Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

You cannot shame the shameless.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

The revolution will be supervised.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

This really is a full service blog.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

This blog will pay for itself.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

In my day, never was longer.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

No one could have predicted…

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Open Thread: It’s Not What You Know…

Open Thread: It’s Not What You Know…

by | 54 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

(Jeff Danziger’s website)

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… it’s who you know. Charlie Pierce, now at Esquire‘s Daily Politics blog, points out that no Lawn Order In-Forcement felt inspired to ‘kettle’, much less pepper-spray, a certain “interstate conspiracy to riot and to disrupt a legitimate recount in a presidential election“.
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Perhaps it’s just that no Floridian Tony Bologna was reduced to impotent rage over the sight of those boobies jiggling uncorseted in their Brooks Brothers button-downs.
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So… what’s on tonight’s agenda for disrupting the cherished prerogatives of our Galtian overlords?

Reader Interactions

54Comments

  1. 1.

    Linda Featheringill

    I now have a facebook account, in my mother’s maiden name. Since Mom died the year Reagan took office, she probably won’t mind too much. :-)

    I asked for help from my daughter to get this account so I could follow the folks setting up occupy-whatever events. So now I can.

    This thing is spreading. There is apparently something the young folks are communicating to each other that us old folks just cannot see. It might be a generation gap. I don’t know.

    However, Chicago is up and moving, even if small, and Boston is organizing, as is Phoenix. Several west coast cities are in motion.

    We’ll see what happens.

  2. 2.

    beltane

    Wonkette, of all places, has good coverage of the Wall St. protest. I think people are just tired of being rolled-over by the bankers and their ilk and are expressing their frustration with the entire system. Sometimes, elections alone are not enough.

  3. 3.

    RossInDetroit

    Charles Pierce is awesome. I’m so glad he’s back at Esq and I’ll read every word. Here’s a liberal commentator who can actually produce an interesting sentence, for a change.

  4. 4.

    RossInDetroit

    As for this day, boo to Wednesday September 28, and glad it’s nearly over. Woke up 45 minutes late and the day went down hill from there. Feel like retiring early with a bottle of Scotch and no glass.

  5. 5.

    trollhattan

    Another potential terrorist wacko arrested. What was that thing certain former presidential candidates were saying about counterterrorism being primarily about good police work?

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/mass-man-accused-in-plot-to-use-remote-control-planes-to-blow-up-pentagon-capitol/2011/09/28/gIQAmR3E5K_story.html?hpid=z4

    Hard to take a plot like this seriously, but I’d rather our wackos not be armed, period. Would our “Tony Baloneys” be interested in stopping a fellow from scoring C4, or just get back out there and mace more hippies?

  6. 6.

    Phylllis

    Reading Must You Go? by Antonia Fraser about her life with Harold Pinter. May peek in now & again at the Braves game.

  11. 11.

    Cat Lady

    @Moonbatting Average:

    Me too. An interesting factoid for baseball fans is that at this moment, not a single team that’s clinched or is vying for a post season berth knows who they’ll be playing yet. I believe that’s the first time that’s ever happened on the last day of the season.

  13. 13.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason

    Galtian Overlords. Ugh, can we retire that phrase? It’s clumsy and no one except us Vicious Vitriolic Jackals has a clue what it means.

    I vote for “Malefactors of Great Wealth.”

    Other than that, I got nothin’ for tonight.

  18. 18.

    pete

    The appalling Tony Baloney may have done more for the anti-capitalist cause than any single protester, and isn’t that delightful. He can’t use it in mitigation, though.

  19. 19.

    Spaghetti Lee

    Touching up and sending in my submission for an art contest where first place gets $10,000. Fingers crossed.

  23. 23.

    Less Popular Tim

    @RossInDetroit:

    Woke up 45 minutes late and the day went down hill from there.

    wait, wait, wait. Wait one minute. We understand from an earlier thread that you made it to work on time because of Detroit’s fantastic redundant infrastructure, so any damage from waking up 45 minutes late was eliminated. If we’re going to complain about feeling “out of sorts,” well hell, that’s pretty much every day by 6:27 pm Eastern for me.
    Cordially,

  27. 27.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    Fox News coverage consisted of text on their screens saying “DEMOCRACY UNDER ATTACK” and “LIBERAL RETALIATION”. I don’t think they ever showed the video.

  28. 28.

    geg6

    Vegging out to one of my guilty pleasures, Survivor. Oh, and eating copious amounts of the chocolate cake my John made me. I deserve it after spending the day deciphering pay stubs, unemployment eligibility records, annuity statements, insurance death benefit statements, and tax forms for four students’ special circumstance evaluations, all with no training in accounting except a one-semester high school class 35 years ago. Talk about stressful days.

  33. 33.

    Spaghetti Lee

    And I agree re: “galtian overlords”. I’ve never liked the phrase, always thought it was clumsy and too in-jokey. “Fat cats” is a tried and true classic. “Big money boys” is good, maybe “robber barons” if you’re talking to someone who knows a bit of history. “The guys who shut down your factory/outsourced your job” if you’re talking to some blue-collar folks. A good slogan needs to hit the audience emotionally more than be cute or clever.

  34. 34.

    RossInDetroit

    @Less Popular Tim:

    wait, wait, wait. Wait one minute. We understand from an earlier thread that you made it to work on time because of Detroit’s fantastic redundant infrastructure, so any damage from waking up 45 minutes late was eliminated. If we’re going to complain about feeling “out of sorts,” well hell, that’s pretty much every day by 6:27 pm Eastern for me.
    Cordially,

    I have to be at work at 6:00 am. I usually get up at 4:45. Today I woke up at 5:30, 45 minutes late. It’s a 25 minute drive to work on city streets. I made it with 30 seconds to spare. 4.5 minutes from waking up to out the door. Not a good way to start the day.

    I’ve been pushed into a job I don’t like for a week. Traded my quiet workshop where I work alone for a much more chaotic environment.

  35. 35.

    Cermet

    Not very strange at all – cops always, always lick the ass of their real masters. The people who pay them are just scum to be abused. The real raygun (or his masters) shining turd on the hill amerika.

  36. 36.

    MikeJ

    Dear god why does espn have to show not just the score from another game but the base diagram too? Every time I look away and back I look at the wrong spot. I vastly prefer espn to Fox (home of McCarver), but I’d rather be watching this on NESN (which the MLB network has brought those of us in the sox diaspora for the past few days.)

  39. 39.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason

    @danimal: I like Banksters too, but it’s a little too job-specific and might leave out some of the rich assholes. Like the Texas oilmen Eisenhower warned us about:

    “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

  40. 40.

    RossInDetroit

    @Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:

    I like Banksters too, but it’s a little too job-specific and might leave out some of the rich assholes. Like the Texas oilmen Eisenhower warned us about

    I think the naming problem is really a definitions problem. The people with money and power go to a lot of trouble not to attract notice so it’s hard to find anyone to point out as an example that adequately illustrates the type(s).

  44. 44.

    Steeplejack

    C’mon, Ass-tros! The Braves are up 3-1 on the Phillies, but Houston let the Cardinals get four runs in the top of the first. WTF?!

  45. 45.

    RossInDetroit

    @singfoom:

    Easy peasy. The 1%. We’re the 99%. All the banksters, texas oil men, Kansas Oil men (the Kochs), et all, is captured easily by “The 1%”.

    We understand that, but it’s a hard sell to the masses. The mechanisms of how a tiny fraction of Americans came to control a majority of the economy are not well known. It all happened under the radar. It’s easy for powerful people to set different religious and ethnic groups against each other. But how do you convince your neighbor that a derivatives trader in Manhattan cost him 2.5% of the growth in his IRA?

  46. 46.

    handsmile

    I’ve decided to post here a brief account of my third visit to the “Occupy Wall Street” protest, as the inevitable poo-throwing has broken out at the end of the earlier thread on the subject.

    The number of protesters has increased substantially, having now spread throughout the large public plaza in lower Manhattan which is the locus of the protest.

    The uniformed NYC police presence has notably decreased from last week, but I observed a far greater number of non-uniformed security personnel with whom the police were interacting. Also, in walking through nearby sidestreets I was startled by the substantial fleet of police and emergency services vehicles and vans, as well as dozens of unmarked, dark-windowed, SUV-scale automobiles parked, double-parked, impeding other vehicular traffic. An additional corps of both uniformed and non-uniformed security personnel, brandishing an impressive array of telecommunications devices, accompanied these vehicles.

    While I chose not to ask any of these peace-keeping officers for directions, on this occasion of visiting the protest, I was not harassed in any manner. Once again, I adopted my secret disguise of a middle-aged white guy.

    I must regretfully report my impression that with the increase in protesters, there has been an expansion of what I’d call “message-creep,” the appearance of signage and hand-outs addressing issues tenuously or tangentially related to the protest’s fundamental principle: the financial institutions of global capitalism must be regulated and their operations made more transparent to public (or public officials’) scrutiny.

    In my discussions today with approx 10 protesters, I was less impressed overall with their grasp of these primary issues and their ability to articulate the objectives of the protest. I do remain deeply appreciate of their earnestness and commitment. I was also touched by their warmth for my modest contributions of water, food, wetnaps and such. Without exception, they were aware that more and more of the world is indeed watching, and that their efforts have begun to puncture the dismissive disregard of the American corporate media.

    All I can do is express my support and listen sympathetically if not always uncritically to the protesters. I’ll leave it to the more discriminating solons here to pass judgement on the efficacy and moral virtue of their actions here in New York.

  47. 47.

    singfoom

    @RossInDetroit: Other than having your neighbor read The Big Short and/or Free Lunch, I don’t know. Lots of pictures of graphs about income inequality? A graph that compares their income to the 1%?

    I understand the issue, as it didn’t happen under the radar for me, but unless you were paying attention and looking at multiple sources, it’s a hard sell. But in terms of naming the group, it works.

  50. 50.

    singfoom

    @handsmile: Thanks for your informative comments. Did you get any idea of the size of the crowd? I know that’s always hard, but I’m curious to see how many people you would put it at.

  52. 52.

    BruceFromOhio

    So… what’s on tonight’s agenda for disrupting the cherished prerogatives of our Galtian overlords?

    Same as it is every night: drinking to excess, hollering at the rugrats, ignoring the pile of work that I ignored most of the day, and commenting on BJ.

  53. 53.

    BruceFromOhio

    …there has been an expansion of what I’d call “message-creep,” the appearance of signage and hand-outs addressing issues tenuously or tangentially related to the protest’s fundamental principle…

    I never miss an opportunity to put my own agenda before everyone else’s, especially in front of someone else’s audience.

    Kinda like Newt Gingrich, except more earnest.

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