The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

Word is getting out on Day Of Rage/OWS, paid protesters forbidden to talk to the press, shredding documents, ACORN relationship cover-ups......

“They reminded us that we can get fired, sued, arrested for talking to the press,” the source said. “Then they went through the article point-by-point and said that the allegation that we pay people to protest isn’t true.”

“‘That’s the story that we’re sticking to,’” Westin said, according to the source.

The source said staffers at the meeting contested Westin’s denial:

“It was pretty funny. Jonathan told staff they don’t pay for protesters, but the people in the meeting who work there objected and said, ‘Wait, you pay us to go to the protests every day?’ Then Jonathan said ‘No, but that’s your job,’ and staffers were like, ‘Yeah, our job is to protest,’ and Westin said, ‘No your job is to fight for economic and social justice. We just send you to protest.’

“Staff said, ‘Yes, you pay us to carry signs.’ Then Jonathan says, ‘That’s your job.’ It went on like that back and forth for a while.”

In related news:

"Peaceful Occupy protests degenerate into chaos"

OWS - separating out the vandals
 

OWS'ers need a conspicuous visible token of their commitment to non-violent civil disobedience. Headbands might work. Window breakers and rock throwers with headbands would be subject to citizen arrest.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

Matt Lewis: "I know someone's going to pull [this] out of context."

Re: OWS - separating out the vandals
 

I realize you like these guys but really, truly? People should wear headbands to show their commitment to non-violence and if they change their minds about being violent and start breaking windows and throwing rocks with their headbands on they should be arrested. Will the citizens who arrest them be wearing special headbands with maybe tin badges? And what about all the people who aren't commited to non violence?

These people need to go home but before they do, they should clean up their mess.

Or go find Jon Corzine and make him parade through the streets in the nude.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

The most plausible theory/explanation I've read thus far on OWS and its raison d'etre has been by Kenneth Anderson at Volokh. To put it in somewhat simplified terms, it's the lower-upper-middle class vs. the upper-upper-middle class. Given Matt's evidence on the background of some of the protesters, the theory fits.

And if this is the case, it's all the more reason Democrats need to stop imposing price controls.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

The one part of the Herman Cain noise that I simply do not understand is the part about him being "likeable". I heard that repeatedly on the first day of this circus, before the "excuse me" video came out.
I have followed Big Daddy Cain since he was a radio whiner. He was unlistenable. Likeable is the last word I would use to describe him.
Your buddy Erick Erickson has been stellar this week in reporting the goods on Big Daddy Cain. Red State is a major source of information about this trainwreck. (Cainwreck)
chamblee54

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

If you go down to the park in New York, mainly what you see is the standard hippie kids and middle aged working class black people. I don't recognize any of them as lower-upper-middle-class. Actual lower-upper-middle-class people like myself just show up for a couple hours here or there.

The blog people who are against it want to make it sound like a bunch of young white whiners who have ivy league educations in art history, because that's a group that's easy to mock. It's analogous to making the tea party about fat racists.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

Interesting. What you would find unlikable I would probably find the opposite. Also what you call drivel I would find entertaining, perhaps. Certainly lots of talk show hosts are annoying. Maybe most.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

I thought Cain was likeable until I listened to this diavlog. Now I find Perry likeable, after watching the video of his speech Bill and Matt discussed. He's hilarious, better than Stephen Colbert.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

Heh.

A few years ago, Joe Therrien, a graduate of the NYC Teaching Fellows program, was working as a full-time drama teacher at a public elementary school in New York City. Frustrated by huge class sizes, sparse resources and a disorganized bureaucracy, he set off to the University of Connecticut to get an MFA in his passion—puppetry. Three years and $35,000 in student loans later, he emerged with degree in hand, and because puppeteers aren’t exactly in high demand, he went looking for work at his old school. The intervening years had been brutal to the city’s school budgets—down about 14 percent on average since 2007. A virtual hiring freeze has been in place since 2009 in most subject areas, arts included, and spending on art supplies in elementary schools crashed by 73 percent between 2006 and 2009. So even though Joe’s old principal was excited to have him back, she just couldn’t afford to hire a new full-time teacher. Instead, he’s working at his old school as a full-time “substitute”; he writes his own curriculum, holds regular classes and does everything a normal teacher does. “But sub pay is about 50 percent of a full-time salaried position,” he says, “so I’m working for half as much as I did four years ago, before grad school, and I don’t have health insurance…. It’s the best-paying job I could find.”

Like a lot of the young protesters who have flocked to Occupy Wall Street, Joe had thought that hard work and education would bring, if not class mobility, at least a measure of security (indeed, a master’s degree can boost a New York City teacher’s salary by $10,000 or more). But the past decade of stagnant wages for the 99 percent and million-dollar bonuses for the 1 percent has awakened the kids of the middle class to a national nightmare: the dream that coaxed their parents to meet the demands of work, school, mortgage payments and tuition bills is shattered. Down is the new up.


http://www.thenation.com/article/164...py-wall-street

The Nation doesn't even realize how hilarious that story reads to me.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

probably because you're not a puppet.

the dream that coaxed their parents to meet the demands of work, school, mortgage payments and tuition bills is shattered.

Really? Here's what I'm thinking. Since the dream is shattered, maybe these kids should just accept their fate. Share an apartment in some cheapish neighborhood and get an undemanding job. There are lots of those, right?

Then go out and enjoy your life. Eschew all of those nasty consumer values. Buy your clothes from Goodwill. Play bongos in the park! Accept your fate. Do not resist. Your dream has been stolen, after all. And that always makes for great art.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

Same article:

But the first spark, here in New York, was generated when artists, students and academics hooked up with activists from Bloombergville, a three-week occupation near City Hall to protest the mayor’s budget cuts. This unlikely mix has proved to be a tactical boon, says Alexandre: “Artists are in a privileged position to take the terrain without too much repression. It’s harder for the police to move against you when you are clearly doing something nonviolent and artistic.”

Ugh. So obnoxious. New York doesn't seem to have any Hard Hats these days. :(

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

except Colbert is kidding. What I am counting on is that all the missteps will eventually be buried underneath even bigger missteps by Obama.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

They're all in South Dakota or Canadian oil sands country, making beaucoup bucks

Maybe the puppeteer guy should have gotten his masters in cowboy poetry. I understand there's still a big market for that...somewhere.

Re: (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis) Republican Horse Race
 

To save all a lot of time and trouble from all this Republican horse race bull shit, which bull shit I kinda' love, I'm here to tell you Romney will get the nomination.

So relax on that and feel free to apply your minds to more estimable subjects and objects.

(Tell everyone you heard it first.)

Itzik Basman

Re: OWS - separating out the vandals
 

Easy for you to say, perched up there in Heidi land. :)

Re: (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis) Republican Horse Race
 

Care to save us even more time and tell us who is going to win in 2012? I just can't stand the suspense.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

Whoever is showing up, polls show the message getting out to the public through the mass media is louder and clearer every day: it's the upper-upper-upper-class against everybody else. The 99.99% vs. the 10,000 wealthiest families in America.

Re: OWS - separating out the vandals
 

We just lost access to Yosemite. Due to the current budget and safety constraints I would imagine they won't be plowing Tioga Pass until spring. I am now contemplating two alternatives. One would be more snow so that Thanksgiving won't look as bleak as it sometimes does without the white stuff. Or put up with brown and save the snow blower until December. Such a dilemma!

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

Yeah, underpaid underemployed people are a laugh riot.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

Someone who quits their job to go rack up $30,000 in student debt to become a master puppeteer, and then returns to complain that he makes less money, is a fool. And yes, this person's foolishness should be subject to ridicule. The reason you feel the need for the hand of the state in most aspects of daily life is that you are unwilling to recognize the governing power of stigma. Rather than judge this person for his bad choices, and recognizing that the consequences he's facing for these choices are completely rational and justified, you want to mourn with him. Mourn the logical conclusion of his ridiculous choices.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

Yes, I feel the need for the hand of the state. LOL.


Again, you have nailed me. It's not like I have ever said anything about the fact that there isn't enough shame in our society or anything.

But carry on, keep on celebrating the fact that some dude got his comeupance for having made a bad choice (and one that harmed no one else) and is now doing work for less than he should be getting paid.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

And the consequence of his choice harms no one else but him either, right? I mean he's the one paid less. And explain how you came to the conclusion about how much he should be making. He quit his job for a long period of time because he didn't like it, and spent his interim time doing a ridiculous thing. He goes back, after having revealed himself to be a flake, and now makes less money. Seems fair, no?

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

I would like someone to tell me when all of this entitlement stuff became such an issue. I realize there have always been murmurings about hating the rich and wanting to take advantage of government largesse but it has now become sanctioned in a way I have never seen it before and I am very old.

I can't help but feeling this whole thing reached a zenith during the debates around the Affordable Care Act. I certainly felt a shift at that time. But, maybe it was an earthquake and I am very old.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

It happened when you decided it happened, because it's happening in your mind, not, for the most part, in the real world.

The big complaints of OWS are with the very set of people who ARE getting government largesse, having been bailed out, and are raking in great rewards for tearing the economy apart.

I know that conservatives are brought to tears by the idea that some poor person somewhere is getting a can of peaches for free, but it's kind of mindboggling that they don't understand the upset about the 40 million dollar welfare queens.

Re: The Week in Blog: The art of the cleverest segue (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/396...0:59&out=01:03

Has anyone noticed how the regular participants on Bloggingheads have this informal competition for the cleverest segue?

The skillful segue is one of the most distinctive attributes of the subtle and imaginative interlocutor in the art of the diavlog.

There should have some mechanism for viewers' choice for the most artful segue.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

since we're playing who is more responsible, please to enjoy the rankings of cities with the best and worst credit ratings. It's clear that the best credit ratings are in bastions of republicanism like Boston and San Fran and Madison, Wisconsin. While the least creditwothy folks tend to cluster in that bluest of blue states, Texas:

http://money.msn.com/credit-rating/a...4-24d94aa18f60

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

Indeed. The weird mating ritual conservatives have of trying to impress each other with their lack of compassion and their contempt for other people is just ... creepy.


So true. Here's how Matt Taibbi put it:


Yeah, again, the thing I consistently have the hardest time understanding is how such a large group of people -- tens of millions of conservatives -- can be so morally depraved. So morally stunted. Their hatred is what defines them.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

I remember the day ACA passed and the sickening feeling I had. Of course the reason for this could be that essentially I have repugnance for the poor even though, based on what is now considered poor, I have been that for large portions of my life.

Then I found this little gem from Mark Steyn and I began to think my feelings might be somewhat normal, at least amongst the morally depraved:

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

You apparently do not read what I write (except in an effort to come up with pithy rejoinders). I don't think anyone should have been bailed out. I say let the profit and loss mechanism work.

How's that Dodd-Frank thingy working in the light of the Jon Corzine and Fannie and Freddie bonuses? Wasn't that supposed to solve all of this? Or doesn't that stuff kick in until after Obama is re-elected?

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

What the OWS crowd doesn't understand is that it is part of the same game. Modern society is addicted to the easy flow of cheap credit; and none more so than the class of urban professionals who take the time to major in puppeteering. The bailouts were done not simply to save the balance sheets of the banks; it was to save the way of life of OWS types.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

You keep making this basic assertion, that the economic pain felt by people in the OWS movement is just the result of their own stupidity in wasting money on useless college degrees in frivolous areas. And while there is some truth to that in some cases, there's no reason to think that it represents the protesters writ large. And even if it does, then that doesn't change the fact that there is a very real unemployment crisis, one that is compounded by, yes, student loans. You might not want to admit this, but the implicit bargain in a college education is that it will let you get a better job. When you graduate into crippling unemployment that hits young people the hardest, that isn't some made up yuppie problem.

And of course this is all particular galling when the standard riposte to arguments about inequality and stagnating wages hinge around the information economy and the increasing returns to education. Many of the people hurting today listened to that argument, took it to heart, piled on student debt in order to take advantage of this grand new economy, and now have graduated into an economy that doesn't keep any of the promises that were made.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

I have no idea what motivated you to be uncomfortable with ACA, but I had someone tell me that ACA was going to be awful, because when you give poor people free stuff, it makes them even more lazy than they already are.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

That has a vaguely impressive, sort of rolling oratorial sound to it, but WTF does it mean?

It's clear that you accuse someone of feeling "the need for the hand of the state in most aspects of daily life". Why you make that accusation I can't tell, and I'm wondering if it's a sort of Tourette's like thing. Or maybe I'm totally wrong and you've actually spent a lot of time with the guy. I'm totally lost, however on what the "governing power of stigma" has to do with anything. Maybe you want to replace law with social ostracism? Sorry; that's the best I can come up with.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

I agree and I think that instead of heading off to college, the wiser choice would be to head for South Dakota. But who is peddling the education myth? Let's identify those assholes and string them up. Or maybe, just maybe people should learn to take what they are being told with more than a grain of salt and to think for themselves.

But I've listen to the beloved professors like Glenn and never have I heard him mention that maybe he's making more than he's worth. Everyone in this play believes what they are selling is worth the price that is being charged for it.
It is really too bad that students have piled on debt that isn't justified but I don't see that any promises were made explicitly. People just made assumptions that proved to be wrong. How does walking around with a sign do anything to remedy the situation? Hopefully you don't think that these debt obligations should be forgiven.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

It means that the guiding impulse of people on the left seems to be to increase the authority and reach of the state; largely because they distrust community to govern itself through yes, things like stigma. In this case, it should be the default setting for a healthy society to snicker at someone who complains about his current station after quitting his job to pursue a degree in puppets.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

That's what you might call having a narrative and finding a way to fit into that every fact you don't ignore.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

The reason why it is a valid theory (There seems to be a curious absence of polling on the matter, unlike the Tea Party where the media was eager to dig up data) is because of the ubiquitous mention of student debt. Now, we know that college degrees vary in utility and value, and we know that even at the worst point of this economic nightmare certain types of profession were desperate to hire.

Thus it is assumed, with reason, that the actual unemployed parties of students are both sizable enough to justify including their outrageous demand, and we can assume that there is a legitimate doubt about the utility of degree they sought since they are underemployed or unemployed. QED, yes?

You might note that the apathy, and in many cases hostility towards OWS types in the rest of the country comes from the fact that among that crowd, unemployment is not a crisis. The unemployment rate among college graduates is much lower than among the public at large. The people are irritated that these privileged youths are complaining, given that fact.

I do not admit it, because that wasn't the founding purpose of colleges. And it shouldn't be. They should be centers for knowledge and learning, not glorified trade schools. These kids should be attending a trade school for electrical engineering or air conditioner repair if they want quality jobs; not studying Queer Music theory or Feminist literature and expecting the city to hold a triumph down main street the second they leave.

I never lied to these people. Neither did my side of the political spectrum. It has been a clique of cultural and political elites who have told them that just like the selfish Boomers, the world would be their oyster if they spent 6 years in college "following their dreams". There was a very interesting dialogue about that a few weeks back.

I never made them a promise. Nor have I ever made that argument. I believe education is its own reward; my particular field of work has nothing to do with my college experience. Indeed, I worked in this field while attending college. I also attended school without very much student debt as I labored full time as I went to school, and paid most semesters as I went.

Other people should do it the same way. And parents should save from the birth of the child onward, if it is so important to them. If not, these people should question their cultural assumptions. To borrow money to live frivolously during your most productive biological years is self indulgent. To then complain about the person who lent you money for such self indulgence seems insane to me.

Re: The Week in Blog: Defense Against the Political Dark Arts (Bill Scher & Matt Lewis)
 

I agree with this. Health Care is the final entitlement nail in the coffin, usually. I suspect this upheaval will save us from the Jacobins, though. Bismarck was right after all, eh? God does protect the United States of America.