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October 14, 2011 03:34 PM UTC

Open Line Friday!

  • 43 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“The Republican establishment doing everything it can to force a nominee on ’em they don’t want, meaning the Tea Party. They’re trying to limit the presidential choice between a hard-leftist, socialist Democrat hell-bent on taking down the country and a fairly liberal Republican who doesn’t want to rock the boat. That’s what the Republican establishment wants.”

–Rush Limbaugh, yesterday

Comments

43 thoughts on “Open Line Friday!

  1. Looks like The Looper has been toying with Occupy Denver all night, softly using CSP assets to merge and purge protesters thousands of protestors to now only 100 or so.

    Now it’s nearly 7a and they’ve made a handful of arrests. Every news channel is covering The Loopers actions as he threads the needle to take down Occupy’s camps, including the Thunder Dome.

    Will he be questioned as to why this disbursement action has taken so long and disrupted workers access to public transportation? Sure, but he’s yet to throw out the teargas and the billieclubs aren’t swinging.

    What a mess. The Looper has given OCcupy one key thing …. great morning media access to a more or less soft take down of the 99%ers. It’ will be cast as a great and peaceful win for Occupy and The Looper.

    1. Yes people on your side will cheer him for it – but they’ll never vote for a [D] regardless of what he does. But for the middle it’s going to be a sense of disquiet because while they may be uncomfortable with the protesters, they do agree with their core message.

      Seeing that people are not even allowed to speak to the frustration they have with the system will in the mind of many, classify Hick as part of the problem.

      1. For Hick this is about winning the media opinion while not pissing off the protesters. Also he wins support from the protesters as this extends and the media coverage continues.

        Best thing for Occupy is to have daily actions where police and media show up for some light hearted action, a few token arrests, a few streets get closed, etc…. Hick will support this daily type of action, it’s a great win for him until Dean Singleton decides it’s time to wrap it up. Not to worry though, Dean needs to sell papers and appear to be balanced and not part of the 1%.

        The only real threat to Occupy is some cold weather, any hint of violence, and the citizens getting tired of the continuing street closures caused by daily Occupy actions that move around the city.

    2. check “disbursement” don’t think you even now what it means.  Glad to see that homeskoolin’ paid off for you, but ya might wanna rethink a public ed for the kiddies.

  2. I’ve been up since 3:15 when the voice from the 9 News livecam feed playing on my computer woke me up from a dead sleep.  I wanted to stand as witness in case bad things happened, and I have to say that the police and protesters were both very well behaved through the whole thing.

    I’ve been blogging through the night, and I’ll be out there over the weekend for whatever rallies they hold.  In the meantime, I wish the best to those who were arrested in peaceful protest and hope that the state and/or city does not press charges unnecessarily.

    1. There’s a new app, developed specifically by an Occupy sympathizer (or participant), called “I’m Getting Arrested,” which allows you to notify people of that with a single touch of the screen. Or so it’s alleged to do. Free download…

      1. yesterday Wong & Aragop were spittin’ out the idea of jamming cell phones and blocking net access to shut down Twitter access.  Seems the act of cowards.

        AGOP would have a public company break a retail contract and deny User service for the sake of what?  AGOP really seems to like the idea of bringing to bear the full brunt of PatAct and invoking Nat Security to clamp down on non-violent Free Speechers exercising the right to assemble.

        Betcha AGOP is getting his jollies putting a nice shine on his jackboots.  

  3. Except when people assemble there to petition the government. Then it’s apparently also closed… whenever. On what grounds are they forcing people out after 5:00am?

    And now that the park is closed indefinitely. Does this mean when Hickenlooper says he supports free speech, he means except when it makes him uncomfortable?

    1. but I really can’t see the problem with enforcing the overnight camping prohibition. People don’t have to sleep there in order to gather every day if they want to, do they? And only a relative handful stay the night as it is, some of them with no political purpose. There are legitimate grounds for objecting to a permanent camp in the park.

      I do hope the Mayor, Governor, police and protesters continue to keep things pretty civil, while all figure out exactly how  they want to handle this.  

      I heard something about some group that already has a permit for the park Saturday so that adds time pressure to a situation where officials really do seem to be looking for the right balance between legitimate enforcement and over-reaction.

  4. The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 22% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -19 (see trends).

    You all know the source

    You hate the source

  5. I’m in, and I’d vote for a 50,000 strong march down 17th Street (the belly of the beast.) Take it to the streets Amerika.

    The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.   T. Jefferson

    1. makes a louder statement than a hundred or so sleep over.  I’m not sure why sleeping over is something I ought to be willing to go to the wall for.

      1. Some people think it’s important. Not sure why so many seem to have a checklist of criteria to use when determining whether to support basic constitutional rights in any given situation.

        1. It just seems to me that this isn’t the most important aspect of the battle. We seem to have accepted that states and municiplaities have the right to regulate camping in public parks.  So do they have that right or don’t they? Would you feel the same about an encampment where your kids want to play soccer?  I’m just saying that a compromise could be worked out that would allow a presence during everybody’s, you know, waking hours.

          I think camping out, as veterans have felt they had to on occasions, to get what the government promised them back in the day,  makes much more sense when you are making the specific demands they were making, sending the message that you aren’t going home until you get X. That is very useful civil disobedience.   That doesn’t seem to be quite the case here in our Denver situation. I don’t see why marches and rallies with large numbers wouldn’t be,  if anything, more effective here and now than a small group of overnighters.

          Basically, not saying I’m against the campers.  Just saying that the hours between 11PM and 5AM in this instance don’t  inspire me with a sufficient level of righteous indignation to make it a no compromise issue for me. Respect your feeling differently. Do you plan to pitch a tent and be arrested?

          And incidentally, I was arrested at a sit in, in my youth. Lucky for me the law under which we were arrested, interfering with an institute of higher learning, was very short lived, quickly ruled unconstitutionally vague (state level) so the whole thing was erased from our records.  

          1. These people are protesting the misdeeds of the banks.  Many people have been thrown out of their homes through those misdeeds.

            Camping in a park is a way to bring that issue to visibility.

            1. Go camp in a bank.

              Occupy Wall Street. Occupy 17th street.

              If protesters want to get arrested – make a statement.

              Daily peaceful protests on 17th street over the lunch hour disrupting traffic and walking through the bankers’ high rises with in your face signage. That’s a statement.

              Sitting on your ass in a park, not so much…

          2. I have all the gear for camping/backpacking and do that in the mountains. The protest camping in violation of existing statues for health and safety reasons not in violation of first amendment rights, while media attractive, isn’t effective action.

            Several years ago I set up an informational picket with handouts to a website about the criminal behavior of a certain developer in the S & L scandal. I did so on public right of way within his $ 800 million real estate project (the streets had been dedicated) and I did not obstruct traffic or harass anyone.

            Knowing the developer would try to have me arrested, I sent a letter to the local municipality citing law and Colorado Supreme Court cases that if I was arrested it would be an illegal arrest under color of law and I would sue the municipality in Federal Court for violating my first amendment civil rights and seek injunctive relief and damages. I sent the letter to the Mayor, the Town Administrator, and the Town Attorney.

            Sure enough, the developer made a complaint and tried to get me arrested. The cops came out and made contact, determined I was doing nothing illegal, and left.

            I’m certain the word went down to the police department that unless I was behaving in an obviously illegal manner, then don’t fuck with me.

            I was ONE person protesting a crooked developer who lied about his past doing an $ 800 million real estate development and i started shutting down his project and there was literally nothing he could do about.

            Know the law, know what your tactics are, and use them for maximum  effectiveness of achieving your objectives. Protesting is fine, but knowledge combined with protest is power.

          3. and the arrests mostly took place after 6 am, I think debating the merits of “camping out at night” is irrelevant to the situation at this point.

            I got arrested when the Iraq war started for civil disobedience, which I guess is still on my record. I’m not personally inclined to get arrested anymore (family life has made that harder), but I think it’s incredibly important that the protest continue. We have such huge problems in this country right now (between high unemployment and overreaching corporate power), and nobody else is saying or doing anything about it. A march is easily ignored (they have been for years), but this is not.

        1. Campers may be allowed to stay without head busting after all.  Situation a bit different since the NYC campers are in a private park but otherwise similar factors are at work:

          NEW YORK – The official cleanup of a New York plaza where protesters have camped out for a month was postponed early Friday, sending up cheers from demonstrators who feared the effort was merely a pretext to evict them and said the victory emboldened their movement.

          Protesters had already been scrambling to clean up the park on their own in hopes of staving off eviction when Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway announced that the owner of the private park, Brookfield Office Properties, had put off the cleaning.

          http://xfinity.comcast.net/art

        2. The Continental Army was demobilized in 1781 without pay and later marched on Philly to gain redress.  I believe it happened again after Spanish-American War and then horribly with the Bonus Army (as per Ralphie’s great link). These were cases that involved citizens who had been enacted to defend the US and now sought their due monetary reparations from the US govt.

          Occupy Wall St. and the adjunct assemblies are drastically different beasts so I ask  what is being sought?  The state can’t offer any reparations to appease these folks so not sure what a 24/7 presence at the CO capitol really provides.  

          Anit-war/Peace demonstrations and sit-ins brought grievances against unjust wars directly to the warmakers in govt.  Suffragist demonstrations and marches brought grievances directly to the legislators and citizenry to make their case.

          OWS in NY seems a good idea but a 24/7 presence @ our state capitol seems somewhat misguided.  I’m by no means slipping right in my views but just giving voice to my troubles understanding & supporting these actions.

          Am I asked to canvas for petition to put something to ballot?  Am I asked to actively demonstrate to have a court decision overturned?  What is the platform of the Occupy Denver and what do they seek from CO govt — that is what I need to realize.  

          1. I tried to address this in the Thursday Open Thread (though obviously I don’t speak for the protesters). Corporate dominance of the government is not a small issue with an easy fix. It’s fundamentally the system we live in, and the protesters are unhappy with it.

            Specific instances of this in Colorado government are the drastic cuts in education because the government refuses to raise taxes to meet its constitutional budget obligations, as well as the reluctance to regulate drilling because it’s not “business-friendly,” among other things.

            But it’s rather like the people who used to protest communism in Eastern Europe. If you’re protesting the whole system, asking for crumbs like overturning a court decision is defeating the whole purpose.

  6. Drill baby, drill!

    I can create 1.2 million energy jobs: Perry

    Perry would repeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority over greenhouse gases blamed for global warming and eliminate all current and planned EPA programs to restrict carbon dioxide emissions. Many Republicans in Congress would support that but it would be hard to overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2007 the EPA has the authority to regulate those gases.

    . . .

    Perry would open up several American oil and gas fields for exploration that are currently off limits, including parts of the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska and the mid-Atlantic

    http://www.reuters.com/article

    Finally, a candidate who’s willing to implement the Palin plan.  (Being a Republican means never having to lack for boobs.)

    Rick Perry:  Making all of America a Texas wasteland.

      1. But for anything it may be worth, I am so very sorry for your loss. I admire you for surviving it and for talking about her here sometimes. It took the better part of five years for me to be able to talk about my godmother at all, and losing a child is orders of magnitude worse, if such things can be ranked that way.

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