Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Oakland

36 Comments

…has been occupied:

True, the Occupy Oakland general strike was not entirely violent. Throughout most of the day occupiers only terrorized shoppers, destroyed private property, and shut down commerce at the Port of Oakland. The real mayhem didn’t begin until protesters occupied an abandoned building near San Pablo Avenue and 17th Street. The occupiers erected barricades using tires, pallets, and garbage cans and set them on fire when riot police began evicting them from the building. An all-out battle followed with police using tear gas, flash grenades, and bean bag rounds on the occupiers, and the occupiers responding with firecrackers and bottles.

By 12:30 AM, the occupiers had been removed from the building and retreated to their home base at Frank Ogawa Plaza. Despite all the damage and mayhem they have caused, the liberal leaders of Oakland only want to embrace the movement further. The Oakland City Council will take up a resolution today supporting the Occupy encampment and calling on city administrators to “collaborate with protesters.” The resolution is expected to pass over the objection of Council President Larry Reid. “We’ve given up control of the city” to the occupiers, Reid said. “We don’t call the shots anymore – they do.”

Remember when the Tea Party did this sort of thing?

Me, neither.

Hey, Obama, do you still support this movement? Hey, Democrats. Want to go into the election a year from now with these people at your side?

[Update a few minutes later]

Speaking of which, the president’s reelection odds are plunging.

[Update a while later]

From Iowahawk: “Good times for America’s beloved Nazi-endorsed bomb-chucking arsonist rape camp.”

36 thoughts on “Oakland”

  1. I wonder if this will be another of those situations where a recession happens, but doesn’t get reported as such until after the election.

  2. Despite all the damage and mayhem they have caused, the liberal leaders of Oakland only want to embrace the movement further.

    Yes, because terrorism works — that’s why people do it…

    1. Actually, yes, I do. It’s interesting to note that these sorts of concerns have been raised since Clinton. Obama doesn’t have the support to make this stick. If Obama wants to commit suicide by suspending elections, I welcome his futile attempt.

  5. Hey, they’re just naive young people who think they want revolutionary change but who have no well-defined demands, who have no concrete idea of what success would look like, and who don’t even agree with each other. Right Bob? I’m sure there were significant disagreements about which gasoline octane to use for fire-starting. (Nothing from BP though, we can probably be assured of that.)
    I’m sure when they get around to well-defined demands, and they’re paidprovided, all this arson and terror will be put aside.

  6. Aren’t you folks sorry now you didn’t support Senator McCain in the last election? And I bet when Governor Romeny gets the Republican nomination you will again throw away your vote on a third party candidate, or choose to skip the election.

    Remember, elections are not about finding the perfect candidate, but the best available among those likely to win. And thanks to the self-appointed “filter states” of New Hampshire and Iowa, the rest of America’s choices haven’t been all that great the last few decades…

    1. Aren’t you folks sorry now you didn’t support Senator McCain in the last election? And I bet when Governor Romeny gets the Republican nomination you will again throw away your vote on a third party candidate, or choose to skip the election.

      So speaks the idiot who voted for Harry Reid. From what fantasyland are you posting this?

      1. Rand,

        Sharon Angle would have been far worst for the state of Nevada as I pointed out many times. She didn’t get her local nick name “41 to Angle” for nothing. And the fact she was campaigning for the AIP candidate for the special Congressional election showed what her true colors were.

        Yes. its pity Harry Reid is from Nevada, but if the Tea Party wanted him out of office the Tea Party Express should not have hijacked the Nevada Republican primary. Again, as I noted before, any of the other Republicans in the primary would have been beaten him easily.

        Fortunately the state Republicans moved to prevent her, and the Tea Party, from messing up the special election, which is why the Republican, Mark Amodei, won. Incidentally I voted for him just as I would have voted for a real Republican in the senate election.

        Now tell me. Are you sorry you didn’t vote or campaign for Senator McCain in the last election? Or did you even vote?

        1. I don’t know anyone who voted for John McCain. Most of the votes he got were either votes against Barack Obama, or for Sarah Palin. Similarly, I campaigned against Barack Obama, and for Sarah Palin. Sadly though, a vote for her was a vote for John McCain as well.

          1. Rand,

            Gee, you do live in a bubble don’t you? That is one of the problems with space advocates as well, isolating themselves from the main stream, so those in it seem like radicals to them 🙂

          2. Indeed. I voted happily and enthusiastically for Sarah Palin. I even volunteered at the local campaign headquarters, which I’ve never done before. McCain had nothing to do with it.

        2. The TP shouldn’t be judged by one or two races. They had a profound impact overall. It might be harder for you to see that based on where you live.

          1. Wodun,

            Given how libertarian Nevada is, the TP almost looks liberal here, especially with given the social agenda of the candidates that support the Tea Party. That was one of the problems with Sharon Angle with Nevadans, especially her efforts to promote Scientology in the state’s prisons 🙂

            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc36tHOe6bY

          2. It might be harder for you to see that based on where you live.

            No, it is hard for Matula to see that because he does not want to see that. Where he lives has nothing to do with it.

            Ignorance is curable, but only if the patient wants to be cured.

          1. Yes, a bubble, just hanging with those who echo your beliefs 🙂

            That is one of the downsides of blogs and social media, it makes it easier for folks to isolate themselves from the general population and move to extreme positions by reinforcing each other beliefs in a specific direction. In business that is called Groupshift and it usually is an underlying factor in major business failures.

          2. In business that is called Groupshift

            What do you call a person who hangs around others making up words to describe their beliefs?

            Funny how academics couldn’t quite grasp the concept of isolation or seclusion in order to call it what it is, so they developed a concatenation of other words that doesn’t make sense. What if the group decided to move from an isolationist stance and become less secluded, wouldn’t the concatenation “groupshift” work for that as well? Are supposed to understand that “groupshift” always has a negative context, even if the original words “group” and “shift” do not? Was it that academics think isolationism or seclusion can only be used for political movements, and therefore can not describe other organized movements?

            A feel like I should donate a dictionary to GBC and help advance education there.

    2. Aren’t you folks sorry now you didn’t support Senator McCain in the last election?

      Nope. President Barack McGovern Obama is the best friend we real conservatives have ever had. No one sells our brand better!

      And I bet when Governor Romeny [sic] gets the Republican nomination you will again throw away your vote on a third party candidate, or choose to skip the election.

      Yep. I’d vote for a store-brand canned ham before I’d vote for that faker. You don’t defeat the Enemy by electing the Enemy.

      Remember, elections are not about finding the perfect candidate, but the best available among those likely to win.

      It’s like choosing which yard bull is going to rape you in prison!

      And thanks to the self-appointed “filter states” of New Hampshire and Iowa, the rest of America’s choices haven’t been all that great the last few decades…

      For which I blame the residents of Settleforanythingville, population: you.

      Now go be mediocre somewhere else.

  7. @Bill Dale
    Oh, you think there will BE an election? I don’t think that is in the plan.

    To quote 300: “Pray they’re that stupid. Pray we’re that lucky.”

    If they pull that stunt, it’s civil war. And we know on what side the guns and numbers are.

    So they won’t do it. It would mean the end of the Democrat party, and big government, for generations and generations. They’ll take a loss and regroup a few years later.

  8. I also see that the Oakland protesters also shut down the Port of Oakland. What did that have to do with the 99% vs 1% thing? Smells to me like some local union is using the protests as cover for a shake down of the Port.

    1. Perhaps, but a lot of ordinary working people took a hit yesterday. From InstaPundit:

      Plus, a truck driver on the scene comments on the victims of the port shutdown:

      “These people are out here trying to make a living. I get paid per run, I don’t get paid by the hour,” he said. “My personal opinion? The 1 percent down here is protesting, the 99 percent is down here working.”

      So, the self-proclaimed “99%” hurts the working people they claim to support. Fairly typical, actually. The Occupy people want whatever they want (even if it is often mutally exclusive) and screw everyone else.

      1. They need to see that the protesters are making a major sacrifice on their behalf and the appropriate thing to do is support the protesters by making sacrifices of their own for the greater good of the cause.

        Don’t the worker bees see that they are the tools of the 1% and that their inaction only serves to prop up the corrupt 1% that are taking the wealth from the 99%?

        There is no middle ground, the front lines are everywhere, you are either with us or against us.

        1. If those protestors cause truck drivers to start missing paychecks, things are going to get very ugly very fast. Most truck drivers that I’ve met tend to be rather no-nonsense kind of people. If a bunch of smelly, ignorant hippies start getting between them and their jobs, well, my money is on the truck drivers.

  9. This morning, though, listening to reports about the latest chaos in Oakland made me worry a bit that all this might just be practice and preparation for the riots that will follow if Obama loses re-election in a year.

    1. You aren’t alone in concern about riots if the theftist democrats lose in 2012. The OWS morons are ready to believe that any such victory is the 1% exercising their control.

    2. This morning, though, listening to reports about the latest chaos in Oakland made me worry a bit that all this might just be practice and preparation for the riots that will follow if Obama loses re-election in a year.

      I imagine this will hurt most the places that support these protesters. If you live in a city that voices support for the OWS protesters, you’re probably much more at risk of harm from a riot than someone who lives in a city that will allow its law enforcement to arrest law breakers.

    3. The writing is on the wall that the Democrats will lose big in 2012, even if Obama somehow manages to stay in office. The protest wing of the Democrat party is gearing up for continual protests until the Democrats return to power.

      Sort of like the Bush era protests that magically stopped when Obama was elected despite nothing changing.

  10. At some point they’re going to hurt a Raider fan, and then things are going to get very ugly.

    I’ll bet Victor Davis Hanson will have some interesting things to say about these riots.

  11. The media could drop all of these peaceful protest descriptions now. You knew the worm was about to turn when someone in the mob tried to start a chant of, “Peaceful protest” and was shouted down with, “Occupy! Occupy!”

    Have seen two awesome videos of this happening and in one the man with the video camera told the young white lady asking for peaceful protest, “The time for white people coming in here and telling us what to do is over.”

  14. Don’t pray for stupid enemies. A stupid, weak enemy can do almost as much damage to you as to himself. Stupid, weak enemies turn straight-up confrontations into knife-fights – of the sort where the winner goes to the emergency room and the loser to the morgue.

    1. I’ve asked before: Which is more dangerous, a smart Communist or a stupid Communist?

      It’s a rhetorical question.

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