Saying that there is little difference between George Bush and Barack Obama, the Occupy Anything, Everything movement staked ground in front of President Obama’s Iowa campaign headquarters, promising that they will commit acts of civil disobedience for the Iowa caucuses in order to protest Obama’s military and business policies.
“We ask that number one they cut the U.S. military budget in half and number two he [Obama] dismantle the U.S. military empire,” Occupier Jessica Reznicek told ABC News. “When we arrived yesterday the business was shut down and nobody was in there and we made a vow to occupy until our demands were addressed, so here we stand.”
The Obama campaign so far has no official comment- apparently they were voting “not present” by locking the doors and hiding inside, a tactic Democrat officeholders often use with constituents - but the development should be worrisome for a president already under pressure to move to the middle.
Even in Obama’s Illinois, a resolution in support of the Occupiers was voted down recently 58-37 with 15 legislators voting present.
ABCNews blog continues:
Joseph Glazebrook, an attorney for several of the protesters, said that although he was an Obama supporter last cycle, they chose to camp out at the president’s re-election headquarters instead of one of the GOP candidates because “if we only focus on one part of the problem we are never going to change anything. We have to focus on the whole problem, which includes the president.”
While there was some talk in 2008 of a Recreate ’68 movement embarrassing Obama during the Democrat National Convention in Denver with mass protests ala Chicago 1968, the threat never materialized. Protestors were active, but relatively well-behaved.
Ok, yeah: The Denver Post reported that the police in Denver did end up seizing a stockpile of urine and feces that protestors intended to use as weapons of mass, um …obstruction?
Presumably by now the Occupiers have completed courses in advanced urine and feces deployment via Zuccotti Park, LA and Oakland. Photographs from the camps at least indicate something was going on there involving human waste.
"This is not a Republican or a Democratic issue. This is about the whole system being against us. The corporate elites own all of the politicians and they set the agenda," Frank Cordaro, a Catholic social justice activist told the Associated Press. "What we are doing here is trying to win back our bought-and-sold political empire. We need to dismantle it because there is no difference between George Bush and Obama."
Well, um, you mean besides race, party, accents, suit size, philosophy and politics?
The Occupiers could signal that the Democrats face the prospect of a long, hot, smelly summer when they get together in Charlotte, N.C. in the first week of September 2012 for their convention to re-coronate Obama.
Who knew in 2008 how appropriate the Styrofoam Grecian columns they used as Obama’s backdrop in Denver would be in light of the Greek bankruptcy, the Euro bankruptcy and the looming US default-in-fact? Maybe this year they can substitute the columns from the Federal Reserve Bank.
The Feds are just as full of it as Obama and a Greek balance sheet.
The presence of the Occupiers also gives you clue as to why Obama decided to declare the Iraq War officially “over” this week. Hostilities against the two sovereign powers ended years ago, as did US troop combat in Iraq.
But Obama wants to pose in the role of peacemaker and lawgiver for all nations.
But Iraq isn’t the only war Obama has to worry about.
In fact, Iraq was likely the least of his worries, war-wise.
Recreate ’68? Obama already has.
If Obama’s cross-border air-strikes in Pakistan aren’t the same thing tactically as Lyndon Johnson’s carpet bombing of Cambodia, Obama may soon find out that in terms of destabilizing Pakistan and his own presidential regime they might well be the same thing politically.
Obama owns the missile strike policy in Pakistan, the failures of his own surge strategy in Afghanistan, the man-made global chilling of relations with Russia and China, the war policy in North Africa and the ceding of Iraq to Iranian influence.
He’s lost most of the Middle East. And Europe too sits on the brink of dissolution, jeopardizing the 100 year-old alliance of the Western Democracies; an alliance that has given the developed world unrivaled prosperity and peace.
Surveying the damage that Obama’s wrought in just three years, actually, 1968 doesn’t look so bad.
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For Christmas this year, my family is buying some goats, some fruit trees, a bicycle and clothes for needy children through Worldvision.
We let our kids pick out the gift they want to give for Christmas and they pay for it with money they have saved through the year. Our kids really get a lot out of the experience.
I hope readers will consider doing the same according to their ability.
Merry Christmas!
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