Sounds like another excuse for Glenn Beck to cry on TV.

I'm not buying into a "reign of Terror" theory until at least a few shop windows are broken and buildings are burned.

I will accept the label blue dog.

The first reason I don't go after tea partiers or debate with them is because I already admitted I lean more their direction. If tea party and OWS were the only two political ideologies in the world I would choose tea party by default. The second reason is there are really no tea partiers who come here and post as vehemently as you do. Some sensible right leaning people believe they are the conservative version of the lunatic fringe.

They are two different groups both moving away from center. One right one left. The further you move in either direction the closer you get to the lunatic fringe.

You so funny. I know I have a bias. You admit you have a bias, or a 'lean', yet you can't see when the argument you are using would apply to each side equally if applied without that 'lean' or bias. It appears increasingly obvious that you may never see it, at least not from me, as you may have a previous opinion of me from this board that true or not prevents you from agreeing with me in any way. It's cool. Maybe have a similar conversation with another liberal friend who thinks about these issues as much as I do. I hope you have one.



And a whole lot more of the lunatic fringe think they are and speak for the middle of the road Americans.

Good conversation for the most part. Helluva lot better than 99% (pun intended again) of the conversations here.

This post is rubbish.
You come across as though you're meeting in the middle. Then you insult him by TELLING him HE doesn't fully understand.

Then you go on to suggest that if you agree with anything at all from this freak show (OWS) then you should take action.
This is good in theory, but OWS isn't a movement, so much as it's a complaint. It's lazy slackers who want more, but have chosen to cry like spoiled brats rather than achieve something.

Just because they make an occassional point means nothing other than to prove the law of averages.

Hell, I bet we could pick and choose a common viewpoint from the KKK, the Nazi's and even NAMBLA.
Doesn't mean it should become your call to action.

OWS has not approached the evil of those three groups, but they are COUNTER productive.
Sure, they're trying to make a point. But isn't that what the tea party was doing when they published the ill-conceived "pledge" for small businesses?
I am against the pledge and completely dissagree with the spiteful message.
You, on the other hand, have embraced the OWS movement despite their counter productive measures.

The Tea Party exists without some warped pledge. But OWS is nothing without their efforts to hinder the working man and disgust anyone with a basic sense of hygiene.

But maybe we shouldn't split hairs...

That's just how fuzzy rolls.....

Some Belated Parental Advice to Protesters - Marybeth Hicks

Call it an occupational hazard, but I can’t look at the Occupy Wall Street protesters without thinking, “Who parented these people?”

As a culture columnist, I’ve commented on the social and political ramifications of the “movement” - now known as “OWS” - whose fairyland agenda can be summarized by one of their placards: “Everything for everybody.”

Thanks to their pipe-dream platform, it’s clear there are people with serious designs on “transformational” change in America who are using the protesters like bedsprings in a brothel.

Yet it’s not my role as a commentator that prompts my parenting question, but rather the fact that I’m the mother of four teens and young adults. There are some crucial life lessons that the protesters’ moms clearly have not passed along.

Here, then, are five things the OWS protesters’ mothers should have taught their children but obviously didn’t, so I will:

• Life isn’t fair. The concept of justice - that everyone should be treated fairly - is a worthy and worthwhile moral imperative on which our nation was founded. But justice and economic equality are not the same. Or, as Mick Jagger said, “You can’t always get what you want.”

No matter how you try to “level the playing field,” some people have better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better places. Some seem to have all the advantages in life but squander them, others play the modest hand they’re dealt and make up the difference in hard work and perseverance, and some find jobs on Wall Street and eventually buy houses in the Hamptons. Is it fair? Stupid question.

• Nothing is “free.” Protesting with signs that seek “free” college degrees and “free” health care make you look like idiots, because colleges and hospitals don’t operate on rainbows and sunshine. There is no magic money machine to tap for your meandering educational careers and “slow paths” to adulthood, and the 53 percent of taxpaying Americans owe you neither a degree nor an annual physical.

While I’m pointing out this obvious fact, here are a few other things that are not free: overtime for police officers and municipal workers, trash hauling, repairs to fixtures and property, condoms, Band-Aids and the food that inexplicably appears on the tables in your makeshift protest kitchens. Real people with real dollars are underwriting your civic temper tantrum.

• Your word is your bond. When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others. Loans are made based on solemn promises to repay them. No one forces you to borrow money; you are free to choose educational pursuits that don’t require loans, or to seek technical or vocational training that allows you to support yourself and your ongoing educational goals. Also, for the record, being a college student is not a state of victimization. It’s a privilege that billions of young people around the globe would die for - literally.

• A protest is not a party. On Saturday in New York, while making a mad dash from my cab to the door of my hotel to avoid you, I saw what isn’t evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations: Most of you are doing this only for attention and fun. Serious people in a sober pursuit of social and political change don’t dance jigs down Sixth Avenue like attendees of a Renaissance festival. You look foolish, you smell gross, you are clearly high and you don’t seem to realize that all around you are people who deem you irrelevant.

• There are reasons you haven’t found jobs. The truth? Your tattooed necks, gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting. Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity isn’t a virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4 percent, find a mirror and face the problem. It’s not them. It’s you.

It was pretty funny when he wouldn't let Mikey call himself a centrist.

You have to understand, a call to action from FuzzNJ means grab some doritos and Occupy the Couch!

And a handfull of napkins too. The MS. isn't going to allow that orange stain on the sofa!

You think I was or was trying to insult him?

This:



For example shows that one does not fully understand the issue as that was not the major problem.



Achieving political change is bs unless you agree 100%, I get your position but don't get why. No one would even need to mention OWS to pursue campaign finance legislation.

The one good thing these protests have been able to do is change the national conversation, and that alone is a victory.

WRONG!




Americans don't want to see or hear about people pooping and peeing out in the public!

And this is where we disagree. I will give you the fact that OWS has shined a spotlight on the anger over our current economic plight. But changing the national conversation is far from a victory. Come 2012 American voters will be choosing between Obama and probably Romney. There is no victory there.

There is for us globalists.

Occupy Wall Street is not under the Obama Cone of Protection yet if they actually vote, they will vote 100% for Obama! It is a beautiful day.

Speak for yourself (and your 2%?)

I'm not buying that idea that the national conversation has changed. I just checked the front pages of CNN. Fox, and the New York Times. No mention of Occupy Wall Street once again.

This claim sounds like a "Mission Accomplished" banner.

Was in DC this past weekend and went by a couple of the occupied parks. BFD. Few long hairs with tye-dyed t-shirts and skirts; bunch of tents. Three or four groups of maybe ten hippy-like 'communers' sitting cross-legged listening to guys with microphones who eerily remimnded me of my TA's in the early 80's; some of you know the type - 35's year old - 9 years as an undergrad, 6 more years in masters program -- hair and clothes that haven't been washed since high school and quoting Karl Marx like they've memorized the Manifesto. Anyway, I was non-confrontational and just tried to get a sense of whether any of them knew what they wanted. They don't. They're all just looking for their little piece of hope and change to be handed to them. The government sux unless they want something from it. Corporations all sux. All of them. Government and corporations in bed together is super-sux......blah, blah, blah. No substance that I could find.

Quick google search under news:

occupy change national conversation-1800+ articles

budget cuts - 331

Quite a shift

Unfortunately people in NY get their "news" from tabloids like the Daily News and the NY Post. They are always featured there. Right next to the lead story that Lindsey Lohan got a million dollars to pose for Playboy.

Combine that with the fact that people consider the Daily Show a legit news program and thats part of the problem.

OK, I tried that.

"Budget Cuts" = 178 million

"Occupy Wall Street = 25 million

Sorry, not buying it.

Lindsay Lohan Playboy = 53 million

I couldn't duplicate those numbers at all. As I said, I googled budget cuts and occupy change national conversation under news, not a regular google search and looked at the articles that were most relevent to the search, not total hits.