A friend of mine, who IS a Republican, made the mistake of posting this on FB recently:
I think this photo post, while superficially factual so far as it goes, is completely missing the point, which is not a surprise given the source mentality.
To my Republican friend: Is Congress owned by business lobbyists or not? I think it would be hard to argue otherwise. People like you, posting that stupid photo, would prefer not to think about THAT. "I have a job, screw everyone else."
To my Republican friend: OWS are not the typical street lefties. These are kids who simply cannot find a job after graduating from college, and are up to their necks in student debt to boot. Many of them watched their parents get their childhood homes foreclosed on them. Most of them voted for Obama in their first election only to see him appoint corporatist Democrats to run his economic team - the same guys who presided over and helped create the meltdown of 2008 (and helped tamp down the efforts to hold the banksters accountable afterwards). "Change" turned out to be a joke. They're pissed off at Obama too. So many of our children have literally lost their roots because of the banks.
To my Republican friend: Is this the typical street lefty?
A lot of them are people, like me, who lost their homes to the banks. Or men and women who no longer recognize the country they grew up in or fought for so many years ago.
To my Republican friend: Saying they shouldn't complain about corporations just because their t-shirt was made by slave labor in China for Abercrombie & Fitch or they own an iPod is not a logical argument. WTF are they supposed to do? Sit naked on the couch waiting for the sheriff to evict them? These kids feel they have no say over what is happening to them, and have watched their parents' retirement, and their own chances at a decent career, evaporate. The banks, Big Business and their bought-and-paid-for minions in Congress and the White House are the problem.
Apple didn't cause the bank meltdown. The BANKS caused the bank meltdown. Were it not for companies like Apple, millions of creative types in this country would never have had a decent-paying job doing something that doesn't make them throw up in their shoes at night. Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase and the rest haven't ever produced anything tangible except their top kicks' bonus checks (and the unemployment and dispossession of millions). These bastards are very happy indeed. As, really, they should be ever since right after Obama won his last election:
Seems like a long time ago, doesn't it?
Of course most of those jobs (you know, the ones that don't make people throw up in their shoes at night... yeah, those ones) have gone away forever now. Now, even that legacy has been poisoned from decisions made over the last 30 years.
Apple, like all the other companies listed in the deeply misguided photo at the top, makes their products overseas. They use Chinese slave labor to manufacture their products at Foxconn in the Shenzhen Economic Zone. That's a BIG part of what the OWS is objecting to.
There are a lot of stupid people out there. (You won't see them demonstrating, however. They're too busy being enslaved and tugging the forelock to the Man, posing for those pathetic photos.) It's too bad our President had to go and make a lot of us look stupid for supporting him. Of course I'll vote for him. But he ain't getting no $1200 of campaign contributions from me this time. I like Michelle more than I like her husband at this point. Some of that money is going to Occupy Wall Street instead.
Thank God for Occupy Wall Street. These brave people blew the Tea Party scumbags right off the front pages, didn't they? Bravo.
Oh, and Herman Cain makes shitty pizza. He is an ignorant sideshow. That is all.