Occupy Wall Street Supporters 'Mic Check' Mitt Romney Over Bain Capital's Job Cuts by Matt Sledge at Huffington Post, January 6, 2012
NEW YORK -- Supporters of Occupy Wall Street say they "mic checked" Mitt Romney in New Hampshire on Friday over the Republican frontrunner's tenure at private equity firm Bain Capital.
During a spaghetti dinner that Romney was hosting at the Tilton School in Tilton, N.H., protestors used the "human microphone," a call-and-response tactic originally designed to get around New York's ban on use of amplification equipment without a permit. As Rose Bookbinder, 28, addressed the former Massachusetts governor, her every phrase was echoed by her fellow protestors.
American Dialect Society Names ‘Occupy’ As 2011 Word Of The Year by Josh Feldman Mediaite.com,January 8th, 2012
"Occupy Wall Street was undeniably one of the biggest news stories of 2011. The movement was an important factor in “The Protestor” being named Time Magazine’s 2011 Person of the Year. Well, the Occupiers are finally getting recognized by another important institution. Yes, that’s right. The American Dialect Society has announced that “occupy” is 2011′s word of the year because of its influence on the global zeitgeist over the past few months."
Oakland police arrest six Occupy protesters in Saturday night march By Sean Maher,Mercury News.com, January 8,2012
...Protester Diane Reiner, 59, said the "huge majority" of people there were nonviolent -- some of them having brought out a bubble machine to blow bubbles signifying their peaceful intent. She said the crowd marched in anger about police actions against Occupy Wall Street camps and events across the country.
"The rising importance of police conflict and government crackdowns on citizens trying to exercise their first amendment rights is becoming a much a higher priority for people inside the Occupy movement," Reiner said. "For people like me, who originally joined to focus on national broad financial issues, media and politicians being controlled by corporate money, now this direct oppression by extreme policing is becoming a higher priority."
Spencer Mills, a member of Occupy Oakland who also acts as a self-described citizen journalist during marches and releases live stream video under the Twitter handle @OakFoSho, said he was disappointed with both sides of the conflict.
"I did see a couple people that did throw stuff from the back of the crowd," he said. "When that happened, the other protesters got really upset. Folks were trying to find out who did that stuff, because the people up front would have felt the wrath of OPD if they decided to do anything about it."
"It disappoints me greatly," Mills added, saying he wants Occupy events to remain peaceful. "They endanger the lives of a lot of people when they do that."
However, he said, he felt police were also overly aggressive, citing a video posted on YouTube of what appears to be a skirmish between several officers and a girl on a bicycle, under the title, "OPD slams woman and her bike to the ground, beat her and chase her down the street!"
Also see: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iW2Pf43s0Tz21s7rdQzhWxny0f6g?docId=CNG.4fd0e1ade75599d2601eaf24fa6979b2.c1
Anti-Wall Street activists protest at Republican debate
(AFP) –
MONDAY, JAN 2, 2012
Rick Santorum’s best week ever Salon.com, January 2,2012
The new darling of the Iowa GOP is perfect for the state's Christian right, but not for a national campaign
The only real shock in Rick Santorum’s late Iowa surge is that it didn’t happen sooner. He’s the perfect candidate for Iowa Christian conservatives, even if it took them a long time to see it. First they flirted with gaffe-prone religious zealot Michele Bachmann, who confused John Wayne with John Wayne Gacy and insisted the HPV vaccine caused mental retardation. Then came a brief dalliance with the bumbling right-wing panderer Rick Perry, whose terrible campaign, given the high expectations and deep pockets of his wealthy supporters, has been 2012′s biggest surprise. They drifted for a while to womanizing huckster Herman Cain, a candidate so unserious about his right-wing credentials that he claimed to be anti-abortion while insisting the decision had to be a woman’s “choice.” Just before Santorum, Iowa’s Christian conservatives embraced the flip-flopping serial adulterer Newt Gingrich, until they remembered who he was.
Is Rick Santorum really on the rise or about to implode.
Or as they say "that was so last week" as Mitt Romney and Ron Paul surge ahead unless things have changed again over the last day or so. maybe Rick Perry or Gingrich will make a come back or they'll all get dumped if Larry the Cable Guy tosses his baseball cap into the ring -now that would be funny and uplifting ...So Geterdone!
Rick Santorum’s Top 10 Most Outrageous Campaign Statements By Igor Volsky on Jan 4, 2012
Santorum Tells Kids With Gay Parents: You’d Be Better Off With Parents In Prison By Marie Diamond and Zack Ford Think Progress.com Jan 7, 2012
On the campaign trail, Rick Santorum rarely passes up an opportunity to pontificate on his favorite subject: the evils of gay marriage and parenthood. Speaking at a boarding school in New Hampshire on Friday, Santorum cited an unnamed “anti-poverty expert” to claim that children are better off having a parent in prison who abandoned them than having two same-sex parents.
This wasn’t just a hypothetical some children in the audience, at least three of whom had gay parents, the Los Angeles Times reports:
For the second time in as many days, Rick Santorum waded into the issue of gay marriage, suggesting it was so important for children to have both a father and mother that an imprisoned father was preferable to a same-sex parent.
Citing the work of one anti-poverty expert, Santorum said, “He found that even fathers in jail who had abandoned their kids were still better than no father at all to have in their children’s lives.”
Allowing gays to marry and raise children, Santorum said, amounts to “robbing children of something they need, they deserve, they have a right to. You may rationalize that that isn’t true, but in your own life and in your own heart, you know it’s true.” [...]
The topsy-turvy world of religious extremists though it appears they are going mainstream . They have done it before and then lost traction their party having used them to get the votes they need.
Tennessee Conservatives Seek Protections For Religious Bullies By Zack Ford on Jan 4, 2012
The Family Action Council of Tennessee (FACT) is using the suicide of Jacob Rogers — who was bullied relentlessly for being gay — to promote state legislation that would protect bullies who harass other students for their sexual orientation. The “license to bully” bill, HB 1153, was actually introduced last year, but FACT is hoping it will make headway in this new legislative session. Mirroring similar language that was recently proposed in Michigan, the bill creates specific protections for students who share any “religious, philosophical, or political views” that are “unpopular,” regardless of their consequences to the learning environment:--------------------------------
“Creating a hostile educational environment” shall not be construed to include discomfort and unpleasantness that can accompany the expression of a viewpoint or belief that is unpopular, not shared by other students, or not shared by teachers or school officials.
The policy shall not be construed or interpreted to infringe upon the First Amendment rights of students and shall not prohibit their expression of religious, philosophical, or political views; provided, that such expression does not include a threat of physical harm to a student or damage to a student’s property.
The proposed law upholds the right of free speech and freedom of religion which trumps the rights of Gays to not be harassed . So because the actions of Gays are according to the religious views of some individuals and groups to be unacceptable and dangerous to society and an affront to the religious values of others ie Christian fundamentalists, Catholics, Muslims and so forth being called a sinner or demon possessed etc. is OK.
But the statute in its attempt to go beyond mere religious bias or bigotry also includes differences over political and philosophical views.
So an existentialists could verbally harangue a neo-Platonists or a logical positivists could harangue speculative and relativists philosopher sort of like a comedy skit ala Monty Python .
But it would also allow for those who are anti-evolution ie Creationists & so called Intelligent Design theorists to harangue verbally those who hold to the truth of Evolution .
Of course this works both ways so pro-evolutionists could harangue the creationists or IDs or those adhering to other Mythological Creation stories.
So a libertarian could be harassed by a traditional conservative who gets harassed by Liberals who are harassed by progressives who get haraassed by hard-core socialists and they all get harassed by the Anarchists and the followers of Ayn Rand.
So according to this view there are to be no restrictions on freedom of speech so a white student could argue that whites are superior to black people and so ipso facto no one is permitted to judge or criticize what many would consider an unfounded bigoted view.
So no teacher or person in any position of authority who questions such views and points out that some opinions people have are without a factual foundation and therefore are at the least questionable. Otherwise no one in the schools or elsewhere would be free to explain to an anti-Semite that there is not in fact a World Jewish Conspiracy .
There is in deed a difference between having a belief or view or opinion as opposed to one which is rooted in reality and the world of facts.
This also points to an issue common to so called liberals who fanatically or tenaciously hold to an extreme form of prescriptive relativism.
Not everything is up for grabs.
The closed minded religious believer does in fact have a lot in common with the militantly anti-religious secular humanists or atheists since both are on shaky grounds. To claim to know there is no god or gods or spirits or no human souls is just as dubious as claiming that you know for certain that there is a God or spiritual realm or a human soul because your Holy Book tells you so. And just because you believe doesn't mean that you have the right to impose those views on others.Either one is to begin with a leap of faith.As the 20th century philosopher Wittgenstein to paraphrase once said- that he did not know if the soul existed but he believed that as far as he was concerned it was his duty as a human being to treat all other human beings as if they each possessed a "Soul". To me this is the core belief of all religions and of those who believe in the dignity and rights of humankind not just in the abstract but in the real world as well.
Rick Santorum: Religious People Should Have Right To Discriminate Against Gays By Igor Volsky Think Progress.orgon Aug 5, 2011
Rick Santorum doubled down on his opposition to same-sex marriage during an appearance in Iowa this morning, arguing that the courts have established a “super-right” of “sexual liberty” that trumps religious freedom:
Santorum was meeting with the Register editorial board this morning. He said same-sex marriage jeopardizes religious liberty because the government may threaten license-holder such as marriage counselors who don’t treat gay couples.
“Religious liberty is now trumped because we have now created a super-right,” he said. “We have a right the Constitution of religious liberty but now the courts have created a super-right that’s above a right that’s actually in the Constitution, and that’s of sexual liberty. And I think that’s a wrong, that’s a destructive element.” [...]
Santorum says if “pursuit of happiness” means “pursuit of pleasure,” we won’t be a country very long.
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