MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Occupy Memphis member Mallory Pope had just finished telling a group of about 75 tea party followers Thursday night that politicians should not allow themselves to be influenced by lobbyists and unions when she received an unexpected invitation.
"It sounds to me that y'all ought to be joining us," said Jerry Rains, a 64-year-old computer programmer and tea party member. "You have a lot of the same goals we have, which is to take our country back."
Pope and fellow Occupy Memphis protester Tristan Tran had a lively, sometimes strained and confrontational, but mostly civil discussion with members of the Mid-South Tea Party at a municipal meeting hall outside Memphis.
The factions saw eye-to-eye on some issues and clashed on others. And, while the young speakers didn't change many minds, they did earn praise from the tea party members for their passion, honesty and courage.
THIS.
You want change? You want to see actual change?
Then you have to stop doing things that don't work -- by your own experience -- and embrace those that do work, whether you agree with every single point on the table or not.
I will never find "consensus" with my views if I insist that every point of what I would use as a platform were I to run for office be adhered to in order to participate. Were that to be my standard there is only one way I'd find common ground, and that is if I was to be crowned a dictator!
That's not America folks, and God willing, it never will be.
Face it folks: The Tea Party was maligned as a bunch of redneck racist cross-burning KKK members by the hard-left political establishment. I called that sort of crap what it is at the time: Bigotry and over the line.
So what is when the hard-right maligns Occupy as a bunch of dope-smoking communists and marxists? The exact same thing: Bigotry and far over the line.
Are there "dope-smoking hippies" in Occupy? I'm sure there are. I'm also sure there are redneck racists within the Tea Party. But the presence of those who would try to exploit something for their own puerile purpose does not make the movement, nor does it constitute endorsement by that movement.
Here's reality folks: The Tea Party, if we are talking about what founded the Tea Party -- the Santelli Scream if you will, of if you prefer my original Tea Bag Ticker, which is this singular message, is where we need to find that common ground and focus:
So long as we have an inauguration drawing this sort of crowd and not a protest about our government blowing $700 billion of our dollars so that The Pigmen of Wall Street can continue to rob our nation blind, then saddle us with the bill when their bets go bad, we will see no solution.
I cannot take credit for the idea floated on the forum, but I do like it.
It is time for We The People to send a strong message to Washington DC - no more. No more loading our children and grandchildren with debt. No more bailing out speculators and bankers who made bets they knew were unsafe at the time. No more bailing out people who came to Congress to demand the removal of leverage limits, got what they asked for, then blew themselves up with the very leverage they demanded to be able to use.
No more.
Therefore, on February 1st, which is more than enough time for Barack Obama to be seated in his chair in the West Wing, I am recommending an act of peaceful, lawful and yet unmistakable protest.
That is, to mail President Obama one teabag. Nothing dangerous, nothing illegal - just one teabag.
Send one to your Congressman and one to each Senator.
Later, when the weather is a bit warmer and fountains are running water (rather than frozen!) this sort of protest can be repeated with LOOSE tea in select cities.
For the Tea Party, take the "guns, gays and God" thing and shelve it folks.
From the left, take the "I want my mathematically-impossible freebie" and shelve it folks.
Here's the punch line, in case you missed it in the Huffington Post article:
"The Occupy movement has remained adamant about not drafting a list of demands because terrorists make demands, and we're not terrorists," said Pope, a graphic design student. "We shouldn't have to demand a democratic process."
Remember the shopworn criticism from The Right, and from the mainstream media? "There's no list of demands." Well it's true that there's no list of demands, because there shouldn't have to be demands. Demands are made by terrorists; the rule of law is followed in a representative republic, and does not need to be stated as a demand as it is implied in any lawful, rational, rights-based society and government.
Wake up and smell the coffee damnit. The Attorney General of Nevada just issued a 600+ count indictment against criminal behavior in bank-sponsored foreclosure actions. Hundreds of counts of felony misconduct are alleged. That leaves just 99,400 more that have yet to be charged nationally, does it not?
The tide is turning.
We need a banking system but we do not need banks that run roughshod over the people with criminal behavior that no legitimate society and government should ever tolerate.
The tide is turning.
Not a damn thing has changed in this regard since 2007; the total notional value of derivatives has increased since that time and what's worse is that they're using your bank deposits as collateral to back them! They have refused to put them on an exchange and back every dollar of underwater position with one dollar of capital from an actual shareholder or bondholder because if they were forced to do this they would not have the money to post the margin and they know it, which means that the "contracts" are no contract at all since it is impossible for them to perform.
This is the outright scheme and scam that is being run against you. Bernanke is coddling these jackasses because he, along with Congress, are locked in a deadly embrace; they both know the above is true and they also both know that the economy does not have actual demand sufficient to absorb the supply -- that is, a good part of the current so-called "GDP" is false just as it has been since 1980.
This must stop!
It is not a matter of politics. It is a matter of arithmetic.
The tide is turning and we are about to be buried under a 500' wall of water.
Europe is on the verge of economic collapse as a direct consequence of their refusal to face reality for the same 30 years. We are next in line if we do not both ringfence our financial system and cut the crap in this country.
There is no way around the economic contraction that we must accept in order to restore balance to our economy. There no way around the deflation of asset prices and the general economy. There is no way to pay that which has been promised to many -- the promises were intentionally fraudulent and the government agencies, representatives, senators, governors and presidents who made them knew it at the time.
This does not mean we cannot help people. It does not mean we cannot fix our economic system. It does not mean we cannot provide the assistance we are able and reform our economic, tax, medical, immigration and government structures to return competitiveness to American manufacturing and ultimately drive economic prosperity. We can do all of those things, but not in the form and fashion we've claimed to do them up until this point.
But we cannot continue with Ponzi Finance and we must unite as a people around the singular goal of putting an immediate stop to it and jailing every one of the bastards that has promoted and continued these policies to the fullest reach and extent of the law.
The tide is turning and the available time to both lay in the sandbags and get to higher ground is running out.
