I'm assuming little of what you posted was actually addressed at me, since I haven't taken any position on the topic, certainly none in opposition to your own.

I must have left out the snark tag, though. I meant to misquote the bumper sticker. I would never accuse you of being a good man, let alone one who does (or has done) nothing. I respect the consistent positions you take here, and I don't want this blog to consist of nothing but emoting and posing. If you're bored with all this too, you've earned it.

What I'm suggesting is that your objectively neutral stance regarding "pigs'n'hippies" allows you to shrug off all reports from the convention. I get that. I'm not out there either. If I thought stoning a cop would turn the world around, I'd go out and stone a dozen. But I don't.

What I don't get is why you want everyone else to conform to your neutral and passive stance. They don't. They're not objective, because they empathize with the normal people caught in the undertow of what is a "crime scene" only because the "pigs" said it was, and feel threatened. They only want the Republicans to feel the heat they deserve to feel, without getting themselves run over, beaten, gassed, or shot.

Don't you think things would work out better if, say, 50 million Americans felt the same way?

Where does this idea come from? Apparently, everyone who opposes the war also has the best intentions and is not violent. Therefore, if there was violence it must have come from the man. Just how silly does that sound? Certainly, 99% of the protestors wanted a peaceful demonstration, but 1% of a group of a thousand or so, is enough. I've seen it myself--these people are douchebags who don't care about politics and hate leftists and liberals for being wussies in their perspective as much as they hate conservatives. They aren't at every demonstration, but they are a staple at all the big national ones. Its like their lollapallooza.

Don't undermine your arguments by stepping out onto this weak limb.

Huh?

Where did I say there are no lefty assholes? The official numbers were "50-100" such "assholes." That's not a lot, however you slice it.

100 IS 1% of 10,000. So your estimate conforms with the reported numbers.

"That's why Glenn should blog more directly about the issues that animate his position with respect to the election himself."

Do you have to work hard to be obtuse or does it come naturally?

Glenn has devoted the entire content of his writings on UT and has had three books published to do just that - clarify and expand on those issues which manifest themselves in his position relative to this election.

If you need to be led by the hand, perhaps you should find another blog to criticize - or once again, learn to read, this time for comprehension.

provocation is the oldest trick in the cracking-heads book. They used it on the unions. Do you think they've forgotten it?

See the comment by Cargo to which I was responding.

there is no hyper-hammer reaction to their wilding and destruction, even if it is on a very large scale. Why is that? Because they're just "letting off steam" and not interfering with the "democratic process?"

Or is there some identity politics at work?

It's not really about broken windows and burning dumpsters and bags of urine (ha ha). It never was.

If more skinny kids with dreadlocks and backpacks were on the police forces (yeah, right, as if... ;-}) there'd be less need for the police to get so hotheaded when a crowd of supposedly depraved youth assembles to chant some slogans and "march" -- well, that's a stretch -- let's say mill in a general direction, and sometimes make pretend barricades with newspaper racks (what will they do when there are no more newspapers?) and dumpsters, and who knows might even break a window or slash a tire.

If the police can identify with the crowd because some of the police are no different (culturally, socially, status wise) than members of the crowd, then the likelihood of police overreaction to minor disturbances, and the likelihood of police riots is lessened.

The SFPD started accepting openly gay cops a long time ago, and by doing so, they lessened the tensions between the police and the gay community. It seemed like such an obvious step, but it took a surprising amount of pressure on the Authorities for it to be done. Same with opening the ranks of policing to more than token members of minority communities. All of these changes, now decades in practice, took tremendous public pressure and effort, over a long time, to accomplish.

Now we see cases where the police are using heavy-handed, militaristic, police-state tactics on designated out groups, in Minneapolis and St. Paul -- so-called "anarchists," who are identified by their youth, their skinny frames, their dreadlocks, and their backpacks -- who are being prevented from shutting down the Republican Convention.

An answer is to recruit more of these kids into policing. Eh?

They're treated like an infestation of aliens. Yet they're not that different, in the end, than most of the rest of us.

Who is they?

I've never heard of or seen anything like this happen. Police departments don't have a delta force division. They do try to infiltrate organizations from time to time, but just for intelligence, and they never stay long because they are easy to spot after just a few minutes. You'd have trouble convincing a cop to break windows and destroy property, its not like a sting that is legally sanctioned. If they got caught, they would lose everything and get sued.

But doesn't say much:

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/3/amy_goodman_grills_st_paul_police

In fact, he sounds a lot like Elephantman. Hey, if they got arrested and physically harmed, they must have deserved, it right?

“We Will Not Be Silenced”

Thanks to several alert readers here at No Quarter, I have learned about a new documentary on Caucus Fraud that is just coming out. “We Will Not Be Silenced, ” by Gigi Gaston, came into being according to their website because:

As Americans, we expect certain liberties and rights that were granted us by our forefathers, who wrote documents like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. “We the people” expect that these fundamental rights will always be protected.

However, in the current Democratic Presidential Primary, this has not been the case. We believe that the The Democratic National Committee (DNC) made a grave error by depriving American voters of their choice of Hillary Clinton as Democratic nominee. Senator Clinton, by all accounts, except caucuses, won the Primary Election and, therefore, should be the 2008 Democratic Nominee.

That didn’t happen, due largely to illegitimate and illegal acts. We have interviews of many accounts from caucus states recounting threats, intimidation, lies, stolen documents, falsified documents, busing in voters in exchange for paying for dinners, I-pods etc.

There are at least 2000 complaints, in Texas alone, of irregularities directed towards the Obama Campaign, that have lead to a very fractured and broken Democratic Party.

The preview, all 33 minutes of it, is compelling. In essence, it is a visual companion to the work of Dr. Lynette Long at Caucus Fraud and Peniel Cronin on Primaries and Caucuses (which will appear at NQ shortly). In short, it is disturbing not just how this happened, but THAT it happened in our country.

I invite you to watch the preview to this documentary, about which the authors said this:

This documentary is about the disenfranchising of American citizens by the Democratic Party and the Obama Campaign. We the People have made this film. Democrats have sent in their stories from all parts of America.

We want to be heard and let the country know how our party has sanctioned the actions of what we feel are Obama campaign “Chicago Machine” dirty politics. We believe this infamous campaign of “change” from Chicago encouraged and created an army to steal caucus packets, falsify documents, change results, allow unregistered people to vote, scare and intimidate Hillary supporters, stalk them, threaten them, lock them out of their polling places, silence their voices and stop their right to vote, which is, of course, all documented in “We Will Not Be Silenced.”

This documentary contains powerful, important information. My deepest thanks to all of those at “We Will Not Be Silenced” for your commitment to democracy, to the rights of Americans, all Americans, to vote. Thank you for your courage and integrity in getting this critical information out. And thank you for bringing the voices of these Americans out for us all to witness.

http://wewillnotbesilenced2008.com/video/index.htm

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