#D18 - 2011: Daily Blog (#OWS)

Occupy Wall Street Sign of the Day

Note: For those of you here from the Angry Bear blog, welcome! (And thanks to Dan for the link). I basically do three things on this blog: 1) I have a daily blog (what you're reading) that has a good deal of Occupy Wall Street news, but also the occasional econ link; 2) I conduct interviews, many of well-know econ folks (Jeff Madrick, Doug Henwood, John Quiggin, Larry Mishel, Jared Bernstein, Dean Baker, Bill Black, etc.). Those interviews are listed on the top, left corner of the blog; and 3) I write essays, usually about politics, but sometimes about economics. Here is a link to a econ essay of mine. So, thanks for visiting and I hope you enjoy the site.


12:00 AM: Boots Riley on twitter

apls452: would LOVE #ows to have a REAL progressive candidate in 2016. In the meantime, gotta support O in 2012 -- flaws and all

BootsRiley: Nope. We have to make a movement that controls the puppetmasters.

apls452: I respect your position --I'm extremely disappointed in O myself. But to say O no better than Ging or Romney, not realistic

Boots Riley: Doesnt matter who's in.If mvmnt doesnt make corps scared,then politicians arent scared.If mvmnt goes n2electoral politix,mvmnt dies

12:05 AM: Trailer of How to Start a Revolution (about impact of nonviolence scholar Gene Sharp):


Gene Sharp - How to Start a Revolution Trailer from Gene Sharp on Vimeo.

9:00 AM: On last night's arrest (50+).

3:59 PM: Atari Teenage Riot (featuring Boots Riley), Black Flags:



4:46 PM: Terrorist Identification Chart (h/t J'Tao, punkboyinsf)

5:46 PM: The 1% of the 1% who funds our political system.

5:48 PM: I must admit I've grown weary over the Left's obsession with the fact right-wingers fail to acknowledge facts or a reality-based world and therefore, are pathological liars. But this one - by Paul Krugman - struck upon something I've noticed and have never really heard mentioned:

Kevin Drum erupts in justified outrage over Romney’s statement that

This is a president who fundamentally believes that the next century is the post-American century. Perhaps it will be the Chinese century. He is wrong.

As Drum says, Obama has never said anything like that. And Romney has surely already established some kind of new record: with all the bad things that have happened in American politics over the centuries, I can’t think of any candidate who has lied so freely, with so little compunction.

But there is a method to this stuff; when Romney declares that Obama has been apologizing for America, or bowing to foreign leaders, or that he believes in American decline, he’s playing into right-wing fantasies. This, the right believes, is what a liberal sounds like.

It’s like the perennial right-wing fantasy of arguing with a liberal at a party and leaving him dumbfounded with your conservative arguments — arguments that any serious liberal involved in public debate has heard a thousand times, and can easily refute with those liberal-biased things, facts. People on the right apparently derive great comfort from feeling contempt for an imaginary type of liberal who probably exists somewhere, but bears no resemblance to their real political foes.

The post goes on to set the record straight, but the part that struck a chord with me is the right-wing fantasy of arguing with a liberal at a party and leaving him dumbfounded. Occasionally, I will get sucked into reading comments at Red State and this is a really common comment. If you post at Daily Kos very often - which, at times, I have - there are often links in the comments. And a lot of times when you say something, you'll be challenged to source it. I noticed two things from the comments at Red State: 1) the lack of citation or request for citation; and 2) the "I dumbfounded a liberal with this [unsourced, unfounded] argument."

Anyone else recognized this tendency?

Quote of the Day: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.



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