The Bar Has Been Lowered

November 17, 2011 | Filed under #Occupy,Modest Proposals,Tea Party Movement | Posted by

Attention Tea Party members and other political activists:

 

The standard for acceptable conduct in the name of political change and activism has been substantially changed. Please adjust your planned protest activities accordingly.

 

That is all.

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Posted by on November 17, 2011.
Filed under #Occupy, Modest Proposals, Tea Party Movement.


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  • Anonymous

    Um, didn’t Rick just post this?

    Instead of having the same posts from the same nutbar ultra blog, check this out and write about it:

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/entire-system-has-been-utterly-destroyed-mf-global-collapse-presenting-first-mf-global-casualty#comments

    • http://www.rustedsky.net Anonymous

      Ah, never mind…

    • herddog505

      Yes, quite right!  Pay no attention to the crimes committed by the lefty / media (BIRM) darlings of IOWS!  And ESPECIALLY pay no attention to these facts because they are posted on an “nutbar ultrablog”!

      / sarc

      But I confess that the article you link is definitely worth a read, this especially:

      The futures markets are very highly-leveraged and thus require an exceptionally firm base upon which to function. That base was the sacrosanct segregation of customer funds from clearing firm capital, with additional emergency financial backing provided by the exchanges themselves. Up until a few weeks ago, that base existed, and had worked flawlessly. Firms came and went, with some imploding in spectacular fashion. Whenever a firm failure happened, the customer funds were intact and the exchanges would step in to backstop everything and keep customers 100% liquid – even as their clearing firm collapsed and was quickly replaced by another firm within the system.

      Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise. What was a surprise was the reaction of the exchanges and regulators. Their reaction has been to take a bad situation and make it orders of magnitude worse. Specifically, they froze customers out of their accounts WHILE THE MARKETS CONTINUED TO TRADE, refusing to even allow them to liquidate. This is unfathomable. The risk exposure precedent that has been set is completely intolerable and has destroyed the entire industry paradigm. No informed person can continue to engage these markets, and no moral person can continue to broker or facilitate customer engagement in what is now a massive game of Russian Roulette. [emphasis mine - hd505]

      Rule of law?  WE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ RULE OF LAW!

      Now, the left likes to portray what has been going on as godless capitalism in action: the rich stealing from the poor because Bush (snarl!) got rid of all the regulators.

      This is not the case.

      The specific case of MF Global appears to be one of actual crime; all the regulators in the world would not have stopped Corzine stealing just as all the laws against bank robbery did not stop Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde.  Further, Uncle Sugar has so distorted the markets, both to obtain some politically-motivated goal (such as “affordable housing”) and to reward political cronies (GM bailout, Solyndra) as to make “regulation” far less about attempting to prevent crime and far more about making politicians and their fatcat pals happy (i.e. richer).  Simply put, the rules don’t apply anymore.

      Anybody want to bet that Corzine never sees the inside of a prison?

      And what else do we see from Barnhardt’s angry article?  She’s getting out of the business, and urging her readers to get out while the getting’s good as well.  What does this lack of confidence spell for the markets?  Those morons at IOWS may get what they want: a collapse of the global markets / banking system simply because it’s not sustainable any more.  I hope they enjoy it, because I’m pretty sure that the rest of us won’t.

      • Anonymous

        You might be right about the crony part, but the system’s been deteriorating for a long time. 

        I tend to think it’s a more generalized oligarchical system that goes back through the Bush and Clinton years and will probably be worse in the Romney years, although I hope “it takes a thief” might apply.

        This is where the action is the world right now, from Greece to China – market and credit frauds.  The Euro’s going down and may drag the dollar with it.   Is that too complicated for this blog, so there has to be five “someone shit in a park” posts every day?

        This is also interesting, from a gold and silver trader who writes about market manipulation: 

        http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2011/11/us-federal-prosecutions-in-obama.html

        US Federal Prosecutions For Financial Fraud In the Obama Administration Fall to 20 Year Lows

        The declines in US Federal prosecutions for financial fraud  that began
        under G.W. Bush have followed that down trend that in the first three
        years of the Obama Administration. That might make more sense if Obama
        had not been elected as a reform president in response to one of the greatest financial frauds in American history. 

        In the first three years of the Obama Administration, federal
        prosecutions have been running at new highs. Over half of the
        prosecutions involve illegal immigration. Another 17% are drug related.

        Illegal immigrants and drug dealers have the reputation for being notoriously cheap in providing campaign contributions.

        Prosecutions for financial fraud however have dropped to the lowest levels in over 20 years.

        • herddog505

          Commander_Chico – I tend to think it’s a more generalized oligarchical system that goes back through the Bush and Clinton years…

          I suggest that the problems which you define as the result of an “oligarchical system” go back almost to Adam, Eve and a certain bad apple.

          Many people can be induced to “bad” behavior if they think that the benefits outweigh the risks.  This is nothing new.  It’s grimly pleasant for those of us on the right to point at Corzine, Solyndra, etc. just as it is for those on the left to rant about Wall Street, derivatives, etc.  This is where there actually IS some overlap between the Tea Party and those morons at IOWS: both sides are thoroughly angry at the massive, catastrophic corruption in the system that we’ve seen in the past several years.

          The difference is what to do about it.

          Based on the data you provide, prosecutions for financial fraud have been falling for years.  Is this because the laws have been rewritten?  Because the crooks have become more clever so it’s harder to catch them?  Are there actually fewer crooks, but the ones still around are just “supercrooks”?  Or are members of Congress (ahem) discouraging the SEC and other watchdog agencies looking too closely at certain financial transactions?

          And what shall we do?  How do we strike the balance between discouraging fraud and other shady practices on the one hand and stifling business on the other?  Lefties seem to think that it’s possible to have a healthy economy with lots of jobs for Bitter Womyn’s History majors without a stock market, banks, and all the other major financial institutions that are represented by Wall Street.  I suggest that they are not only wrong, but catastrophically so: shut down the markets and we’ll see misery that will make 1933 look like the Elysium Fields.

          As I and others have written, we can do quite a lot by getting Uncle Sugar out of the business.  It’s one thing to have bank examiners, SEC investigators, US Attorneys, etc. investigating and prosecuting fraud; it’s quite another to have members of Congress or “czars” deciding who gets tax breaks, who gets “loans” and grants, who does and doesn’t have to follow standard bankruptcy laws, etc.

          Ace of Spades HQ links to a timely article that speaks to this point:

          The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform demanded answers in a local hearing Monday on why pensions for salaried retirees of Delphi were treated differently than pensions for other company retirees.

          At issue is the fact that salaried Delphi retirees saw cut their pensions cut by 30 to 70 percent when the pensions were transferred to the federally backed Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. in 2009, while General Motors elected to support or “top off” the pensions of retirees represented by three large unions.
          “The least powerful group was always going to get screwed,” said U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, committee chairman.

          In particular, committee members and retirees asked how this could happen when GM had been supported by more than $52 billion in taxpayer funds by March 2010. The federal government helped GM emerge from bankruptcy in 2009. GM is the largest customer of Delphi, which itself left bankruptcy about four months after GM.

          http://ace.mu.nu/archives/323832.php

          http://www.daytondailynews.com/business/committee-seeks-answers-in-delphi-pensions-hearing-1284377.html

          This doesn’t appear to be a case of Wall Street malfeasance per se, but rather of Uncle Sugar NOT playing by the rules.  All the regulations and regulators in the world do no good when the chief regulator decides that rules are for other people.

          And to think: those morons on IOWS are NOT marching on the White House or Capitol Hill…

          • Anonymous

            I agree – the problem is not solved by engaging in the kobuki dance of introducing legislation, committees investigating, lobbyists spending gazzillions lobbying, passing legislation increasing federal control, rinse and repeat ad nauseum [I'm reminded of the numbnuts who screamed for more rules regulating guns after Columbine, when, in fact, the killers broke over a dozen existing rules which were not enforced - of what use are more rules when you can't or won't enforce the rules you already have?]. 
            The solution is no bailouts – let the miserable bastards go broke AND face lawsuits, together with aggressive enforcement of existing criminal laws.  In other words, in fact in your words - Uncle Sugar must play by the rules, which means he must assume his proper role as umpire and enforce the rules, not attempt to insert himself in the game and see how far he can go before somebody catches him breaking the rules. 

        • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ryan-Murphy/100001624276605 Ryan Murphy

          And so all of your solutions to a corrupt government is to. . give it MORE power to be corrupt with.  Describe how this makes sense again?

          • retired.military

            Ryan

            You silly.  Dems just want to look like they are doing something.  Whether it works or not doesnt matter a wit.  If fact it is better if it doesnt work because then they call for more spending on it becuase if they only threw more money at it then it would be sure to work.

          • jim_m

            The solutions to failure on the left is always more of what failed.  Government screwed things up?  Well then, we need more government, more rules and regulations and more layers of bureaucracy to ensure that it never happens again.

          • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ryan-Murphy/100001624276605 Ryan Murphy

            So in other words, their political philosophy is “Hair of the Dog that Bit you”

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ryan-Murphy/100001624276605 Ryan Murphy

      SO let me get this straight. . are you even going to bother trying to dispute any of these FACTS?

      • jim_m

        Chica’s response to evidence of leftist malfeasance is always to point out that someone else did something wrong, usually in a far more minor way and often not illegally.  He rarely owns the fact that the left is full of frauds and hypocrites.  He’d rather bellyache about Newt Gingrich getting $1.6 M from Fannie Mae than defend a lefty hack who took $26M in half the time.

    • retired.military

      oh look a shiny. 
      Nothing like shinies to detract from the folks that Chico has been backing for the past few months.  Hell Chico even says that it is fine for them to break the law.  and if one law doesnt matter than why should any others.  Anarchy Chico.  You asked for it you got it.  I would say Toyota here for those who remember the commercia but I think GM is much more appropriate when talking about Obama and his lackeys.

  • Anonymous

    Things like MF Global are the disease, OWS is the symptom.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_G7YIUZMXOD5JGZZTCYMVA75KFU Shadow

      Those who make and enforce laws that make the environment ripe for infection are the germs that cause the disease.  Things like MF are the oozing sores resulting from the disease.  OWS is the band aid being used by the germs to provide cover for the sores that are spreading and will devour our economy until it is beyond recovery.

      • herddog505

        Nauseating analogy.  Spot-on, but nauseating.
        :-P

    • retired.military

      of your own demented brain.

    • jim_m

      The ideology and thinking of the OWS movement is the disease.

      The idea that you can get something for nothing and that people will work hard only to have the fruits of their labor redistributed in order to serve what some arrogant leftist deems as “fairness” is a bunch of crap.  People work hard when they are promised to benefit from that work.  The good things cost and if you want them you need to work for them. 

      The OWS ideal of no debt and no income inequality through income redistribution are ideas that were tried nearly a century ago and found wanting.  Eastern Europe struggled through over half  century of poverty to finally break free of that ideology and the ignorant OWS and their fans want the US to follow the same path of destruction today.  Fear not they tell us.  Communism will work, it just hasn’t been tried correctly yet.

      • herddog505

        I suggest that there are actually two diseases, though they are related.

        The first is a really bad economy that looks to get much worse before it gets better.  The left likes to blame Wall Street, and there’s some truth to it: it would appear that some Wall Street types who really ought to have known better did a great many foolish things, both at the behest of the government and in a desire to make a fast buck.  Some of them, like (allegedly) Corzine, did outright criminal things.  Over all stands the increasingly corrupt though imbecile figure of Uncle Sugar* who went from “encouraging” businesses to be more “fair” to turning an incompetent blind eye to corruption to outright engaging in corruption of his own, totally screwing up the market to the point that it’s no longer a reasonably safe bet to conduct business.  And people wonder why the economy isn’t recovering…

        But the bad economy and its causes aren’t limited to the Wall Street or even the United States; various countries in Europe and around the world are deep in the kimchi due to a variety of factors, but mostly increasing fractions of their populations that are soaking up generous nanny-state benefits faster than they can be supplied by dwindling fractions that are in the workforce and can pay enough in taxes to support those benefits.  [EDIT] The fact that government is interfering in the market makes it less efficient; money that might go to economic growth (i.e. more jobs and higher wages) is siphoned off to pay for regulation as well as taxation. This is the other problem: the social welfare state that the left (with much help from the right) built over the course of the twentieth century is collapsing, but it’s not going gently into that good night.

        Into the midst of this unfolding economic catastrophe steps the idiots of the Occupy Wall Street crowd.  Yes, they are a pack of loafers.  Yes, they are morons.  Yes, they don’t really understand what they’re angry about, what to do about it, or how soap works.  But they are bright enough to see that the world is changing in a big hurry, and not for the better.  The model they were raised to accept as an unchanging reality – that any college degree would land them a good job – is falling apart.  Their degrees are like stock certificates after a crash: devalued or even outright worthless.  They face NOT the rosy future that generations of Americans before them anticipated, but rather years of struggling to find a decent job, to pay off a mountain of debt, and to try to reach the standard of living that their parents enjoyed and they thought was theirs by right.  They’re disappointed, frightened, and angry.  They were taught that crooked businessmen are ALWAYS to blame (nobody ever talks about “government fatcats”), and, true to that education, they are blaming Wall Street for their plight.

        I suggest that they won’t be alone in their protests for long.  We’ve got IOWS here in America: mostly youngsters who are mad that they aren’t getting what they thought they deserved.  Soon, however, I fear that they’ll be joined by older people who, like their counterparts in Greece, are mad as hell because the government teat is drying up and their comfy government / union jobs, pensions and social welfare benefits are going to be slashed because we simply can’t afford them anymore.  They may also be joined – or, more likely, opposed – by still another group of older Americans: those who still have jobs or small businesses and don’t want to have to pay for everybody else.  Forget “their fair share”: simple math tells us that “the rich” can pay EVERYTHING THEY HAVE and there still isn’t enough money to pay off all the pensions, Social Security accounts, Medicare bills, and everything else we’ve promised to millions of people over the past decades.  Where will the money come from?  Easy: from everybody who has any.

        O’ course, this is exactly the wrong thing to do: taking money from “the rich” means that they stop investing, hide what money they’ve got, or perhaps pay off a member of Congress to write the tax code such that they pay less in taxes than their secretaries.  Either way, they stop spending in ways that lead to people having jobs.  More and more people go on the dole.  Those who still have work are squeezed tighter and tighter (again, consider Greece, where tax evasion has apparently been such a national sport that Timmy Geithner would be a third-stringer in a very bush league).

        This is the path we’re on, the path that the IOWS and their fellow travelers, lefties around the world, want to follow.  Convinced of the moral rightness of taking money from “the rich” who MUST BE corrupt (otherwise, they wouldn’t be rich, would they?) to give to people who “deserve it”, they won’t be swayed.  They won’t stop.  They’ll keep protesting, rioting, and demanding more and more.

        That’s the future that lies ahead.  As you say, it’s been tried, but these clowns think that THIS TIME, it’ll be done right.

        —-

        (*) Not to be confused with the noble figure of Uncle Sam, the tough, honest, unyieding symbol of American strength and virtue.

  • http://wizbangblog.com/author/rodney-graves/ Rodney G. Graves

    Yeah, one of the #OccupySF fucktards assaulted and battered my lady yesterday as she was headed home from the Financial District.  She left him sprawled in the street wondering how his thumb came to be at that odd angle.

    • Anonymous

      Mr. Graves,

      What happened to your special lady isn’t right.  I’m sorry it happened.  I hope she is all right.  May I be so forward as to recommend she (and you) get a concealed carry permit (if its allowed in your jurisdiction).  We have such a thing where I live, and it does wonders to keep such unacceptable behavior to a minimum.

      Semper Fidelis-

      • http://wizbangblog.com/author/rodney-graves/ Rodney G. Graves

        Brucepall,

        Concealed carry permits in CA are issued on a County by County basis, and the Bay Area Counties see no need to issue such (especially the City and County of San Francisco, where my lady works).  Should the bar continue to drop we have weapons which we know how to use, and being caught carrying same concealed is only a misdemeanor in CA.

        Until and unless that situation obtains, we’re both adequately trained, as the fate of her assailant demonstrates (though I think she was too kind).

  • Anonymous

    And all this time we thought we’d seen the bottom in Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel, Stevie Chu, Barry Obama…………….

    • Anonymous

      Uhmm, those are 6 persons whose bottoms I never thought I saw and I never want to see, thank you very much.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_EJGOSD7BRBBY4ZQQEUCFQU4GHU W

    What about the numbers. The occupiers will have a few hundred here and there that will at times expand to couple a thousands. That is supposedly according to the MSM a large number and they need to be taken seriously. The Tea Party had 100s of thousands at it demonstrations and they were supposedly small in number and not to be taken seriously.

  • Anonymous

    I believe the day when the phone call comes down and a banking holiday is declared – and ATMs quickly run outta cash as a result… a certain percentage of my town’s population will riot within hours.   In many ways American has the same elements in its society as Argentina, Belarus, and Greece.  There are just too many clueless non-productive types dependent on the state for their entire lively hood and existence for it to be otherwise.  

    Whatcha going to do in the next crisis, when America runs head first at full speed into the debt saturation wall, and as a result the state runs outta OPM (Other People’s Money)?  Many will revert to type.  OWS and the spoon fed libs will go for mayhem and debauchery; the Tea Partiers will try and salvage what can be saved. The divide will be stark. Which side will I be on?

    That’s an easy call.  Me and my like minded friends will be banded together to help each other out in our neighborhood block; prepared to do whatever is necessary to keep the angry rioters out and the flames away from our homes and families.  911 and law enforcement will be too overwhelmed and busy to be of any help, at least for the first few days or so…

    Will it actually come to this?  I pray and hope not.  But if I have to ask myself how bad can it really get, and how low can the bar really go – then its way past time for the prudent to contingency plan and be prepared for the worst. FWIW

    Semper Fidelis-

  • PBunyan

    One good thing about OWS is that at some point in the future when we have to send troops into battle while there is a Republican President and the same people who are praising and supporting OWS today are attacking our troops for things that are many orders of magnitude milder than the least of the occupiers’ infractions, we can at least point to what they’re saying today and the intellicutally honest ones would have to realize the hypocracy and shut up.

    Wait a minute…. What am I thinking?  lol   “Intellectually honest leftist”– Kinda like the Great Pumpkin or Easter Bunny.

  • http://otisthehand.blogspot.com/ OTIS the hand

    The bar has been lowered, but the toilet has been raised! As seen on The Daily Show.

    If you want to see the video, here:

    http://otisthehand.blogspot.com/2011/11/occupy-wall-street-memorial.html

    • jim_m

      is that a toilet or a delousing station?

      • http://otisthehand.blogspot.com/ OTIS the hand

        That’s a good idea for a new invention. Combine it with an automatic penicillin shot for STD’s and you have a winner. Stewart’s video is actually a devastating critique. Depicts the class warfare which already developed within the movement itself.

        edit: Throw a shower in there, too.

        • jim_m

          Combine it with an automatic penicillin shot for STD’s and you have a winner.

          Oooohhh!  So that’s what all those needles they found in Zuccotti Park were for.  Maybe they were giving out flu vaccines as well.

          • http://otisthehand.blogspot.com/ OTIS the hand

            They probably wouldn’t use it unless it had an automatic behind-wiper. lol.

  • retired.military

    Chico

    OWS has the disease.  in fact they have several to include TB, ringworm, and body lice .   The main disease they have is the ‘GIve me stuff not because I earned it but because I want it and I shouldnt have to work for it.” disease.  Most liberals are infested with that disease.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Q6DL245AVVGQXIOZ3CLCINRIWY Brian

    MFGlobal has spooked the economy.  Seriously.  IT was a relatively smallish firm, but anyone who has cash int he market is now asking “is my cash balance…really a balance”.  

    How Corzine and those people in charge actually did this…baffles me.  And I’m guessing we’re going to find more firms pulling the exact same sort of crap.

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