No, evidently we need a whole hell of a lot. Way too much, it seems. Faced with an unprecedentedly insecure and desperate consumer base, America’s retailers stoop ever lower to sell Chinese crap to consumers by turning Christmas into a fatter and less cinematically appealing combination of Survivor and Road Warrior, with predictable results. Pepper-spraying. [...]
Here’s a Portland picture I found at Digby, and it’s my old bank branch, where they used to retroactively explain their many fees to me. Nice to know somebody’s got their back.
Now, I’ve read some dumb things in my life at the Atlantic (especially since Megan McArdle came along), but this is ridiculous. Wendy Kaminer, an “author, lawyer, and civil libertarian,” which in plain English means “wingnut welfare queen,” leapt into the fray with one of the silliest “slippery slope” arguments against OWS I’ve ever heard, [...]
UPDATE BELOW: Awesome picture from New York. Today Occupy Portland was scheduled to meet at 8:00am at the East end of the Steel Bridge, so I went down to take a look. I walked along the west side waterfront, figuring that would give me the broadest view of what was happening, and alert me to [...]
They’re everywhere – these little men. No tendentious description of the phenomenon is required, nor is a detailed and boring historical context necessary, since they (like the poor) “have always been with us.” But the sudden “surge” of poseurs, fakers, demagogues, deadbeats, and crooks stands out right now, as our vaunted world economy teeter-totters, [...]
Occupy Portland assembled just outside my front door earlier today, at a rally/walkout for Portland State University students. As you can see, it was reasonably well attended, and eventually led to a march on, appropriately enough for debt-saddled students, the Bankruptcy Court, I’m not sure which one. Though I left as the march departed, I [...]
Wow, that was quick, wasn’t it? As if by some act of divine intervention, Occupy Wall Street and most of its larger offspring elsewhere, just vanished into thin air in a few days, albeit aided by everything from foaming editorial pages to pepper spray and media blackouts. When I went to the GA today at [...]
In the aftermath of the of the rout of OccupyPortland yesterday afternoon, I decided to take a look at the oft-touted “damage” to the parks. Peering through the hastily installed cyclone fences at a crew of city workers, who had doffed the ever-so-telegenic masks worn by the earlier invaders, all I saw was what any [...]
UPDATE: (4:00pm) Reinforcements have been brought in from enlightened places like Salem, and the cops are really rolling up with rubber bullets, tear gas, and what not. Another busload of cops is heading in. More news later; the protesters are heading right here to Park Ave. Bowing to the bleatings of The Oregonian and [...]
UPDATE: Well, we just left Occupy Portland well over an hour after the whole thing was supposed to have been rolled up once and for all, and it wasn’t happening. Thousands of people filled both the parks and the surrounding streets, encircled by hundreds of supportive cyclists. (This is Portland, after all….) Disappointed helicopters still [...]