As IF Times

D.C. marchers rally for jobs and justice – The Washington Post.

When Reverend Al gets into the fray, it generally confirms that whatever the cause he’s backing, it’s probably hysterical hyperbole.  Reverend Al, for those who are  unfamiliar with his career, sees racism in the most mundane things.  White lines on blacktop would arouse his keen sense of racial injustice if only he could convince anyone of its merit.   His affected indignation at anything involving perceived racial injustice to blacks is legendary and by now, he is essentially a comical caricature of himself, ironically taken seriously only by those in the white liberal media.  The media perpetuates Reverend Al’s influence by interviewing him whenever any issue involving blacks pops up.  As if Reverend Al is THE spokesman for a nation of 80 million blacks.  Imagine if something contentious was occurring with a white person and Charlie Sheen’s opinion was sought to get the white perspective.

We know he caters to a constituency of idiots or at least to those of very modest intelligence because of the way he frames his messages.  Rather than making articulate speeches, he prefers the classic nursery rhyme technique to drive home his compelling intellectual arguments.

Borrowing a page from the famous Johnnie Cochran of O.J. Simpson legal team fame, Reverend Al has taken the infamous ” if the glove don’t fit, you must acquit” tactic and adopted it as his own.  As the linked article details, his present campaign is ” if you don’t get jobs bill done in suite, we will get done in street”, in reference to both the recently nixed Obama jobs plan and the protests in the streets of New York.  It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but at least a few words rhyme, so for Reverend Al, it’s considered witty repartee.  He follows this with “this is not about Obama, it’s about my mama!”.  Pure gold.   It’s not exactly “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks”.  But this technique gets the job done.  His constituency can more easily remember his position if it can be repeated in rhyme than if it were articulated more prosaically.

It’s unclear to me why his followers wouldn’t be insulted by his condescending delivery, it’s as if he were addressing pre-adolescents.

Or maybe he’s just a master entertainer.

That would make sense since his entire shtick is part vaudeville, part church revival and part P.T. Barnum.  Like many of his other hypocritical colleagues in the liberal bleat-sphere, railing against poverty and oppression has, surprise, surprise,  made Reverend Al rich and famous.  This is like Al Gore bleating of global warming and living in a house the size of a community center or of  Michael Moore condemning capitalism while making millions off his delusional movies.

In the spirit of Reverend Al however, we’ve come up with some other slogans which are free to be used by any who may find them appropriate:

Give me a job, or I join a mob!

Given some time, what’s yours will be mine!

Give us da cash, or we gonna bash!

We want rights, we want justice, if we don’t get it, come and bust us!

And of course the most genuine chant:

Stop all greed, enough is enough, give us more money, give us more stuff!

link Occupy Wall Street veteran gears up for Occupy Sacramento – KansasCity.com.

Nobody wants to miss out on a good street event.  At any given time, there is always some issue to protest somewhere in the world.  Sometimes it’s legitimate bread and butter issues, ie: they don’t have any, or it’s social issues such as gay or animal rights concerns.  In some parts of the world, it can even be about losing a hockey or soccer game.  Some are professional rioters who go from town to town looking to participate at the behest of organizers.  I’m sure there’s a Facebook page for protesters whereby participants can pick the ones that sound amusing.  Some just love a good riot and want to be part of the scene.  The clue is when some people bring their kids like it was the Macy’s parade.

The recent so called “Wall Street Occupation” is a prime example of a protest about nothing.  While ostensibly, it’s about lack of jobs and opportunity and the increasing gulf between regular people and the Wall Street fat cats, the actual message is lost on the majority of the participants.  They incoherently try to frame the issue as some kind of righteous entitlement protest, when in reality, they are a mob with nothing better to do.

When asked what they want, they essentially want those ‘fat cats’ at the top to share their wealth with them.  In other words, they want what someone else has.  How original.  Sometimes they claim that they want jobs.  That’s rather unlikely since if they needed jobs, they’d be out looking for them rather than standing around waving signs and causing public disruption.  Where are they staying?  How do they pay for lunch?  More importantly, where do they wash and pee?  There’s no denying that for years, “Wall Street” financial heads have reaped out-sized rewards for their dubious roles as captains of finance.  There’s no doubt that much of that stemmed from political influence bought and paid for, from both sides of the political fence.  Therefore the roots of the current malaise lie as much with politicians as with greedy bankers.

Unfortunately, the mob have no real endgame solutions other than just to cause disruption.  When you have an avowed communist like Van Jones exhorting the “people” to revolt and stand up for America, we know it’s a complete farce.  The kind of policies people like Jones are pushing are in fact blatantly anti-American.  They are completely at odds with the founding principles of the nation.  There is nothing in the founding tenets of the constitution that refer to any kind of statism, collectivism and certainly not socialism.  Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is clearly mentioned.  Nothing about being owed a job.  Or a minimum wage.  Or 4 paid weeks off every year.

In the old days, when people felt oppressed and deprived of opportunities, they left a country for greener pastures.  This factor is likely high on the list of reasons for why people emigrate.  How do you think America got started in the first place? Immigrants from all parts of the world converged on the U.S. precisely because its policies were diametrically opposite to the countries they were leaving.  From this immigrant pool was built indisputably, the greatest nation the world has ever seen.  Now, it seems, many don’t like the way things are.

If you go to a football game and you don’t like the product, is it logical to change the rules to more closely resemble those of soccer?  Why not just go to a soccer game?  This is the curious circumstance we see today.  “Thousands of protesters”, which actually means hundreds when you discount the media hyperbole, are protesting that the U.S. does not embrace policies that are essentially… socialist!  Breaking news, the U.S. is not a socialist nation, at least not by origin even though the neo socialists want to make it so.  There are plenty of high tax, socialist nations in existence today.   Think Sweden, or Denmark or Great Britain or France, although in France, the winds are a-changing.  These are nations that have embraced the socialist philosophy in their governing policies.  Why wouldn’t these nations be beacons of attraction for the oppressed masses here who are tired of that damn capitalism?

It’s one thing if the ‘mob’ were coherent about inequitable government policies; it’s another to say that the entire system of government sucks.  Strangely there aren’t long conga lines of people heading for Cuba or Venezuela.   These places have widely advertised their socialist/Marxist charms.  Plus, the weather is generally nicer than New York or Michigan.  Somebody should post that on Facebook.