Don't know if this has been cited previously. http://volokh.com/2011/10/18/pollin...+Volokh+Conspiracy)&utm_content=Google+Reader [T]he movement doesn’t represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda. The vast majority of demonstrators are actually employed, and the proportion of protesters unemployed (15%) is within single digits of the national unemployment rate (9.1%) .... What binds a large majority of the protesters together—regardless of age, socioeconomic status or education—is a deep commitment to left-wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth, intense regulation of the private sector, and protectionist policies to keep American jobs from going overseas.
hey, doesn't this go against the whole "OWS are parasites" argument? man man man, you gotta choose a flawed argument and stick with it, instead of flip-flopping.
I've heard this BS before, and it's really strange. I know a lot of people protesting, in various cities, including New York, and all the ones I know are pro-capitalism. They just don't support completely unregulated and destructive forms of capitalism that benefit 1% of society at the expense of just about everything else, including the remaining 99% of the population, the planet's resources, etc. If you actually love capitalism, you should love a form that can last over time without driving the majority of people into declining standards of living. To me, if I'm "opposed to free-market capitalism," I would do exactly what Bush II did: cut taxes, greatly increase government spending, deregulate financial markets. In sum, concentrate wealth and destroy the shared public system. This leads to the kind of misery and anger we're seeing. And if it gets bad enough, you can lead a population to swing too far in the other direction, away from capitalism. Basically, if the wealthy aren't careful, capitalism could become as dirty a word as "liberal" (shudder!) or "commie." And if things get *really* bad for most people, capitalism could become even less popular than those terms, and then we've got a real problem (if we like that system.)
the heart swells; the mind reels. Spoiler <iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/MxupmU4cJOE?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Oh whoops. I can't see that post, but I made the mistake of mentioning Bush II. That's like putting honey in your tent while in bear country.
Poll: 49% of Occupy Wall Street protesters think the bank bailouts were necessary? What are they protesting again? --------------------------------------------- President Obama and the Democratic leadership are making a critical error in embracing the Occupy Wall Street movement—and it may cost them the 2012 election. Last week, senior White House adviser David Plouffe said that "the protests you're seeing are the same conversations people are having in living rooms and kitchens all across America. . . . People are frustrated by an economy that does not reward hard work and responsibility, where Wall Street and Main Street don't seem to play by the same set of rules." Nancy Pelosi and others have echoed the message. Yet the Occupy Wall Street movement reflects values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people—and particularly with swing voters who are largely independent and have been trending away from the president since the debate over health-care reform. The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies. On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park. Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion. Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda. The vast majority of demonstrators are actually employed, and the proportion of protesters unemployed (15%) is within single digits of the national unemployment rate (9.1%). An overwhelming majority of demonstrators supported Barack Obama in 2008. Now 51% disapprove of the president while 44% approve, and only 48% say they will vote to re-elect him in 2012, while at least a quarter won't vote. Fewer than one in three (32%) call themselves Democrats, while roughly the same proportion (33%) say they aren't represented by any political party. What binds a large majority of the protesters together—regardless of age, socioeconomic status or education—is a deep commitment to left-wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth, intense regulation of the private sector, and protectionist policies to keep American jobs from going overseas. Sixty-five percent say that government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement—no matter the cost. By a large margin (77%-22%), they support raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, but 58% oppose raising taxes for everybody, with only 36% in favor. And by a close margin, protesters are divided on whether the bank bailouts were necessary (49%) or unnecessary (51%). Thus Occupy Wall Street is a group of engaged progressives who are disillusioned with the capitalist system and have a distinct activist orientation. Among the general public, by contrast, 41% of Americans self-identify as conservative, 36% as moderate, and only 21% as liberal. That's why the Obama-Pelosi embrace of the movement could prove catastrophic for their party. In 1970, aligning too closely with the antiwar movement hurt Democrats in the midterm election, when many middle-class and working-class Americans ended up supporting hawkish candidates who condemned student disruptions. While that 1970 election should have been a sweep against the first-term Nixon administration, it was instead one of only four midterm elections since 1938 when the president's party didn't lose seats. With the Democratic Party on the defensive throughout the 1970 campaign, liberal Democrats were only able to win on Election Day by distancing themselves from the student protest movement. So Adlai Stevenson III pinned an American flag to his lapel, appointed Chicago Seven prosecutor Thomas Foran chairman of his Citizen's Committee, and emphasized "law and order"—a tactic then employed by Ted Kennedy, who denounced the student protesters as "campus commandos" who must be repudiated, "especially by those who may share their goals." Today, having abandoned any effort to work with the congressional super committee to craft a bipartisan agreement on deficit reduction, President Obama has thrown in with those who support his desire to tax oil companies and the rich, rather than appeal to independent and self-described moderate swing voters who want smaller government and lower taxes, not additional stimulus or interference in the private sector. Rather than embracing huge new spending programs and tax increases, plus increasingly radical and potentially violent activists, the Democrats should instead build a bridge to the much more numerous independents and moderates in the center by opposing bailouts and broad-based tax increases. Put simply, Democrats need to say they are with voters in the middle who want cooperation, conciliation and lower taxes. And they should work particularly hard to contrast their rhetoric with the extremes advocated by the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Mr. Schoen, who served as a pollster for President Bill Clinton, is author of "Hopelessly Divided: The New Crisis in American Politics and What It Means for 2012 and Beyond," forthcoming from Rowman and Littlefield. --------- website: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204479504576637082965745362.html
A growing number of Israelis and foreign Jewish groups are expressing concern over the anti-Semitic flavor of some of the “Occupy Wall St.” economic protests in the US. . . . In Los Angeles, California, protester Patricia McAllister, who identified herself as an employee of the Los Angeles Unified School District (we can only hope she is not an educator), had this to say: “I think that the Zionist Jews, who are running these big banks and our Federal Reserve, which is not run by the federal government… they need to be run out of this country.” On the American Nazi Party website, leader Rocky Suhayda voiced support for “Occupy Wall St.” and asked, “Who hold the wealth and power in this country? The Judeo-Capitalists. Who is therefore the #1 enemy who makes this filth happen? The Judeo-Capitalists.” One of [the] people reportedly responsible for organizing the “Occupy Wall St.” protests, Adbusters editor Kalle Lasn, has a history of perpetuating conspiracy theories that say the Jews control America’s foreign policies. Back in New York, another protester insisted that “a small ethnic group constitutes almost all of the hedge fund managers and bankers on Wall St. They are all Jewish. There is a conspiracy in this country where Jews control the media, finances… They have pooled their money together in order to take control of America.” This does not mean all or even most of the OWS protesters are anti-Semitic, but the prominent liberal leaders who have shown sympathy for their cause have failed to speak out, as have the other elements within the group. Israel Today reports: “More than the few Occupy Wall St. anti-Semites themselves, it is the lack of a clear and firm repudiation of their hateful rhetoric by the mainstream American media and political leaders that has a growing number of Israelis and Jews on edge.” You will recall that reports of alleged anti-black comments (never verified) from Tea Party groups brought howls from Democrats and the media. But not this time, when Jews are the object of the vilification (documented on film) and it’s the left who is protesting and engaging in behavior that would have earned the Tea Partyers condemnation had they engaged in the same conduct. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...anti-semitism/2011/03/29/gIQA43p8rL_blog.html
You know the panic has set in when gwayneco has come out of the bunker to post his rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Imagine if someone at a Tea Party rally had expressed the idea that black Americans should be forced to leave America and sent back to Africa.
That would not be ant-Semitic, unless they are black and Jewish like Drake and Lenny Kravitz. Except Drake can just go back to Canada. He's not even American so he doesn't even count. So what the hell are you getting at?
That's all well and good, if it were true -- BREAKING: Doug Schoen Grossly Misrepresents His Own Poll Results To Smear Occupy Wall Street In this morning’s Wall Street Journal, Doug Schoen reports on the results of a poll he conducted of Occupy Wall Street protesters. Here is the nut graph: What binds a large majority of the protesters together—regardless of age, socioeconomic status or education—is a deep commitment to left-wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth… At Capital New York, Azi Paybarah has obtained the full poll results, and Schoen appears to have grossly misrepresented the results of his poll. He writes that a “large majority” are bound together by support for a “radical redistribution of wealth.” But when he asked the protesters what they’d like the Occupy Wall Street movement to achieve, just 4 percent said “radical redistribution of wealth,” which tied for last on the list of answers given. There is no mention of “radical redistribution of wealth” anywhere else in the poll. Here are the full results of that question: Schoen also writes that “ixty-five percent say that government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement—no matter the cost.” But the actual question makes no mention of costs. Schoen, who bills himself as a Democrat but has effusively praised the Tea Party and advised Obama not to run for a second term, was determined to paint the Occupy Wall Street protesters as politically toxic. As a result, he grossly misrepresented the results of his poll to Wall Street Journals readers.
You are only showing the difference in the rhetoric. There is nothing wrong with anger. There is something wrong with second amendment remedies to elections that people don't like, and the idea that if ballots don't work bullets will. You act like the two sides have equivalent inflammatory rhetoric, but everything you post only shows the difference between the two. One actually literally suggests violence, and the other only uses idioms and well established figures of speech that are known not to be literal. The fact that you either don't understand the difference or choose to pretend you don't to defend the rhetoric doesn't reflect well on you.http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showpost.php?p=5868286&postcount=191 **** T]he movement doesn’t represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.
