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Jewish World Review Oct 18, 2011 / 20 Tishrei, 5772 Occupied by crazies By Jack Kelly
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Ugly and pathetic. That's what you get when you combine envy with desperation and wrap them in hypocrisy. Democrats envy and fear the tea party, a grassroots movement that arose spontaneously after CNBC editor Rick Santelli's epic rant on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Feb. 19, 2009. There followed more than 300 rallies, including one in Searchlight, Nev. (pop 576), hometown of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, where police estimated the crowd at 8,000 to 10,000. Tea partiers turned their attention to the 2010 midterm elections, and helped hand Democrats their worst thumping since 1946. Envious Democrats tried to Astroturf a liberal alternative, the coffee party, founded by Annabel Park, an organizer of the United for Obama video channel. Ms. Park's affiliation with the Obama campaign often went unmentioned in media accounts of this "grassroots" organization. "Is the coffee party the next big thing?" asked Stephanie Condon of CBS last year. But despite massive media cheerleading, attendance at coffee party events was sparse. "Mainstream" journalists are trying again, harder this time. "The Occupy Wall Street protests are suddenly all that Washington can talk about," said Christiane Amanpour of ABC News. "Are we witnessing the birth of a new kind of tea party?" "These protests have been largely peaceful and their messages of economic inequality, social injustice and peace over war are beginning to take root in the nation's political debate," said reporter Ron Mott on the NBC Nightly News. "The seed of progressive activism in the Occupy protests may grow into something very big indeed," wrote Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson. The movement "has spread to more than 250 American cities, more than a thousand countries," enthused ABC anchor Diane Sawyer. That's remarkable, since there are only 195 countries on earth. (ABC later reported that she meant to say "a thousand cities.") Ms. Sawyer's accuracy is rivaled by those journalists who compare OWS protests to the tea party. • The OWS protests "are to tea party events as Pittsburg, Kan. (pop. 20,233), is to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (pop 305,704)," wrote columnist George F. Will. "So far, probably fewer people have participated in all of them combined than attended just one tea party rally, that of Sept. 12, 2009, on the Washington Mall." • Nearly all adults at tea party rallies are likely among the 53 percent of Americans who pay federal income tax. Many at OWS protests are likely among the 47 percent who do not but who think they're entitled to lots more free stuff anyway. Yet Mr. Robinson finds them "idealistic." • Tea partiers protested against runaway federal spending and Obamacare. There is little (other than their desire for more free stuff) that unifies OWS protesters. Some came for drugs and sex. Some are hiding out from the law. Some have been paid to protest, according to a report in the New York Post. • Tea partiers cleaned up after themselves. Garbage is strewn wherever OWS protesters march. The OWS encampment in New York City's Zuccotti Park last week "smelled like an open sewer -- with people urinating and defecating in public," according to the same New York Post story. • Tea partiers are law abiding. Hundreds have been arrested at OWS protests. OWS originated with Adbusters, a Canadian magazine that caters to the far left. But ABC News reported Monday that "Democrats Seek to Own 'Occupy Wall Street' Movement." Democrats wish to deflect blame for the economy from themselves to Wall Street. But at least as responsible for the housing market meltdown were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the now bankrupt "government-sponsored enterprises" whose reckless lending policies were protected by Democrats in Congress. The Wall Street investment banks most complicit with Fannie and Freddie were big contributors to Democrats. President Obama has protected them from bankruptcy and subsidized them at the expense of smaller, regional banks that had nothing to do with the meltdown. Their friends in the news media rarely call Democrats on their hypocrisy. But their embrace of OWS could lead to big trouble. Stunts like blocking the Brooklyn Bridge do not endear the protesters to the working people they inconvenience. Many protesters are openly Marxist. Some advocate violence. The last time Democrats so openly embraced the hard left was at their national convention in 1972. That didn't work out so well. The Democratic candidate for president lost by the largest popular vote margin in history.
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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.
© 2011, Jack Kelly |
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