[Rantman] Like a bug on the windshield...

[rPauli]

First, there are some great images at http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/

A great rant should be spiced with rage, containing both truth and 
insanity.   James Howard Kinstler now rants on the Wall Street Occupation:

http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/10/here-come-the-owsers.html


      Here Come the OWSers!

By James Howard Kunstler
on October 3, 2011 8:24 AM

      All last week across the media landscape, in pod, blog, 
flat-screen, and crunkly old newsprint columns, fatuous professional 
observers complained that the Occupy Wall Street marchers "have no clear 
agenda" or "can't articulate their positions." What impertinent 
horseshit. I saw a statement on one OWSer's sign that said it all:

$70,000 College Debt
$12,000 Medical Bills
I'm 22
Where's My Bailout?

      What part of that is unclear to interlocutors of what we called 
"the establishment" back in the day? That would be the day of the 
Vietnam War and the Aquarian Upsurge. One difference being that in 1968 
we at least had some solidarity in the older generation coming from 
figures of gravity like Senators Robert Kennedy (bumped off), Eugene 
McCarthy, J. William Fullbright, George McGovern, Rev Martin Luther King 
(bumped off), and even one US Attorney General, Ramsey Clark. Today, the 
entire "establishment" is a clueless, hopeless blob of self-interested, 
craven opportunism. Even the arty fringe - the people who pretend to be 
an /avant-garde/ - are nothing but narcissistic self-branding operations 
masquerading as culture leaders.
      The worst offender this past week was the prating empty vessel 
Nicholas Kristoff at /The New York Times/ who affected to offer the 
OWSers his own tidy agenda of nit-picky, arcane tax reforms (e.g "Close 
the 'carried interest' and 'founders' stock' loopholes") and limp-dick 
banking regulations (e.g. "[move] ahead with Basel III capital 
requirements"). David Plotz and his Gen X sidekicks at the Slate 
Political Podcast were equally mystified. I have some heartier 
suggestions: bring the full weight of the RICO act and the federal 
anti-fraud statutes down on Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, Brian 
Moynihan, Angelo Mozilo, and a host of other impudent schmekels still at 
large in their world of Escalade limos and Gulfstream vistas. Or, if 
that's just too difficult, how about a handy lamppost and about 40 feet 
of stout nylon cord?
      It is cosmically ironic, of course, that the same generation of 
Boomer-hippies that ran in the streets and marched through the maze of 
service roads around the Pentagon has become a new "establishment" more 
obtuse, feckless, greedy and mendacious than the one they battled with 
over 40 years ago. I guess they just don't see that their time has come 
to get right with reality - or get shoved aside and trampled. The 
essence of the OWSer's argument is pretty simple: they've got a raw 
deal; somebody dealt them a bad hand; someone ran their society into a 
ditch and not a goddammed one of the older generation will set in motion 
the machinery to correct the situation, or even acknowledge it.
      At the apex of this new establishment is the Baby Boomer's moral 
trophy president: Barack Obama, whose election made the Boomers feel 
good about themselves - while they preceded to loot the national 
treasury's accumulated capital, and then reach forward a few generations 
to rob their legacy, too. I haven't heard Nicholas Kristoff (or any of 
his colleagues at /The New York Times/) complain about Mr. Obama's 
stupendous inattention to the crimes of Wall Street, or to the 
dereliction of his proconsuls in the SEC and the Department of Justice. 
I'd at least send somebody to hold a mirror under Eric Holder's nostrils 
to see if he is actually alive.
      For my money, the OWSers have plenty to yell about. Apart from the 
crimes and turpitudes of their elders, the younger generation hasn't 
even been prepared for the massive change in reality that these times 
are heaving them into. If it was me out there, I'd conclude that I'd 
better make up the future on my own, with no help from my parent's 
generation. In fact, that future is rushing toward all of us so cold, 
hard, and fresh even in this autumn season that it might splatter the 
banking establishment - and the global economy - like a bug on a 
windshield. The OWSers have a front row seat down there in lower 
Manhattan. The financial gangrene (thank you Zero Hedge) is not just 
seeping anymore, it's blowing through the arteries of the money 
underworld like fracking fluid. The damage can't be contained. Let the 
Arabs have spring. The OWSers of America own the fall. Rock on OWSers 
and don't let the "pigs" (as we used to call them) get you down.
_____________________________

Comments appear on his web site 
http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/10/here-come-the-owsers.html

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