The Glade 4.0

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Holy shitsnacks!

"NYPD raiders roust OWS rabble"

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/nypd ... YElqsxsWjO

Hahahaha! About time!

Pretty sound logic. I don't see how you can argue with that.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

The movement is doomed. They couldn't even agree on an argument while they were there.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I don't think that winning an argument was even the purpose of this whole movement....I think it was more about social unrest and a bunch of people looking for an excuse to be lazy in a park and yell and cry about stuff....the purpose of the movement was the protest itself and nothing more. They'll all move on until the next "cause" comes along.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

This totally infringes on their first amendment rights. They should riot until Bloomberg caves to their demands.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Rioting is a great way to help businesses fix the economy. /sarcasm

It always felt like a flashmob to me. Random people came together because someone coordinated it and beyond that they had no goal, cause or purpose.

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Yup. Mob mentality. I could stage an event to protest the unfair treatment of cockroaches in NYC apartment complexes and if I provided food and a large place with some bongo drums and someone crying with a guitar, I'd have hundreds of people gathering with me singing and crying "kumbaya."

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Those poor cockroaches...

Occupy Roach Motels

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You could hold it at Joe's Apartment.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

Hey, I could be pretty good at this!

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

+1

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

I don't support the OWS protests by any means, but I find the vilification of them in this thread very disturbing. Of course Lex's trolling isn't helping out, but even ignoring that it's kind of scary.

It seems to me that any protest is going to have a few bad apples giving the rest a bad name. I'm even open to the idea that the OWS protests have a higher proportion than average. But posting every little highlight where someone says something dumb or a protester acts violently or whatever and then circle-jerking about how they're all a bunch of lazy hippies is... well, I don't know. It just disturbs me.

I can see it now. In the not-too-distant future, the government will overstep some boundary and give us a very good reason to protest in defense of our rights. Then, the main stream media, being in the pocket of the government, will start running a bunch of stories about protesters assaulting little old ladies and how the movement is just an excuse for a bunch of low-life thugs to loot and cause mayhem. And the average American will eat it up.

I don't know if I'm making much sense, I'm having a hard time putting my feelings into words. I think I just wish people were a little more skeptical about what they hear on the news. No one cares about reporting on the thousands of ordinary people protesting peacefully for legitimate reasons every day. That's not an interesting story. Of course it works both ways too, with supporters of the OWS movement jumping on every little piece of evidence of police brutality. But I haven't seen much concern about that in this thread.

But currently the government is not overstepping this boundary, which is why I don't support the protests and they should all pick up their tents and go home. And if they break laws (such as trespassing or loitering), they should be forcefully removed if necessary. For example I can't go claim a plot of land and put a tent down and not be removed. There's a reason why 99.999% of people pay rent or are consentually dependent on someone who owns the land, or are under some legal contract.

Last I checked the MSM wasn't villifying these people, it has all been local press who are there seeing this crap first hand.

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Protester wants to firebomb Macy's or something:

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

The right to Occupy is not in the First Amendment... as further clarification. The protesters are mildly retarded when they think free speech means they can occupy territory like a soldier in Post-WW2 Japan.

It helps if the protesters have a goal besides just engaging in protest. It never really got past the same shrill childish "it's not fair!!!" ranting, as far as I can tell.

There are people that have money. I don't see how "it isn't fair!" that they do. There are people that have power - that doesn't move my "it's not fair!" meter either. Some of the folks that have money also have power, yet still, I'm not seeing that there's some failure on the part of society that these issues exist.

It may legally be a legitimate protest, but it's lack of a legitimate point that is causing it to implode. A free society allows folks to over-achieve just as it allows folks to under-achieve. The disparity between those achievements isn't the responsibility of the society.

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In time, this too shall pass.

I think if you look into the not-so-distant past, you'll see exactly that. The opposite is happening here. The MSM is characterizing this completely differently than they did when they "covered" those right-wing, racist, angry, violent tea-baggers.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

It's not that legitimate. If you actually go to an Occupy staging area, you'll find that most people are kind of dirty, kids who dropped out of school to 'travel', homeless (usually from drugs or disorders), and college students who haven't yet looked for a job. They're just mad at the 'evil corporations', which makes no sense to me because everything they've ever owned came from a corporation. There's also the people who are just generally angry at everything and like finding places to vent. And they think that the First Amendment means they can set up a home on public property and not pay rent.

That's true; the media is a sucker for stereotypes. Hence, the Tea Party was portrayed as a bunch of racist, angry, violent gun nuts, and the Occupy groups are portrayed as know-nothing hippy wannabes with no idea how the "real world" works. Kernel of truth to both caricatures, but both miss the more nuanced reality of the groups being described.

They really are though, have you been to an Occupy tent-land? I have. The people who stay overnight at least do live up to the stereotypes.

Yes, I walk by and/or through it 5 days a week, Lex. When it started, the ratio of normal people to whackjobs was much higher than it is now.