Scott Spiegel

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The police warned that if protestors didn’t move, force would be used to remove them.  Protestors didn’t move.  Force was used to remove them.

What’s the big deal?

Liberals were aghast at last Friday’s video showing Police Lt. John Pike shooting pepper spray at a row of seated protestors blocking a walkway at the University of California at Davis.  The protestors were barricading the path against officers trying to arrest students who had violated the college’s order prohibiting pitching tents on the quad.

Curiously, the seated protestors had their heads down and eyes covered during the entire 10-second assault.  This may have had something to do with the fact that the sadistic monster Pike had raised his bright-red pepper spray can in the air and shaken it for about five minutes before spraying, in order to warn the protestors about what was coming.  In the video, onlookers can be heard calling out, “Keep your eyes closed!” “Cover your eyes!” and “Protect yourself!” Upon being sprayed, none of the seated protestors appeared to cry out in pain, though it was difficult to hear over the onlookers wailing, “You guys are supposed to protect us!”

One hysterical woman in the video can be heard yowling, “Why are you doing this?  These are children!”—which I guess is supposed to be aurally reminiscent of “It’s for the children!”

For those who don’t belong to the Young Democratic Socialists, pepper spray is a commonly used, non-lethal crowd control agent that is a chemical cousin of mace and other tear gases.  It induces watery eyes, runny nose, and coughing—which can’t be any worse than the symptoms of Zuccotti Lung.

Contrary to occupiers’ claims, the seated protestors were not willing to move out of the way if asked.  Officers can be seen trying to drag protestors away after the pepper spray cans had been pulled out, but the arm-linked protestors refused to move.

The police appear to have carried out their pepper spray raid, not to cruelly inflict distress on the protestors, but to soften them up to make it easier to remove them from the walkway.  As former Baltimore Police Chief Charles Kelly noted, “When you start picking up human bodies, you risk hurting them.  Bodies don’t have handles on them.”  Even after being sprayed, the protestors remained limp, forcing multiple officers to drag them away.

The UC Davis protestors, despite the widespread impression of them as beleaguered innocents set upon by hordes of machine gun-toting Gestapo, far outnumbered the police patrolling them.  UC Davis reports that there were 35 police officers on the scene Friday, compared to 250 protestors and onlookers.

Overwhelming numbers of unhinged protestors in any setting have the potential to wreak havoc, as evidenced by violent Occupy-driven confrontations over the past two months in other U.S. cities.  Even small groups of committed protestors can inflict costly wreckage, as demonstrated by the handful of Occupy protestors in Rome several weeks ago who injured hundreds of people and caused millions of dollars in damage.

The Occupy protestors have no concern for the well-being or safety of police officers, i.e. individuals in a dangerous profession who otherwise protect protestors in their daily lives.  As one commenter at the website Boing Boing ordered, “[D]on’t pepper spray non-violent protester [sic] you intent [sic] to arrest.  Just arrest them and move on.  If you get hurt, so be it.  You are a police officer.  Your job is inherntly [sic] dangerous.”  Yes, their job is inherently dangerous, due to chaos-instigating criminals like Occupy protestors and the people who sympathize with them.

There are numerous ways of hindering police work besides pushing back against cops or throwing bottles, urine, and feces at them (though the Occupy protestors have tried all of those methods!).  Even passive forms of resistance such as building human chains or walls to prevent police from getting by, or sprawling out on the ground and refusing to move, can justify retaliatory force.

Perhaps the cops could have “stepped over” or “brushed past” the protestors, as some Occupy apologists have glibly suggested.  The protestors sob that they were seated and non-violent when they were sprayed.  Boo-hoo.  They aligned themselves with an anarchic, violent mob, and they telegraphed their intention not to comply with police.  Maybe they would have let themselves be peacefully pushed aside had it come to that.  But the police don’t have time to administer a psychological evaluation to each rally participant to determine his or her propensity for causing mayhem under stress.

When cops say move, you move—even if you’re curled in a fetal position on the ground with flowers in your hair listening to Cat Stevens and nursing orphaned kittens.

The UC Davis police could have acted a lot more brutally, including prodding or beating protestors with batons.  The occupiers should consider themselves warned: Trust fund brat refuses to move, trust fund brat gets spray tanned.

Protestors in the UC Davis videos can be heard chanting “Shame on you!” at police after the incident.  Actually, shame on patsy mayors like Michael Bloomberg and Jean Quan for not empowering police to clear out these animals ages ago.

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• UC Davis Students’ Eerie, Powerful Protest Against Pepper-Spray Chancellor [Video] (gawker.com)
• So Unbelievably Horrible And Wrong: Police Officer Pepper-Sprays Non-Violent Occupy UC Davis Protestors. (perezhilton.com)
• UC Davis Police Pepper Spray Student Occupy Protestors, University Investigating Incident (mediaite.com)
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Last summer, during the debt ceiling standoff, Congressional Republicans and Democrats came to a dubious—no, wait: stupid—deal to set up a bipartisan “supercommittee” to negotiate $1.2 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade.

The committee comprised three Republicans and three Democrats from the House, and three each from the Senate.  The committee would make spending cut recommendations by November 23, and Congress would vote on them by December 24.  If the committee failed to agree to cuts that can pass in Congress, automatic cuts of $450 billion from defense spending, $450 billion from domestic programs, and $300 billion from reduced interest payments would kick in on January 1, 2013.

What could possibly go wrong?

For starters, there are six Democrats on the panel and only six Republicans.  Since spending bills originate in the House, which Republicans control, why is this a 50-50 proposition?  Would gloating Democrats have been so sporting if this process had unfolded in 2007 or 2009?

The Republicans on the committee aren’t nearly as conservative as the Democrats are liberal.  Only one Republican could be called a consistent, genuine fiscal conservative: newly elected Senator, Club for Growth President, and godsend Pat Toomey.  Republican committee chair Rep. Jeb Hensarling, Sen. Jon Kyl, and Reps. Rob Portman, Dave Camp, and Fred Upton, whatever their virtues, all voted to increase the debt ceiling in August, and thus cannot be trusted.

In contrast, three Democrats on the committee—Reps. James Clyburn, Chris Van Hollen, and Xavier Becerra—bucked the majority of House Democrats and voted not to extend the Bush-era tax cuts last December.

In other words, the GOP appointed moderate-right members, while Democrats appointed members of the Socialist Workers Party.

Then there’s the matter of negotiating strength.  Sen. Max Baucus, a Democratic committee member and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, infamously rammed ObamaCare through the Senate without a single GOP vote.  Whatever you think of his policies, the firmness of Baucus’s past negotiating stances has been solidly demonstrated.

In contrast, Republicans consistently fail to stand up for their side in negotiations with Democrats, always caving in when the accusation of being meanies gets to them.  Already Hensarling is making the rounds telling reporters that tax increases are “a reality” when you’re dealing with Democrats.

There’s also the fact that any agreed upon spending cuts are not binding, and can be weakened or eliminated by future Congresses—which means that any cuts that don’t take effect in the next ten minutes are basically meaningless.  Even the “automatic” cuts slated for 2013 can be “unautomatized” by Congress next year.  As Toomey notes, in the event of failure to reach a deal, “[I]t’s very likely that Congress would reconsider the configuration” of automatic cuts.

Also, the Defense Department says it cannot sustain $450 billion in cuts.  As for the $450 billion to be cut from domestic programs, Congress still has to wrangle over which agencies to target, which means that the supercommittee isn’t really deciding anything, just kicking the can down the road.

Also, other committees are trying to use the supercommittee to slip by Congress unpalatable bills on things like agricultural subsidies for farmers who don’t farm, by capitalizing on its behind-closed-doors nature and refusal to disclose its discussions to the public.

The secretive supercommittee, whose final product will be sent straight to Congress for a vote, with no opportunity for revision or amendment, finds itself just eight days away from the deadline with no resolution in sight.  (This, despite President Obama’s helpfully calling the committee every five minutes to nag them from his courtside seat in Hawaii last week.)

Even within their party, Democrats can’t agree on which job-killing tax increases and illusory spending cuts to propose.  For example, Democrats haven’t decided whether to try to claim that the $700 billion we might not be spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may count as 58% of their spending cut target.

Recently Republicans on the committee agreed to a tax increase that would reform the overall tax code, lower the top marginal rate, and broaden the tax base to incorporate the 47% of the population that pays no federal income taxes (and sponges off the rest of us).  Naturally, Democrats resoundingly defeated that proposal.  At least Republicans were savvy enough to start with a negotiating point that involved cutting taxes for high income earners, so that the final compromise would likely be closer to no tax increases for this group.

Although it’s been said many times, many ways, it bears repeating: All of this chaos is entirely the fault of Congressional Democrats, who have refused to pass or even propose a budget for over two years, thus necessitating all of these recent, panicky, last-minute showdowns.  (Quick: Google “Democrats haven’t…” and see what autocomplete suggests for you.)

The most important lesson conservatives should learn from this farce is one that cannot be stated too often: Never negotiate with Democrats.



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• Congress May Try To Prevent Automatic Cuts If SuperCommittee Fails (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Republicans Mull Tax Increases (businessweek.com)
• Supercommittee Making Little Progress, Lawmakers Warn (huffingtonpost.com)
• GOP wobbles on no-new-taxes vow (thehill.com)
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Iran’s leadership is working feverishly to develop nuclear weapons, and has been doing so for the past two decades.  President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei have repeatedly pledged to use whatever means they have at their disposal to wipe Israel off the map.

Just about everyone except Israel’s right-wing politicians and John McCain has been denying, distorting, or downplaying these hard truths for years.  Even though the U.S. State Department has listed Iran as the biggest state sponsor of terror for decades, and even though evidence has been piling up that Iran is working to acquire weapons, President George W. Bush did nothing to encourage military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities during his eight years in office, even after the attacks on 9/11.  President Barack Obama is not likely to deviate from this course.

Israel has been undermining Iran’s progress via indirect channels, including deploying the sophisticated Stuxnet worm, which sabotaged Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges and set their capabilities back a year or two; and authorizing a covert assassination program to take out top Iranian nuclear scientists.  These strategies have been helpful, but they only buy so much time.  They are not enough to prevent Iran from succeeding at its ultimate goal.  Economic sanctions are also not enough to halt Iran’s work.

The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is about to release its most detailed report yet documenting Iran’s secret nuclear weapon development at a site near Tehran called Parchin, its uranium enrichment at a facility in Natanz, and its installation of centrifuges at Qom.  All of this activity has been going on, despite Iran’s lies that its technology will be used only to generate electricity.

The IAEA’s report includes evidence that Iran is in the final stages of assembling and deploying nuclear weapons, including developing an atomic bomb trigger device, altering long-range missile warheads to fit nuclear payloads, setting off test explosions, and running computer simulations of nuclear explosions.  All of these experiments are, of course, just essential for the benign task of keeping Tehran’s hairdryers operating.

The IAEA’s unequivocal evidence incorporates satellite photographs and detailed plans obtained by U.S. spy services revealing technological expertise offered by nuclear states hostile to the U.S., including Russia, Pakistan, and North Korea.  Iran has repeatedly denied UN requests to inspect Parchin to verify Iran’s putatively peaceful intentions and to interview Iran’s top nuclear scientists.

Despite the impending release of the IAEA’s report, the otherwise useless and softheaded agency is not expected to condemn Iran for its activities or directly accuse Iran of developing nuclear weapons.  China and Russia, as permanent members of the UN’s Security Council, are likely to oppose new sanctions against Iran, never mind military strikes.

Recently Israel has been hinting at its intention to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.  Any sane person who doesn’t want the craziest, most dangerous regime on the planet to have the most powerful, destructive weapons in the world in its arsenal should be cheering Israel’s attempt to prevent this Armageddon from arriving.  Instead, most of the free nations of the world—to say nothing of its dictatorships, quasi-dictatorships, and communist states who loathe Israel and the U.S.—will likely scream hysterically if Israel launches so much as a spitball into Iran.

Liberals at home and abroad will cry that Iran is another Iraq, that Iran’s nuclear program is as apocryphal as Saddam Hussein’s stockpiles of WMDs.  Regardless of the fact that there were legitimate reasons to go to war with Iraq besides weapons of mass destruction, the evidence of weapons development is much stronger for Iran than it was for Iraq.  In addition, Iraq is a small fry compared to Iran, which has been channeling millions of dollars to terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza for decades.

Obama is not likely to do anything to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.  Certain Republican presidential candidates—i.e. Ron Paul—seem positively giddy over the possibility of Iran acquiring the means of defending itself against big, bad bullies like Israel.  The U.S. must elect a candidate in 2012 who understands the threat Iran poses and is willing to say so repeatedly, unprompted, in interviews and debates.

In the meantime, Israel remains the U.S.’s front line in the war on terror.  This means that Israel may fight some of our common enemies before these foes advance to our terrain—and that if we support Israel, we may spare ourselves American casualties.

But the longer this charade goes on of pretending Iran means what it says when it’s convenient—that they seek only peaceful uses for nuclear power—and doesn’t mean what it says when it’s inconvenient—that it doesn’t really want to destroy Israel—the more difficult it will be to destroy its nuclear facilities, and the more collateral damage will be racked up when the task is finally accomplished.  Iran’s position strengthens the longer we wait.  Iran’s mullahs are hoping to run out the clock.

The U.S., if it doesn’t have the will to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities, should at least provide any help it can—military, monetary, and moral—to Israel in its attempt to do so.  This is an existential crisis that affects Israel’s ability to remain a viable state in the short-term—and the U.S.’s ability to remain a credible world power in the long-term.



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On Tuesday the Mississippi electorate will vote on a controversial amendment to the state constitution declaring that “the term ‘person’ [is] defined to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the equivalent thereof.”  The Mississippi Personhood Amendment, as it is known, is echoed by similar ballot measures in a half dozen other states.

Since it is illegal to murder a person in all states, and all states have laws dispensing jail time or even the death penalty for murder, the logical conclusion from these referenda is that they will instantly reclassify a broad swath of society as felons.  Have pro-life advocates prepared state corrections officials for the flood of recently pregnant women, abortion doctors, and “morning after” pill consumers they’ll be sending to the pen or the gas chamber?

Mississippi’s law, the most extreme state personhood referendum on the ballot this year, would ban all abortions, some forms of birth control, and all embryonic stem cell research.

Jessica Valenti notes that Proposition 26 would “prioritize the rights of fertilized eggs over the rights of the women carrying them.”  Passage of the law would lead to the absurdity of proclaiming fertilized but unused eggs in a Petri dish to be persons and outlawing in vitro fertilization.

Pro-life conservatives have been crowing about the recent spate of stealth victories their movement has won on the state level.  In The Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes explains that this progress has been possible largely because gay marriage has become the more visible social issue in recent years and has detracted attention from continuing behind-the-scenes efforts to restrict abortion.  Such advances are supported, Barnes argues, by technological breakthroughs in sonogram quality, which have made fetuses seem more developed and autonomous than imagined.

Never mind that the reason new abortion restrictions have passed in multiple states is that Republicans took control of 26 state legislatures in 2010 by campaigning against Congressional Democrats’ stimulus spending and health care plan, and that the GOP did not receive some special mandate to start outlawing abortion.  In the minds of the religious right, the momentum is on their side, and they are becoming increasingly bold in their attacks on abortion rights.  As Barnes approvingly notes, anti-abortion crusaders have become “almost wildly ambitious, and more relentless than ever.”

To give a taste of the recently radicalized movement’s fervor, a pro-personhood newsletter in Mississippi assures voters that, while extreme, Initiative #26 would not criminalize miscarriage.  Oh—well, that’s a relief, then.

Meanwhile, go back in time to January of 2010, when the left was enraged because the Supreme Court had ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that corporations, not-for-profit organizations, and unions have the same rights as citizens to spend money to express their political views by endorsing candidates or parties in the final months and days leading up to elections.

Justice Antonin Scalia ripped into Justice John Paul Stevens’ flimsy dissent, noting, “It never shows why ‘the freedom of speech’ that was the right of Englishmen did not include the freedom to speak in association with other individuals, including association in the corporate form.”  Organizations from the Heritage Foundation to the American Civil Liberties Union supported the decision.

Democrats Charles Schumer and Chris Van Hollen subsequently sponsored the DISCLOSE Act to try to squelch the free speech Citizens United had unleashed, but the bill failed to pass in the Senate.

No, of course corporations aren’t literally persons, or at least single persons.  They are considered “legal persons” under the law, not “natural persons.”  But they are made up of persons, and persons run them and act on their behalf.  Persons own the resources they wield.  Persons control how they are configured and operated to provide products and services that keep the corporations—and their employees’ jobs—in existence.

Why are liberals upset that corporations can exert political influence, when the persons that make up corporations can exert political influence?  How is a 1,000-employee corporation that exerts political influence different from 1,000 employees doing the same?

How is a corporation’s power more offensive than a single billionaire such as George Soros virtually controlling the operations of one of the country’s two major political parties?

Because the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, which Citizens United overturned, contained an exception for media corporations, I suppose Democrats would have us believe that corporations aren’t persons, but newspapers are.

But back to Mississippi.  Despite the claims of the recently ascendant “personhood movement,” a fetus simply is not a person.  It is biologically attached to and dependent on its mother, who is a person.  A newborn baby is incapable of surviving for long on its own; a fetus is even less so.  Unlike a physically-separate baby disconnected from its mother and beginning to move about and explore the outside world, a fetus is passive and lacks agency—the ability to act on its environment to pursue life-sustaining goals.

The Citizens United decision was proper, because it correctly identified the link between an individual’s agency in influencing the political process and the agency of a collection of organized individuals influencing the political process.

The Mississippi referendum falsely attributes agency and personhood to a fetus.  It should be soundly rejected.

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• When is a Person a Person? If Mississippi gets their Way it would be at Conception (ferrellgummit.wordpress.com)
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Presidential candidate Herman Cain has been touting his 9-9-9 tax plan, which would replace the three-million-word tax code with a flat 9% federal income tax, 9% corporate tax, and 9% national sales tax.

Fellow candidate Rick Perry recently proposed a flat tax of 20% on earned income and 20% on corporate income, and a simplification of the tax code, including elimination of loopholes and eradication of the death tax.  Newt Gingrich has similarly suggested a 15% flat tax.

These plans recall the flat tax Steve Forbes campaigned for president on in 1996 and 2000.  All of these plans would massively reduce the U.S.’s collective tax compliance cost to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.  (Though liberals don’t realize it, it would be a fantastic thing for our economy if every employee of the Internal Revenue Service and H&R Block, and every tax lawyer, accountant, and tax preparation service employee lost his job and had to go out and find useful productive employment.)

In response to these thoughtful Republican proposals, liberals are screaming that conservatives’ plan for getting us out of our present fiscal crisis is to “tax the poor.”

If only we could get out of our current budget predicament by taxing the poor.  In fact, we can’t even get out of it by taxing the rich.

As has been amply demonstrated, massively increasing taxes on high earners wouldn’t come close to relieving our budget woes.  These can be alleviated only via radical entitlement reform.  Eating the rich now will not ensure an enriching long-term diet for the nation later.

The reason conservatives have been advocating flatter taxes is not that they want to “balance the budget on the backs of the poor,” or some other such nonsense.  It’s so that the 47% of the population who, due to the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit over the past several decades, pays no federal income tax will be forced to contribute something, however measly, to the country’s tax revenue.

Free market types don’t want to raise taxes on the poor to be meanies.  They just want liberals to stop demanding that high earners pay more, and Democrats to stop spending so much, and are willing to call the left out by shining a blinding spotlight on how little almost half the population pays to fund our government.

Conservatives hope that if the income of the lower-earning half of the electorate were considered fair game, then maybe the voters who receive it wouldn’t be so quick to rally around politicians who want to increase spending via public boondoggles like Obama’s Jobs Act, which will have to be paid for via tax revenue.

If Democratic politicians weren’t constantly dreaming up new ways to steal and waste the hard-earned income of the nation’s most productive citizens, perhaps so many Republican candidates wouldn’t be gaining traction by proposing that a greater proportion of society have some “skin in the game.”

And contrary to Democrats’ claims, a flat tax doesn’t “help” or “benefit” the rich—it merely punishes them a little less.  If Occupy Wall Street types weren’t going around hollering that the rich should be even more exorbitantly taxed than they are now—the highest-earning 1% already shoulder 40% of the federal tax burden, a fact of which most protestors seem blissfully unaware—then the glaring lunacy of their demand that the rich pay their fair share wouldn’t be so ripe for ridicule.

It’s possible that neither Cain nor Perry is the best Republican candidate to deliver the flat tax message, since each seems to have some difficulty explaining the intricacies of his policies to audiences (though see Perry’s fine Wall Street Journal editorial outlining his plan).  But having three of the most prominent candidates pushing for a flat tax may pressure other candidates to endorse similar plans, should they secure the nomination (ahem, Mitt Romney).

Liberals must be scared that these flat tax proposals will resonate with voters, as witnessed by the flurry of recent editorials declaring, not that the plans won’t work, but that smart voters would never, ever go for them.

Conservatives often play the game of asking liberals how much those earners in the highest tax bracket should pay—that is, how much would satisfy the left’s desire to bash the rich.  50% of their income?  60%?  70%?

How about a different game: What percentage of their income would it be fair to ask those in the lower 47% to pay?  Would 10% a year be too much too ask?  How about 5%?  1%?

Something greater than 0.00%?



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Last week a concerned reader took issue with my negative comparison of the Occupy Wall Street protests to the Tea Party rallies—in particular my statement that “Tea Party rallies have been amazingly peaceful, with not a single arrest… across hundreds of cities and thousands of events…”  The reader was correct—there were in fact Tea Party arrests I had overlooked.

In March of 2011, Jim Canelos was arrested in Mohave County, Arizona for wearing a flag hat at a county supervisors’ meeting that prohibited wearing hats.

In February of 2010, Mervin Fried was arrested in Kingman, Arizona for bringing a symbolic pitchfork to a protest in a county administration building.  Fried argued that the county already allowed citizens to carry guns—a more dangerous weapon—into government buildings, and was later acquitted.

Most notably, in November of 2009, ten protestors angry over ObamaCare were arrested for engaging in disorderly conduct outside Nancy Pelosi’s office in Washington, D.C.  The ralliers were discovered to have been organized by rabid anti-abortion activist and Democrat Randall Terry of Operation Rescue.

That’s it!  A dozen Tea Party arrests in two-and-a-half years, most tied to anti-abortion protestors.  Given the media’s left-wing slant, you can be sure that every arrest ever made at a Tea Party rally in the tiniest hamlet in the country has been thoroughly documented.

Now that we’ve gotten that straight, let’s examine the arrest record of Occupy Wall Street, which just hit its one-month anniversary:

•    Several weeks ago in New York, over 700 protesters were arrested for marching into the vehicular lanes of the Brooklyn Bridge against police orders and cutting off traffic;

•    Last Tuesday 129 protestors were arrested in Boston and 6 in D.C. for trespassing and disorderly conduct;

•    On Saturday 92 protestors were arrested in New York for occupying a branch of Citibank, knocking down police barriers, and other offenses;

•    Also on Saturday, 53 protestors in Tucson, 24 in Denver, and 19 in Raleigh were arrested for occupying public parks after closing time;

•    On Sunday 175 protestors in Chicago were arrested for setting up a tent city and occupying Congress Plaza near Grant Park;

•    Also on Sunday, 46 protestors were arrested in Phoenix for refusing to evacuate a public park at closing time

This is just a partial list and includes only roundups at the most high-profile rallies in the biggest cities.

Let’s not forget the recent riots abroad, mostly in Western Europe, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protests.  In Rome on Saturday, police arrested protestors for breaking windows, destroying statues, spraying graffiti on churches, vandalizing bank lobbies and ATM machines, smashing police cruisers, and setting dumpsters, cars, and military depots on fire; attacking police with batons, rocks, bottles, fire extinguishers, and bombs; injuring hundreds of innocents, mostly police officers; and causing millions in damage to public property and untold damage to private property.

(In one delicious footnote, Roman protestors expressed indignation that police hadn’t made more arrests of their most violent compatriots early on, so that the whole group wouldn’t be discredited.  Damned if you enforce the law, damned if you don’t.)

So let’s examine the totals: 12 arrests for the Tea Party rallies, which have been going on for 30 months; and 1200 arrests for the Occupy Wall Street mobs, which have been going on for 30 days.

It’s awfully close, but I’m going to have to suggest that Occupy Wall Street is less law-abiding than the Tea Party.  Yet to hear the mainstream media present it, Occupy Wall Street is every bit as peaceful and legitimate as the Tea Party.

The disparate treatment given to these wildly uneven tallies reflects the double standard set by the left-leaning media: One Tea Partier raising his fist in anger over intrusive government is as alarming as one thousand Occupy Wall Street protestors clashing with police.

Some commentators have noted that Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party both began out of anger over the nation’s largest banks being bailed out.  Though the sources of their grievances overlap, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street have used vastly different tactics to get across their messages.  Ironically, the Tea Party, which is more suspicious of government, has been following the letter of the law.  Occupy Wall Street, which favors more government regulation, has been trampling all over the law.

This irony is easily explainable: The Tea Party believes the government has legitimate, limited functions, such as the power of the police and courts to protect people from the initiation of force and violation of property rights.  In contrast, Occupy Wall Street believes legitimate functions of government include providing universal healthcare, free college education, and a living wage; naturally, they see its policing functions as rather superfluous and heavy-handed, if not downright militaristic.

Thus, we have the spectacle of defense lawyers representing over 800 defendants in Manhattan’s criminal court system demanding that all charges be dropped for the protestors, and threatening individual trials for the miscreants, thus further clogging the system’s already overstuffed caseload.  (Prepare for agitators to crow that their struggle was victorious and their motives vindicated after overburdened prosecutors inevitably throw in the towel.)

Just before the fall 2008 bank bailout, which most Democrats supported and most Republicans opposed, President Bush infamously observed that he had “abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.”

The members of a protest movement that claims to be concerned with justice have been wildly indiscriminate in their violation of the law.  Occupy Wall Street protestors apparently believe they must abandon our civilized system of government in order to save it.



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The only similarity Tea Party rallies and the Occupy Wall Street protests share is that both involve humans gathered in public spaces.  Other than that they have about as much in common as a Rolling Stones concert does with a public stoning.

The UK Daily Mail featured a story on the unsavory conditions at the OWS protestors’ home base in Manhattan, Zuccotti Park, including photos of one flannel-clad agitator squatting and defecating against a police car.  Hmm, I think the last time that happened at a Tea Party rally was… never.

Having destroyed the park over the past three weeks by filling it with patchouli ashes and feces, the protestors traipsed north on Saturday to turn another great New York gathering space, Washington Square Park, into a public urinal.

The glaring differences between OWS and the Tea Party rallies are obvious to anyone with a functioning pair of eyes (and nostrils).

The Tea Party movement, which began around the start of Barack Obama’s presidency and built momentum during the year-long national healthcare debate, was a grassroots uprising.  Across the country, people who had never been active in politics networked and gathered with concerned, like-minded citizens to demand a curb on the intrusion of federal government into our lives.

In contrast, OWS, which is a fraction of the size of the Tea Party, was instigated by an anti-consumerist Canadian magazine called Adbusters, and has seen its numbers swell via conspicuous throngs of bused-in union members, bored trust fund brats cruising for easy sex, disheveled homeless people looking for free food, and savvy criminals on the lam who understand that a crowd of ragtag bums is the perfect hiding spot for them.

Despite their heated rhetoric, Tea Party rallies have been amazingly peaceful, with hardly any arrests and not a single incidence of violence—except for those committed by union members against the ralliers—across hundreds of cities and thousands of events attended by millions of people over the past two-and-a-half years.

In contrast, OWS has rudely disrupted its host cities, with over 700 arrests in just one day in one city (New York) and tens of millions of dollars in policing costs only a few weeks into the movement.  Commuters and municipal officials have complained about the invaders’ lack of respect for residents just trying to go about their business.

Tea Party rallies have been antiseptically clean, to such a degree that public works employees have gushed about how attendees leave the protest areas cleaner than when they arrived.

In contrast, the OWS occupation has been sickeningly unsanitary, with widespread public urination and defecation, hordes of unwashed louts mating in filthy sleeping bags, mounting piles of rotting trash, and an omnipresent odor of raw sewage.

The Tea Party has been well-organized and influential, having achieved earth-shattering electoral results in special and off-year gubernatorial and senatorial elections, and a historic landslide in the Congressional midterms.

In contrast, OWS has been ineffectual and impotent, with no one—including the protestors—having any idea what they want, let alone how they hope to achieve it by playing hacky sack and painting their bodies like tribesmen.

Most Tea Partiers took time out of their busy days to attend the rallies, which were almost always held in the evenings, after work, or on weekends.

In contrast, most OWS protestors appear to have no jobs, homes, or responsibilities to attend to, and seem to be looking to the rallies to provide them with shelter, food, and a purpose in life.

And those are just the superficial differences!

On a deeper level, the Tea Partiers want government to leave them alone and allow them to be productive citizens and decide how to spend their money.  In contrast, OWS protestors wish to tear down the capitalist system while forcing society to give them free college, universal healthcare, and guaranteed home ownership.

The Tea Party’s heroes have included our nation’s Founding Fathers, and 20^th-century political and philosophical leaders such as Ronald Reagan, Friedrich Hayek, and Ayn Rand.  In contrast, OWS has thrown its support to the likes of cop-killer Troy Davis and al-Qaeda conspirator Tarek Mehanna.

Tea Partiers have been reading and debating the Constitution and the Federalist Papers.  OWS leaders have been teaching protestors how to pick open handcuffs with hairpins.

Tea Party organizers have been handing out miniature flags; OWS leaders have been distributing condoms.

As anyone who’s been watching knows, the Tea Party increased its influence the larger it grew and the more it pervaded our culture.  Given the public revulsion over the Wall Street protests, the longer these embarrassing displays continue, the bigger the anti-Democratic tsunami will be in 2012.

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What the hell are the Wall Street occupiers protesting?  Do they even know?

The “Occupy Wall Street” hoodlums have been occupying Zuccotti Park (formerly Liberty Plaza) near Manhattan’s financial district for almost three weeks, with no signs of leaving.  They have literally been occupying the park—demonstrating without a police permit and setting up living quarters, complete with their own sleeping area, kitchen, and “library.”  They have been clogging neighboring streets and bridges.  They have pledged to occupy the area through the coming winter.

Demonstrators are trying to boost the legitimacy of their operation by passing out hundreds of thousands of copies of their self-published, four-page diatribe, “The Occupied Wall Street Journal.”

The self-described occupiers are, of course, long-haired, hippie-ish, slovenly, litter-strewing, profanity-spewing, Marxism-spouting, law-and-order-despising, ill-informed, inarticulate, slack-jawed, and unfocused—in other words, your typical left-wing mob.

(You knew the mob just had to be leftist before you even heard what it was about.  From what other portion of the political spectrum could activists organize so many thousands of unemployed people to do nothing but sit around in the street and chant all day?  Contrast the Wall Street occupation with Tea Party rallies, which always take place in the evening or on weekends, outside of work hours.)

The highlight of the movement so far came when New York City police arrested 700 thugs who unlawfully marched into the traffic lanes of the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday evening, cutting off traffic for hours.

Not ashamed in the slightest at their disruptive, feral behavior, the picketers have been screaming “police brutality” over their supposedly shocking mistreatment.  Such brutality has included police telling marchers that they would be arrested if they blocked the Brooklyn Bridge, then arresting marchers when they blocked the Brooklyn Bridge.  Dissenters were lined up in neat, orderly rows in plastic handcuffs and then escorted away in vans—or, in protestors’ minds, tortured and abused by sadistic Gestapo officers.

Dreadlocked hooligans have set up tent cities in support of the Wall Street protestors in Boston, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, and Seattle.

On Monday the protestors held a “corporate zombie” march, with participants dressed like zombie bankers stuffing Monopoly money in their mouths.

Celebrity lefties such as Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Russell Simmons, Cornel West, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, and Roseanne “Robespierre” Barr have made guest appearances to support the protestors.

So what exactly are the protestors protesting?

The Associated Press characterizes the activists’ grievances as “corporate greed and other issues.”  That’s about as specific and succinct a description as you’re likely to find anywhere, including in the protestors’ own literature.

The “other issues” protestors have railed against include—and this is far from an exhaustive list: bank bailouts, home foreclosures, high unemployment, global warming, destruction of the ecosystem, poverty, food modification, excessive health care company profits, Islamophobia, Jewish control of the economy, social inequality, the execution of Troy Davis, and the inclusion of American Indian-abuser Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.

One movement leader narrated a video in which he states that the marchers are protesting the following evils: “corporatism, fascism, crony capitalism, a police state, an American empire, [too many] military bases, dead bodies in Iraq, a ‘welfare warfare’ state, and ‘Republi-crats.’”  The site hosting the video explains that protestors’ strategy “was inspired by recent uprisings in Spain, Greece, Egypt, and Tunisia”—as though the causes of the austerity protests in Western Europe were remotely related to the causes of the democracy protests in the Middle East.

Perhaps this is a clue: The demonstrators have held many of their rallies in front of Federal Reserve buildings around the country.  Does that mean they’re protesting the existence of the Federal Reserve?  Are they opposed to its manipulation of the U.S. currency, including the Obama administration’s quantitative easing programs?  Are they calling for a return to the gold standard?

Why no, actually, those are demands being made by attendees at Tea Party rallies.  In fact, those are thoughtful demands I could actually get behind.

In contrast, the Occupy Wall Street protestors are less focused in their goals.

Thus, in one video, we get such contradictory statements as the following musings, separated by mere minutes:

“It’s about, like, people making things happen, rather than expecting, like, someone else to take care [of you].”

“It’s a process of educating people… that we have to be first and foremost altruistic, and care for the collective before caring for ourselves.”

Whereas the Tea Party’s message is razor sharp and crystal clear—limit the size and scope of the federal government and restore individual liberty—the occupiers’ message is fuzzy and incoherent, a miasma of unfocused, seething rage.

Even the über-liberal The Nation, which recently featured a helpful FAQ section on the movement, groaned, “Ugh—the zillion-dollar question” in response to an honest query on what the demands of the protestors are.  They elaborated: “The General Assembly [Occupy Wall Street’s organizing body] is currently in the midst of determining how it will come to consensus about unifying demands.  It’s a really messy and interesting discussion.  But don’t hold your breath.”

Riot first; self-reflect later.  The motto of the radical left.

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FiveThirtyEight whiz Nate Silver recently asked whether Chris Christie is the anti-Romney or the anti-Perry.

The answer is yes.

Christie is the anti-Romney, because he genuinely and unapologetically embraces and enacts conservative policies, at least on fiscal matters—in particular entitlement reform, the most important policy realm our nation currently faces.

Critics charge that he’s not consistently conservative on issues such as global warming and gun control.  Yet Rick Perry critics complain that he’s not consistently conservative on issues such as immigration and the HPV vaccine, and most people wouldn’t call Perry a liberal.

Christie is the anti-Perry, because he knows how to identify, articulate, and justify his positions, using fiery, uncompromising rhetoric that doesn’t sound rehearsed, and isn’t afraid to say things that tick off hallowed interest groups.

Critics charge that he’s arrogant, has a temper, and insults people.  Yet his style has proven wildly popular with voters who are fed up with politicians who can’t or won’t stand up to bullying public employee unions that are bankrupting the nation’s most populous states.

If Mitt Romney held more consistently conservative positions on the major issues of the day, he’d be able to articulate them to voters.  But he doesn’t.

If Rick Perry were more articulate and had a better understanding of the issues, his positions would be conservative enough for most Republicans.  But he isn’t.

The other candidates still in the running all have their weaknesses, with most embodying one of the fatal flaws represented by frontrunners Romney and Perry.

Ron Paul is blisteringly conservative on economic issues but crazily isolationist on foreign policy, to the extent that he thinks Iran should be allowed to build nuclear weapons to defend themselves against the U.S., and to the degree that he approvingly quotes Osama bin Laden’s reasons for attacking us on 9/11.  Newt Gingrich led the Republican Revolution of 1995 and enacted welfare reform, but is prone to making insane statements such as claiming that repealing ObamaCare involves as much abridgment of people’s liberty as enacting it.

Michele Bachmann is a solid conservative, but is prone to gaffes and sloppy slips of the tongue such as her mindboggling insinuation that the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation.  Herman Cain is a successful former businessman with sensible ideas about the economy but a stunning, blissful ignorance about foreign policy.

Michael Barone correctly notes that just about the only remaining feasible Republican presidential candidates who both are conservative enough and know how to speak without sounding like idiots are Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, and Chris Christie.  Daniels is concerned about his family’s privacy and has decided not to run; Ryan is young, early on in his career, and clearly has no intention of running in 2012.

That leaves Christie, who has certainly denied numerous times that he is running, but whose supporters and staffers seem to be leaking rumors that he may change his mind.  Christie has spent the past few months jetting around the country speaking at high-profile Republican fundraisers, giving speeches at prominent venues such as the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and meeting with potential donors.

Elsewhere I have written at length about why we should encourage Christie in particular to run, including the fact that Republican candidates for governor did well in 2010 in part by emulating his substance and style; that he knows how to take the fight to his opponents; that his popularity among Republican voters is underreported; and that his electability among independents and Democrats is underappreciated.

Christie’s not perfect.  But where is the glaring RomneyCare albatross–whose defense Romney cheekily deleted from the paperback version of his book No Apology—in Christie’s past that will come back to haunt him in the general election, when voters are focused perhaps foremost on repealing ObamaCare?

Christie’s not perfect.  But where are the embarrassing misstatements—like Perry’s lame, botched attack on Romney’s flip-flopping in last week’s debate in Orlando—that lead us to fear Christie will flounder in debates with the supposedly golden-voiced Obama?

Contrast Christie, if you will, with the Republicans’ 2008 nominee, John McCain, who combined the worst aspects of Romney and Perry: liberal policies and inarticulateness.  Republicans should never again have to suffer the ignominy of a nominee who differs only a little bit from the Democratic candidate—or who can’t convincingly explain why he’s to the right of Barack Obama.

The conservative establishment prefers Romney to Perry because they believe him to be more electable.  Some commentators, such as columnist Sandy Rios, believe Republicans will break for Perry over Romney because people “prefer an honest hesitator over a slickster with all the answers.”

But why should Republicans have to choose between a conservative and someone who can talk?

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History has taught us that the farcical “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority breaks down every single time it is forcibly initiated by the West.  The routine disintegrates because it always unpeacefully proceeds in the following manner: Palestinians make demands, and Israel agrees to them; Palestinians smell blood in the water and up the stakes, and Israel necessarily balks; Palestinians attack Israel, and Israel counterattacks; the world condemns Israel for its “disproportionate” response, and Palestinians secretly celebrate Israel’s global denigration without shedding a tear over the deaths of its own civilians; and then the whole sordid cycle starts again.

The Palestinians’ latest gambit for feigning legitimacy in the eyes of free nations is for PA President Mahmoud Abbas to request a platform for better infiltrating, isolating, and attacking Israel—I mean, “statehood”—at the United Nations’ Security Council meeting this Friday.  This entreaty would require fulfilling President Obama’s outrageous demand earlier this year that Israel return to its undefendable, pre-1967 borders and cede east Jerusalem to the Palestinians.  A usefully idiotic coalition of Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, and Lutheran priests in Jerusalem have boosted the PA’s bid.

The PA’s move on Friday will almost certainly be blocked by the United States, which, as a core member of the Security Council, has veto power over any such bid.  If its statehood attempt fails, Abbas has implied that the PA will present its case to the U.N. General Assembly, whose peanut gallery of Third World dictatorships will likely approve an upgrade for the PA from “entity” to non-voting, non-member observer state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed the PA’s bid for statehood as unhelpful posturing and insisted Palestinians earn concessions by returning to the peace process, not trying to circumvent it and gain statehood so they can strong-arm Israel via the U.N.

Palestinian leaders have threatened that if they don’t succeed at gaining statehood, there may be unpleasant consequences, i.e. more protests, violence, and attacks on Israel.

History has also taught us that—in addition to the peace process always failing—whenever Israel capitulates to the PA, Palestinians’ demands only escalate to unreasonable levels, and mayhem ensues over Israel’s failure to meet their impossible conditions.  In contrast, whenever Israel firmly rejects the PA’s ultimatums and warns that military force will be used against reprisal attacks, Palestinians back down.

In other words, people respond to threats.  Groups, organizations, and nations respond to threats.  Even animals are smart enough to respond to threats.  The Palestinians are no different.  If Israel resolutely rebuffs their ridiculous demands and issues threats against retaliation, the PA will surely back down as well.

Why is the PA’s bid for statehood, and the whole peace process, ridiculous?  Because only good-faith parties respond in a reasonable manner to the give-and-take process of negotiations, in which each party’s ongoing actions build up its reputation as either a credible partner or a backstabber.  The Palestinians always fail to live up to their end of the deal, yet keep getting a free pass to continue as an equal partner in the process.

Two parties cannot negotiate if one refuses to recognize the other’s right to exist, existence being an obvious precondition for negotiation.  How can the PA credibly claim to be negotiating with an entity it refuses to acknowledge as legitimate and has repeatedly stated it wishes to wipe off the map?  How can the PA purport to be acting in good faith when it maintains close ties with anti-Semitic terrorist group Hamas—whose charter calls for the expulsion of all Jews from Palestine—and refuses to denounce this organization’s tactics or even label it a terrorist group?

As Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman noted, Israel has previously “shown great generosity towards the Palestinians, but it did not bring us peace…  It’s been 18 years since the Oslo Accords and we’ve tried everything…  [Ehud] Barak, in Camp David, agreed to all [Palestinian] demands.  What did we get in return?  Another intifada and more bloodshed.”

The U.S. should forcefully reject the PA’s bid, vigorously protest its request for an upgrade to non-member status, and permanently withdraw the half a billion dollars in annual aid it gives to the Palestinians.  The latter measure, in addition to preventing funds from being diverted to a political entity with a history of sponsoring terror, will signal to the PA that it has no business trying to morph into a state of semi-authenticity under the cover of the scores of reprehensible prison states unconscionably given legitimacy at the despicable U.N.



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