Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
frank miller, huh? I bet warren ellis would never betray his principles. his principles are pretty much the one true way we all should live. we should all mass copy+paste his worldview on all issues. because he's not just a talented writer who loves to drop anvils. he's a true prophet.
The Portland rioters are openly attacking cops now. I'm fucking tired of other rioters saying they aren't part of the "bad group". You're all standing as one, you're all responsible for your hateful decisions.
November 6th, 2012: Americas new Independence Day.
Ah yes, Fascism alive and well in America. American citizens...forced to pay taxes...aren't allowed Freedom of Speech or Freedom to Protest. This is not America. It's a Police State run by corruption and controlled by the worst of humanity. I look forward to the revolution.
BREAKING: Bloomberg served with temporary restraining order requiring reopening of Zuccotti Park to protesters at 7:50 a.m. | At 6:30 a.m. this morning, following a midnight police raid evicting protesters from Zuccotti Park, Justice Lucy Billings issued an order requiring the protesters to be readmitted to Zuccotti Park with their tents. ThinkProgress just spoke to one of the plantiff’s attorney’s, Gideon Orion Oliver, who confirmed that the order was served on Mayor Bloomberg and the other defendants via fax at 7:50 a.m. During his 8 a.m. press conference, Mayor Bloomberg seemed to acknowledge he was familiar with the temporary restraining order, but claimed he had not been served and was keeping the park closed. As of this writing, Zuccotti Park remains closed to protesters in direct contradiction of Justice Billing’s order.
Seems Bloomberg needs to be brought up on criminal charges. Court Orders aren't optional, even for the corrupt Corporate puppets...
Asked why press was prevented from watching eviction, Bloomberg says "to protect members of the press." An Orwellian statement if I've ever heard one...
When the cops raided Zuccotti Park, lawyers for Occupy Wall Street immediately woke up a judge with a civil liberties background and asked for help.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lucy Billings signed an early-morning order temporarily barring cops from keeping protesters and tents out of Zuccotti Park.
But within hours, she was off the case as court administrators prepared to randomly choose a new judge — and excluded Billings’ name from the list of candidates.
Billings’ biography notes that before she became a judge in 1997, she spent 25 years as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.
“I have devoted my career to public service, especially the disadvantaged in desperate circumstances,” she wrote in a 2007 pre-election statement.
READ THE FULL OCCUPY WALL STREET COURT FILING
Lawyers for Occupy Wall Street phoned Billings after cops moved into Zuccotti Park early Tuesday, evicted the protesters and got rid of their tents and other camp equipment.
Asked why they called her first, protest lawyer Daniel Alterman wouldn’t say, remarking that he’s not a “gossip guy.”
The lawyers also called an emergency hotline set up to assign judges to after-hours cases. A staffer told them that since Billings had already been contacted, she should handle the Zuccotti matter.
He said Billings came to the lawyers and at 6:30 a.m. signed an order declaring cops cannot evict protesters who aren’t breaking the law or stop protesters from entering with tents.
Billings’ involvement will be short-lived.
At 11:30 a.m., court officials were scheduled to use a computer program to pick a new judge for an afternoon hearing on the restraining order — the proceeding that will determine if the tents can be erected again.
Billings’ name will not be included because she usually handles real estate cases, court officials said.
When the cops raided Zuccotti Park, lawyers for Occupy Wall Street immediately woke up a judge with a civil liberties background and asked for help.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lucy Billings signed an early-morning order temporarily barring cops from keeping protesters and tents out of Zuccotti Park.
But within hours, she was off the case as court administrators prepared to randomly choose a new judge — and excluded Billings’ name from the list of candidates.
Billings’ biography notes that before she became a judge in 1997, she spent 25 years as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.
“I have devoted my career to public service, especially the disadvantaged in desperate circumstances,” she wrote in a 2007 pre-election statement.
READ THE FULL OCCUPY WALL STREET COURT FILING
Lawyers for Occupy Wall Street phoned Billings after cops moved into Zuccotti Park early Tuesday, evicted the protesters and got rid of their tents and other camp equipment.
Asked why they called her first, protest lawyer Daniel Alterman wouldn’t say, remarking that he’s not a “gossip guy.”
The lawyers also called an emergency hotline set up to assign judges to after-hours cases. A staffer told them that since Billings had already been contacted, she should handle the Zuccotti matter.
He said Billings came to the lawyers and at 6:30 a.m. signed an order declaring cops cannot evict protesters who aren’t breaking the law or stop protesters from entering with tents.
Billings’ involvement will be short-lived.
At 11:30 a.m., court officials were scheduled to use a computer program to pick a new judge for an afternoon hearing on the restraining order — the proceeding that will determine if the tents can be erected again.
Billings’ name will not be included because she usually handles real estate cases, court officials said.
Critics of Occupy Wall Street have a transparent objective: They want to persuade blue collar whites and ordinary middle class Americans to turn on the movement for cultural reasons — because its optics offend these voters’ cultural instincts — even if they broadly agree with its general principles and critique of what’s gone wrong.
This dovetails with a quote from John Cole I recently posted here (to much rending of garments and clutching of pearls from the very people he’s talking about):
“The greatest hoax of the last couple of decades has been the ability of the right wing to co-opt members of the struggling lower middle class and lower class and pretend they speak for them while enacting policies that enable the super-rich. They’ve used wedge issues like gay marriage and abortion and the baby Jeebus to alienate folks from their own economic interests, feeding them a steady diet of hatred of minorites, the educated, science, and, well, reality to create a voting block of people so guided by hatred of the ‘other’ that they would crawl over broken glass to cut their nose off to spite their face.”
I posted that quote from Cole on my G+, and the self-identified conservatives are livid about it. I don’t mean this as an attack on self-identified conservatives at all. I quote it because it breaks my heart.
And not that it matters, but the same thing can largely be said of Democrats since the election of 2000. I strongly believe that if Obama and the Democrats had behaved like the populists they claimed to be when they had majorities in both houses of congress, and actually done something to hold these Wall Street criminals accountable, #OWS wouldn’t be necessary.
Now we just have to hope that the #OWS protests capture enough attention for long enough to force the Democrats (because you can be damn sure it won’t be the GOP) to enact laws and policies that actually address and correct the things we’ve all been begging them to listen to for about ten years.
This is how a movement gets started, and it doesn’t end quickly or cleanly.
And it isn’t the job of the protesters to write the damn laws; that’s the job of the Congress, who need to work for The People instead of The Lobbyists.
That must be why the most liberal mayors in this country are breaking up the protests. Makes sense.
And by the way, Oakland, New York City,etc., are not banning these people from having free speech. These cities are just not allowing the OWS scumbags to sleep in the park and streets, not allowing them to erect tents that are hubs for illicit activities and crimes, and not allowing them to destroy the local businesses, not defacate on police cars, not create a horrible stench, and so forth. There are hours now for OWS liberal scumbag rights, and hours for the rights of the rest of New York's businesses and residents. That's fair.
Again I refer to the article I posted on local businesses hurt by the protests. Such as the guy who lives by Zucotti Park who supports Occupy Wall Street, but won't go to his favorite restaurant because of the protestors! That's Mayor Boomberg's case made, right there.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
Critics of Occupy Wall Street have a transparent objective: They want to persuade blue collar whites and ordinary middle class Americans to turn on the movement for cultural reasons — because its optics offend these voters’ cultural instincts — even if they broadly agree with its general principles and critique of what’s gone wrong.
“The greatest hoax of the last couple of decades has been the ability of the right wing to co-opt members of the struggling lower middle class and lower class and pretend they speak for them while enacting policies that enable the super-rich. They’ve used wedge issues like gay marriage and abortion and the baby Jeebus to alienate folks from their own economic interests, feeding them a steady diet of hatred of minorites, the educated, science, and, well, reality to create a voting block of people so guided by hatred of the ‘other’ that they would crawl over broken glass to cut their nose off to spite their face.”
FAUXNews: When Ignorant Redneck Trash Need to have a Pep Rally
Originally Posted By: Prometheus
Quote:
BREAKING: Bloomberg served with temporary restraining order requiring reopening of Zuccotti Park to protesters at 7:50 a.m. | At 6:30 a.m. this morning, following a midnight police raid evicting protesters from Zuccotti Park, Justice Lucy Billings issued an order requiring the protesters to be readmitted to Zuccotti Park with their tents. ThinkProgress just spoke to one of the plantiff’s attorney’s, Gideon Orion Oliver, who confirmed that the order was served on Mayor Bloomberg and the other defendants via fax at 7:50 a.m. During his 8 a.m. press conference, Mayor Bloomberg seemed to acknowledge he was familiar with the temporary restraining order, but claimed he had not been served and was keeping the park closed. As of this writing, Zuccotti Park remains closed to protesters in direct contradiction of Justice Billing’s order.
Seems Bloomberg needs to be brought up on criminal charges. Court Orders aren't optional, even for the corrupt Corporate puppets...
Wonder Boy content User mighty weilder of the Penis of Truth 7500+ posts 3 seconds ago Previewing modifications to a post Forum: Politics and Current Events
SEE MORE PHOTOS FINANCIAL DISTRICT — Twenty-one restaurant workers lost their jobs last week because of the disruptions caused by the Occupy Wall Street protests, the cafe owner said Tuesday.
Marc Epstein, owner of the Milk Street Cafe at 40 Wall St., said he had no choice but to let nearly a quarter of his staff go last Friday after he saw his sales drop by 30 percent in the six weeks since the protests started.
"What are [the protesters] trying to accomplish here?" Epstein asked Monday. "The end result is that I and all the wonderful people who work for me are collateral damage."
Epstein said he supports people's right to protest, but said the biggest problem is the police barricades that have lined Wall Street since Sept. 17, making it difficult for people to see his restaurant and cross the street to get to it. Epstein has also had to contend with closed subway entrances, police checkpoints and frequent Occupy Wall Street marches, which he said have dampened the Financial District's formerly thriving street life.
"Now, Wall Street is deserted," Epstein said. "The only people who walk down Wall Street are people who have to walk down Wall Street. It's transformed from a beautiful pedestrian mall to a police siege."
Epstein just opened the 23,000-square-foot Milk Street Cafe in June, marking the first expansion of the eatery and catering business with the same name that he and his wife opened in Boston 30 years ago. Using loans and private investors, Epstein poured $4 million into the project and said he was proud to be part of lower Manhattan's revitalization.
On the restaurant's first day in June, former Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith helped ring an "opening bell" and praised Epstein for creating much-needed new jobs in the city.
The restaurant's sales grew steadily over the summer, and Epstein said he was on track to break even by October or November at the latest.
But now, Epstein said he isn't sure how much longer he'll be able to keep his doors open. In addition to laying off 21 of his 97 workers last week, he also cut back the restaurant's operating hours and now closes at 3:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, rather than 9 p.m.
"If we don't get these barricades down, we will be out of business," Epstein said Monday. "I give myself three weeks."
Epstein said he is frustrated that he cannot get anyone at the city to return his calls, and he said he would never open another business in New York if this one fails.
On Monday, Epstein did manage to speak on the phone to Donald Trump, his landlord, and Trump said he would try to intervene with the city to get the barricades removed, Epstein said.
Marc LaVorgna, spokesman for the Mayor's Office, said the city wants to help Epstein.
"We have been working closely with the community to address the issues caused by the Occupy Wall Street protesters and will continue to do so," LaVorgna said in an e-mail.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg criticized the Occupy Wall Street protesters in October for negatively impacting local businesses and said they are "trying to destroy jobs."
Occupy Wall Street released a statement Tuesday saying that the blame for the barricades rests with the NYPD, not the protesters.
"The NYPD makes the decisions on the part of police barricades," the statement said in part.
"This is not our choice and we would never want businesses to have to deal with inconveniences that may reduce their business traffic."
The NYPD and Trump's spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
The issue of the Wall Street barricades has come up at recent community meetings, and NYPD officers have repeatedly said that the security barriers must remain in place because the protesters do not give advance notice of their marches and routes.
Epstein said he supports people's right to protest, and is proud to have participated in a massive 1987 march on Washington to free oppressed Jews from the Soviet Union.
But he said he couldn't condone Occupy Wall Street's tactics.
"This movement is not serious," Epstein said. "If it was, they would not want small businesses going out of business."
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
Critics of Occupy Wall Street have a transparent objective: They want to persuade blue collar whites and ordinary middle class Americans to turn on the movement for cultural reasons — because its optics offend these voters’ cultural instincts — even if they broadly agree with its general principles and critique of what’s gone wrong.
“The greatest hoax of the last couple of decades has been the ability of the right wing to co-opt members of the struggling lower middle class and lower class and pretend they speak for them while enacting policies that enable the super-rich. They’ve used wedge issues like gay marriage and abortion and the baby Jeebus to alienate folks from their own economic interests, feeding them a steady diet of hatred of minorites, the educated, science, and, well, reality to create a voting block of people so guided by hatred of the ‘other’ that they would crawl over broken glass to cut their nose off to spite their face.”
FAUXNews: When Ignorant Redneck Trash Need to have a Pep Rally
Originally Posted By: Prometheus
Quote:
BREAKING: Bloomberg served with temporary restraining order requiring reopening of Zuccotti Park to protesters at 7:50 a.m. | At 6:30 a.m. this morning, following a midnight police raid evicting protesters from Zuccotti Park, Justice Lucy Billings issued an order requiring the protesters to be readmitted to Zuccotti Park with their tents. ThinkProgress just spoke to one of the plantiff’s attorney’s, Gideon Orion Oliver, who confirmed that the order was served on Mayor Bloomberg and the other defendants via fax at 7:50 a.m. During his 8 a.m. press conference, Mayor Bloomberg seemed to acknowledge he was familiar with the temporary restraining order, but claimed he had not been served and was keeping the park closed. As of this writing, Zuccotti Park remains closed to protesters in direct contradiction of Justice Billing’s order.
Seems Bloomberg needs to be brought up on criminal charges. Court Orders aren't optional, even for the corrupt Corporate puppets...
These protests are funded and organized by far-left (Soros, MoveOn, SEIU, Code Pink) liberal front groups.
These protests are not spontaneous or specific to any real social issues in the United States, they were planned and orchestrated to begin simultaneously worldwide.
These protests are an assault on the U.S. free market system, intended to bring it down and replace it with a new socialist order, where the organizing front group organizations and their backers (Soros, etc. ) are the new establishment power, screwing the people they front to be benefiting. Like Obamacare, it will benefit the super-rich (that portion who support Obama and the Dems) and reduce the freedoms of average americans.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
the article seemed to suggest it coincided with the movement but didn't offer enough to draw a direct correlation. again, that's assuming the article is completely honest, but that'd just bring us right back to the old selective skepticism...
It seems clear that across the board, local businesses are hurt by the movement.
(Updates with CBO report in sixth paragraph and Oakland arrests under ‘Not as Tolerant’ subhead.)
Oct. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Occupy Wall Street protests assailing income inequality, joblessness and big banks may have some unintended consequences. They’re hurting nearby merchants as police barricades deter shoppers.
“If this doesn’t stop soon I will be out of business,” said Marc Epstein, 53, president of Milk Street Cafe on Wall Street, less than a block from the New York Stock Exchange.
Sales have dropped about 20 percent since the protests began last month and the 103 jobs created by the cafe’s opening in June are now at risk, said Epstein, who is not alone. Caroline Anderson, general manager of Boutique Tourbillon, a Wall Street jewelry store, said customer traffic is down about 20 percent, and Vincent Alessi, a managing partner at Bobby Van’s Steakhouse on Broad Street, said his lunch business has been cut in half.
The Occupy Wall Street movement that began in New York with about 1,000 people on Sept. 17 has spread to cities on four continents as demonstrators from London to Rome and Chicago to Sydney have pitched tents in public spaces. Police, whose displays of force also may be hurting business as they block access to tourist destinations, have arrested hundreds.
“These protesters don’t understand the consequences of their actions,” Epstein said. “Who’s going to create the jobs they’re banging their drums for?”
INCOME INEQUALITY
Participants say they represent “the 99 percent,” a reference to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz’s study showing the richest 1 percent of Americans control 40 percent of U.S. wealth. A Congressional Budget Office report released today shows that from 1979 to 2007, after-tax income grew by 275 percent for the top 1 percent of households, compared with 18 percent for the bottom 20 percent.
As Wall Street banks reported earnings this month, financial executives made little or no mention of the protests’ impact on their business. Firms including Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. have their main New York offices in Midtown, about three miles from the protest epicenter in Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park.
At Kenjo, a watch retailer adjacent to Milk Street Cafe, the barricades have killed the lunch-hour rush, Artice Jones, the manager, said yesterday as he looked around a store devoid of customers.
“If it stays this way for the rest of the month, it’s not going to look good going into November,” Jones said.
SALES PLUNGE
Sales have plunged 40 percent at Paternoster Chop House near the London Stock Exchange, said manager Gerhard Jacobs, whose waiters greet customers at the metal barricades and escort them through the square that police have cordoned off.
“Not only is it affecting my general trade, it’s also affecting my future business,” Jacobs said. “We’ve got inquiries for weddings and exclusive hirings who are now considering taking their business to other restaurants because of the uncertainty of how long this may carry on.”
Alessi, the steakhouse manager, said customers are “fed up” and are seeking out more convenient places to eat.
“We’re tired of being herded through barricades like cattle,” he said.
Paul Browne, a spokesman for the New York City Police Department, didn’t respond to e-mails inviting comment on how the barricades have hurt businesses in the area.
TOO EARLY
It’s too early to tell whether the protests are damaging the real estate market in New York’s Financial District, where pending apartment sales have slumped 26 percent in the past month, compared with an 8.8 percent decline for all of Manhattan, said Noah Rosenblatt, founder of UrbanDigs.com, a real estate data and consulting firm.
Beth Bogart, 55, a documentary filmmaker from New York’s West Village who has volunteered at the Zuccotti Park press table for the past three weeks, said she has encouraged occupiers, visitors and journalists to help local businesses.
“It’s a fairness issue; this cart was here before we were here,” she said, pointing to the food and apparel vendors that line the park’s south border. “We have to make sure that since we are here he doesn’t go out of business. That would be an incredible injustice.”
TEASHOPS, TENTS
Some businesses have benefited from the influx of protesters and curious tourists.
A teashop that faces about 100 tents pitched in front of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral has drawn lines of customers stretching to the door as people converged on the area to witness the protests, said waitress Zanete Cakane.
Some merchants near the European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt, where protesters have pitched about 80 tents, are benefiting from the movement.
“If anything, we are getting more business from the demonstrators,” said Isabelle Baelly, 54, who runs a newsstand across from the ECB. “They are very peaceful and we have been letting them use our bathroom facilities and Internet.”
Sales are up as much as $1,000 a day at the Pret A Manger sandwich shop a block and a half north of Zuccotti Park, said Shamirah Dillard, a store manager.
“It’s been good, definitely,” she said in an interview. Weekends and days with scheduled marches bring the greatest peaks in extra sales, especially for hot drinks, which more than cover the increased costs of toilet paper and maintenance to keep the two bathrooms clean, she said.
NOT AS TOLERANT
About four in 10 Americans say they support the Occupy Wall Street movement, according to a Pew Research Center/Washington Post poll released yesterday. Almost as many, 35 percent, say they oppose the protests. The telephone survey of 1,009 adults was conducted Oct. 20-23 and had an error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
While New York’s protesters are being allowed to stay at their encampment, officials in other cities haven’t been as tolerant. About 4:30 a.m. local time today, police in Oakland, California, arrested 85 protesters who’d been staying in a park near City Hall, said Sue Piper, a spokeswoman for Mayor Jean Quan. Demonstrators in Denver and Trenton, New Jersey, have also been evicted.
Protesters initially struggled to build momentum, drawing a fraction of the 20,000 participants that organizers such as Adbusters, a group promoting the movement, aimed to lure to lower Manhattan last month. Prior to the Occupy Wall Street movement, Adbusters gained attention for what critics called an anti-Semitic essay published in 2004.
Amos Winbush III, a Wall Street resident, said he has stopped frequenting a local Thai restaurant and started ordering groceries for delivery.
“I’m super passionate about the movement, but the frustration is feeling like you’re in a war zone with barricades in front of my apartment and cops with big guns standing around,” Winbush, 28, said inside a Brooks Brothers store across the street from Zuccotti Park. “We were okay being a little uncomfortable for a couple of weeks, but after six weeks it gets to be a little much.”
--With assistance from Namitha Jagadeesh in London, Alex Webb in Frankfurt and Katie Spencer in New York. Editors: Peter Eichenbaum, Dan Reichl, Mark Schoifet
To contact the reporters on this story: Charles Mead in New York at cmead11@bloomberg.net; Esme E. Deprez in New York at edeprez@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net; Mark Tannenbaum at mtannen@bloomberg.net
In fairness, it lists a few businesses in Franfurt and London near protests that are seeing an increase in business, such as sandwich shops and streetside tea shops.
But any nicer restaurant that offers cuisine and atmosphere is seeing a loss of business. Interesting was a Wall Street resident who favors the OWS protests, but won't go to his favorite restaurant because of the protests he favors!
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
FAUXNews: When Ignorant Redneck Trash Need to have a Pep Rally
Originally Posted By: Prometheus
Quote:
BREAKING: Bloomberg served with temporary restraining order requiring reopening of Zuccotti Park to protesters at 7:50 a.m. | At 6:30 a.m. this morning, following a midnight police raid evicting protesters from Zuccotti Park, Justice Lucy Billings issued an order requiring the protesters to be readmitted to Zuccotti Park with their tents. ThinkProgress just spoke to one of the plantiff’s attorney’s, Gideon Orion Oliver, who confirmed that the order was served on Mayor Bloomberg and the other defendants via fax at 7:50 a.m. During his 8 a.m. press conference, Mayor Bloomberg seemed to acknowledge he was familiar with the temporary restraining order, but claimed he had not been served and was keeping the park closed. As of this writing, Zuccotti Park remains closed to protesters in direct contradiction of Justice Billing’s order.
Seems Bloomberg needs to be brought up on criminal charges. Court Orders aren't optional, even for the corrupt Corporate puppets...
Critics of Occupy Wall Street have a transparent objective: They want to persuade blue collar whites and ordinary middle class Americans to turn on the movement for cultural reasons — because its optics offend these voters’ cultural instincts — even if they broadly agree with its general principles and critique of what’s gone wrong.
“The greatest hoax of the last couple of decades has been the ability of the right wing to co-opt members of the struggling lower middle class and lower class and pretend they speak for them while enacting policies that enable the super-rich. They’ve used wedge issues like gay marriage and abortion and the baby Jeebus to alienate folks from their own economic interests, feeding them a steady diet of hatred of minorites, the educated, science, and, well, reality to create a voting block of people so guided by hatred of the ‘other’ that they would crawl over broken glass to cut their nose off to spite their face.”
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
Oh Frank. It's not like there's not a person left alive who doesn't know you sold out to the 1% twenty-years ago. What a has-been. 
