“No one knows what they want!!1!!”

[HughBeaumont]

Erin “Beijing” Burnett. Andrea Mitchell. Herman Cain. Donald Trump. Stephen Moore. Jonathan Hoenig. Chuckles Gasparino. Mitt Romney.

Now that The Movement is underway and cannot be ignored, it’s like they’re all reading from the same Roger Ailes-Chuck Koch-coordinated cue card:

“No one knows what they want!!1!!”, which, in turn, goes into “Those silly naifs don’t know it, but they’re mad at Obama’s failed policies!!”

Hermster Cain laughingly even pulled out the “bootstraps” card, telling the protesters to “Blame Yerselves” if they aren’t rich (assuming they all want to be rich in the first place . . . assuming).

You gotta wonder if so many people in so many powerful positions can be this clueless and out of touch and still walk erect.

Apparently, they can.

Especially when you consider that, economically, not much has changed from the previous administration as far as the Honey One Percenters are concerned.

Not one tax has been raised. Corporate profits are at record heights. 10% of the country owns 71% of the wealth. Not one person or entity responsible for 2008 has been investigated or indicted. Hiring, as pathetic as it’s been, has been reversed from 500-700k jobs lost per month. Life has not been made one atom-speck less comfortable for the ownershit class. They really have absolutely no reason to bitch or be “uncertain”.

The 99%? EVERY reason on the planet.

- The economy, for the past 30 years, has been primarily built on war/defense, pharmaceuticals, insurance, debt investment, technology and risky financial instruments; with the exception of technology, all unstable, speculative sectors and concentrate wealth and security on the top of the chain,

- Pretty much every social program has either been cut or de-funded, resulting in poor schools, crumbling infrastructure and a social safety net that isn't worth the paper it's non-existent plan is printed on.

- With the exception of the Clinton years, taxes on the wealthy have been lower and lower with each passing year, which is part of the reason for a 14 trillion dollar increase in the national debt (the other part being worthless, illegal and greed-based wars) and affecting the economy with booms, bubbles and crashes rather than steady job creation and real wealth building.

- Manufacturing, Automotive and General Industry in the US has gone the way of the Dodo, resulting in several million displaced workers, many of whom will be experiencing long periods of un/under-employment.

- College costs have skyrocketed while college degrees (thanks to there being substantially less jobs available than college-educated workers that can fill them) have become all but worthless.

- Our corporations have been overrun by Friedmanite bean-counters who refuse to veer from this predatory plan that has failed the overall economy for that same amount of time (you know, unless you happen to be well-monied . .. then it works out just fine).

- Incomes of the wealthy have increased anywhere from 29 to 1000 percent while the average worker makes, in real dollars, the same income he/she did in 1973 (this same condition was prevalent in the Great Depression as well).

- Job security no longer exists in many American occupational sectors, which now require massive amounts of time and expensive training to even get entry to.

- Offshore out/in-sourcing has replaced paying American citizens good wages and has jeopardized the future of at least 14 million jobs by 2015 according to one survey.

And people have the unmitigated gall to say “No one knows what they want?”

How about “STRUCTURE and STABILITY?” How about the notion of a fair living wage for an honest day’s work? How about the notion of long-term goals instead of short term gain and profit? How about REAL “shared sacrifice”?? How about making capitalism well-functioning, regulated and BORING again? How about not operating international business as if it were a whiskey-throttle casino in which the 1% wins at the rigged roulette wheel every time?

“No one knows what they want??”

Are you idiots still going to say that when we’re at the doors of your mansions, board rooms and limos?

WISE up. GROW up. SHUT up. No one’s buying your coordinated nonsense anymore . . . and you’re sweating.

[gratuitous]

1. When their fat paychecks depend on their not understanding something

You can bet a dollar to a hole in a doughnut they won't understand it.

[BanTheGOP]

35. Banning the GOP will solve this problem, gratuitous

Unfortunately, the capitalists understand the "problem" all TOO much, indeed, they PERPETUATE it with their unbridled acceptance of a philosophy that is part of our destructive tendencies. ONLY one action can prove fruitful: That is to financially ban the existence of the republican party. ONLY with political parties that ensure a rich, diverse amount of input can we get this situation under control and progressively advance our needed economic changes. But right now, the republicans are illegally standing in the way. We need to ban the GOP....NOW! Pure and simple.

[FrenchieCat]

2. Oh, they know!

[locahungaria]

24. Holy shit!

Thanks for the chart!

I knew about the US CEO ratio to pay, but had no idea about other countries. That chart really puts in perspective!

[moondust]

3. They're used to buying submission.

They're fishing for the price of a settlement.

[Scout]

4. may i steal this for facebook? i'd be happy to give you proper credit. n/t

[HughBeaumont]

7. Spread it like wealth should be!

:rofl:

[Life Long Dem]

5. Has something to do with the 1%.

[LeftinOH]

6. My Repub cousin is convinced that the OWS demonstration is a massive anti-Obama movement;

as such, he keeps posting OWS-related links on Facebook and voicing showing his support for the protesters. Ugh.

[HughBeaumont]

10. Yes, because as we know . . .

. . . the OWS Movement LURVES them some Laissez-Fail!! :rofl:

There's a Facebook group called "Reaganomics: Raping America Since 1981" that's covering all of the #Occupy movements across the country. I get some updates there, pretty useful . . .

[hifiguy]

8. Outstanding post, Hugh!

:applause::applause::applause:


:kick:ed & Rec'd

[Jim Warren]

9. I saw a sign that said:

You see disorganized,
We see democracy.

It is often forgotten or conveniently overlooked that democracy doesn't come in neat little media packets, it can be raw, raucous and argumentative by nature but leans on the premise that voices need be heard and opinions known because no one person knows enough.

[HughBeaumont]

12. Nice phrasing.

They're confused because it's a protest, not a Power Point Presentation. Speaking your mind is bad, BAD I say!

[truedelphi]

44. That's one powerful group of words. n/t

[Lionessa]

11. “Those silly naifs don’t know it, but they’re mad at Obama’s failed policies!!”

Unfortunately though it has been a 30 year ride to get to this dismal place, Obama has had time to address these issues in a Democratic way and unfortunately chose to continue.

This week even though most of the 99% is focused on jobs jobs jobs, Obama ended last week trying to get his free trade agreements, the ones with no humanitarian conditions, the agreements that move more jobs overseas,... anyway, on the stump it's all jobs and Democratic jargon, in reality his policies are no different than any other republican president in the past 30 years.

Edited to add links to free trade articles from last and this week. More job killing legislation.



http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7923U120111004

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7944PJ20111005

[HughBeaumont]

14. Well, to be fair, he's not exactly had a congress filled with progressives during his term.

Hard saying whether he would have been able to get Democratic economic legislation passed even when he had 60 votes. Far too many "D"s are actually economic "R"s. Even so, he campaigned like a center left and has been wearing the moderate right suit ever since.

I hate that he drinks the Chi-School Kook-Aid . . . HATE it. Makes me lose faith in the whole governmental and economic process knowing there's really no choice in the matter economically. If all I'm voting for is for the US to not become ChurchWarMerica, what's the point?

[Lionessa]

36. It's even more difficult to tell when Obama cede's the middle before either House has even tried.

[kenfrequed]

54. Well

Thanks to his economic advisors he blew a hell of a lot of political capital on just continuing the Bush tarp crap. He really wasn't all that invested in it. It confused his message and it wrecked the popularity boost of his first hundred days where he would have had a chance of pushing some actual reform through. He should have been a boat rocker and instead he tried to be everyones friend.

[Matariki]

13. Yeah - go back to reporting on Aston Kucher

while the real news is going on all around you.

babies.

[Uncle Joe]

15. The vast majority of the corporate media doesn't want to tell you, they want to sell you.

They're paid to be ignorant or apathetic, (and for that they probably deserve a pay raise) that makes it all the easier to dumb their viewers down.

Don't expect them to get down to Wall Street to actually find out or deduce the answers, they already know them anyway, but are too compromised to say so on television.

Thanks for the thread, HughBeaumont.

[Jim Warren]

17. Or blow you.

Imagine the courtier spirit alive and well here, picture the Court of Louis the 14th, fops in powdered wigs and beauty marks fawning over the uttering of an unintelligible king.

[Uncle Joe]

21. Yes, I don't believe the selling stops when you obtain political office.

They tell those in office what they want to hear so long as what they want to hear satisfies the corporate media's ownership and commercial buying clients.

Selling the royalty to their own pride and selling the people down the river.

[lunatica]

16. First they ridicule you...

That's what's happening. Ghandi had it right. He was ridiculed too.

[butterfly77]

18. Why in the hell is Dylan Ratigan...

getting Ron Paul and asking him for his consideration as though either of them are leading the OWS movement??And Mark McKInnon of the no labels bullshit!

[HughBeaumont]

19. I can never truly read Dylan.

One minute he's a populist-of-the-people, next minute he's in the Ron Paul Rubber Room. :shrug:

[Jim Warren]

20. Courtier spirit

Ratigan had the the idiot Karl Denninger on recently, someone who would have fit in well as a junior staffer with Joe McCarthy.

[Kahuna]

22. Dylan is usurping OWS, and in the absense of a clear message,

he is defining the movement to coincide with his agenda.

[Jim Warren]

23. No worries

As long as he keeps featureing guest like Karl Denninger, this movement will always be one step beyond his reach.

[Kahuna]

25. Don't be so sure. The M$M is an echo chamber with many more voices...

Right now Jonathan Capehart is on MSNBC conflating OWS with the tea party. See what I mean? He's also saying that OWS has no clear articulation of what their ultimate goal is.

[Jim Warren]

29. That's why he's irrelevant

The media is jaded and lazy, accustomed to "the story" being easily packaged and not at all accustomed to democracy being what it truly is, an improvisation unfolding.

[Fire Walk With Me]

26. K&R!

[fascisthunter]

27. they are scared...

[HomerRamone]

28. Best. Post. Ever. nt

[swilton]

30. The greatest opportunity was missed about 20 years ago

when the Berlin Wall fell and the peace dividend was squandered on the drug war and other investments for the MIC. That in my view was a pivotal moment and revealed a lot about our Government's mission in life = serve the MIC rather than the public/common good. At that point there was a chance to fix the environment at less cost - everything squandered.

[Shandris]

31. I think the most telling thing about the 'coverage'...

...is that they are all agreeing that it is 'disorganized', and 'no one knows what they want'. They want a simple, one-bullet-point demand that the entire protest is predicated on. They look at the Democracy in action, and THEY DO NOT RECOGNIZE WHAT IT IS.

Think about that. The mainstream media, when confronted with Democracy, IS UNCERTAIN WHAT IT IS THEY ARE COVERING. That is the proof that things have gotten so far beyond the intention of the Founding Fathers that no single demand can even attempt to correct the course. It'd be like trying to dam the Nile with a copper penny.

"THE MEDIA CALLS US UNORGANIZED.
THIS IS DEMOCRACY IN ACTION.
AND THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS.
IF THEY DO NOT RECOGNIZE THE FOUNDATION
OF OUR COUNTRY...
...WHY SHOULD THE 1%?"

[Jim Warren]

32. Now you're getting it.

Think of Marie Antoinette being told the people had no bread.

[HughBeaumont]

47. Like it was said above, the oligarchs and their "Fourth Estate"s wealth DEPEND on our confusion.

Just like their equally ridiculous demand that each of us become a "Thomas Edison", find a need and fill it, as if that's SO easy and cost-efficient to do.

Hard telling if the oligarchs are standing pat, saying "This, Too, Shall Pass" or they really are worried.

[DearAbby]

33. YES!!!

K&R

[ieoeja]

34. "With the exception of the Clinton years, taxes on the wealthy have been lower and lower..."

Clinton created a COLA tax cut. Every single year under Clinton, the brackets were adjusted upward as cost of living increased. This in turn lowered taxes year after year.

If you count each of those as a separate tax cut, then I can add 8 tax cuts to the total number of federal income tax cuts I have worked through. I believe the total is over 20, and I've only been working 27 years.

Yet, people still complain that the federal gov't keeps raising taxes. Which pretty much means those people are fucking idiots.

[nc4bo]

37. +1 and yes they are sweating.

Someone should tell them it's going to get much hotter.

[Occupied1]

38. Huge presence today, significant union participation.

http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution

NYPD just decided to push back the human pens one lane back. Crowd is too big. #OccupyWallSt twitpic.com/6vnv32

6 minutes ago

Centre St in this area now closed to vehicular traffic, people filling street now. #occupywallstreet twitpic.com/6vo144

[HughBeaumont]

39. Even the next-to-rightest-of-right channels, CNBC, did an overhead shot.

It was amazing, a wonderful sight to see.

They aren't going away. It's going to be too widespread for them to ignore.

[jwirr]

40. There is nothing that makes me more angry than the suggestion

that these demonstrates do not know what they want. It is a deliberate evasion of the obvious. And they may not realize it but it is inflammatory. Like police action it only makes us more angry.

[HughBeaumont]

51. And they'll never confront us.

They'll hide and slink past us with their heads down or yell from a very safe distance.

Their talking points fall flat on their faces when applied to reality.

[jwirr]

55. What they are saying just proves that they do not get it. They are

living in that gop fantasy world we see so eloquently expressed by the gop candidates. Anyone who is up on what is happening in this world knows what they are worried about - the same things we are.

[sad sally]

41. . ..Come mothers and fathers

through out the land.
And don't criticize
what you can't understand.
Your sons and your daughters
are beyond your command.
Your old road is rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
if you can't lend a hand.
For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

[Kurovski]

42. I love it when DUers take the time to write such terrific original material.

A big K&R!

It's HUGH! :)

[lonestarnot]

43. And shitting! A sweat and a shit is what I see.

:evilgrin:

[Rex]

45. Like in Total Recall.

It was almost believable until that one bead of sweat started rolling down the head...they are sweating and should be worried that their corporate mouthpieces in the media are having no effect on the masses anymore. Hungry people want the crime to stop on Wall Street and for D.C. to clean up the waste and fraud. Simple, but Foxnews parrots get paid to read the agenda card of Koch or Karl depending on which GOP paymaster needs to be shielded from justice.

[ScottLand]

46. Just call us France.

[Pacifist Patriot]

48. I honestly don't get the confusion. I could sum it up in one sentence.

We want an economy and power structure that affirms human dignity, not one that destroys it.

[HughBeaumont]

49. "Cooperation > Competition Any Day"

Our problem is we can't speak Bumper Sticker, News Ticker Item, Cliche or Factoid.

[raccoon]

50. Great post, Rec'd. nt

[Gold Metal Flake]

52. Reccing another of your threads.

[Pooka Fey]

53. When they can't ignore your presence any longer, they move on to Tactic No. 2

"You have no clear statement to deliver, and we have NO IDEA what you want!!!"

Such BS. :mad:

[CrispyQ]

56. "It's the corporations, stupid!"

That's the message, summed up in the sound bite fashion they love so much! Too bad they are whores to their corporate masters instead of true journalists. :grr:

Bumper sticker: The liberal media is only as liberal as the conservative corporations that own them.


on edit: spelling & k&r.