There’s no longer room at the inn at a Manhattan church that’s sheltering Occupy Wall Streeters after a holy vessel disappeared from the altar last week.
When the Rev. Bob Brashear prepared for Sunday services at West Park Presbyterian Church on West 86th Street, he noticed parts of the bronze baptismal font were gone.
In a fire-and-brimstone message to occupiers later that day, he thundered, “It was like pissing on the 99 percent.”
In Brooklyn, at another church housing OWS protesters, an occupier urinated on a cross, according to Rabbi Chaim Gruber, who has angrily abandoned the OWS movement.
In a letter last week to OWS obtained by The Post, the rabbi fumed, “The Park Slope church housing occupiers was desecrated when an occupier peed inside the building and the pee came into contact with a cross.”
The pastor of the church did not return calls.
At West Park, Rev. Brashear walked into the church for a morning service to find the 18-inch-diameter bronze basin and lid missing from the baptismal font’s 800-pound base. Holy water — straight from the River Jordan — had been poured from the missing basin insert into the base’s bowl.
About 60 occupiers had rolled out their sleeping bags between the pews the night before as part of their evening ritual, Rev. Brashear recalled. When they returned to the church later, following the pastor’s discovery, he issued a stern warning: “You have 24 hours to find it and to come up with an amends and to come up with a plan. ‘I’m sorry and it won’t happen again’ won’t work,” he scolded.
The pastor and a worshipper finally found the missing basin tossed into a small room connected to the church. The lid is still missing. The pastor has given protesters two weeks to vacate the church.
There’s no longer room at the inn at a Manhattan church that’s sheltering Occupy Wall Streeters after a holy vessel disappeared from the altar last week.
When the Rev. Bob Brashear prepared for Sunday services at West Park Presbyterian Church on West 86th Street, he noticed parts of the bronze baptismal font were gone.
In a fire-and-brimstone message to occupiers later that day, he thundered, “It was like pissing on the 99 percent.”
In Brooklyn, at another church housing OWS protesters, an occupier urinated on a cross, according to Rabbi Chaim Gruber, who has angrily abandoned the OWS movement.
In a letter last week to OWS obtained by The Post, the rabbi fumed, “The Park Slope church housing occupiers was desecrated when an occupier peed inside the building and the pee came into contact with a cross.”
The pastor of the church did not return calls.
At West Park, Rev. Brashear walked into the church for a morning service to find the 18-inch-diameter bronze basin and lid missing from the baptismal font’s 800-pound base. Holy water — straight from the River Jordan — had been poured from the missing basin insert into the base’s bowl.
About 60 occupiers had rolled out their sleeping bags between the pews the night before as part of their evening ritual, Rev. Brashear recalled. When they returned to the church later, following the pastor’s discovery, he issued a stern warning: “You have 24 hours to find it and to come up with an amends and to come up with a plan. ‘I’m sorry and it won’t happen again’ won’t work,” he scolded.
The pastor and a worshipper finally found the missing basin tossed into a small room connected to the church. The lid is still missing. The pastor has given protesters two weeks to vacate the church.
There’s no longer room at the inn at a Manhattan church that’s sheltering Occupy Wall Streeters after a holy vessel disappeared from the altar last week.
When the Rev. Bob Brashear prepared for Sunday services at West Park Presbyterian Church on West 86th Street, he noticed parts of the bronze baptismal font were gone.
In a fire-and-brimstone message to occupiers later that day, he thundered, “It was like pissing on the 99 percent.”
In Brooklyn, at another church housing OWS protesters, an occupier urinated on a cross, according to Rabbi Chaim Gruber, who has angrily abandoned the OWS movement.
In a letter last week to OWS obtained by The Post, the rabbi fumed, “The Park Slope church housing occupiers was desecrated when an occupier peed inside the building and the pee came into contact with a cross.”
The pastor of the church did not return calls.
At West Park, Rev. Brashear walked into the church for a morning service to find the 18-inch-diameter bronze basin and lid missing from the baptismal font’s 800-pound base. Holy water — straight from the River Jordan — had been poured from the missing basin insert into the base’s bowl.
About 60 occupiers had rolled out their sleeping bags between the pews the night before as part of their evening ritual, Rev. Brashear recalled. When they returned to the church later, following the pastor’s discovery, he issued a stern warning: “You have 24 hours to find it and to come up with an amends and to come up with a plan. ‘I’m sorry and it won’t happen again’ won’t work,” he scolded.
The pastor and a worshipper finally found the missing basin tossed into a small room connected to the church. The lid is still missing. The pastor has given protesters two weeks to vacate the church.
Gee, y'know, do you think maybe with all the other murders, rapes, violent assaults, pooping on police cars, calls for marxist revolution, and for the overthrow of capitalism, the recurring sanitation problems, evictions from every city by even the most liberal of mayors... that despite all the protests of Occupy Wall Street advocates that this is some exception, that this truly IS the real face of the OWS movement?
I guess that's a rhetorical question. the answer is obviously yes. This is how the absolute slime of society rewards kindness from multiple churches.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
"I think if you put every single left-wing cause into a blender and hit POWER, this is the sludge you'd get. And it's basically anti-capitalism, and they want to re-distribute the wealth. But if you eliminate capitalism, there's no wealth to re-distribute."
By DOUGLAS SCHOEN President Obama and the Democratic leadership are making a critical error in embracing the Occupy Wall Street movement—and it may cost them the 2012 election.
Last week, senior White House adviser David Plouffe said that "the protests you're seeing are the same conversations people are having in living rooms and kitchens all across America. . . . People are frustrated by an economy that does not reward hard work and responsibility, where Wall Street and Main Street don't seem to play by the same set of rules." Nancy Pelosi and others have echoed the message.
Yet the Occupy Wall Street movement reflects values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people—and particularly with swing voters who are largely independent and have been trending away from the president since the debate over health-care reform.
The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies. On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park. Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion.
Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.
The vast majority of demonstrators are actually employed, and the proportion of protesters unemployed (15%) is within single digits of the national unemployment rate (9.1%).
An overwhelming majority of demonstrators supported Barack Obama in 2008. Now 51% disapprove of the president while 44% approve, and only 48% say they will vote to re-elect him in 2012, while at least a quarter won't vote.
Fewer than one in three (32%) call themselves Democrats, while roughly the same proportion (33%) say they aren't represented by any political party.
What binds a large majority of the protesters together—regardless of age, socioeconomic status or education—is a deep commitment to left-wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth, intense regulation of the private sector, and protectionist policies to keep American jobs from going overseas.
Sixty-five percent say that government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement—no matter the cost.
By a large margin (77%-22%), they support raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, but 58% oppose raising taxes for everybody, with only 36% in favor. And by a close margin, protesters are divided on whether the bank bailouts were necessary (49%) or unnecessary (51%).
Thus Occupy Wall Street is a group of engaged progressives who are disillusioned with the capitalist system and have a distinct activist orientation. Among the general public, by contrast [Gallup poll --WB], 41% of Americans self-identify as conservative, 36% as moderate, and only 21% as liberal. That's why the Obama-Pelosi embrace of the movement could prove catastrophic for their party.
In 1970, aligning too closely with the antiwar movement hurt Democrats in the midterm election, when many middle-class and working-class Americans ended up supporting hawkish candidates who condemned student disruptions. While that 1970 election should have been a sweep against the first-term Nixon administration, it was instead one of only four midterm elections since 1938 when the president's party didn't lose seats.
With the Democratic Party on the defensive throughout the 1970 campaign, liberal Democrats were only able to win on Election Day by distancing themselves from the student protest movement. So Adlai Stevenson III pinned an American flag to his lapel, appointed Chicago Seven prosecutor Thomas Foran chairman of his Citizen's Committee, and emphasized "law and order"—a tactic then employed by Ted Kennedy, who denounced the student protesters as "campus commandos" who must be repudiated, "especially by those who may share their goals."
Today, having abandoned any effort to work with the congressional super committee to craft a bipartisan agreement on deficit reduction, President Obama has thrown in with those who support his desire to tax oil companies and the rich, rather than appeal to independent and self-described moderate swing voters who want smaller government and lower taxes, not additional stimulus or interference in the private sector.
Rather than embracing huge new spending programs and tax increases, plus increasingly radical and potentially violent activists, the Democrats should instead build a bridge to the much more numerous independents and moderates in the center by opposing bailouts and broad-based tax increases.
Put simply, Democrats need to say they are with voters in the middle who want cooperation, conciliation and lower taxes. And they should work particularly hard to contrast their rhetoric with the extremes advocated by the Occupy Wall Street crowd. ______________________________________________
Mr. Schoen, who served as a pollster for President Bill Clinton, is author of "Hopelessly Divided: The New Crisis in American Politics and What It Means for 2012 and Beyond," forthcoming from Rowman and Littlefield.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
Gee, y'know, do you think maybe with all the other murders, rapes, violent assaults, pooping on police cars, calls for marxist revolution and the overthrow of capitalism, the recurring sanitation problems and evictions from every city, by even the most liberal of mayors, that despite all the protests of Occupy Wall Street advocates this is some exception, that this truly IS the real face of the OWS movement?
I guess that's a rhetorical question. the answer is obviously yes. This is how the absolute slime of society rewards kindness from multiple churches.
I think part of the trouble with this church thing is it's really hard to tell the legitimate OWS guy sleeping in the church from the average NYC homeless.
Police in riot gear clashed repeatedly with Occupy Oakland protesters Saturday, firing tear gas and bean bag projectiles to try to disperse the demonstrators. At least three officers and one protester were injured in what was the most violent anti-Wall Street protest Oakland has seen since November, when police forcefully dismantled an Occupy encampment, reports the Associated Press, which cites a police official saying that around 300 people were arrested.
The clashes with police flared up Saturday afternoon, when protesters tried to seize a long-closed convention center "as their movement’s new home," notes the San Francisco Chronicle.
The demonstrators disrupted traffic throughout the afternoon as their numbers grew to anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 people. The day of protest began in an “upbeat, even festive mood,” notes the Chronicle. But that quickly changed when demonstrators tried to temporarily occupy City Hall and a YMCA, reports the Oakland Tribune.
Police in riot gear battled with protesters who threw “bottles, metal pipe, rocks, spray cans, improvised explosive devices, and burning flares,” according to the Oakland Police Department.
At one point, protesters broke into City Hall, and brought out at least two American flags, which they quickly burned. A clearly frustrated Mayor Jean Quan asked the movement to “stop using Oakland as its playground.” She added that taking a look at how things unfolded Saturday, “it’s almost like they are begging for attention and hoping that the police will make an error.” Although Quan had previously criticized the police for its heavy-handed tactics, “she seemed to have changed her tune” Saturday, writes the AP.
Meanwhile, the National Park Service said Friday that Occupy protesters would be barred from camping in two parks they have been living in since October in Washington, D.C. “That order, which takes effect Monday, was seen as a blow to one of the highest-profile chapters of the movement,” reports Reuters.
And bear in mind, this is the sympathetic far-left Slate version.
This is the best it could be sugarcoated to sound.
If the liberal media were not sympathetic participants, helping shape events they pretend to be neutrally reporting --giving these people a false media-scripted voice that is far more lucid and articulate than any actual participants in OWS-- these protests would have died the death they deserve in the first few weeks.
All the eloquent voices of OWS are journalists, who front to be neutrally "reporting" on OWS, when they are in fact biased participants in what they allege to be neutrally reporting.
Whether with the New York Times, Huffington Post, NPR, Daily Kos or whatever, they are reporters who are deceitful in "reporting" the events they are themselves creating. And some of these reporters, as I detailed earlier, have been fired by news organizations that pretend to have any illusion of objectivity.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
Here's Ralph Nader, who has a new book out and is promoting it in this rambling book appearance in Washington DC, that I saw recently on C-SPAN. In a long, rambling and endlessly repeating speech, with question-and answer after.
Nader appears to be drinking the OWS Kool-Aid, and completely ignores that OWS, while ostensibly opposing corporatism, actually is the left side of corporatism, in the form of Unions, MoveOn, CodePink, and supporting of corporate welfare that occurs through Obama's "green technology" to corporations like GE and Solyndra.
I voted for Nader in 2000. I would never do so again. He reveals himself here both deluded and partisan, in what he willfuly ignores about OWS and the left.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
(SF Chronicle) — Protesters arrested during an Occupy Oakland rally Saturday said they were abused by police, subjected to illegal mass arrests and suffered a litany of human rights violations while held at two county jails – which only strengthened their commitment.
Organizers held a news conference outside Oakland City Hall on Wednesday to denounce police and restate their goal to move into a vacant building. Members called for another demonstration Saturday night, the latest in what Occupy activists have dubbed “F- the police” rallies, as well as a march to a courthouse Monday.
“Even the people who suffered the most traumatizing experiences are back out here,” said Caitlin Manning, an Occupy Oakland member. “Santa Rita (county jail) spawns rebels. People who go through that don’t come out broken; they come out strengthened.”
Earlier Wednesday, Police Chief Howard Jordan said he had assigned a team of investigators to look into Occupy protesters’ allegations of police abuse.
“We take allegations of abuse seriously,” he said. “Obviously, this is a very volatile situation that needs to be addressed immediately. We are not shying away from these allegations.”
These jerks provoked cops, and are now crying that any level of controlled force was used to reign them in and arrest them, after protestors burned flags, smashed windows and vandalized property, including a historic building, for no discernable reason.
Even OWS apologists are distancing themselves from these people, calling them a "radical fringe" non-representative of OWS as a whole.
And I'm sure the video cops themselves took of these arrests will vindicate them of any allegations.
Occupy Oakland is aptly named. When forces occupy a city, they know that occupied turf is not their home. They can maraud, loot, vandalize, abuse the locals, and then leave. They can treat other people's property as their own.
The occupiers don't have to clean up after themselves. They don't have to worry about paying for the workers who clean up after them, either.
Occupiers don't have to exert self-control. They can freely act upon their rage, while defenders of occupied territory must concentrate on protecting what others want to harm.
Occupiers do not have to fear that they will be punished for the damage they have inflicted on the city of Oakland. About the worst that most occupiers might fear is that if they break the law, they will be arrested, held and released. Most won't even have to make bail.
Occupy Oakland protesters broke in to City Hall on Saturday, sprayed graffiti, toppled a historical model of City Hall and children's artwork, stole and then burned an American flag, and otherwise trashed the people's building. Police arrested some 400 people. Mayor Jean Quan likened the activists' behavior to "a tantrum" as she complained Occupy activists have been treating the city "like a playground."
Except that children treat their playgrounds better. And children don't organize their tantrums. But the playground analogy works when you look at what Occupy posts on the Internet: "The march and the pigs played a game of cat and rat, we, the rats with our tiny sharp teeth bared, they, the dumb slow cats with their fancy technology and weaponry."
Oakland cannot afford to police and clean up after Occupy activists. City Hall already has had to eliminate jobs to shave $28 million from a $388 million budget. Quan estimates that since tents first went up in Frank Ogawa Plaza in October, the Occupy tab has exceeded $5 million.
It defies all logic that activists, who see themselves as champions of fairness and advocates for the poor, have chosen to become a fiscal drain on the financially strapped city.
Clearly, the protesters didn't choose Oakland because it is a financial hub or because its downtown is rich and powerful. They chose Oakland because Oakland doesn't fight back.
Quan finally ordered police to remove the illegal Occupy encampment in Frank Ogawa Plaza last fall. When a protester ended up in the hospital, Quan took so much heat that she invited the tents back.
Later, she changed her mind again. Since then, when protesters intermittently have gotten out of control, the police have arrested them for remaining at the scene of a riot or wearing a mask to avoid identification -- and sometimes, rarely, for battery or assault. Then what? We don't know.
When I called Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley's office to find out how many Occupy Oakland arrestees have been prosecuted, a spokeswoman told me the DA does not keep track of Occupy cases as a group.
Throwing objects at cops, occupying city space, blocking people on their way to work or vandalizing city property -- these might as well be minor crimes in the Bay Area.
I know from covering protests gone bad in San Francisco that police frequently complain that prosecutors do not take activist arrests to court. Prosecutors complain that police fail to supply them with the evidence they need to win a conviction.
Occupy Oakland has been choking City Hall and draining its coffers for months. Are there any consequences? It seems, pun intended, there is no there there.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
BTW, just found out he's a reservist in the USMC. Didn't expect that.
"Batman is only meaningful as an answer to a world which in its basics is chaotic and in the hands of the wrong people, where no justice can be found. I think it's very suitable to our perception of the world's condition today... Batman embodies the will to resist evil" -Frank Miller
"Conan, what's the meaning of life?" "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women!" -Conan the Barbarian
"Well, yeah." -Jason E. Perkins
"If I had a dime for every time Pariah was right about something I'd owe twenty cents." -Ultimate Jaburg53
"Fair enough. I defer to your expertise." -Prometheus
He's not a reservist anymore. He was back in the late 70's/early 80's before he got fat and went into comedy.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
Here's Ralph Nader, who has a new book out and is promoting it in this rambling book appearance in Washington DC, that I saw recently on C-SPAN. In a long, rambling and endlessly repeating speech, with question-and answer after.
Nader appears to be drinking the OWS Kool-Aid, and completely ignores that OWS, while ostensibly opposing corporatism, actually is the left side of corporatism, in the form of Unions, MoveOn, CodePink, and supporting of corporate welfare that occurs through Obama's "green technology" to corporations like GE and Solyndra.
I voted for Nader in 2000. I would never do so again. He reveals himself here both deluded and partisan, in what he willfuly ignores about OWS and the left.
I don't know if Nader is veering away from the Occupy Wall Street crowd at all. But here's a more concise offer of his proposed solutions to revitalize the economy and stagnant wages. From 4 nights ago on O'Reilly's program:
Nader proposes: 1) Raise the minimum wage, and the increased wage will be spent by workers and stiumulate the economy. 2) Get rid of corporate tax shelters and corporate subsidies that they don't need. 3) Stop all our overseas wars and bring the money spent on them home to the U.S. 4) Eliminate "job destroying, sovereignty-shredding free trade" that lowers U.S. wages, takes capital and jobs out of the U.S., and empowers brutal dictatorships. 5) Make corporations pay fair taxes like workers do (vs. the above listed tax shelters and subsidies). 6) Break up the "too big to fail" investment banks that risk destroying our entire economy.
O'Reilly gives good counterpoint of what raising the minimum wage would logically do (i.e., raise prices and eliminate 500,000 jobs), and of what Nader's other proposed reforms would do. Nader said his projections, that raising the minimum wage would stimulate the economy and create jobs, were "based on research". But he didn't cite any stats or sources to support that assertion. I agree about splitting up and diminishing the size of "too big to fail" investment banks, and eliminating corporate subsidies.
I like Nader, and would like to believe he is offering real alternative solutions. But he increasingly seems ideologically dug in, and resistant to the fair criticisms offered about what the things he proposes would logically do. How corporations would not just tolerate these changes inside the U.S., but would instead legally dodge these reforms, pass on the added cost to consumers, and ultimately move to nations with lower corporate tax rates.
It's easy to offer platitudes about how things "should" be, and harder to come up with pragmatic solutions that companies, workers, and governments, will adhere to.
On the program Wall Street Journal Report today, Daniel Henninger said McDonalds (after the implementation of raised minimum wage laws) has seen a 30% decline in revenue, and a 6% decline in profits in the last quarter. And that McDonalds, along with other lower-wage industries with a small profit margin, will simply go more toward automation.
As Henninger phrases it, "The only ones who will see a raise from an increased minimum wage are automated robots."
