At the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, graduate students boldly and courageously mic checked an invited guest, U.S. House Republican Majority Leader
I trust that U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders will be the next invited guest to the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, TX.
Meanwhile, Houston's Texas Liberal reports on the OccupyHouston efforts.
If members of Occupy Houston could come up with a lot of money and bundle it into large anonymous donations so as to legally bribe politicians, that would have been protected speech under the Citzens United case.
Also–correctly–protected by the Supreme Court are the anti-gay protests of the Westboro Baptist Church at military funerals.
In Houston however, the presence of a tarp during rain and jaywalking merits arrest.
It would be great to see conservatives speak up about the use of state power to stifle First Amendment protections.
Crickets continue to chirp in the conservatives stepping up to uphold First Amendment protections department.
No kidding.
OWS Evictions Continue Across the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
Houston's P.Diddie at Brains and Eggs reports on nationwide efforts by city police forces in concert with the FBI and Homeland Security in a coordinated effort to evict protesters from their encampments.
For?
Since when are the FBI and Homeland Security called in to interfere with peaceful protests by American citizens? Do peaceful U.S. protestors enjoy the same status as foreign terrorists where the efforts of the NYPD, the FBI and the U.S. Homeland Security Agency are concerned?
One has to wonder.
Seattle police pepper sprayed an 84 year old woman.
For?
In New York City, police, cloaked in riot gear, shredded tents with knives. They threw the tents, the peaceful protester's personal possessions, food, medical supplies and the contents of the OWS library into dumpsters and hauled it away.
Earth to the United States of America. We seem to be living in a police state these days.
No matter. OWS will not go away, police state or not.
Last night thousands of the evicted occupiers returned to Liberty Square in lower Manhattan. Bloomberg's goons set up a check point that would make Nazi Germany proud. The occupiers were not allowed to bring in tents, sleeping bags or large back packs. Nor could they lie on the ground to sleep.
And yet hundreds spent the night at the park despite the heartless and inhumane restrictions imposed by Mayor Bloomberg and his foot soldiers in the NYPD.
Gosh, Lord Bloomberg kind of reminds me of the Dictator and Crony Capitalist Extraordinaire of Texas called Rick Perry.
Hello, U.S. mayors from Bloomberg to Parker to Quan. And Rick Perry. OWS will not go away.
This is What Revolution Looks Like
Get back into your cages, they are telling us. Return to watching the lies, absurdities, trivia and celebrity gossip we feed you in 24-hour cycles on television. Invest your emotional energy in the vast system of popular entertainment. Run up your credit card debt. Pay your loans. Be thankful for the scraps we toss. Chant back to us our phrases about democracy, greatness and freedom. Vote in our rigged political theater. Send your young men and women to fight and die in useless, unwinnable wars that provide corporations with huge profits. Stand by mutely as our bipartisan congressional super committee, either through consensus or cynical dysfunction, plunges you into a society without basic social services including unemployment benefits. Pay for the crimes of Wall Street.
Cross posted on Texas Kaos.
A Rogues Gallery of Wall St. Crooks
The rogues’ gallery of Wall Street crooks, such as Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs, Howard Milstein at New York Private Bank & Trust, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers and Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase & Co., no doubt think it’s over. They think it is back to the business of harvesting what is left of America to swell their personal and corporate fortunes. But they no longer have any concept of what is happening around them. They are as mystified and clueless about these uprisings as the courtiers at Versailles or in the Forbidden City who never understood until the very end that their world was collapsing. The billionaire mayor of New York, enriched by a deregulated Wall Street, is unable to grasp why people would spend two months sleeping in an open park and marching on banks. He says he understands that the Occupy protests are “cathartic” and “entertaining,” as if demonstrating against the pain of being homeless and unemployed is a form of therapy or diversion, but that it is time to let the adults handle the affairs of state. Democratic and Republican mayors, along with their parties, have sold us out. But for them this is the beginning of the end.
To find an occupy movement near you, please visit the global live streams here.