"Black Friday" insanity

As I watch the local and national TV news, I am shocked by the subtle egging on of the "Black Friday" shopping hordes--even on the relatively better Fox News. In a time of bad economic news, with personal debt at near record levels and with so many people paying off "underwater" housing mortgages, does this mad spending and camping out in front of stores for the latest Iphone or Xbox gizmo make ANY sense?

Perhaps the shopping mantra for the liberal media this year is this: We can't admit the Obamunist government mandates and Demunist economic "stimulus" policy, for which we were cheerleaders, utterly failed, and we know the future is hopeless, but we’re not going to allow the bad economy to ruin our "holiday" season.

The liberal media won't call it Christmas Season, of course.

Of course, I will shop for presents for my family and good friends too, but I will do it on my own sweet time and not get swept up in some media-driven frenzy. Nor will I go into debt for them. I don't think the supplies of goods are THAT low, and in this depressed economy, there will certainly be more discounted sales to entice me to buy in the future.

Then again, perhaps the Obamunists and their media apparatchiks are preparing us future proles for our lives under their socially rationed economic system, where we must stand in line for rationed goods like Cuba, or quickly spend our hard earned cash before it devalues in hyper-inflation like Argentina in the 1970's.

And under such economic policies, we will have to be prepared to be like the crazed shoppers who were pepper-sprayed on Black Friday at a Los Angeles Walmart by a woman who wasn’t about to miss out on one of the most sought after necessities of life — the new Xbox. Only next time, if the Obama Administration wins the 2012 elections and enough Demunists and RINOs hang on to their gerrymandered sinecures in Congress, next time the pushing, shoving, pepper spraying and even shooting may be over gasoline or bread or meat or even vegetables.

Perhaps the "Occupy" camps can be seen as training grounds for future Obama Red Guards. The Occupiers would be perfect candidates to put themselves in harm’s way to get their "fair share" of discounted playthings that they desperately need to keep their gray matter anesthetized. You could just picture many of them punching out the "rednecks" they hate, and then taking their electronic toys back to their Occupy Wall Street tents, and after taking some good drugs falling into a peaceful slumber, thinking to themselves, “Mission accomplished.” And the next day today, they will go back to the front lines fighting those "evil" guys on Wall Street for their Chairman Mao-bama— you know, the same Wall Street guys who have given Barack Obama more money than any candidate in history. But don't tell the Occupier dupes that!

I do not mean to imply that all, or even many, Black Friday shoppers are Occupy Wall Streeters or that all, or even many, Occupy Wall Streeters are Black Friday shoppers. Far from it. But the two groups have at least three things in common: They are very materialistic, they are angry about what they don’t have, and some have no qualms about resorting to mob violence.

When I use the word materialistic, I’m referring to wealth. And to be clear here, wealth is not what someone earns. Wealth is what someone owns. Wealth is cars and buildings and computers and television sets and iPods.

But wealth has to be created. It has to be earned by *somebody*. It takes money, management, and labor to produce all of those cars, buildings, computers, television sets, and iPods. The predicament that America now finds itself in is that there’s a lot of money and management around, but not enough good labor. At least not enough good labor at a cost that allows companies to manufacture goods at prices consumers are willing to pay.

Of course, there’s plenty of labor in places like China, India, Chile, Ecuador, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, and many other countries throughout the world. So it’s no mystery why these countries now produce a great deal of wealth.

The reason the Western world is broke is because it doesn’t have a workforce that is willing to work at wages that are competitive with non-Western nations. From Greece to California, from Italy to New York, the reason workers are unwilling to accept competitive wages is because they can afford to be choosy. Unemployment benefits (now extended to 99 weeks or more), food stamps (ditto), and other forms of "stimulus" welfare remove the motivation for Commiecrat ghetto lumpen proletariat to work at any job that is available to them, at whatever wage is being offered, in order to feed and clothe their families.Starvation no longer motivates people who are unemployed, because the government forces those with wealth to provide food, clothing, and shelter to those who don’t have them.

And with these factors removed from the survival equation, people can afford to camp out at Best Buy, Target, and Walmart for days on end and elbow, stab, shoot, and pepper-spray those who would stand in the way of their getting their fair share of stuff at the lowest possible prices.

Does this mean that people have to work 16 hrs a day for 10 cents per hour in order to compete with a Cambodian serf? Only if they have no more education than a Cambodian serf. Hopefully they went to school and learned a useful trade. NO, Bogus Ethnic Multicultural Commiecrat Studies Victimization is NOT a useful skill. "Social Justice" is also a worthless field. But if they actually studied in school, learned math, chemistry, physics, sciences, engineering, biology, a medical skill or perhaps computers, THEN they can make a good salary. They are not entitled to $30 per hour for sticking a bolt in a car door handle on an assembly line; those days are OVER! But if they can repair a transmission or restart some one's heart, or research how to get greater yields from grains, then they will certainly find jobs all over the place that pay $30 per hour. And that's ALL they're worth.

Then again, maybe not. The more productive business is bashed, the more it moves out of "blue" states, or now even out of this "blue" Demunist nation. (The "Red / Blue" political color scheme should be utterly the other way around, but I digress.) Perhaps they will study hard, like some US engineers, only to have the value of their study undermined by H-1B modern day indentured servant immigrants.

There’s no way to prove it, but I’d be willing to bet that a disproportionate number of those who had nothing better to do than camp out in front of superstores for several days prior to Black Friday are classified as “poor” by the federal government. But how in the world can poor people afford to go shopping for electronic toys?

Good question — and here are some facts about people whom the Census Bureau defines as “poor” that may help to answer it:
--43 percent own their own homes.
--80 percent have air conditioning in their homes.
--75 percent of poor households have a car, and 31 percent have one or more cars.
--97 percent have a color television set and 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
--89 percent own microwave ovens.

Clearly, being poor in America is a whole lot better than being middle class in most other countries. In fact, so-called poor people in the U.S. live as well as those in the median American household of the early 1970s. So when you get right down to it, poverty is relative. But as the living standards of the poor rise, vote-hungry Commiecrat politicians simply make those rising standards the new baseline for poverty. And the RINOs meekly go along.

The "Super Committee" fails--GOOD!

Dick Morris explains:

Mark Twain famously wrote that "no man's property or liberty is safe while the Legislature is in session." The same could have been said for the Deficit Reduction Super Committee. Now that it has reached an impasse, we can all breathe easier!

There is a fundamental, deep difference between the parties in Washington. Democrats want higher levels of taxes and spending and Republicans want lower levels of each. The gulf between them can only be adjudicated by the electorate at an election. That's the way we do it in a democracy. To split the difference in a spate of legislative deal making is to deprive our people of their right of self-government.

Because we are not Japan, we use our elections to air fundamental policy differences. Because we are not Italy, we come to conclusions and are not always looking to split the difference in fuzzy compromise.

For the last weeks many conservatives have been concerned that our Republican members of the panel would sell us out and go for a tax increase. Some, like Tennessee's Senator Lamar Alexander, urged one. For them to have agreed to a compromise would have been disempowering to the voters. It would have been a sin.

Now the great question looms before us: How large should government be? Should it consume the 41% of our national resources it now does or even less than the 33% it did when Obama took power? Let the debate begin and let the voters decide. And let one or the other party return to Washington in 2013 with control of both Houses and of the White House, determined to enact the will of the voters.

The insiders in Washington wanted a deal because they don't trust the voters. The insiders on Wall Street wanted one because they want predictability. But this decision is not to be made by insiders. It will be made by voters. It is not the triumph of gridlock, but of democracy. The absence of a deal is not a failing of our system, but a manifestation of its most glorious success.

We are still, after all, a democracy. 

Not a surprise really.

Let’s get real here. Only the play-along-to-get-along media could hype a business-as-usual non-event like the supercommittee’s thumb-sucking task into sounding like the Cuban missile crisis — or at least the lead-up to the Super Bowl.
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Sorry, but the truth is that the media’s hand-wringing over the supercommittee’s deficit-reduction work is nothing more than a monumental farce. By getting the public to focus on the choice of cutting $1.2 trillion from the budget over 10 years or triggering automatic spending cuts of $1.2 trillion, Congress is once again able to distract from what really needs to be done.

And by “really needs to be done,” I mean cutting a minimum of $1.5 trillion from the budget next year. Why $1.5 trillion? Because that’s what it would take to balance the current budget, which is already 10 times greater than it should be.

It’s all part of the same old Washington game, and the rules of the game are very simple: Democrats never agree to any serious spending cuts, and Republicans always give in (while pretending to be victorious, of course).

In other words, from the Democrats’ point of view, it’s: “Heads, I win; tails, you lose.” And from the Republicans’ point of view, it’s: “Just let us continue to eat in the Congressional dining room, work out in the Congressional gym and have access to insider stock-trading information, and we’ll go along with just about anything you ask of us.”

It never really mattered whether the so-called “spending cuts” came from the super committee or as a result of “automatic, across-the-board spending cuts.” Either way, the budget, the deficit and the national debt were guaranteed to continue to rise — and at an accelerating rate, at that.

What does this mean in terms of next November’s elections? Well, if the Republicans run a progressive candidate like Mitt Romney, once again allowing themselves to be intimidated by the Democrats’ constant admonishments that “voters want Democrats and Republicans to come together,” then they will have learned nothing from their Mush McCain mistake in 2008.

It’s scary to think about, but even Ann Coulter has fallen into the ageless trap of believing that conservatives should once again set aside their principles and nominate a candidate who can win. Not only is such a position unprincipled, it also yields either a losing Presidential race or a Republican President who does nothing more than carry the water bucket for Democrats. (Think George W. Bush.)

Perhaps the biggest tip-off that Romney has Democrats licking their chops at the thought of his winning the Republican nomination is that their liberal media cheerleaders keep insisting he is the candidate Democrats fear most. That’s a dead giveaway for just how badly they want him to be the Republican nominee. Trust me, the thought of running nonstop ads that feature Barack Obama thanking Romney for creating the model for Obamacare has them both salivating and cackling.

Of course, if voters bypass Romney and flee into the arms of Newt Gingrich, Democrats would also have a ball with some of Gingrich’s more infamous positions — supporting the Troubled Asset Relief Program, global-warming couch sessions with Nancy Pelosi, favoring an individual mandate for health care, and, worst of all, referring to Paul Ryan’s serious budget-cutting plan as “extreme right-wing social engineering.”

The important question of the day is not whether the super committee will “compromise” and work out a spending-cut plan or take the easy way out and allow automatic spending cuts to be triggered. Either way, you can be sure there will be no significant cutbacks in government spending.

A far more important question is: Will conservatives be smart enough and tough enough to understand that promising to cut the size and scope of government and put an end to the criminality in Washington is what got them elected to Congress in 2010?

Or will they misread the political climate once again and run scared — right into the arms of their socialist pals across the aisle — and hand the only Marxist President in American history a default victory that will give him the time he needs to finish the job of destroying what is left of the U.S. economy?

Why Liberals Want Gun Control

Q: Why do Leftists, Liberals, Demunists and Commiecrats want "gun control"?
A: So we can't fight back when they foment mobs and unleash them upon our persons, homes, businesses or other property.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan shows the way:

Even after the bandanna-wearing, rock-throwing, fire-starting fringe demonstrators took over a downtown Oakland building and blocked off a street late Wednesday, Mayor Jean Quan did not want police to intervene.

Instead, Quan asked that police hold off on any confrontation until daylight - or, barring that, send in negotiators to try to work out a peaceful resolution.

"She didn't want to incite the anarchists any more than they already were," said one source who was in the city's emergency operations center when Quan stunned the assembled staffers with her comments.

Finally, interim Police Chief Howard Jordan, with the backing of City Administrator Deanna Santana, made the call for police to take action. Both were in the emergency center with Quan.

The following day, at a press conference with Jordan and Santana, the mayor praised police for their handling of the situation, while a stone-faced chief and city administrator stood by her side.

Quan's command center call was the latest example of the mayor's resistance to using police force on demonstrators, a position that is being reinforced both by her closest advisers and her family.

In fact, eyewitnesses say Quan's husband was among the banner-wavers blockading the port in a nonviolent action earlier Wednesday.

Quan said at a press briefing the day after last week's riot that she was still hoping for a "peaceful resolution" to the Occupy encampment outside City Hall.

Sure you do, Jean. Sure....

But when asked what her idea of a peaceful resolution was or how it might be achieved, Quan said, "I don't know."

It will only be achieved when those goons are turned back by armed law-abiding citizens with weapons.

The Liberal Democrat Powers That Be won't help; in fact, they show their sympathy with the window breakers, robbers and looters.

Editorial Cartoon from 1934, Still True Today

But what has the Chicago Tribune, and ever other major newspaper, since come to?

The other plan of action they had was to infiltrate and slowly take control of the newspapers. Thank goodness for blogging.

How to respond to "Occupy Oakland" thug vandals

They form mobs, destroy property and threaten violence against working people. How to respond? With equal or more severe force. And one Oakland developer threatened to do just that, and one Oakland driver did just that! In a sane society we would give these guys medals.

Here's to you, Phil Tagami:

...though some businesses have been targeted and vandalized by Occupy Oakland protesters, there is at least one businessman who refuses to be intimidated.

Phil Tagami is a well-known Oakland developer. Late Wednesday night, instead of going over paperwork or brokering deals, he was forced to defend a downtown building where he personally oversaw $50 million worth of renovations.

He also has an office there.

“We had people who attempted to break into our building,” the landmark Rotunda Building on Frank Ogawa Plaza outside City Hall, Tagami said. According to comments he made to the San Francisco Chronicle, Tagami grabbed a shotgun that he usually keeps at home, went down to the ground floor and “discouraged them.”

Although they didn’t get inside the building, vandals did scrawl graffiti on the outside walls during the post-midnight riot that broke out after Occupy Oakland’s daylong general strike, writes the Chronicle.

“I was standing there and they saw me there, and I lifted it – I didn’t point it – I just held it in my hands,” Tagami said. “And I just racked it, and they ran.”

Meanwhile, a driver trying to get out of an Oakland BART transit station, after one of these creeps started pounding on his car hood, accelerated and hit the creep! He is unidentified at present, but hats off to him as well. Hats off to the BART Transit Cops for letting him go, too.

Lesson of riots: You can't appease the savages, like the Men's Wearhouse tried to do.

But I suspect the Commiecrats will try to prosecute these two guys. Why is that? Because they are in cahoots with the "Occupy" goons, as Mark Steyn points out:

Jean Quan, mayor of Oakland, and the Oakland City Council have made "preserving disorder" the official municipal policy. On Wednesday, the "Occupy Oakland" occupiers rampaged through the city, shutting down the nation's fifth-busiest port, forcing stores to close, terrorizing those residents foolish enough to commit the reactionary crime of "shopping," destroying ATMs, spraying the Christ the Light Cathedral with the insightful observation "F**k", etc. And how did Mayor Quan and the Oakland City Council react? The following day they considered a resolution to express their support for "Occupy Oakland" and to call on the city administration to "collaborate with protesters."

That's "collaborate" in the Nazi-occupied France sense: the city's feckless political class are collaborating with anarchists against the taxpayers who maintain them in their sinecures. They're not the only ones. When the rumor spread that the Whole Foods store, of all unlikely corporate villains, had threatened to fire employees who participated in the protest, the Regional President David Lannon took to Facebook: "We totally support our Team Members participating in the General Strike today – rumors are false!" But, despite his "total support", they trashed his store anyway, breaking windows and spray-painting walls. As The Oakland Tribune reported: "A man who witnessed the Whole Foods attack, but asked not to be identified, said he was in the store buying an organic orange when the crowd arrived."

There's an epitaph for the republic if ever I heard one.

"The experience was surreal, the man said. 'They were wearing masks. There was this whole mess of people, and no police here. That was weird.'"

No, it wasn't. It was municipal policy.

In fairness to the miserable David Lannon, Whole Foods was in damage-control mode. Men's Wearhouse in Oakland had no such excuse. In solidarity with the masses, they printed up a huge poster declaring "We Stand With The 99%" and announcing they'd be closed that day. In return, they got their windows smashed.

I'm a proud member of the 1 percent, and I'd have been tempted to smash 'em myself. A few weeks back, finding myself suddenly without luggage, I shopped at a Men's Wearhouse, faute de mieux, in Burlington, Vermont. Never again. I'm not interested in patronizing craven corporations so decadent and self-indulgent that as a matter of corporate policy they support the destruction of civilized society. Did George Zimmer, founder of Men's Wearhouse and backer of Howard Dean, marijuana decriminalization and many other fashionable causes, ever glance at the photos of the OWS occupiers and ponder how many of "the 99%" were ever likely to be in need of his two-for-one deal on suits and neckties? And did he think even these dummies were dumb enough to fall for such a feebly corporatist attempt at appeasing the mob?

I don't "stand with the 99%," and certainly not downwind of them. But I'm all for their "occupation" continuing on its merry way. It usefully clarifies the stakes. At first glance, an alliance of anarchists and government might appear to be somewhat paradoxical. But the formal convergence in Oakland makes explicit the movement's aims: They're anarchists for statism, wild free-spirited youth demanding more and more total government control of every aspect of life – just so long as it respects the fundamental human right to sloth. What's happening in Oakland is a logical exercise in class solidarity: the government class enthusiastically backing the breakdown of civil order is making common cause with the leisured varsity class, the thuggish union class and the criminal class in order to stick it to what's left of the beleaguered productive class. It's a grand alliance of all those societal interests that wish to enjoy in perpetuity a lifestyle they are not willing to earn. Only the criminal class is reasonably upfront about this. The rest – the lifetime legislators, the unions defending lavish and unsustainable benefits, the "scholars" whiling away a somnolent half-decade at Complacency U – are obliged to dress it up a little with some hooey about "social justice" and whatnot.

But that's all it takes to get the media and modish if insecure corporate entities to string along. Whole Foods can probably pull it off. So can Ben & Jerry's, the wholly owned subsidiary of the Anglo-Dutch corporation UniLever that nevertheless successfully passes itself off as some sort of tie-dyed Vermont hippie commune. But a chain of stores that sells shirts, ties, the garb of the corporate lackey, has a tougher sell. 

The class that gets up in the morning, pulls on its lousy Men's Wearhouse get-up and trudges off to work has to pay for all the other classes, and the strain is beginning to tell.
Let it be said that the "occupiers" are right on the banks: They shouldn't have been bailed out. America has one of the most dysfunctional banking systems in the civilized world, and most of its allegedly indispensable institutions should have been allowed to fail. But the Occupy Oakland types have no serious response, other than the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by government-funded inertia.
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At heart, Oakland's occupiers and worthless political class want more of the same fix that has made America the Brokest Nation in History: They expect to live as beneficiaries of a prosperous Western society without making any contribution to the productivity necessary to sustain it. This is the "idealism" that the media are happy to sentimentalize, and that enough poseurs among the corporate executives are happy to indulge – at least until the window smashing starts. To "occupy" Oakland or anywhere else, you have to have something to put in there. Yet the most striking feature of OWS is its hollowness. And in a strange way the emptiness of its threats may be a more telling indictment of a fin de civilization West than a more coherent protest movement could ever have mounted.

Michelle Malkin posts what the lamestream media apparatchiks won't.

When You Have Lost Stephen Colbert.....

...it is time to pack it up and go home. "Occupy Wall Street" dupes get clowned. Even liberal weenie Stephen Colbert realizes they are a joke.

It's everything you'd hope it would be, and more. I would try to narrow down a few highlights for those who are pressed for time, but it's spectacular from start to finish. Especially entertaining is Colbert's interview with the "female-bodied" facilitator named "Ketchup," and her smirking consensus comrade.