Occupy Wall Street

Obama has as much say in the local governments of the US as he does in how the Egyptians run things. If he can offer his moral support in one area, he should be able to offer it in the other.

I do see the difference and understand why he doesn't say anything in the US but really...

 

That's no surprise, let's keep that .1% rich on capital gains. Forbes via Yahoo, had a great article that it was actually the .1% that was making all the money and the gap there was the one widening and it was due to Capital Gains. Not so much regular taxes. It was an article I would never expect from Forbes.

I'll see if I can find it.
--- merged: Nov 21, 2011 11:39 PM ---

I did and it was a mistake I hit the damned reply button instead of edit. I thought I had corrected it.

Yes, you can't truly solve a problem unless you recognize you have one. Obama is truly in a tough situation and I do not envy him, nor have a workable solution in theory.

--- merged: Nov 21, 2011 11:45 PM ---

I agree in both cases you state. He should be offering the same exact support he did to other countries. BUT, it's politics and it is here at home. Regardless of how I may feel about OWS, his lack of leadership in this is astoundingly sad. It may end up costing him the election.

He could very easily have the dept of Justice quickly write something up offering protection from locals, but then what happens when some gung ho OWS fringe element takes that protection to mean they can bust store windows and so on. (Not saying they would, but people out there in some cases if you give an inch they push as far as they can to see how many inches you will give them, both the government and the people are that way.)

 

But you do see that there is a difference between peaceful protest and breaking windows, yes?

 

Yes I do, but you also see the gist of what I said there don't you?

 

I can't get confirmation that the interview was about anything more than the news from the SuperCommittee.

Here's an open letter to the President (byJesse Kornbluth) asking Obama to speak out against the police response to the protests.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-kornbluth/obama-police-brutality_b_1102970.html

Michelle Obama was booed when she showed up at a Nascar event yesterday, by the way. So much for southern hospitality.

 

demanding that the movement articulate positions that everyone will say "yay!" to is basically demanding that they do and say nothing. because there is no position that is met with unanimous consent. particularly when they are just sentences, before they are implemented. and no political movement **ever** gets held to that standard---they'd be paralyzed. what the occupation movement has done is to create inclusive spaces for conversation about what matters to people and what they think fucked up and what they imagine would be a resolution--or, more likely, a direction that would produce more desirable outcomes. because, in the end, that's what any political movement can propose because the world is a collection of processes, so unfolds time, and is not a collection of objects that can get arranged this way or that on some giant table. so it's about orientations, ways of framing problems, directing resources, etc. at least ideally (we all know that politics is also about power as well...)

my sense is that ows in general is more cohesive than people imagine and this to a great extent because the dominant televisual infotainment system can't seem to figure out how to cover the general assembly process. they prefer, for whatever reason, to individuate things, just as, by default, television tends to cut events from contexts. it's not necessary, but it seems to follow from stuff like segment lengths and the fact that, in the states anyway, information is basically a teaser for advertisements, which requires certain kinds of discontinuity, if you like. things are rather otherwise in other countries with different media styles (this without idealizing anything)...

the comparisons between the us an egypt are and aren't helpful. they aren't to the extent that there's nothing comparable in the us to the lunacy o the interior ministry (which runs the police), who are almost universally hated. there's been nothing like 20 years (more---since the assassination of sadat) of martial law (there's only been little flirtations with a state of emergency, notably during the bush administration)--despite the repression that does exist in the states, it's a much more open place politically, at least on the surface. and most people only look at and live on the surface of things. what the past few days in egypt seem to have been about are specific problems that have only abstract parallels in the us---the attempt on the part of tantawi and his buddies in scaf to manipulate the next constitution so as to position the military beyond all legal and political control. the complication is that--i think (i do not know for sure) the united states has placed its marbles with the military as repayment in a sense for the 1.5 billion a year they've been getting since camp david in order to assure continuity of egyptian consent for the americans' lunatic policies toward israel. and the egyptian military is a variant on the american national-security state. but there's also not the same division between the police and military in egypt---if you've been following the past few days in cairo in particular, you see how this is confused, with both interior ministry goons and military involved in street fighting with people who initially were mobilized against the constitutional issue, but who are now basically saying fuck you to scaf in general and the obvious fact that with scaf in control mubarak is only physically gone as these are the same people that mubarak came from amongst and on whose support he relied to stay in power. but the us also operates on a different model of repression. mubarak was in away old school--direct, violent suppression of political dissent, wholesale corruption at a scale unimaginable here, etc. the united states is the pioneer of neo-colonialism, so operates with different ways of herding people around and limiting/shaping what is done and said. if you take a comparison too literally, you'd actuallybeieve the paper freedoms in the united states were real---and they are within definite limits. the point about decentralization is accurate as well...but that may be more apparent than real given the co-ordination in city responses to ows of late and the role--which is still shadowy, but there's information about it out there---of the dept of justice in shaping that.

hope folk are thinking and acting, when and how they can, in solidarity with the folk in tahrir.

 

That was probably all there was then. I have a feeling Obama is staying away from saying anything regarding OWS for fear of it blowing up in his face. People say Clinton was calculating and based everything on polls... Obama is far worse in that area, he can't read the polls and interpret their meanings.

I'll read it when I get a chance.

What else would one expect in the Southern NASCAR arena, she'd probably get the same response at a Hank Jr or Toby Keith concert.

Not to sound prejudiced but it's conservative, redneck NASCAR...lol (sorry I was born and raised to love the open wheel of INDY and Formula 1, while also being a fan of LeMans style racing, that is racing (I grew up with Mid Ohio Race Car Course in my backyard) and memorial Day weekend meant INDY 500, the Unsers (Al Sr and Bobby), Rick, Mears, Gordon Johncock, Bobby Rahall, Mario Andretti, and so on. NASCAR was more Southern and redneck and country music. Took me years to get over that prejudice and I still have it. Still can't watch left turn straightaway, left turn straightaway, etc racing. I like road courses, left turn, right turn straightaway, sharp left into a sharp right keyhole type race.

/end threadjack.

 

OK, I did an edit job on your post. Please take a look at it when you have a moment to make sure I haven't altered your intent.

 

Is the problem with OWS and the declaration of the problem that it takes longer than 60 seconds to expound and that the Twitter generation of media professionals don't have room for it?

Maybe partially, but I think more and more people are "getting it". Some don't want to hear it (yet). Others want to undermine the discussion.

I think it's a start. I'm not yet sure sure that the "occupy" movement will bear fruit. However, you can't evict an idea and I think it will spawn something that will bear fruit.

 

You got it. Thank you does make it a lot easier to read.

 

Life on the other side

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/11/28/111128sh_shouts_kenney

 

http://news.yahoo.com/top-0-1-nation-earn-half-capital-gains-172647859.html

The article in Forbes I talked about above. Stating the top .1% owns 50% thanks to the cuts in capital gains.

Short of Faux News and Dredge you can't get more conservative than Forbes, MAYBE the WSJ.

 

maybe it's the same kind of "delicate balancing act" that @AliAbunimah summed up this morning like this:

 

If you question why regarding OWS just take a look at Newts comments about child labor laws. You still wonder why people are sick and tired of this crap?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/21/newt-gingrich-child-labor-lobbyist_n_1105178.html

 

The thing to remember about Gingrich and the people he speaks for is that their ultimate goal is to make the US economy closely resemble a third world country. They want to get rid of worker rights, safety regulations, age restrictions, unions. They want wealthy factory owners and a large desperate lower class. They want the US to be the kind of place Capital One would want to outsource a call center to.

 

even david frum sees that:

http://nymag.com/news/politics/conservatives-david-frum-2011-11/

bodkin points to one of the central aspects of neo-liberalism in republican hands--the war on decent wages. it's how the right imagines us workers will be "competitive"---isolated, without benefits, paid for shit with no job security. what's astonishing is that they've not been held to account for it, even as it's been obvious for a long time that this is the agenda. what has militated against that happening is the focus on capital to measure overall economic well-being, as if it were objective as a measure, even in banal contexts like the nightly dow jones index report on the network infotainment shows. because of this, the right has been able to chump whole segments of the population into thinking that they represent their interests. by now, you'd think no-one would take that seriously. what's in the way of this particular recognition of the obvious on the part of the popular base, such as it is, of the republican party is the style of identity politics that's produced, marketed and repeated ad infinitum by outlets like fox. which even the reactionary frum recognizes as a fundamental problem **for the right** as well as for everyone else.