Media Battlezone Prep: Pretty Vacant

Posted on 11/7/2011 by TC and has 1 comment.
The plaza of Zuccotti Park.

Zuccotti before the infestation Image via Wikipedia

This is the second of a recurring series. The first installment is here.

Back on September 17, 2011, a bunch of idealistic, disillusioned protesters gathered in Lower Manhattan to protest, as is their wont. The target of their ire was the barons of Wall Street; the fat cats, the oligarchs, the insanely rich “1%” of society who were, in their eyes, robbing the other 99% of what was rightfully theirs, and this plucky band of would-be Robin Hoods were calling those Brooks Brothers-clad, would be Rulers of Nottingham to account.

They called themselves Occupy Wall Street. The Left’s citizen uprising had begun!

“Beware, Teabaggers, beware! Our grass-roots are deeper than yours!”

Not really.

What ended up corralled in Zuccotti Park back then had no resemblance to the people who rallied under the Tea Party flag, following CNBC reporter Rick Santelli unleashing his call to arms, which almost immediately went viral, and became known as The Rant Heard ‘Round the World:

‘The government is promoting bad behavior… do we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages… This is America! How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage? President Obama are you listening? How about we all stop paying our mortgage! It’s a moral hazard’…

The Tea Party movement’s message was simple: the Federal government had turned into Leviathan, an insatiable monster whose size and appetite was out of control and would irreparably cripple the country. Federal overreach into every facet of society, via an ever expanding regulatory machine requiring an ever expanding revenue stream, flew in the face of the enumerated powers given it by the Constitution.

It threatened to bring the American economy to its knees, by squeezing the productive members of society of their earnings to subsidize people deigned “needy” by the powers-that-be, “needy” because they were irresponsible assholes who needed Uncle Sugar to maintain their over-indulgent lifestyles in the manner they had become accustomed.

The Tea Party’s response was “HELL NO!” It had to stop, and it had to stop now.

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Media Battlezone Prep: Eyesight to the Blind

Posted on 11/6/2011 by TC

 

MSNBC

MSNBC: Where stories go to die. Image via Wikipedia

The last couple of months should put to rest any idea the Make Believe Media deals in reality. I’m talking about going above and beyond their usual mendacity. They have gone full-tilt boogie attempting to “shape the narrative” heading into the 2012 elections; they are escalating their decisions regarding what information you should know–or should not know–before hitting the voting booth.

This is the first installment of a series, that will deal with some of what they ain’t talking about.

Solyndra: The media’s coverage of the Solyndra scandal has been abysmal. On Thursday, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations issued the White House subpoenas (one to WH Chief of Staff office, another to Choo-Choo Biden’s Chief of Staff) seeking any and all documents related to the Administration’s role in the decision to grant the now bankrupt, “green energy” company, Solyndra, over half a billion dollars of taxpayer money. The White House rejected the subpoenas, declaring them “too broad” and “driven more by partisan politics than a legitimate effort to conduct a responsible investigation….”

That’s a pretty big deal, no? If, say, Koch Industries were served a subpoena, and responded, “You can pound sand before we’ll give you what you want because we know you hate our politics,” these MBM monkeys would be flinging poo and hyperventilating over that kind of rejection of the Constitutionally grounded legal right the legislative branch is granted. But when the Obama Administration does it, it not a big deal in the MBM’s eyes.

The Googlebot tells me that, beyond blogs, only the Washington Post and ABC News shows any interest in this latest development. Indeed, Newsbusters.org notes that at MSNBC, the only evening host who has even mentioned Solyndra since they went belly-up is Rachel Maddow. Of course, when she did bring it up, she tried connecting it to G.W. Bush, whose administration had invited, considered–and then rejected–Solyndra’s application for public assistance.

Newsbusters has an extensive archive of the MBM attempting to downplay or shift blame regarding the Solynda scandal on the few occasions they deemed to address this debacle, and fellow Moron John E. provided a nifty info-graphic showing the Solyndra scandal’s timeline (as of October 7) over at Ace’s place.

Stay tuned….

 

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So Full of FAIL!…

Posted on 10/25/2011 by TC

I haz a book!

I have to deal with
Meghan McCain’s Day at Occupy Wall Street – The Daily Beast.

I’m the daughter of one of the most long-standing senators in politics and I have been given every opportunity that anyone could possibly dream of. I was given those opportunities as a result of the hard work from both sides of my family. What struck me more than anything is that for the first time possibly in history, people aren’t being given the same opportunities that my parents and grandparents had.

Umm, you’re a joke, Toots. You happened to be borne of a mother whose father had built a successful beer distribution business, and then showered his offspring with his largesse; borne of a father whose family’s military tradition (combined with his time in a bamboo cage) allowed him to skate into a political career where he has proven to be an indictment of the political system (see: Keating Five), and well earned his nickname: Sen. McGrampypants.

You epitomize the Silver Spoon Syndrome (second generation). You’ve never done shit with your “opportunity” other than exist on the fruit of someone else’s accomplishments. No one would give a damn about your ditzified bullshit if not for your family financed fame and last name.

You’re a two-bit, political Paris Hilton (sporting a heftier rack). It’s all Tina Brown sees in you….

Now, on to the bint’s reportage:

“Are we supposed to choose between feeding our children or paying our rent?” asked Yvette Vigo on a recent afternoon, from a lawn chair where she had been occupying Wall Street for nine straight days. “In my case, I had to choose to feed my children instead of paying my rent. I have six kids and I was lucky if I made $15,000 a year. If anyone comes here and talks to us, they will know that we aren’t here for handouts. We want somebody to hear us.” Vigo, 45, says she was a teacher in the Bronx until she was laid off last year. She has no intention of leaving Wall Street anytime soon.

Quick thoughts:

  • 45 years old; six kids? When did that clown car start?
  • “I was lucky if I made $15,000 a year” yet kept the clown car running?
  • “…occupying Wall Street for nine straight days..” Who’s watching the kids?
  • “a teacher in the Bronx until she was laid off” How did that happen in NYC?

Next sob sap story:

But most of the people who I spoke to had real stories of hardship and despair. Tom Quigley, a 23-year-old college graduate from Buffalo, N.Y., said he couldn’t find a full-time job after graduating from college. He’s taking a cross country bike trip, and he plans on stopping at all the various Occupy Wall Street gatherings across the nation.

Really now, is this clown the best you can do, vis-a-vis “hardship and despair”? This chap seems a member of your class strata; how does one take a cross country bike trip without a source of funds–”couldn’t find a full-time job”–to finance such an outing, yet represent what you deploy him as exemplifying?

It must be glorious to be thick as a brick, and rich.

The #OWS Crowds’ Sucker Bet on Higher Ed

Posted on 10/18/2011 by TC

I admit; I chortled (in a completely inappropriate way):

The number of people participating in the Occupy Wall Street sit-ins because they are angry that their education has not yielded the fruits that they hoped it would becomes more apparent by the day. Many of the protesters I have met are understandably ruffled that they are unemployed, and they often finish their remonstrations with a non-sequitur, delivered as if it were a knockout blow: “And I went to college!” Well, one might ask, “So what?”

I first noticed this “college = good life” fallacy back in England. A close friend of mine was looking for a job straight out of college, and remained unemployed for six months while he searched for what he described as a “graduate job.” Outside of those careers that rely on specific skills and expertise — doctors, veterinarians, and so forth — I have never been sure quite what this term means. My friend has a degree in modern history. Congratulations! But there is no obvious career path for this qualification. Why should it lend itself more to working in, say, finance than to working in a 7-Eleven?

This is why I can’t accept that some among the people Stupid Fucking Hippies, while no doubt earnest, possess anything resembling the ability to bring critical thinking to bear in regards to their “message” when they whine about college debt. I took a full measure of Higher Education™, as offered by CUNY/CSI The Thirteenth Grade, and walked away from the place in disgust… pushed, actually, by a couple of–okay, one was a full professor (who got me a part-time job as a back stage wage slave for a waay the fuck off Broadway company where he was pals with the guy running it, after I had completely ripped off an almighty Harlan Ellison short story and mashed it into a one-act play, leading Prof to believe I had a future in thee-ah-ter… until he read my first original manuscript, which he gave an “A” grade, with a margin note, “You are insane if you think anyone will stage this.”).

The other guy was an adjunct who had just published an ass-kicking novel that CSI’s The Thirteenth Grade”s English Department had studiously ignored (so I ran full page ad in the student rag), and was himself planning to bolt. They both–

side note: there was a third guy, who taught “The Bible as Literature” that, on the first day of class, asked everyone why they had signed up for the class. He “hmm” and nodded, and offered an occasional “Interesting,” till he got to me; then, burst out in laughter when I said “Because a bunch of the Old Testament and pretty much all of Revelations is just fucking nuts, and I wanted to talk about that with someone not wearing a Roman collar.”

–told me to run away as fast as I could… sure, jousting with teachers can be fun, they all admitted as much, but in their eyes, I was just wasting time.

As the Prof put it, “you in a classroom here with anybody teaching business approaches the surreal. You staged a coup at the student newspaper because you were pissed off about “flop sweat” getting cut from one of your columns. Yeah, I heard about that; a lot of people here think you’re my pet project. And I’ve heard you’re running riot in the PoliSci faculty, because of the stuff you’ve printed in the student newspaper since then, and I have been told, I quote here, “a penchant to throw the NY Times on the desk with a headline circled in red and say “What about THAT.”

“That only happened once,” I replied. “C’mon, Herb, they call themselves “Political Science” guys and can’t figure out Guy Molinari? That asshole instructor was trying to convince the class that Ronald Reagan was, in fact, a liberal, and bringing up ancient Greece. I told him that classical liberalism died sometime between 1959 and 1965. I asked him, “What about your hero Bobby Kennedy, wiretapping anybody who pissed his brother off, like Martin Luther King?” He wasn’t happy. He was used to feeding the dumb his blithering bullshit and I wouldn’t stand for it. The class turned into a tennis match; I’d volley his bullshit and he’d return his weak claptrap. Everyone else in the room just watched the show….

“And then Gorby fell; THAT was the day’s paper I tossed on the desk. I figured the collapse of the Supreme Soviet King High Heir of Khrushchev deserved discussion in a PoliSci class, even if the rest of the room were ignorant assholes. And he blackballed the topic.”

“And two days later you trashed him in the newspaper,” Herb said.

“I never used his name, department, anything identifying.”

“Except for that “grey haired, four eyed, pony-tailed fool with tenure” bit?”

“Herb, that’s half the fucking male faculty here, including you.”

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