The 99% (Published in the Independent Coast Observer)

Like many Americans, I’ve struggled to come to grasp with the mobs of the OWS, their class warfare mantra of “We are the 99%,” their hatred of successful people, and their inexplicable reluctance to protest political leaders. They “choose” not to blame President Obama’s disastrous policies that have increased our debt by more than $4 trillion and brought perpetually high unemployment. And we’ve yet to see one of their squalid tent cities on the pristine lawns of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Nor will OWS protest the plush residences of Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, etc., though these politicians were largely responsible for the toxic loans and financial calamities visited upon us in 2008.

A simple reason explains why such protests have not occurred - - the OWS is 99% political. Its participants are the armies of Hope and Change reduced to a pathetic reality. They’re the “transforming of America” that Barrack Obama promised and has now delivered. These Obamavilles, a cross between Brave New World and The Lord of the Flies, have spawned hate, destruction, crime, filth, and disease. Their putrid streams of rapes, mugging, murder and mayhem are becoming so prevalent that several Leftist mayors now realize they’ve created a monster.

Protest is the American way. Wallowing in the refuse of self-pity is not. There’s no constitutional right to create a lawless community that callously shuts down small businesses. There’s no constitutional right for people to take over public or private property to breed crime and disease. Period.

Democrat leaders (e.g., Obama, Biden, Pelosi) have supported OWS from its beginning and they now own it. Perhaps these esteemed politicians seek a kindred message in the inarticulate garbling of idiots. The rest of us hear only the ancient adage, “What you do speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you say.”

Jim Littlejohn

Concerned Coastal Voters

Gualala, CA

VETTING CAIN (Published in the Independent Coast Observer)

I don’t know if Herman Cain can stand up to the rigorous vetting process of the Republican primaries or the onslaught of attacks from the “mainstream media.”Time will tell. I do know that his stellar executive experience and his ability to articulate a practical conservative view of the world drives many Liberals crazy. So that’s a good thing. Even local Lefties, who swallowed entire bottles of “Yes We Can” tablets in 2008 without noticing they were made of sugar and air, are now taking shots at Cain. Fortunately their diatribes are about as effective as gnats biting an elephant’s butt.

Still, it is nice to know the Left has re-discovered the necessity for critically examining aspirants for the Presidency. Perhaps those newly found skills can be turned toward their own flailing candidate, who was last seen running around the country preaching class warfare and embracing the unwashed OWS mobs. These increasingly violent “protestors” appear to have sprung up spontaneously from a Stephen King novel (or George Soros’ checkbook). The President recently stated that he has fulfilled 60% of the promises he made as a candidate. That boast rings a little hollow and likely is not true. Even so, what he has left undone are “elephants in the room” ( e.g., things like closing Guantanamo or “bringing the country together”).

Cain is being criticized because he will not specify how he would deal with a host of hypothetical foreign policy issues. He says he will apply his problem solving skills to those issues. Unlike candidate Obama, who promised much that he could not deliver, Cain has demonstrated many times that he has such skills. Also unlike candidate (and President) Obama, Cain prefers not to pretend that he knows what he doesn’t know.

That approach is honest, direct, and refreshing to many.

Jim Littlejohn

Concerned Coastal Voters

Gualala, CA 95445

A DEBACLE

The Democrats and the mainstream media are enthusiastically embracing the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) folks, comparing them favorably to those hated “Tea Partiers.” That’s ludicrous. The Tea Party was (and still is) totally focused on repealing ObamaCare and pushing back against President Obama’s Czar-filled big government agenda. In the summer of 2010, Tea Partiers gathered hundreds of thousands strong on the National Mall, made patriotic speeches, sang songs, and uttered a few prayers. They then picked up all the trash, went home and voted both Republicans and Democrats out of office, replacing them with people they felt better understood the need for a more limited, fiscally responsible government.

Number of Tea Partier’s arrested:  zero.

In an article in The American Thinker (10/17/2011), J.R. Dunn notes that a better comparison to these undisciplined, group-chanting, OWS folks is the radical rebel crowd who stormed the 1968 Democrat convention in Chicago and got their heads bloodied in the process. Dunn notes that in 1968, the Democrats were totally in charge of the government as had mostly been since the days of FDR. Liberalism was the establishment that the 1960s kids were protesting against.

For years liberals had been trying to co-opt the youth revolt for their own purposes. Lyndon Johnson promised them cradle-to-grave welfare through The Great Society programs. But Johnson also gave them the Vietnam War, and that was a bridge too far.  In November 1968, the voters took the full measure of both the radical protestors and their erstwhile Democrat allies and gave Richard Nixon a huge victory over Hubert Humphrey. The Democrat Party has never fully recovered from that 1968 debacle.

Now we have Democrat politicians and unions embracing the OWS protests while practicing “crony capitalism” with Wall Street. How will that end for Democrats?

Jim Littlejohn

Concerned Coastal Voters

Gualala, CA