We are the oppressed in America. We are the 1%!

Well, we are the banks.  We are the people who are being oppressed in this country.  We are being oppressed by these people calling themselves, the other 99%.  These rotten vagrants are nothing but parasites.  They leech off of the services that we provide in this country every single day, and then question the manner in which we provide it.  Where are all these supposed Ron Paul fans?  They are supposed to have our backs!  But yes, we are the oppressed.  We are being ill-treated by these thugs, and why – because they think we are somehow responsible for the problems that the poor in this country have now.

I hate to break it to you, poor people, but sometimes, a little bit of loss for everybody else is just the cost of doing business!  Sometimes, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, know what I mean?  I mean, where was all this bitching that you are doing now back when the market was great?  You all just complain when things are bad!  You parasites don’t like to admit that you like us when things are good, and then don’t when we are bad.  You are nothing but people needing to find a person to blame for your problems.  Well you know who you can blame – yourselves.

The reason that you all are not doing well is because you are lazy!  You don’t try hard enough!  After all, if you all simply got off the street and looked, you’d find a job.  There are jobs around, if you lazy cretins decided to have the dignity enough to go and work for it.  I mean, that’s what we do!  We come into our banks every day, and we bust our asses, playing with all of your money.  Where are our medals?!  Where are the people saying, “thank you Wall Street for doing the important job of keeping the economy running”?!  Where the fuck are you when we need you to be nice.  You think all these problems just happen?!  This isn’t our fault.

Sometimes, things go wrong.  And we’re people, after all.  So what if we just crashed and destroyed the economy, how are we responsible?  It is the government and you all’s faults for keeping us regulated!  If you took away all of those regulations, everything would get better.  Again, where are all these Ron Paul people when we need them?  Why aren’t they out there telling these worms that the free market can regulate itself!  That we should have the liberty to do as we please, and just you watch as things will get better!

But now all these protestors are forcing our hand!  We didn’t want it to come to this, but what choice did you leave us?  We are now forced to have to fight against you.  We have bought and paid for the police in this country.  And now we are forced to also back political candidates who will strike down you protesting masses.  The fact is that we must say this to you – you and your resistance is completely futile.  We will defeat you, because honestly, we own this government.  If you will not step down on your own, we will put a government body in power who will force you to step down.

We didn’t want it to come to this.  We didn’t want to have to put you in your place.  But what choice did you leave us?  When you all go on about how you are the ones oppressed, you are ignoring the fact that you are singling us banks out.  So now we have to takes steps to put you down.  We don’t want to, we shouldn’t have to, but you people and your refusal to blindly be our slaves has left us no alternative.  We’re sorry to have to do this.

Oh wait, who am I kidding.  You people are nothing but our slaves, and if you really think anything to the contrary, then you are just plain blind.  We are going to continue to oppress you, because the fact is that we can buy and sell politicians.  Your President is even bowing to us (no bullshit, check one of the videos linked above)!  You really think your protests can do anything?  Well, the fact is that you are just blind.  So, we will keep going, and unless you are willing to step up beyond just blind protest, then we will own you forever!

Until next time, a quote,

“But wishes are for children.”  -Dexter Morgan, Dexter

Peace out,

Maverick  (Occupy Wall Street, you need to step up!  Either make the fight bigger, or step off.  These people are NOT listening to you!)

The Other 53% vs. Occupy Wall Street

Here is something that is really interesting to look at.  There is a group that has come up now calling themselves, “the other 53%.”  They are a counter-protest to those who are the Occupy Wall Street protestors.  When one looks at this group, there is something that should also be considered when it comes to occupying – reality.

It is natural that the conservatives immediately got on the bandwagon of how the Occupy Wall Street, and now the movement that has grown from that, Occupy Together, are just a bunch of left-wing nuts who “violate the law.”  Here’s a quote from Karl Rove about this group.  This guy, what a shit.  Well, what a piece of shit.

What are these people for?  To the degree that they’re for anything it’s left wing nuttiness…One (the Tea Party) is a group of Constitution loving, law abiding people, and this is a group of left nuts whose goal is to violate the law.”

A point of interest about Rove’s statement is that the protestors have broken no laws.  The protestors have gotten very good at staying right in the law.  Part of why this movement hasn’t died out already is due to the cops overreacting to what the protestors are doing.  If they had just ignored them, if they had just let them be, nobody would care by now.  This stays in the news because of the fact that the internet is showing what these thugs, I mean cops, are doing.

But now we have a group of people who are coming into the fold, and are the right-wing answer to rational discussion.  They call themselves “the other 53%.”  They say they are the 53% of people who pay federal income taxes.  They go on and on about how they are living in their means, and how their lives suck, but they don’t blame Wall Street.  I’m not shitting you here.  Take a look at this lovely message that was done by one YouTube vlogger –

I work 3 jobs.
I have a house I can’t sell.
My family insurance costs are outrageous.
But I don’t blame Wall Street.
Suck it up, you whiners.
I am the 53% subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is one of this new group.  There are a lot of people online who are putting up these hand-written signs.  This fascinates me to death, because how stupid are these people?  TJ Kincaid made a hell of a point about this in a recent vlog he did.

First of all, why is it a bragging right these days to talk about how, ‘I bust my ass to have what little I have.’  Do you have any idea how fucking stupid you sound?  When you talk about how you bust your ass to have your little shitty one-bedroom apartment.  You sound like a fucking moron.”

That is kind of how I view things.  We can occupy wherever, but in order to actually change something, we need to get people to start occupying REALITY.  This is getting almost a little too offensive for words when we have to suffer listening to idiots deliberately protest against their own interests.  This Other 53% morons don’t have ten brain cells to rub together.

That is the absolute truth here.  These people are idiots.  The system we have in this country is so bad that it crushes the poor, and canonizes the rich.  And that really tragic part is that we have people in this country who are bragging about how shitty their lives are, saying that they bust ass to get nowhere, and they they think the system doesn’t need to change.  “Suck it up, you whiners.”

It’s part of this tragic paradigm shift that has happened in this country, and is the reason I support Occupy Wall Street so vigorously – because while the protestors on Wall Street are trying to make this country better for everyone, these people will just blindly follow ignorance, blindly follow the path that keeps them in perpetual bondage to poverty.

These people just bug me.  Because they don’t seem to see that the private market these people seem to love so much is keeping them in bondage.  They are one big medical crisis away from a mountain of debt from which they will never get out from under.  Obama is a failure because won’t even talk about universal health care.

And the people who defend these corrupt banks don’t seem to realize that these people don’t create anything.  They don’t earn the money they get, they play with money that other people have earned.  It is an endless cycle of corruption, abuse, and the people not standing up and fighting for the right to be treated like human beings.  The sad fact of that is that the law is supporting them.  The law is backing the people who do this.  They take our money, gamble it away, and then foot us with the bill.  Why these other 53% are on their side, well, I’m sure Fox News can answer that question.

Here’s the real truth – the people who actually want to change things are out there, on Wall Street, and now other places, are trying to change things for the better, and Wall Street does what it has always done – mobilize the stupid and the gullible to say that the system is fine just the way it is.  A joke that should be completely stale by now, but it isn’t.

It just kills me that the people who are part of this 53% are proud of the fact that they have no chance to get ahead at all.  Yes, the fact that you are kept in perpetual poverty is a good thing!  You know, if somebody were to beat these people with a wrench, that would make the world a much better place.

The system that we have right now is broken.  The banks are still in control, and Wall Street is accountable to nobody.  The people who are doing this, among other things, they want these people to be held accountable.  The Randroid Ron Paulites viscerally hate that, but that is the truth – that these people need to be held accountable.  This movement was supposed to be a movement for all the right reasons, and instead, it has been morphed and manipulated by all the wrong people into a cause of those who are corrupt to rally.

After all the lies, misinformation, and spin, there is one truth about this – that the “Other 53%” are nothing but flunkies of a system that is broken, but doesn’t want to be fixed, because those who control it are more powerful than we can possibly imagine.

Until next time, a quote,

“By the way, you stupid fuck who thinks you live within your fucking means, you don’t live within your fucking means.  You are one, ONE, fucking medical crisis away from being hundreds of thousands of fucking dollars in debt!”  -TJ Kincaid, Occupy Reality

Peace out,

Maverick

YouTube is Changing the World, While the NYPD are Thugs

It is an amazing thing to see – when something that began as a trend is able to change the world.  It has happened before.  Facebook is probably the most famous example.  It has completely revolutionized how groups interact with one-another.  The Internet began as a military program, and now it has been able to link the world like never before.  Things that used to just be seen as trendy are now reshaping the entire world.  But there is one invention that has been reshaping things like never before – YouTube.

I know it will be hard to believe.  Most of the prudish scholarly types are still just calling it a trend, a fad, something that will come and go.  But that is not true.  That is less true now than ever.  Now, more than ever before, YouTube is entering the public arena.  I am, of course, talking about the Occupy Wall Street protests.  This has brought YouTube into the fold of what is being recognized in the world of not only journalism, but social progress as well.

What began as the dream of three former PayPal employees has now become just a much a part of the media and social culture as Facebook.  For real, anything that you can possibly imagine being a part of life, YouTube is a part of.  There are families who share their travels with the world.  There are professors who record their lectures on put them on YouTube.  There is even a clause in the YouTube license that says that somebody can post news clips, which makes it easy for people to stay informed.  The best clips are posted by various television networks, like Comedy Central.  There is a plethora vloggers who are all working to get their ideas and opinions out into the world.  My favorite is TJ Kincaid, aka The Amazing Atheist.  He is a free-minded guy who is not nice with his words, but very good with his points.  He talked recently about the protests in New York City.

Because my favorite clip of all is – there’s this big march full of these passionate protestors, and they’re doing their chants, and you can just see the passion on their faces, and then above them there’s this balcony, full of rich Wall Street investment banker types, and they’re all drinking champagne and laughing, and they have these looks of bemused contempt on their faces.  Like, ‘look darling, the peasants are revolting!’  ‘Yes they are (fake laughing sound)'”

And that has been a sentiment that Wall Street seems to have about this whole state of affairs.  They seem to not think that this is important.  While there are signs that things are going to pick up, it remains to be seen if this is going to be some kind of huge deal the way that those who are involved believe it is.  Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon showing up and talking has gotten the mainstream media involved.  The corporate media is starting to talk more about this, but one could make the argument that that is just because of the fact that it is getting bigger, becoming more than just a worthless issue.

YouTube also helped this issue as well.  This protest was being as ignored as possible by the corporate media.  But YouTube came into play in ways that nobody could have imagined.  Also, a huge political commentator came into the arena in a big way.  Keith Olbermann, who is now on Current TV, came onto the scene.  He, and commentators like Sam Seder, The Young Turks, and the YouTube vlogger scene massively came out and was talking about this.  But YouTube brought this into the light in ways that nobody could have imagined.  It exposed an unacceptable amount of police brutality with these peaceful demonstrations.  Each video has gone viral, and it has generated massive buzz.  As you can imagine, when police brutality came to the public eye, the first thing the cops did was say that it wasn’t their fault.

On Monday, the police department was blithely insisting that the use of pepper spray, and all the rest of the brutality caught on tape was appropriate, even while we and anyone else with internet access had video proving that it was completely unjustified.”

That was from a Rewrite sequence from The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.  He goes on to explain that Anthony Bologna is going to be investigated.  But, like so many of these investigations, it is all just a sham.  It is going to be a lot of shtick that is designed to make us think that something is actually going to happen.  In all likelihood, Bologna will either not be charged with anything, or will be given a slap on the wrist.  He also shows that Bologna is not the only one.  YouTube has several more videos that have gone viral, all showing more police brutality.

And the people who this brutality was directed at were those who were doing their Constitutional duty, and filming the cops.  They were trying to film a completely peaceful protest, and they were treated like criminals by cops.  These cops are slaves to the system.  Allison Kilkenny wrote an article talking about this very problem.

The teargas aside starts to tap into something important: how the police state and its domestic weaponry and bureaucratic assist with the needs for permits to do anything in protests have successfully crippled the activism community. Activists are afraid. You can smell it in their midst.”

But while she says that, and her article makes some very good points, there are signs that hope may just be in the air.  For while the police are cracking down on the public, they are still standing up.  They are still choosing to put themselves in danger and dawn their video cameras.  They are still choosing to ignore the fact that the police are nothing more than a weapon of the state these days, and they are not letting fear stop them from coming together.

There are even plans to march on the central police station in New York City.  They are going to make themselves known to the police.  Should they go through with this, anything could happen.  Part of me fears for those who will send a message to the cops that they cannot be driven by fear.  I hope for their safety.  But when the public decides to push against the weapons the state has, that is a step up from how Kilkenny described them in her article as “young, brash, and lost.”  This is something more.

And YouTube will continue to be a part of this.  It will still continue to be involved in this war against a machine that has grown far too powerful for its own good.  We can hope that groups like Anonymous, and the independent and foreign media will be there as well, to help these brave soldiers of peace.

Until next time, a quote,

“Soon enough, the protestors realized that using their cameras meant that they were running a much more serious risk than being beaten and arrested, and still they had the courage to do it.  There’s a very brave man in this picture.  A very brave man.  And it’s not the guy in the white shirt.”  -Lawrence O’Donnell, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell

Peace out,

Maverick

Sorry, but #OccupyWallStreet is a Joke!

I don’t want to be the guy who says this.  I don’t want to say it because really, nobody wants to hear the truth anymore.  A lot of great articles have beeen written.  A lot of people have said a lot of great things, but the overall consensus is that this whole affair was just a giant joke.  And there is proof of this contention – the fact that those who it was meant to effect were not affected.  It was a joke to them, and it is a joke to everything that our society here in America has become.  Here’s the real truth – this was a movement that didn’t have true activism, but the reason that it didn’t is because the activists who are more serious were all too scared to show up.

As Allison Kilkenny put it –

It’s not mere paranoia. We know for a fact that the F.B.I. monitors activism groups, and this practice reached a frenzied level during the Bush administration years. These intimidation practices continue under President Obama in the form of raids.“

This is the reason that Occupy Wall Street, a movement that began on Twitter, like so many others, is a joke to me.  Let me enlighten you with some reality – we are living in a police state.  And the police are NOT on the side of the common man.  This whole tragic endeavor is proof like no other that that law does not work for the people, it works for the system.  If a group comes up who wants to jeopardize the status quo, they are put down, brutally.  This is why Tea Party protests are ignored, for the most part.  They are in favor of the status quo.  They want more of what this country is becoming.

Also as Kilkenny pointed out –

While the left loses the valuable organizational mechanism of unions, the right has gained corporate masters like the Koch brothers to disseminate millions of dollars into astroturfing campaigns to organize and destroy on their behalf. While the left makes signs, the right has already deployed troupes to scream at town hall events.

This is the other side of the fence that needs to be examined.  The left is so hopelessly pathetic at doing anything in this country anymore.  It used to be that those on my side of the political fence were able to accomplish great things.  But now, with the fear of getting maced and legally abused by those we believe are there to protect us (the cops, oh sorry, the thugs), and the general impotence, the left is now the retreating party in the face of remorseless and ceaseless opposition.  The left has almost lost the culture war.  It’s only a matter of time.

But back to Occupy Wall Street, sorry, kiddos, but this is nothing more than a bunch of kids trying to play Egypt.  And it isn’t working.  There have been over 100 arrests so far.  And a lot of these were caught on film.  One was of a guy who was just waving a flag around.  He wasn’t hurting anybody, he was just shouting a lot, but the cops decide to throw him to the ground and beat anybody who tried to intervene.

Then there was the even worse incident – how a couple of women were corralled off from the rest, and a senior police officer comes over and maces them in the face.  They were NOT a danger to anybody.  They were doing nothing but standing there, observing, and the cops decide that is worthy of being maced in the face.  This was also caught on video.  What’s worse is that the police issue a statement after this saying that they had “used the pepper spray appropriately.”  Unreal.  So, a couple of women who were corralled away from the rest and completely peaceful were deserving of being sprayed.

Then there was another instance of a guy who approached the cops with his arms up, showing he didn’t want any trouble, and the cops decide to throw him to the ground, pin him down, and arrest him.  Why they did this is pretty obvious – for the same reason that the FBI monitors peaceful activist groups.  For the same reason that these kinds of tactics have been used on other protests like this – because it scares others who would have shown up from coming to help.

Now, it should be mentioned that another reason that this is a joke is because these kids are, as Kilkenny puts it, “Young, brash, and lost.”  It’s a bummer situation, to be sure.  Made even more tragic because there is a lot of passion with these kids.  A lot of them have suffered for the misplaced energy that they have to bring some attention to a cause that is worthy.  Of course, they failed.  The corporate media has given this whole affair abysmal coverage.  The independent media is just dismissed as a place where the eggheads and webworms go, but that nobody really cares about.  These kids really did try and do something that was worth doing.  This does need to be done.

But it needs to be examined also how the cops are instantly there to protect the wealthy, the elite, business as usual.  What drives this point home, to me anyway, is the clip that shows a bunch of protestors, passionate and making an effort, then looks above them, at the Wall Street fat cats who run this country.  Do they takes it seriously?  Not a fucking chance.  They look in it with smiles, like this is all just a funny show for them to watch. It’s entertainment to them.  They look on it with bemused contempt.  Because they know the truth – that this effort by these kids will mean NOTHING.  It’s a joke because it was doomed to fail before its conception.  I want to believe that something like this could matter, but Kilkenny and TJ have the right idea – that this was just a bunch of kids who aren’t even getting to those who they are trying to send a message to.

Call me a realist, but the truth is that the people who are doing this protest have all the right ideas, all the wrong approaches, and are being put down by a system that, from top to bottom, works against them, and the law enforcement agents who are part of what we all understand to be a police state that works against the common man.  It’s a joke.  It’s horribly tragic, horribly awful joke.  And what’s more, it will probably be one of the last that is told, before things like this are cracked down upon completely, and we are slaves to the system.

America, welcome to the police state, where no amount of protest will do you any good.  Part of me is starting to wonder if peace is the way to get these people’s attention.  And while I’m on the subject, hey Wall Street – fuck you!  You fuck up, foot us with the bill after you almost wreck our economy, and now you want to stand on your balcony and laugh at us?!  Fuck you!

Until next time, a quote,

“We have this fantasy that our interests and the interests of the super rich are the same.  Like somehow the rich will eventually get so full that they’ll explode.  And the candy will rain down on the rest of us.  Like there’s some kind of pinata of benevolence.But here’s the thing about a pinata: it doesn’t open on its own.  You have to beat it with a stick.” -Bill Maher