which $3 billion he calls “brand value.” Disclosed in his forthcoming book, “Time To Get Tough,” in which he writes he was so close to running for president that he had already prepared to disclose his finances, something many suggested he would never do.
Nobody Pepper-Sprayed Enraged, Even Armed Tea Partyists When They Disrupted Public Events in 2009
A Summer of Protests and Rage from Nico Colombant on Vimeo.
Despite the frequent eruptions of violence, threats lodged at elected officials and, on at least two occasions, shows of force when protesters arrived at presidential events fully armed, law enforcement across the country all but ignored the rage fits indulged in by pro-corporatist, anti-health-care reform protesters — almost all of whom were over 40 and 99.99 percent of whom were white — in the summer of 2009.
Contrast that with the fall of 2011 when police in New York City; Portland, Oregon; and on the campus of University of California at Davis have pepper-sprayed nonviolent Occupy protesters — most of whom are young and many of whom are not white — who were peaceably assembled, as is their constitutional right.
Keep in mind the images of cops pepper-spraying Occupiers like they were bugs today, as you take a quick stroll down memory lane to the late summer of 2009:
GOP Grand Wizard Limbaugh: NASCAR Racists Booed First Lady Because She Is ‘Uppity’
The NASCAR crowd doesn’t quite understand why, when the husband and the wife are going the same place, the first lady has to take her own Boeing 757 with family and kids and hangers-on four hours earlier than her husband, who will be on his 747. NASCAR people understand that’s a little bit of a waste. They understand it is a little bit of uppity-ism.
– Rush Limbaugh, thought leader of the white supremacist Republican Party, applauding the actions of racist NASCAR fans who booed the First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama at veterans’ event at a race last weekend because she is African-American.
Occupy Miami Gets No Respect
It’s the Rodney Dangerfield of the Occupy Wall Street protests — Occupy Miami, which has been on site at city hall for more than a month now, can’t get no respect.
Last week when Zuccotti Park was forcefully emptied and New York’s OWS protesters streamed across the Brooklyn Bridge, a series of messages was projected on the side of the Verizon Building. Among those messages was a list of Occupy sites — New York, Oakland, Portland. But no Miami. The list included “Florida” instead, no Miami.
Besides a few demonstrations in Sarasota, Daytona and several other Florida cities, no place except Miami has maintained a sustained and violence-free effort. They have negotiated with the city for permits to stay on the property, they police themselves pretty well (one heroin overdose and a runaway 11-year-old notwithstanding), and they hold almost daily demonstrations as well as workshops, discussions and a nightly movie projected on the side of the city hall building.
