j_b

What do you think the bonus army was if not in great part a bunch of homeless/jobless people? i.e. the disenfranchised. It is normal that those who have least to lose are the ones who are on the front line. What happened to the homeless is right smack at the center of OWS demands.

You have to differentiate between reality and its portrayal in the national discourse. Demonizing occupiers as filth is very effective.

Right, but the hardcore invisible handjobbers are only the rhetorical fig leaf for business as usual (privatize profits, socialize losses)

Did you read my last paragraph because i clearly said there were more demands than what they knew to do with them but the movement had no political representation to articulate these demands, which shouldn't be surprising considering the betrayal by those who are supposed to represent them and the artful job done by regressives of demonizing anything left of Joe Lieberman for the last many decades. OWS is truly an organic grass root movement and it'll take a while before its political expression emerges.

isn't it what they have done? repression of the movement by the establishment isn't compromise. It's refusal to negotiate.

i don't watch tv, so i doubt it. Good for you, but I suspect it isn't the case for most people around you including here. Did you ever hear the corporate media complain the Tea Party didn't have specific demands within the first 2 month? OWS participants don't suffer from a lack of demands, they suffer from lack of political representation that would champion these demands. OWS participants not only have specific gripes (jobs, education, health care, etc ..) but they are also fully aware of the take over of government by corporate interests. Taking back power won't happen in a few months so you better get used to the idea of seeing them around ("Petulance"? sheesh! get a hold of youself)

I am not sure where you got their demands were incoherent and unquantifiable. From TV, perhaps?

The invisible hand says that only bail out for banks, tax cuts for the wealthy and benefit cuts for the peons would keep US rates low. I wonder what the catfood commission II is going to do.

[size=10 pt]Democratic establishment abandoned Occupy Wall Street[/size] Author Barbara Ehrenreich accused Barack Obama and the Democratic establishment of betraying the Occupy movement on Tuesday by failing to stop the evictions from Zuccotti Park. Ehrenreich, who has championed the struggles of working class Americans in books such as Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America said her outrage at the police crackdowns was magnified by the acquiesence of Democratic leaders. "One of the appalling things here is that there are so many Democratic mayors involved in these crackdowns or in Bloomberg's case, someone who is seen as a liberal," Ehrenreich said in a telephone interview. "And where in all this was Obama? Why couldn't he have picked up the phone at some point a couple of weeks ago and called the mayors of Portland and Oakland and said: 'go easy on these people. They represent the anger and aspirations of the majority'. Would that have been so difficult?" She said Obama had been practically silent since the protesters first descended on New York two months ago. "There have been a few little muffled comments but he has practically disappeared." For Ehrenreich, who has written in support of the protesters, the Occupy movement was an inflection point in American politics. It was a repudiation of bureaucratic politics - even as pursued by those on the left, she said, and it was embraced across the country. She said she had been astounded to learn that some 1,600 cities were under occupation at one point this autumn from the metropolis of New York to Ehrenreich's home town of Butte, Montana. For years, she said, she had maintained the importance of going out to vote. Now, she suggested she was becoming sympathetic to the argument of some of the protesters that the political system was so corrupted that elections were irrelevant. "I am a responsible citizen. I always tend to drag myself out to vote but I am having trouble making arguments for that. I find myself having a lot of trouble," she said. "We do not seem to be heard or represented." She added: "I just feel so disgusted at this point." For all her anger, though, Ehrenreich said she remained confident that the evictions were not the last for the movement. more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/15/barbara-ehrenreich-occupy-wall-street

The role of ideology in this crisis

http://utahavalanchecenter.org/accident_gad_valley_11132011

Yeah, I love how pissed off the bankers and European elite were when they thought the people of Greece would actually be allowed to choose their fate. I mean, can you even imagine???????? Good thing THAT wasn't allowed to happen!! Yes, the dressing down by Merkel and Sarkozy against a Greek referendum was for posterity. As if it were per chance there is one year till the French presidential elections and the Socialist Party candidate is way ahead of Sarkozy in the polls. Nearly a month ago, S&P said they were reassessing the French debt exactly one day after the socialist primaries. Since then, Sarkozy must have said "national debt" 10^nth times, just like some other people we know.

Probably, but in the meantime, austerity measures are destroying what's left of the Greek economy.

“It’s a confidence crisis,” Right, French borrowing costs doubled after Moody's made a "mistake" in their press communique announcing the country had lost its AAA rating. The news was retracted after markets had already reacted to the initial announcement. These people must think the peons are morons.

We could dispense with electing representatives and have bankers and the rating agencies run the show in the open. We could then all come to term with what western democracies have become.

Good find! Although perhaps too much emphasis is implicitly placed on the role of objectivists in our modern version of pre-1930 speculative boom and bust cycles. It's just amazing to me that supposedly brilliant people fall for such simplistic tripe but perhaps it's that they are merely successful, which is understood to be exhibit A of their intelligence.

Perceived self-interest may be disparate but objectively our needs are fundamentally very similar and we are much more able to achieve our goals when the needs of others are met as well.

How come you Dem party hacks regurgitate corporate media propaganda?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader also, in case you didn't know, King isn't alive anymore.

I can't think of a pol who can hold a candle to Nader's lifelong political accomplishments so I have to conclude that you must be the assclown.

Can you tell the difference between a) clearly not knowing what an issue is about and b) appearing to not remember something, which is a fairly common occurrence? Note that I much prefer someone who shows they don't know enough on a topic to discuss it than someone efficiently regurgitating the usual talking points. Although, there are obviously issues about which candidates should have an opinion.

You must be joking. Nader, Kucinich and others had no problem handling the national stage except for the corporate media deciding their candidacy didn't warrant being covered.

only for the time needed to destroy him.

They won't even give fair media coverage to Ron Paul, even though he's leading in some Iowa polls. Paul gets way more media coverage than 3rd party candidates will get. I'd be more concerned about that.

On the contrary, I don't trust the corporate media to vet candidates and I won't buy into their dog and pony show even if it is momentarily advantageous.