This is kind of the thrust of reports on how Occupy worked out for the Political Party conventions.

1. The first night had only a handful of protesters, populated by more seniors than youth. When one young man started to curse the police, he was chewed out by a grandmother to watch his language, and he immediately shut up!
2. The most radical thing ResistRNC did for 3 days was a “Celebration of Resistance” at a local brewery, followed by a one-hour Roving Radical Dance Party. Seriously? Going out for beers is a resistance movement? Followed by a dance?  How more embarrassing can it get?
3. There were no protests that numbered more than a few hundred people, and that included every manner of protest groups from PETA dressed up in pig costumes with signs reading Tax Meat” to seniors protesting high utility costs.
4. One one day, the only time people appeared in the vast park that was reserved for protests, was a 30 minute protest by 6 lunatic members of the Westboro Baptist Church who were screaming people straight to h311.   Not a single other protester there the entire day…which was not surprising considering there was hardly any other protests the entire week.The only excitement of that day was when a few dozen protesters, including even fewer sporting bandanna masks, decided to march down to the protest park and confront the church members.  Yes, that’s right.  The only thing that apparently motivated Occupy and all it’s minions to march was to protest other protesters!:-DThe most hilarious thing was when a young girl protester who had somehow gotten a bit farther ahead of the “protesters protesting protesters” march was approached by a TV news crew that asked her if the rest of the group was coming their way.  She seemed shocked by the question and then said wideyed, and I quote, “They’ll be here any time….they’re like ninjas…secret ninjas.”  ROFLOL

A similar report from a more sympathetic source.

“Romneyville” is the home base for Occupy at the Republican National Convention. It is easily contained in a city block—and it is sad. Despite a lot of determined souls, lovely ideals, and blessed intentions, it might as well not exist. For 99 percent of convention goers, it doesn’t.
I arrive after Romney’s closing remarks to a camp defeated. There is no sense of a job well done. There is no sense of a job done at all. A boy with the body of a man is sobbing. He is 6’4″, 210 pounds, and 22 years old.
“I’m so sick of being silenced,” he cries. “Why do we have to live in these makeshift FEMA camps?” But no one really cares. They want to go to bed. The boy is learning, for the first time. And so it goes.
Occupy is not a movement. It was moment.
Politicians have changed the way they deal with protesters. It’s time protesters do the same.

Which is kind of interesting, both the “Sadness; irrelevant” nature of the thing and the claim of “Protesting the Protest” claim, because on the probably slightly less sad “One Year Anniversary Occupy Wall Street” do-did we get this…

An activist group founded by the notorious Koch brothers is holding a demonstration in Midtown tomorrow to voice its opposition to President Barack Obama’s economic policies and to stand up to the “Occupy Wall Street mob,” according to a press release.
Activists from Americans for Prosperity plan to protest tomorrow morning outside the Time-Life building as part of group’s Failing Agenda Bus Tour, which is devoted to urging President Barack Obama to shun policies that increase the nation’s debt. Despite the group’s billionaire backers, the AFP describes itself as a grass roots organization. It has more than 2 million supporters nationwide. […]
“The Occupy Wall Street crowd is nothing but a fringe element of malcontents bent on mayhem and destruction,”said Steve Lonegan, director of Americans for Prosperity’s New Jersey branch. “These are people who despise free enterprise. They are not attacking Wall Street. They are attacking the very freedoms that everyday Americans cherish to pursue their own dreams and succeed.”
Occupy Wall Street commemorated its first anniversary on Monday, staging protests throughout lower Manhattan in “resistance to economic injustice.” According to the NYPD, there were 185 arrests in conjunction with the protests.
“It’s time that someone stood up to the Occupy Wall Street mob,” said Mr. Lonegan in the release, adding that the group would also protest President Obama’s economic policies:

And all this flub of bulfs of Tea Party coming out to protest Occupy and…

There were 30 people in the protest of the protest.

Whatever amplifies their message, I suppose.

“Yeah.  We were getting some Republican mad by making fun of Ron Paul.”
“Ron Paul?  You mean Paul Ryan.”
“Yes.  We meant Paul Ryan.”

I.  Mississippi.  Here’s Mississippi’s Democratic Senate candidate weighing in on an issue of utmost importance… the momentary lack of mention of “God” in the Democratic Party platform.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Mississippi Delegate Albert N. Gore said. “It doesn’t bother me from the standpoint that I know where I stand and I know that there is one and that’s it.”

Daniel Pinkwater endorses Barack Obama and down-ticket Democrats.  It breaks his own rule.  I find it … eyebrow raising.

Others will say, “Whoa! I’m scared. This might turn out badly. We should go back to when things were simple, back in grandpa’s day, in which I never lived, and have no real idea, but I am sure I would have felt more secure, and it’s the way things were intended, by God, or dead leaders who we’ve simplified into fictional heroes.”

Ronald Reagan?

This happens every time. Luddites, looneys and religious orthodoxers get all excited. (I’m not talking about conservatives–that’s a word that has changed its meaning. Poor actual conservatives!) And some normal people get influenced. After a while, we get past the beginning, we get used to the changes, things don’t turn out so badly, and the turmoil dies down. You get this, don’t you? There was a time when some people were sure God was going to plunge the earth into fiery destruction because somebody had invented the steam engine.

Hm.  “Change beyond the way things used to be” means any number of things.  A splot somewhere near Pinkwater brings us over to this… Down down down ticket…

Senator Stephen M. Saland, a lawyer from Poughkeepsie, has served in the New York State Legislature for 32 years. In 2010, he won re-election by 19 percentage points. And since then, he has raised $788,000 for his campaign war chest — more than 40 times what his challenger in the Republican primary raised.
Yet a day after the primary, Mr. Saland clung to a 42-vote lead on Friday over a little-known opponent, Neil A. Di Carlo, and faced the prospect that he could lose his seat after absentee ballots are counted. Mr. Di Carlo waged a shoestring campaign focused in large part on one issue: Mr. Saland’s decision to break with his party last year to provide one of the pivotal votes to legalize same-sex marriage in the state.

Actually I don’t know if this race is Pinkwater’s state legislative district at all.   But it is in the neighborhood, and was the first thing I thought of when I read that.

There’s nothing much to say about the greedy criminal element that’s always among us, and doesn’t really belong to either of the two categories–they just want to manipulate the system so they can buy more stuff, or get a thrill from thinking they have power–except we should try not to elect any of them, or people controlled by them.

The Republican vice presidential nominee used to recommend his Congressional staff read Ayn Rand, which does strike me as a political cross-road crossed, even as to a great extent I do figure “Most Important Election Ever” gets over-stated every election.  Or whether this election itself represents a “Critical juncture” moreso than any other election.

Who should we elect? I can tell you who I want to elect: President Obama, and congressional Democrats. Ordinarily, I would keep this to myself, and not worry too much about how the election turns out, because I am optimistic, and believe the human race has always falteringly gone forward and slowly improved. But I think we are at a critical juncture, and it’s important to get it right this time. So I am willing to try to influence you to vote the way I think is right, and hope you will agree, and try to influence others.

This influences close to nobody.  The majority, though not all, voting Pinkwater fans are voting for Obama.  Still, this rare straight-forward political endorsement (I qualify with “straight forward” because I don’t think a social satirist can help but make elliptical political statements…  Pinkwater gave an NPR commentary at an early point in Clinton’s presidency when his presidency seemed to be on shaky ground that his problem was he had cut back on the Big Macs — a political statement of sorts, I suppose, indicating his preferences) gets gets some minor push-back —

I just wanted you to know that I am disappointed in your venturing into the political realm with you endorsemnet of President Obama in the upcoming election. I’m not sure that we should turn to the author of “The Pineapple and The Hare” for political advice, just as I would not ask Mr. Obama for tips on how to run a business.

I’m neutral on his political statement itself (The name’s familiar enough that I assume he’s left comments at “Talk to DP” before) — his “venture into the political realm” is after all echoed in the ambivalence of Pinkwater’s own statement after all, and am mostly concerned with the the “Pineapple and the Hare” jab, which for a self-identified Pinkwater fan is really a puzzling insult.  To whatever degree that he’s a Republican, I’d point out The Artsy Smartsy Club makes the Democratic Party a point of fun, but that nearly seems a coin flip decision.

The numbers I always find interesting in polling results are these statistically insignificant results from, I suppose, counter-intuitive minorities.  Looking down these results from a New York Times poll that shows “Obama moving past Romney on the economy” and we get to this question.

Sometimes I wonder about the searches getting to this page.  Take this question:

What was Diocletian solution?

Good lord, go to wikipedia for your bulletpoint answer.  For further analysis, consult books from your local library and debate amongst yourself and in yourself how Diocletian’s reforms speak to the current political scene in America or whatever country.

In spite of his failures, Diocletian’s reforms fundamentally changed the structure of Roman imperial government and helped stabilize the Empire economically and militarily, enabling the Empire to remain essentially intact for another hundred years despite having seemed near the brink of collapse in Diocletian’s youth.

Maybe we can stave off the End of America for another century by following the Diocletian model?

Next question:  what is health care reform

Sigh.  Something Truman wanted. Actually here’s the question:  “What is Reform?”  and once you reform something, do you necessarily have to re-reform to something else?  Can it be called reform as you’re forming again or should it be called re-reform because you’re taking it from the vantage point of the pre-reform existence?

bob jones quote i’d rather see a nigger elected president than al smith
Yeah, sounds like something he’d have said.

mark kraschel

Question:  Is Mark Kraschel anyone I should know of?  He did write a particularly hilarious letter to the Oregonian once, which I felt the desire to dissect, and when coming upon the search engine result and backing to it think this may be one of the best things I posted onto this blog.  If I can find it online, I’d post this circa late 1930s piece on the cliches of Roosevelt haters which seems apt when I read back that letter.

jackie salit skirt

I guess I should do a Jackie Salit update.  I don’t know why I care about her skirt, though.

It’s always awkward pulling a tragedy down to its political consequences…

… even though, to an awful degree, political combatants are thinking in terms of “How do I mitigates its negative political effects and use it to my advantage?”

Yes.  Romney is shameless.  Embassy violence in Egypt and Libya … “Because Obama is weak”… as opposed to, um, Islamic Extremists at War and there are Americans there?

Nate Silver’s forecast model (which has been accurate through the last few election cycles — it’s the horse race thing and Silver comes out of the Sports forecasting world)  has Obama moving further ahead, and now has Obama at 80.8 percent chance of winning the election.  (If the election were today, it stands at 91.6 percent.)  Essentially I don’t think hasn’t been a day this calendar year where “If the election were held today”, Obama wouldn’t win (if perhaps a bit ugly).  Basically Romney has a few news cycles where things can make a difference.  The Conventions were one possibility.  They’ve passed.  The Debates are the next opportunity.  The only other possibility is unforseen events.  And … there’s this he needs to get a hold of.  Even if the “Shoe were on the other foot” would have Romney, Rumsfeld and crew charging any Democrats with shamelessly seeking political gain and breaking up Americna Unity in the face of Terror.  But the bulk of neocons feel they can charge ahead with this “It’s because of Democratic Weakness” tag … and who knows?  Maybe it’ll get traction after initial public revulsion.

The curious item is the popular vote discreprency.   Obama’s chances of carrying the popular vote stands at 51.5 percent.  (Today would be at 51.2 percent.)  I think the point here is Obama has massive ground in states that went to McCain in 2008, and slight ground in states that he pulled in 2008.  (Excepting Indiana, which Obama narrowly won, and falls in the former category.)