"I Cannot Believe I Still Have to Protest This Shit"

Poster spotted at a Women's Health Care Rally in Virginia.

Occupy SLO Pulls Up Stakes

Occupy SLO is no more. What you see above is all that’s left, a solitary steam cleaner pressure-washing the sidewalk, presumably clearing the site of slogans chalked onto the concrete, but also washing away the flowering of an idea.

I’ll be the first to admit that the Occupy SLO encampment degenerated into little more than a campsite for the homeless over the past couple of months. We got an “all-staff” email here at the County last week urging employees to steer clear of the location. Safety officials warned that “the character of the encampment has changed considerably” and cautioned employees to beware of “assertive behavior by the campers” and “tailgaters attempting to access the building.”

While the initial message of “the 99%” remains a valid one and potent political argument, it appears the duty of mounting large-scale political movements is best left to areas with a stronger population base, such as Oakland, CA; Wall Street, NYC, Philadelphia, PA; Washington, DC. Occupy movements are all still going strong in many big cities.

The little gathering in the Happiest City in America was here for 135-some-odd days, but it had clearly lost its mojo many weeks ago. The County had already whittled the presence down to one simple “information tent,” routinely staffed by just a couple of people, but on a trek past the site last week one could easily hear the boozy, curse-laden chatter of lost souls, rather than any passionate political discourse. When the ne’er-do-wells outnumber the activists, it’s time to fold up the tent.

So on Monday, the whole damn thing was gone. And today the County brought out the steam-cleaner to blast away any last remnants of a nascent, ultimately transient, political awakening.

"Somethin's Happenin' Here!!"

Occupy Wall Street: Different Kind of Protest

Compare and contrast...

Tea Party Protester:



Occupy Wall Street Protester:

Newt Gingrich is Having the Worst. Week. Evah!

Click here to see the beady-eyed, square-headed reptile and his lovely wife get fully GLITTER-BOMBED by a gay rights protester in Minneapolis. At the rate he's going, Newt's insipid incipient "candidacy" could very well be over by Flag Day.

Rally in Support of Unions and Public Service

Yours truly will be taking to the podium to rally the troops at the pro-labor demonstration this afternoon in San Luis Obispo.

Details here.

Wisconsin Senators Return to Madison

The "Wisconsin 14" returned to the state capitol yesterday, where they were met by an estimated 85,000-100,000 pro-union supporters. It was the largest protest in Madison since the governor there initiated his union-busting efforts.

Once the farmers show up with their tractors and their cows, you know it's on.

Best Protest Sign Ever

Literacy in Protest

There's one thing you can count on at Left Wing political protests: Every last sign will be grammatically correct, with apostrophes in their proper places, all words spelled accurately and ironic slogans that are actually ironic.

Courting Trouble

I remember one Fourth of July years ago down in Santa Barbara, we were hanging out in the war zone known as Ledbetter Beach, where trenches are dug like World War I and Roman Candles and M-80s whiz by at a constant, fear-inducing rate, and I stumbled across a small American flag. “Haha!” I thought, “Wouldn’t it be funny to light this thing on fire?” No sooner had I put match to cloth when one in our group, in a show of patriotic fervor a tad too passionate for the situation, pulled a Rick Monday and grabbed the flag from my hand and ran off down the beach, saving it from the flames of irony. I eventually got the miniature banner back from him and singed it with a few strategic flames before nailing it to his front door later that evening.

[Before you go all "U-S-A! U-S-A!" on me and get up in my grill about burning the stars-and-stripes, let me be clear: I believe I have a First Amendment right to do whatever I damn well please with the flag, including wave it, wear it, trash it, flush it, stick it on my car and/or burn it. That's the freedom our soldiers fought and died for, not your non-existent "right" to tell me what I can and cannot do with my own private property. End of story.]

I mention this tale only as a lead in to what I believe is a brilliant means of dealing with these idiot teabaggers aiming to hijack September 12 as a protest day for irrational patriotism and lily white, racist exclusionism. Yes, thanks to Glenn Beck and his melon-headed minions, “9/12” has become a red letter day on the ”Tea Party” calendar. This year, the yahoos plan to hold rallies across the nation beseeching the brainless to vote against Democrats (as well as any sentient Republicans, natch) in the November elections.

Given the racist underpinnings of the Tea Party movement – manifest most clearly in their repugnant opposition to the largely centrist policies of nation’s first black president – satirical blogger General JC Christian is proposing that liberals show up at next month’s 9/12 rallies prepared to Burn the Confederate Flag:

[The] General says he hopes Burn The Confederate Flag Day will expose what he says are the racial motivations of the tea party movement. The logistics are simple: protesters are urged to show up to the rallies and, if local laws allow a fire to be set, light a Confederate flag (or whatever approximation of one they can get their hands on -- the blogger told me he's not picky.) If laws don't allow the flag to be burned in a public place, the protesters are urged to show up with a singed flag they burned at home and display it prominently.

Clearly, given the mental instability of most teabaggers, this could lead to some angry confrontations, but what a brilliant means of calling these people to account for their shallow ideology and its flatly racist cornerstones. Imagine the sight of these dunderheaded fools rushing to save the nation’s most widely accepted symbol of racism, a flag black Americans still view as a prominent banner of slavery and oppression. Be careful what you wish for teabaggers, that corner you’re painting yourselves in is getting smaller by the day.

We’ll have more on this as the protest approaches.

Something in the Water?

How come every time they show a picture of a female protester in Iran she looks like a supermodel?

Tiananmen Square, June 4, 1989

The greatest FU in human history?

Tiananmen Square, June 4, 1989

Irony is Dead

Happy Banned Book Week!

You won't believe the book some crazy Christian wants banned in the following story:

Pat Yourself on the Back...

...if you, like I, donated money to Planned Parenthood during last week's blogswarm. It seems the venerable women's health care facility [run by "community organizers", natch] caught a bit of a windfall in fundage thanks to rabble-rousers like you.

If You Wanna Get to Heaven, You Got to Raise a Little Hell

If you haven't already heard the story about Sarah Palin and the "pay-as-you-go" rape kits, it's truly an outrage.

[...]Sarah Palin hired Charlie Fannon as the new Wasilla Chief of Police and said it was one of her best decisions as mayor. Fannon eliminated the forensic rape kits from the budget. Though the number of rapes weren’t reported, Fannon claimed it would save Wasilla taxpayers $5,000 to $14,000 a year.

When Eric Croft, a Democrat Legislator from Anchorage, learned of Wasilla’s policy, he drafted HB 270, which Governor Tony Knowles signed into law. The new law made it illegal for any law enforcement agency to bill victims or victims’ insurance companies for the costs of examinations to collect evidence of a sexual assault or determine if a sexual assault actually occurred.
[...]
Wasilla Police Chief Fannon protested the new law stating it would require the city and communities to come up with more funds to cover the costs of the forensic exams. Really?

Now, in an inspired bit of culture jamming, there's a blogswarm going on in which people are making donations to Planned Parenthood in honor of Sarah Palin to highlight her anti-choice woman-hating ways. [The minimum donation is $5.]

I made a small donation in Palin's "honor" and asked PP to send the confirmation thank you card to John McCain's HQ at the following address:
>
> McCain for President
> 1235 Clark Street
> 1st Floor
> Arlington, VA 22202
>
Here's the link to the PP website if you want to get in on the fun (which you can do for as little as $5, tax deductible).

The Fourth Estate, Under Siege

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!" and one of the most respected journalists working in the United States today. She was arrested, along with hundreds of other just-plain-folks, by St. Paul police during the Republican National Convention.

"Democracy Now!" host Amy Goodman questioned St. Paul's police chief this morning about why police arrested her and two of her program's producers Monday.

Goodman described how two producers, reporting on arrests Monday, were also arrested. Goodman said she was on the convention floor, interviewing the Minnesota and Alaska delegations, when she heard that her producers had been arrested and were bloodied.

Goodman said she immediately ran from the Xcel Energy Center to the site of the arrests, in a parking lot at Seventh and Jackson streets.

"I went up the riot police line," Goodman said. "I said, 'I'd like to talk to a commanding officer.' "

She said tried to ask why the producers were under arrest.

"They took me, handcuffed me immediately, said, 'You're under arrest,' " Goodman said. "They pushed me to the ground. I said, 'You can clearly see I have all the proper credentials, I have my security clearance for the (convention) floor.' "

Rage Against the Machine in St. Paul, MN

Rage Against the Machine arrived in St. Paul on Thursday to play at a scheduled protest rally in a park near the Republican National Convention. But when the authorities got a look at how many people showed up they shut the gig down. Of course, that didn't stop Zack and Tom from turning the event into even more potent political theater.

"They're not afraid of four musicians.
THEY'RE AFRAID OF YOU!"

RAGE: Takin' it to the Streets

After police banned them from playing a political rally in Minnesota yesterday, Rage Against the Machine whipped out the loudspeaker and went a cappella.

The band's original plan was to play an impromptu gig at left-wing rally Ripple Effect. Sadly, the police had other ideas, leaving Zack de la Rocha to address some angry fans.

"Rage Against the Machine is a band that has never, ever advocated violence," he, er, rages. "We've always advocated a direct opposition to unjust wars like the one started by John McCain and the Republicans and Bush and all of them."

He continues: "Why the fuck are these cops so afraid of us? Are they afraid of us?"

--The Guardian via Crooks and Liars

FOX News gets an earful

FOX reporter "Griff" Jenkins heads into the breach...

REPORTER: "Do you have an actual message without cursing?"
PROTESTER: "Stop the torture, stop the war."
REPORTER:[dismissively]" 'Stop the torture, stop the war.' Do you not believe in freedom?!?"
PROTESTERS: "FUCK FOX NEWS! FUCK FOX NEWS!"

Hah! Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

Four Dead in Ohio

There are various tragic dates in American history that will forever remain seared in memory. April 4, 1968; June 5, 1968; January 28, 1986; December 7, 1941; November 22, 1963.

Today, May 4, is another one of those dates.