Free Republic

For the second straight year, members of the UW-Madison Teaching Assistants' Association will express their love for the university on Valentine's Day. The teachers' union plans to hold an "I ♥ UW" rally, marching from the Memorial Union to the state Capitol at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday. Last year's rally by the same name touched off a series of historic protests in opposition to Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to curb the power of public employee unions. In August, the T.A.A. chose not to seek state certification under the new law, which curtails collective bargaining for most public workers. The T.A.A. is...

A small group of people in Oakland, California may have taken the first steps against Occupy that has the potential to spread across the United States during the coming months.

The protests come in advance of Russia’s March 4 presidential elections. Putin served two terms as president before term limits forced him from office in 2008. Putin announced in September he would run for a third non-consecutive presidential term as allowed by the Russian constitution. Dmitry Medvedev, whom Putin picked to succeed him as president in 2008, is stepping aside to allow Putin to return to power. Reports have estimated the Moscow turnout at 50,000 to 120,000 people. Similar Anti-Putin protests erupted in December with demonstrators alleging election fraud by Putin’s United Russia party, which managed to hold onto a...

Arrests in Oakland protests rise to more than 400By Emmett Berg Sun Jan 29, 2012 4:09pm EST OAKLAND, Calif (Reuters) - More than 400 anti-Wall Street protesters were arrested in Oakland during a night of skirmishes in which police fired tear gas and bean bag projectiles, the city said on Sunday, marking one of the biggest mass arrests since nationwide economic protests began last year. Earlier on Sunday, authorities had said that the arrest figure was between 200 and 300. But the Oakland emergency operations center said in a statement that revised that up to more than 400, and said...

Madison - The Madison School District has released additional sick notes given to Capitol protesters last year that show two more doctors provided the excuses the district deemed to be fraudulent. Fifteen doctors who signed the notes have not faced sanctions from the state Medical Examining Board. The notes were written after hundreds of teachers called in sick last February, closing schools for four days. School district officials required the absent employees to provide notes documenting a doctor visit. The district docked pay from employees who didn't have a legitimate excuse. The protests erupted after Gov. Scott Walker proposed cutting...

Putin ejects Kremlin "puppet master" after protestsBy Guy Faulconbridge | Reuters – 1 hr 39 mins ago MOSCOW (Reuters) - The architect of Vladimir Putin's tightly controlled political system became one of its most senior victims on Tuesday when he was shunted out of the Kremlin in the wake of the biggest opposition protests of Putin's 12-year rule. The sacrifice of Vladislav Surkov, branded the Kremlin's 'puppet master' by enemies and friends alike, is also a rare admission of failure for Russia's 'alpha dog' leader: Surkov's system was Putin's system. With irony worthy of Surkov's cynical novels, the Kremlin's 47-year-old...

<p>Prime Minister Vladimir Putin blasted U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday for encouraging and supporting the election protesters and warned of a wider Russian crackdown on unrest.</p> <p>By describing Russia's parliamentary election as rigged, Putin said Clinton "gave a signal" to his opponents.</p>

Kristi Lacroix took a political stand. Now she said she’s paying an awful price. The teacher at Lakeview Technology Academy, a choice school in Kenosha, appears in a campaign ad praising Gov. Scott Walker and his controversial reforms, not the least of which was Act 10, which curbed collective bargaining for teachers and many public employees in Wisconsin. In the ad, Lacroix says she is “not big on recalls,” and the Democratic Party’s push to recall Walker “feels a little like sour grapes — It’s you know, ‘We didn’t get our way and so we want to change the outcome.'”...

Two months after it began, the movement is giving every sign of running out of steam. Recent protests have been resounding flops, public support is slipping, and even Democrats are reluctant to embrace the movement. Some recent Occupy failures:...

Occupy protests can't stop S.F. shoppersKevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer San Francisco Chronicle November 26, 2011 04:00 AM **SNIP** Two dozen Occupy protesters began marching around downtown at sundown, chanting protest slogans. They'd hoped to make their anti-consumption point at the annual Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Union Square, but the crowd was so massive they couldn't get near. The marchers then blocked the intersection of Market and Fourth streets for 15 minutes beginning at 7 p.m., but left when police arrived. "Don't use credit cards to show love this holiday," said Occupier Michael Byrnes, 31. Josh Delacruz shook his head...

Leef declares that that she is against violence but that people are becoming increasingly angry, hopeless. Demonstrations will soon resume and could become more "extreme" than past protests, social protest organizer Daphni Leef said Thursday morning in an interview with Army Radio. "I will always be against violence, but if this government does not pull itself together and work for its citizens, people will understand that they have nothing to lose," explained Leef. "The government is not even trying to show results or real changes... During the last two weeks we have begun feeling angry and insulted because we are...

As cities across the nation clean up after the Occupy Wall Street peeps they are coming across all sorts of rubbish and filth. Needles, human feces, garbage, and now disease have all been found at the park where the occupies have been encamped. Now tomorrow the are threatening violence? I am more concerned with them associating with the public. Time to bring back leper colonies.

Madison - Seven doctors received a reprimand from a state board Wednesday for how they kept medical records after issuing controversial sick notes to demonstrators during the protests against Gov. Scott Walker's union bargaining law. "The board action today holds these physicians accountable for their very public actions," said a statement from Sujatha Kailas, a physician and chairman of the Medical Examining Boar Another two doctors received administrative warnings, a lesser form of discipline, according to the board. Twelve doctors faced scrutiny from the department about their activities at the Capitol, said John Murray, the No. 3 official at the...

While I can't imagine why, some New York City residents are just sick and tired of the Wall Street Occupiers -- and would prefer they pack up their Zuccotti Park tent city and head on home, wherever home might be. NBC New York reports: Downtown residents and business owners are organizing a protest of the protest after two months of Lower Manhattan being occupied by the Wall Street demonstration.Angry over all-day drumming, people urinating and defecating on the streets and verbal attacks from protesters, organizers say they will rally at City Hall Monday to send officials a message. …Businesses have...

Way back in 1968, after the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Mayor Daley declared his forces were there to "preserve disorder." I believe that was one of Hizzoner's famous malapropisms. Forty-three years later Jean Quan, mayor of Oakland, and the Oakland City Council have made "preserving disorder" the official municipal policy. Last Wednesday, the "Occupy Oakland" occupiers rampaged through the city, shutting down the nation's fifth-busiest port, forcing stores to close, terrorizing those residents foolish enough to commit the reactionary crime of "shopping," destroying ATMs, spraying the Christ the Light Cathedral with the insightful observation "F**k", etc. And...

<p>These videos are for entertainment but illustrate what the occupy movement and black bloc anarchists are about. Anarchy and a meltdown of our system.</p>

As radical progressives continue to strengthen their grip on the #OccupyWallStreet mob, they’ve looked to activists of yesteryear to glean some advice and guidance. The #OccupyChicago crowd has unsurprisingly turned to domestic terrorist-turned-university professor Bill Ayers. Ayers appeared at a recent “teach in� at #OccupyChicago and regaled his audience with stories of meeting with the Vietnamese to tut-tut about his “American revolution.� He theorized whether or not the police – you know, the pigs that protesters are attacking from coast-to-coast – are indeed a part of the 99%. They’re not if they attack us, he mused. But then, in typical...

"They're not doing anything right," Stein says in a way that somehow combines flat affect and high impact. "They don't accomplish anything specifically useful." So what would Ben Stein do? He'd do what he's done in the past. Stein used to write 7,000 word in-depth exposes on corporate fraud. "They were a lot of work but they eventually got some people prosecuted," Stein says. "They got some money recovered for stockholders." Stein offers that if the OWS crowd wants to do something helpful they should do the research necessary to direct and inform their discontent. Beyond method and means, Stein...

Another 19 participants in the Occupy Sacramento movement made their first court appearance today on charges that they violated late-night curfews at Cesar Chavez Park. snip Cres Vellucci, vice chair of the local American Civil Liberties Union board and a spokesman for the protesters in Sacramento Superior Court today, said "everyone's going to plead not guilty" and ask for a jury trial.

Hello Career Preparation: We are beginning the next unit. The students will research positive interpersonal skills, goal setting, and effective leadership skills. Tomorrow the students will be in the computer lab taking a shortened version of the Meyer Briggs personality test. At the conclusion, they will be given a list of careers that support their responses. Next week we will begin the unit on analyzing health and wellness practices that influence job performance. The next DECA meeting is Nov. 10. Let me know if you have any questions.

Is there a lesson to be learned here? The kitchen staff volunteering to feed the Zuccotti Park protestors have been providing – for free – top-quality meals to OWS protestors and outsiders who are not officially part of the unofficial movement. Kitchen staff no like. My guess is they wouldn’t be happy if I stopped by for a free lunch of organic chicken, vegetables and sheep’s-milk-cheese salad either. From the New York Post. The Occupy Wall Street volunteer kitchen staff launched a “counter” revolution yesterday — because they’re angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for “professional homeless” people...

Far-left social justice teachers never miss an opportunity to push their agenda in the classroom. As you’ll see in my upcoming book, “Indoctrination: How ‘Useful Idiots’ Are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalism,” leftist teachers use moments like the #OccupyWallStreet protests around the country to push their agenda of shifting America leftward away from a free market system. One such teacher, Bob Peterson, who moonlights as the president of the Milwaukee teachers union, fawned all over a music video produced with footage from the various protests. He called it “a great video rich with teaching possibilities.” In one part,...

Among those closely watching the Occupy Wall Street protests: the Smithsonian. The National Museum of American History has dispatched representatives to collect materials, such as protest signs, from the demonstrations. It is in pursuit of the museum's mission to "document the spirit of American democracy and the American political process, including how people express their points of view through political rallies, demonstrations and protests," the institution said in a statement.

NEW YORK CITY (2011-10-26 23:22:00 ET): Late local news is reporting spontaneous, and deliberate attempts to snarl traffic in Lower Manhattan by left-wing radicals. Reports are it is in response to the Oakland and San Francisco peace officers putting down the insurrection in their respective cities.

NEW YORK (AP) — Fed up with petty crime, the all-night racket of beating drums, the smell of human waste and the sight of trampled flowers and grass, police and neighbors are losing patience with some of the anti-Wall Street protests around the U.S. In Oakland, Calif., police in riot gear fired tear gas and bean bags before daybreak Tuesday to disperse about 170 protesters who had been camping in front of City Hall for the past two weeks, and 75 people were arrested. The mayor of Providence, R.I., is threatening to go to court within days to evict demonstrators...

President Obama will again be in San Francisco Tuesday — but only to take money from the “fat cats” that he said that he said waaaay back in 2009 that he didn’t run for president to protect. No, he won’t be spending any time with the “99 percent.” Not unless they cut him a $7,500 check for lunch. .. But Obama will be greeted by a rainbow of people he’s disappointed — left, right and center during his $7,500-a-plate noon fundraiser right here at the W Hotel in San Francisco. .. We know that Tea Partiers (protesting Obama’s economic policy)...

Occupy Dallas protesters infiltrated an Oak Cliff Wal-Mart this evening -- a demonstration that ended when as many as a dozen Dallas police cars showed up to hustle them out. "They went in slow, four at a time," said Richard Beebe, who watched the operation unfold as he sat outside the store, off Cockrell Hill Road at Interstate 30, collecting donations for homeless veterans. A few of the protesters dropped money into his box, Beebe said, before "they started raising hell." I got there after the protestors had been dispersed. And police and Wal-Mart managers wouldn't comment. But back at...

We have terrible weather here in NY today. Raining cats and dogs and windy to boot. Just wondering how the OWS hippies,commies, socialists are making out today. Anyone have a live link to NYC?

Best statement of the night - must see video :-) ___________ Herman Cain stands by his "if you don't have a job, blame yourself" line while talking about the "Occupy" movement. "They might be frustrated with Wall Street and the bankers, but they're directing their anger at the wrong place. Wall Street didn't put in failed economic policies. Wall Street didn't spend a trillion dollars that didn't do any good. Wall Street isn't going around the country trying to sell another $450 billions. They ought to be over in front of the White House taking out their frustration," Cain said...

Mike Bloomberg's girlfriend Diana Taylor happens to sit on the board of directors of Brookfield Office Properties, the company that owns Zuccotti Park. This has raised some eyebrows, given Brookfield's tense relationship with the protesters occupying its property and the way the mayor and the company have gone back and forth over their eviction. But Bloomberg says he and Taylor don't talk about Brookfield. More specifically, he told the AP that "I can tell you that pillow talk in our house is not about Occupy Wall Street or Brookfield Properties." Pillow talk! Noooo. The pillow talk of the 70-year-old Bloomberg...

The revolution will be corporate-sponsored! That’s according to Harrison Schultz, an Occupy Wall Street organizer who also happens to be an “business intelligence analyst” at a publicly traded company. On a limited-access email list shared by Occupy protesters, Schultz wrote of a ”Corporate Funded Revolution,” calling it “a revolutionary plan.” Despite protesters’ occupation of a New York City park and their stated goal of ending corporate influence — particularly of Wall Street — in government, e-mails emerged Monday showing Schultz and other anti-corporate organizers were a little more corporate than they like to let on.

A public relations firm closely partnered with the George Soros-funded Tides Foundation represented last week's anti-Wall Street march past millionaires' homes in New York, WND has learned. Fenton Communications has been behind the public relations strategy of a who's who of far-left causes, organizations and activists, from Soros himself to Health Care for America Now to crafting strategies for MoveOn.org and a litany of anti-war groups. Fenton, which works closely with Tides, first made its name representing communist dictatorships in the 1980s. Fenton's founder is tied to President Obama and to a slew of Saul Alinsky-style community organizing groups directly...

With demands seemingly all over the map by various occupiers of various streets and/or government centers and/or college campuses, a recurring theme has been free education, as in college education should be free. Incidentally, the drums and hula hoops have started up in Durham, N.C., home of Duke University, which was created by the generosity of a tobacco corporation. The Duke news came to me the other day from an acquaintance who informed me, "It's started, drums and hula hoops.'' I knew instantly what she meant and deduced that she watched, with, I hope, some irony, before resuming the rather...

"Well there are protestors in several major American cities using their iPads at Starbucks to make Facebook and Twitter updates about the evils of corporations and you don't know whether to laugh or cry, honestly. What we're seeing here, I think, are the self-esteem movement's chickens coming home to roost. These kids are upset because the $100,000 of debt they took on in order to get their degree in Bitterness Studies isn't paying off with a six figure job and a car and full benefits at an organic farm collective." "These people don't know what they're protesting but I do....

The Occupy Wall Street movement (OWS) has captured the imagination of the American left, including our brilliant left leaning media. To be sure, there is a real movement here. Those on the right simply dismissing these people do so at their own peril. The angst among the American people is real, and is very much similar to the forces that led to the birth of the Tea Party: distrust in government, fear of corruption because of massive federal spending, and politicians complete failure to translate the needs of the people into thoughtful policy. I am a First Amendment absolutist...unless you...

Those from Occupy Wall Street took their great shout from downtown to uptown this week, up the East Side to where some noted rich guys live, including Jamie Dimon, who runs JPMorgan Chase. When it was over, here was a building super who gave his name as Frank and his age as 50, said he was born in Puerto Rico and raised on the West Side. He was standing around the corner from Dimon's building on Park Ave., saying he was still amazed at what he had seen and heard. "Yelling like that, you don't expect that up here," he...

Wall Street protesters need more practiceTuesday, October 11, 2011 (Updated 3:00 am) I was watching the news about the demonstration/rally/block party on Wall Street. My gosh, 700 people arrested after being “tricked” by police into going onto the Brooklyn Bridge. I felt a real rush of nostalgia from my 14-year-old socialist days. Agitprop stands for agitation and propaganda, a well-worn technique to suggest a protest group is bigger or more influential than its true size. First, you get a few people together, hoping a few more curious or like-minded people will join you. You then break a minor law and...

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street protesters scrubbed, mopped and picked up garbage at the corporate-owned park they have been occupying in an attempt to stave off a scheduled cleanup Friday that demonstrators suspect is a pretext to evict them. While moving out mattresses and camping supplies, organizers were mixed on how they would respond when police arrive at the request of Zuccotti Park owners to help remove the occupiers from the public plaza so it can be cleaned.

There has been much speculation over who is financing the disparate protest, which has spread to cities across America and lasted nearly four weeks. One name that keeps coming up is investor George Soros, who in September debuted in the top 10 list of wealthiest Americans. Conservative critics contend the movement is a Trojan horse for a secret Soros agenda. Soros and the protesters deny any connection. But Reuters did find indirect financial links between Soros and Adbusters, an anti-capitalist group in Canada which started the protests with an inventive marketing campaign aimed at sparking an Arab Spring type uprising...

I didn't “Occupy” Wall Street, though I spent enough hours working there that a sleeping bag could have come in handy. I can attest to one of the protesters' claims about Wall Street bankers: While most are good and ethical people, they are supremely money-oriented, and, like the bear that sniffed out a Payday in my trash, they'll take the path of least resistance to find theirs. However, the profit motive is not a bad impulse, and countries with economic systems that ignore it suffer worse economies. In our system, the accumulation of profits is an important metric of success,...

Magicians, that other group of professionals who make their living by fooling the public with sleight of hand and smoke and mirrors, have as their unofficial motto: mundus vult decipi, decipi decipiatur (the world wants to be deceived, so deceive it). The Occupy Wall Street gang might think about adopting it. OWS began in September as, what I call, an extended flash mob. Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English defines a flash mob as "a group of people who organize on the Internet and then quickly assemble in a public place, do something bizarre, and disperse.” The difference here is...

Looks like #OccupyWallStreet is morphing into #OccupySenate first and #OccupyCongress soon. Next up: #OccupyWhiteHouse? From a reader: "Here is a live feed to Occupy DC which has stormed the Hart Senate Office Building in D.C. – there are several dozen protestors chanting, arrests being made, and a flag that was hung upside down (sign of distress)."

Protesters marched along Route 66 for the second weekend in a row, but the Occupy New Mexico protest left the streets and entered Albuquerque banks and business on Saturday. "People decided to go in and let folks know that we're here, that we're not gonna be silent any more, and that we're gonna speak up," said marcher Tomas Garduno. The Albuquerque Police Department said protesters did more than that. "We had a small group, part of the protest, they went into some businesses, started spitting on people," said APD spokesman Patrick Ficke. "Some of the people were scared. They were...

Well, it seems the 'people of the world' are supposed to 'rise up' on the 15th of October for a world-wide 'non-violent' protest for global democracy...whatever that is. Apparently, the "Occupy (insert name here)" crowds are supposed to go along with this. This is from the homepage of the "15October" website...On October 15th people from all over the world will take to the streets and squares. From America to Asia, from Africa to Europe, people are rising up to claim their rights and demand a true democracy. Now it is time for all of us to join in a global...

On Saturday at the ANSWER Coalition’s Anti-war Socialist protest and march, we asked this protester if she thought the protest was patriotic. She claimed she didn’t think they knew why they were there, in fact, she didn’t seem to know much at all. Video at link.

Republican presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain spoke with Bob Schieffer on the place religion holds in the election, the driving force behind the "Occupy Wall Street" protests, and Mr. Cain's 9-9-9 tax code to fix America's broken economy. http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7384002n&tag=contentMain%3BcontentBody#ixzz1aIyhhu3r

Meet The 53%. Who are they? The term 53% refers to the people who are actually paying taxes for themselves and the rest of the country. The 53% is a group of responsible young people organizing across the country. However, this group is not camping out in parks around the country and demanding the entire capitalist system be destroyed. These men and women have jobs (most of them work at more than one job in order to make ends meet), but they are talking about attending the Minneapolis Occupy Wall St. protest scheduled for today – Friday, October 7th. Here’s...

This is NOT MY post I ran across it on another forum which I don't think we can link to for various reasons. However, this moderator at the forum has been doing some digging into the connections of Zuccotti Park that the protesters are using. Kudos to the poster for the investigative work! I'll copy and paste below.

A video posted on Tuesday shows a young man spewing anti-Semitic rhetoric at an observer of the Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park. The protester mocked the older Jewish man and told him to “go back to Israel.” National Review correspondent Charles Cooke explained what happened: Moments after I arrived, I saw a Jewish gentleman being berated when he criticized a protester. (Shortly after my video camera was switched off, he (inexplicably) shouted the N-word at the same man.)

Deep in the trenches of oppression and opportunity, beneath the rubble of idealism and propaganda, lies the truth. No, the truth doesn’t lie, but it is far too often manipulated, torn, and waved as the flag of special interests. Yet, where there are tears in the fabric of freedom, the thread of misconception can always be traced back to the source. America, the land of the free and home of the brave, was forged upon the pain and suffering, the ingenuity and wisdom, of cultures spanning the dawn of man. In the wake of tyrannical rulers, religious persecution, and endless...