Occupy Wall Street Protests

Man, that sounds delicious! Make mine fiery-hot! I like food to bite back!

 

Yeah we agree on that one. And I'll tell you what. J is dynamite in the kitchen once he gets the wok fired up. I can hold my own, but he's a master. Once we got a stove that distributed massive BTUs evenly across the bottom of the wok and up the sides he was in business. I just wish he'd write these recipes down. They're all in his head.

 

Vegetables...What did you think I was talking about right winger?

 

The thoughts that generate within your mind are known to be meaningless, therefore I asked the standard question that anyone who interacts with you asks, "What in the world are you talking about"? No one will ever know.

 

I'm with everyone else who says that this dish sounds delicious! Thanks so much for telling me about it--it sounds like the perfect post-Thanksgiving meal. All I need now is a wok.

 

...That's what your dog said... (waits for rimshot, it never comes)... Oh, come on! It wasn't that bad!

 

If you have the right heat source a wok is the ultimate cooking utensil imo. Followed by maybe an iron skillet, Lodge is good, Wagner Ware is sweet, and a Staub dutch oven.

 

Yes it was, but I liked it anyway.

 

There's nothing like a good pun . . . and that was nothing like a good pun.

 

Don't know if the flea baggers are even relevant anymore but I got some pretty good insight into the "movement" this week.
I hosted a shooting contest for area police officers at my farm the day after Thanksgiving and we had officers from KY, OH, IN & TN in attendance....I took the opportunity to pick their brains about the flea bagger gatherings.
Almost unanimously they supported the right to protest but the biggest issue was the hypocrisy.....organizers on power trips & rich kids being supported by mummy & daddy while speaking against wealth were the two biggest. They also mentioned how poorly the homeless were treated at the various gatherings (except when cameras were present) and how virtually every flea bagger seemed to have their own agendas.

 

Make up your mind. Are they rich kids or are they homeless flea baggers? You seem to want to play both sides of the argument. Maybe it's because you don't actually have an argument, just an agenda. It shows.

 

That's the problem: no one knows who they are. If the "movement" had an identifiable face, then David couldn't get away with playing both ends against the middle and you'd be forced to choose a defense for a group of people rapidly descending into obsolescence.

 

I don't know about the 'kids' part but rich people certainly can look like they have fleas and also appear homeless.

 

Into obsolescence? I doubt it. Not until the problems that motivate them (us) have been addressed. The Corporate Storm Troopers are breaking up the camps one by one, but they will just come back in a different form. And they already are. Masking the symptoms does nothing to solve the problems. And the lack of an identifiable face is the movement's strength in large part because the RWers don't understand it. It is also an indication of the breadth of its appeal. Different people are exploited in different ways, but we all know that there is a problem and I think I can safely say that we all know generally where it's coming from.

 

I completely agree that once this group is gone that another will spring up in its place. That's good, because as you say, we need to deal with more than just masking the symptoms. However, the current groups are slipping into obsolescence. The public is losing patience with being occupied, the police are breaking up the groups over time, and their news coverage is slipping. HOWEVER, where i disagree strongly with you is your statement about the lack of an identifiable face being a strength of the movement. Without an identifiable face (and I don't mean an individual--I mean the ability to form a mental picture of a representative when the movement is mentioned) no movement can be successful. If the intention is to make a movement universally accessible to readers or viewers, then it must be possible for ALL people to identify with it, including people from the right. If "the RWers don't understand it" and can't identify with it, then how can anyone say that the group is the 99%? At best, the group would be the 49% or so, since conservatives are pretty much equally represented with the liberals. So, in my opinion, its lack of identifiable face is a major weakness of the movement because the movement cannot seem to decide if it is a liberal/socialist group determined to end government as we know it or whether it is a group intended to appeal to conservatives and liberals alike and to put the government back into the hands of the people.

I could actually get behind the second one but feel that the movement is intended to be more like the first.

 

Football coaches can also look like a homeless man cleaned up. Rob Ryan is asking the player if he could spare some change for a hot dog. If you look close you can see the Susan B. Anthony that was used in the coin toss in the players hand.

 

Well the hardcore RW ideologues as opposed to reasonable, open people to the Right of me (Such as you, Jo, if I may stick my neck out here. ) are I believe a rather smaller group, and age and time are working against them. Some will be converted, others won't. On the other side I can't speak for OWS but I have spoken to a number of the active participants since their camp here was literally a block away from the corporate office tower where I work and I walked through it regularly on my way to and from my bus stop.

It seemed to me to function on one level as a great big networking session. Al lot of people, of all ages, wanted to get involved in pushing change somehow but didn't know where to start or who to talk to. Politically the one thing that everyone I talked to seemed to agree on was that Corporate Welfare and corporate money in politics had to end because most of our troubles stem from that. There are of course any number of approaches to this problem, some rather "Socialist" at least by current American standards and some not so much.

As for the camps, they may go but in terms of people, the numbers will just grow and they'll manifest themselves in different ways. And after all, how long has it been since a little protest in New York that few people paid any attention to at first? July, I think it was. The focus or rather focuses (foci?) will come, although I do think the name Occupy Wall Street should provide a general indication of what they're about. I also think that the focuses will be local/regional, as I've said before, and the agendas will reflect that. One thing at I'm pretty sure of is that declaring the movement dead is whistling The Messiah in the dark. Dream on Billy O.

 

Oh, I need to clarify one thing. When I said RWers don't understand it, I was thinking largely in terms of the RW politicians and the RW punditocracy, whose existence is probably so far removed from that of normal folk that their personhood more closely resembles that of a corporation than it does the personhood of any one of us.

 

I thought this was interesting.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis...ng-truth-about-crackdown-occupy?newsfeed=true

 

You have my permission to stick your neck out as far as it needs to go on that one, Tak. I try to be as reasonable as possible in terms of keeping an open mind and I agree that there are a lot on the far right who go a bit too far. I go to a Baptist university, for Heaven's sake, so I see a lot of the good and the bad on that score. I personally don't think that age is not necessary or responsible for making an ideologue on either side (there was a terrific Law & Order: SVU that demonstrated that, but I digress), although I do agree that younger people are generally better at having open minds than older people.

I agree that at the beginning the name "Occupy Wall Street" provided a general indication of what the group was about. The second another group formed off of Wall Street, however, the message became muddied. It was at that point that it took on a much more threatening (in my opinion) form and became not so much about the corporate welfare and money as it did about defying government--both local and federal--and apparently overthrowing it. Now, let me state right here that I have nothing against peaceful protests against the government. Equally, I have nothing against peaceful civil disobedience. I, in fact, plan to prepare for a day in which I have to take my dogs and go "underground" with them, since animal rights activism is slowly making pet ownership illegal. However, I really enjoy living in a democratic republic and prefer to see that system of government last for a bit of a while longer. I cannot embrace anything that seriously smacks of socialism with any fondness: I was born in such a time and such a family that it is impossible for me to do so. I apologize if this sets a wedge between me and anyone else (especially you, Tak), but I like to think that I will be like the Poles and Russians who mounted family photos on the backs of icons, which they would turn an use in private religious ceremonies after their faith was outlawed by the Communists. Only with dogs.

No, I don't think it's the camping. Now, honestly, camping is illegal in public areas in most cities. In New Orleans, they mounted iron arm rests in the center of long benches so that the homeless couldn't sleep on them. When the tarot readers are in Jackson Square, they cannot bring cots (although they can bring blankets) to their set-ups, no matter how long they are out there. In my opinion, the problem is that the Occupy groups block access to businesses and have become increasingly prone to harming locals--not physically, but financially. To me, if the Occupy folks would have left after a week, having made their point, and found another form of protest, then I would have been 100% behind them. Right now, though, I think they are doing more harm than good and are infringing on the rights of the very people that they claim to represent. That is, I agree with the idea that corporate America needs reform and I think that lobbyists are one of the corporeal forms that Satan takes when he wants to cause trouble on the Earth, but I completely disagree with the evolution of the OWS movement. In my opinion they need to evolve and move on or disband before they do any more harm to the local businesses that they've been harming with their actions.