It's the details, people.

Christopher Cantwell isn't a guy I agree with 100% of the time, but when he's right, he's right.  Consider these three Black folks killed by the cops this year, and where the similarities in their cases end:

Michael Brown was a violent criminal. He committed a strong armed robbery, and when he feared being apprehended, he attacked a police officer. He got shot. If he was white, nobody would care. He is a non-story outside of liberal race hysteria. I am not going to care about Michael Brown just because he’s black, and if you do, then you’re a racist. Case closed.

Tamir Rice was shot for having what police believed was a gun. If he was white, liberals would not care, but I would. Whether the gun was real or fake is a non-issue. I live in New Hampshire, I openly carry a .38 revolver. People see my gun all the time. By the standards of the Cleveland PD, I should be gunned down in the street for this. Thus, if you care about the death of Tamir Rice, you should be complaining about gun control.


Eric Garner was seized upon by police for selling untaxed cigarettes. If he was white, liberals would not care, but I would. Executing people in the street for tax evasion is something people are rightfully upset about, but it’s not all that far off from what happens in tax courts every single day. I would not personally feel any better about this case, had Eric Garner been taken into custody without incident, locked in a cage, and stripped of his property. I don’t feel any better about it when hard working people try to keep their own money and are seized upon by the IRS and locked in cages and stripped of their property. Thus, if you care about the death of Eric Garner, you should be complaining about taxation.

Exactly.  If you're simply focusing on 'Black' and 'killed by cops,' you're too damn ignorant for me to take anything you say seriously.  And if you're looting and burning your own neighborhood, harming innocent people, you suck as a human being.

The alleged Leftist mind

I've had the germ of this brewing in my head for a while now, but Captain Capitalism nailed it.

Your average leftist isn't curing cancer, building empires, starting an accounting career, or developing a trade. They're "raising awareness" or "engaging communities" or "helping the children" or leading some bullshit crusade. Whatever euphemistic titles and jargon they use to describe their "careers," in the end they're just masking the fact they're literally doing nothing with their lives. ie-their lives are worthless and thus they are worthless people.

Since deep down inside they know they are worthless and their lives have no meaning, they put "leftism/socialism/communism" at the core of their being. As Rush Limbaugh says, "being a liberal is the easiest thing" in that you just have to "claim" you care and vote to use OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY to finance your compassion. Ergo, if you ever GENUINELY, INTELLIGENTLY, LOGICALLY and DISPASSIONATELY constructively criticize of question a liberal's ideology they get emotional, enraged and angry (I remember the only people who cried on my radio show were liberals). This isn't because they really care about the poor children in Africa. It's because you are shining light on the fact they are a worthless person who does nothing, has done nothing, will continue to do nothing, and thus waste their lives.

The final result of such thorough brainwashing, insecurity, laziness, and a predisposition to naivety, results in a veritable zombie impervious to reason, logic and rationale. No matter the preponderance of evidence, they simply ignore reality and retreat to their circularly referenced and supported ideology, blame the rich, blame conspiracies and (presumably to their deaths) blame "Bush." You no doubt have ran into this where you can cite data on the internet from a reputable source, PROVING a leftist is wrong, but they (like the dismembered knight in Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail) will never admit defeat and continue to subscribe to their now-false beliefs.

I hadn't gotten around to thinking about it in this measure of detail, but I find no fault in his logic.  RTWT.

Rumble in the cerebellum!!

Submitted for your inspection:  two highly intelligent men.  Both patriotic capitalists with differing ideas regarding OWS.  Both have valid points to make regarding the "Occupy Everything" movement and the state of the nation as a whole.

Denninger:

I've taken a boatload of heat for my alleged "support" of the "Occupy Everything" meme that is taking off across the country. There are a lot of people commenting on my positions that have displayed everything that is wrong with our education system, chief among them being its utter lack of teaching people to read for content rather than generating spittle-laced knee-jerk invective.

No matter. Since 2007 I have written what I believe on The Market Ticker and if you read Musings going back to 2004 you can see my commentary there too. A very few remember the rather-acerbic interviews and debates that I had with the ACLU and other organizations during the 1990s, including some tame appearances on Chicago Tonight and some much-more-lively ones on Usenet. If you think I can't take the heat that gets dished out you are rather naive; I believe there were entirely-new curses named for me back in the 1990s. In comparison the screeching of people on other blogs and media outlets today is the sort of thing that annoys with the intensity of a dog that occasionally barks next door.

Alvie:

As for educating the Occupy occult, I'm not feeling it. The only way that they become a revolution is if people like you and me assist them. Otherwise, they remain a small group tht will be ignored. Did you feel that chill go down your spine? Until people come alongside them to give them mainstream cred, they'll remain a fringe group rather than the 99% they claim to be. I can only imagine how far Restore The Constitution would go with similar support.

Let them craft their own damn message. Let them keep shitting on cars and doorsteps and residents. Let them wear out their welcome. Let the left keep full ownership of occupy and all the fallout that goes with it. Seriously. Two things I know about "bipartisanship" as demonstrated in Washington. 1) Bipartisanship means the right acceding to the demands of the left today for the promise of quid quo pro from the left tomorrow. 2) Bipartisanship means hold on to your property and your liberty because one/both is about to be assaulted.

Make up your own mind.

She nailed it, too.

Welcome Fuzzy Logic to the Infinite Blogroll (via Odie) for laying it down so simply that even an Oppressive can understand it.

It's easy and convenient to blame "Wall Street" for all of the nation's ills, but is that even reasonable?  Do you know where the mandates to provide unsafe home loans came from?  Do you know why the banks gave loans to people, in some case, who didn't even have a job?  Now, I know and readily admit that some investment bankers and particularly hedge fund creeps "bet" on these loans going into default.  I also think this is unethical, but it's not as if it wasn't completely obvious--to everyone except the commies in Congress who forced this--that these loans would all be defaulted, that there would be mass foreclosures when people who either didn't have jobs or were getting loans that the jobs they did have would never be able cover.  The housing crisis was a government-conceived, government-mandated crisis, made to make you stand around years later crying because people, for some unknown reason (and yes, they are culpable, too), are being foreclosed on for not being able to repay loans they should never have received in the first place. 

Again, that's not to excuse the excesses of Wall Street, but you know what is the most insidious, most dangerous aspect of Wall Street?  Its relationship with government.  You seem incensed that no one on Wall Street has been indicted for wrong-doing.  Okay, let's look at that.  What did BO say?  That they didn't do anything illegal, right?  That they can't indict for non-criminal, totally legal activity.  And that's true.  But who makes banking laws?  Who writes them?  Who pays for them?  That's right, my unthinking friends, Wall Street.  There are these things called lobbies, and they spend all the billions that you think, and I think, they should be paying in taxes, to ensure that there are "free zones" for unethical activity and numerous tax shelters that enable gigantic corporations like GE to avoid paying so much as one penny in taxes.  Legally.

Wall Street doesn't need reform, the government does.  With the government reformed properly, there will be no Wall Street excesses.  This is something we refer to as "critical thinking" and an understanding of a thing called "cause and effect"; you'll note that "unintended consequences" tend to manifest most often and to most onerous effect from leftist policies.  Things don't happen in a vacuum, and when you do one thing (pass a regulation, for instance, or ban shallow water drilling), it has a ripple effect (the costs of the regulation are passed on to the consumer (BoA), or deep-water drilling--much less easy to manage, maintain, and clean up than that done in shallow water--results in serious environmental damage).  In short, something that "sounds good" needs to be considered beyond the moment.

RTWT, y'all.  Guaranteed good stuff.

He nailed it.

I don't know who "Kevin R." is, but his comment(#17) on this disgusting display at iOTW summed up the entire situation perfectly:

It isn’t simply a matter of the efficacy of the free-market over a command and control market. That isn’t the point that I want to make.

When these damn collectivists destroy the rule of law in order to take over they do a lot more to society than take over the physical means of production. I want to scream from the rooftops! Capitalism isn’t a system. Capitalism is simply what happens when people enjoy freedom and liberty. Its what happens because people are free! Before Marxism free societies and the products of freedom were simply referred to as civilization. The very foundation of civilization is free society. Those communists destroy free society and destroy the civilization that free society produces!

This isn’t about the efficacy of different so called “economic systems.” The Left are the ones that compartmentalized and confused the thinking on this subject and they would love to keep the argument compartmentalized as a clash of different “economic systems.” This is actually a clash of civilization verses anti-civilization.

(Emphasis mine.)  Yeah.  It's EXACTLY like that.

Well said, Kevin--I'll buy you a beer if we ever meet!

"Greed," indeed.

In my younger days, I was a liberal.  I believed that everyone had the same rights no matter how little money they had.  I became a libertarian when I realized that everyone has the same rights no matter how much money they have.

Wild Bill points out who the real greedheads are:  The Trashbaggers!

Sympathy for the Trashbaggers

Their lives are so horrible, after all.

Going viral by way of TSM.

And now, we pause for a word from the Left.

Behind all their propaganda of 'social justice' and 'fairness,' this is what they want to do.

-@anarcosocialist You guys want to tax “the rich” 90% of what they make. So what happens when “the rich” stop generating revenue?
-@GunFreeZone the vast majority will fall in line the others will be forced to keep working. its very simple
-@anarcosocialist what do you mean they can’t? How are you gonna force them if they don’t want to?
-@GunFreeZone they can’t refuse, its very simple -@GunFreeZone to get a truly peaceful and just society you must be wiling to #breaksomeeggs i do not shy away from this
-@GunFreeZone it might be painful for the first generation but their kids will fall in line in a hurry. it is the only way
-@GunFreeZone #breaksomeeggs that is all im wiling to say

That's where socialism leads.  That's where it's always ended up in one "Peoples' Glorious Revolution" after another:  Do what we want, or we'll kill you.

Thank you, 'anarcosocialist,' for making your intentions plain as day.  People like you are why people like me own guns.  I will not go quietly into the boxcars, sir.  Nor will a sizable portion of Americans.  Try breaking those eggs, and you'll be the one who ends up in the frying pan.

Our ONE, NON-NEGOTIABLE demand:

Yes, folks--it really is that simple.

(HT iOTW)

Blogroll update: The 53%

OK, you folks all need to read this now.  Just read it, and know that we're not lost yet. 

I currently drive a truck.  Over the course of my life, starting out broke and homeless at the age of 18, I've washed dishes, delivered newspapers, worked fast food, telemarketed(mea culpa), changed tires, run forklifts and done lots of things that are none of your damn business to earn a living.

Did you get that?  Earn a living.  I've done a lot of things, but thinking that someone owes me one damn thing has never been one of them.  I've made mistakes; mistakes that set me back quite a ways, but I never asked anyone to bail me out.

I ran up $20K in credit card debt.  The 'why' is immaterial.  I went into consolidation and paid it off after 4.5 years.  I didn't throw a temper tantrum about how mean the credit card companies were for expecting me to pay what I owed.  (But I still say, 'F@ck BoA.'  Long story.)

I've run up student loans of over $30K in three separate schools, and paid them all off--including the one which was essentially a ripoff.  Why?  Because I agreed to it.  You pays your money and you takes your chances.  (Ironically, the cheapest school has given me the most lucrative career.) 

It's called 'personal responsibility,' and I've got it.  I admire others who have it.  And I'm flat-out disgusted with people who not only don't have it, but wouldn't recognize it if it pissed in their latte.

I am the 53%.  No one owes me a damn thing.

And guess what, you Wall Street Occupiers?  No one owes you anything, either.  If it weren't for nasty capitalism and the eeeeevil corporations, you wouldn't be able to survive as the brain-dead ingrates you are.  So post that on your iPad, you entitlement-poisoned, halfwit spoiled brats.  Then take a shower and get a job.

(HT iOTW)