Stop Me Before I Vote Again

NEW YORK -- A union representing 5,000 New York City Police Department sergeants blasted Occupy Wall Street protesters on Thursday and threatened to sue them should they injure police.

"New York's police officers are working around the clock as the already overburdened economy in New York is being drained by 'occupiers' who intentionally and maliciously instigate needless and violent confrontations with the police," said Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association. Although sergeants are higher in rank than patrol officers, they do not wear the white shirts of some of the more senior officers.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/27/nypd-sergeants-union-oakland-violence_n_1062823.html

They should sue me. I'm responsible. Sue a beggar and you get a louse, as my granny used to say. Years ago, a crooked lawyer here on the West Side sued me for libel, to the tune of (I think) six million dollars. His daughter is now a Supreme Court justice.

I'm loving the white shirt non sequitur. Regardless, I think somebody needs a hug and a ride in the waaaahhhmbulance. Why not just ignore the protesters? Or, better, lend them a hand. They're doing God's work, according to my religious friends and of course I agree.

Oh the other thing, if she is pushed out (there is the beginnings of a REcall, supported by the cops, that predates Occupy) one thing Oakland has is all colors of Dem party hacks and step n fetchits.

Might as well laugh and keep laughing.

I meant to quote in the part that was about Oakland. The NY cops used Oakland as their justification.

Note the quotation marks around "occupiers." If they're mere "occupiers" instead of, say, occupiers, then why the fuss?

Surely, "occupiers" would not "maliciously" "instigate" "needless" and "violent" "confrontations" with the "police."

Nice catch, CZ. The petty sneering of the quotes says a lot.

And later when it comes time to documenting the "occupation" some John Searle lookalike—world class jerks like him aplenty in the groves of academe—will amble along to pass his verdict on the "occupiers":

... worst yet, we attracted to Berkeley, the worst collection of kooks and nuts you've ever seen in your life. Everybody saw this on television, and they had a completely distorted conception of it. They thought, 'what you do is you go to Berkeley, and you riot and you just have a great time; its one big political, sexual, drug feast.'

...scratch a Liberal and find a Fascist. Perfect!

A review of a recent work entitled Living with Hitler: Liberal Democrats in the Third Reich:

This book addresses key questions about liberal democrats and their activities in Germany from 1933 to the end of the Nazi regime. While it is commonly assumed that liberals fled their homeland at the first sign of jackboots, in reality most stayed. Some even thrived under Hitler, personally as well as professionally. Historian Eric Kurlander examines the motivations, hopes, and fears of liberal democrats—Germans who best exemplified the middle-class progressivism of the Weimar Republic—to discover why so few resisted and so many embraced elements of the Third Reich.

German liberalism was not only the opponent and victim of National Socialism, Kurlander suggests, but in some ways its ideological and sociological antecedent. That liberalism could be both has crucial implications for understanding the genesis of authoritarian regimes everywhere. Indeed, Weimar democrats’ prolonged reluctance to oppose the regime demonstrates how easily a liberal democracy may gradually succumb to fascism.

Bosworth points out that Mussolini's colonial atrocities in Ethiopia and Libya (where in Cyrenaica he killed half the population) as well as his opportunistic entry into the second World War was all too much in keeping with "Liberal" traditions.

sk,

I think liberal democracy is a fair predictor of fascism. Perhaps not the flags-and-falange sort which populates the past, but now moreso the corporate varieties which have freed themselves from needing to directly run states, because it's cheaper and easier to take into patronage those who do.

On the "scratch a liberal" theme, here's a doozy:

Pauloween Krugman:"As far as aggregate demand in concerned... spending on bombs is as good as spending on public parks."

He goes on to cite Michal Kalecki who attributes the "bombs is as good as parks" idea to... guess who?

http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/2011/10/perils-of-krugmania.html

Yep. Don't scratch 'em if they don't itch.

The history of the United States offers up Liberalism's sham in abundance.

Genocide, Slavery, Militarism are mainstays.

1. At present the US outsources Genocide via economic sanctions, aggressive wars, and arms deals.

2. New and improved forms of Slavery in US(Industrial Prison Complex and "Illegal" Immigrant labor) and used outside US(Asia, Central America) by US corps.

3. Bases all over the world. Contractors "operating" in over 70 nations. #1 arms dealer. Drone bombing 5 nations...etc

Left movements in the US died with FDR. LBJ buried the corpse, Clinton pissed on the grave, and Obama's dug up the cadaver and continuously skull fucks it. Liberal "heroes" all.

Perhaps not the flags-and-falange sort which populates the past...

Yes, harping on "sinister glamor" of figures from the past does little good now. Less poetic work such as that of Enzo Traverso is worthy of a larger audience:

The relationship of Nazism to western modernity is thus essential to an understanding of its origins and the history of Nazi violence. Liberal 19th-century Europe—the heartland of racism, imperialism and colonial war—was the cultural and ideological laboratory in which Nazism developed.

=v= Your humble Oakland correspondent here. I'm going on general strike in a few hours, so I'll make it brief.

I don't see Quan's election by ranked-choice voting as particularly relevant, nor is a recall campaign anything special in these parts (unless a Hollywood celebrity is involved). This is a region where you can't run for dogcatcher without having voiced undying allegiance to Hamas (after 2006; before that it was undying allegiance to Fatah, of course), but Dianne Feinstein sweeps the popular vote.

Politicians in these parts do tend to be progressive on the sociocultural front and, well, Clintonian at best on other issues -- but usually just lackluster. For me, that's where Quan seems to be.

I honestly have no idea how much control she actuall has over the OPD. It's worth noting that they are currently under Federal supervision for egregious racism against the black community, while nominally answering to a black mayor.

I couldn't help but remember, though, when the teargas cannisters were flying, that the penultimate mayor was quite keen on militarized police forces and inviting marines ("Marines are cool!") into Oakland to practice maneuvers against domestic uprisings. That mayor's name was Jerry Brown.