Rubberneckers

This whole Occupy movement is getting to be like that crazy, hippie drum circle down the street, pointless and aimless to be sure, largely unlistenable and destined to never get any better. I get that large groups of a multigenerational swath of America are justifiably unhappy. I know who they are pissed at. I agree with much of their anger and reasoning.

But a large amorphous blob of people without a clear unifying message, coherent set of demands, let alone potential solution or roadmap, sounds suspiciously like the Tea Party and in my opinion doomed. Every Tom, Dick and Mary anarchist wannabee can now hook themselves to the occupy bandwagon. Every act of violence, rape or craziness will be owned by the whole group. Kill the whole thing now. It can only get a whole lot worse and you will find yourselves continually apologizing for the few bad apples. Which the opposition will blame you for. Plus you are becoming a big nuisance and financial drain in terms of fire, police, cleanup, etc.  Company and fish, things are starting to stink.

The point has been made.

Several of my friends have had their business absolutely ruined due to their proximity to an occupy group. Don't hurt the small businessman right now, we are on the ropes already.

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One of my cohorts read my latin america/germany post the other day and mentioned that Volkswagon located their manufacturing facility in Puebla, the town with the largest native german population concentration in Mexico. I had never considered the tremendous german influence on the latin population until very recently. Damn you for that Banda music!

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Heard an interesting thing on NPR this morning about the"Bystander Effect." This is a term coined after the Kitty Genovese murder to describe why bystanders are oftentimes incapable of reacting when they see a violent or sordid crime being committed. Genovese, 28 years old, was stabbed to death on March 13, 1964 in New York before a reported 38 eyewitnesses who did nothing (a number that has been factuall disputed as excessive.)

People are piling on the Penn St. assistant coach for not going to the cops, an unfair target if you ask me, he has received multiple death threats. According to Wiki during the Bystander Effect "the probability of help has in the past been thought to be inversely related to the number of bystanders; in other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help. The mere presence of other bystanders greatly decreases intervention. This happens because as the number of bystanders increases, any given bystander is less likely to interpret the incident as a problem, and less likely to assume responsibility for taking action."

According to the NPR spot, which I will try to find and link to, people say that they would always help in these situations and then don't. Researchers hired actors to create simulated violent scenes and the same people who pledged to help ended up doing nothing as well.

I was in a situation once in an airport, when I was young and strong and at the top of my martial arts game when I saw a man verbally abusing and pushing his wife around and I did nothing. I had remembered something I had heard or read about the danger of involving yourself in a domestic squabble, the possibility of being attacked by both parties. I felt bad for my lack of action for some time. Should have got a cop.

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President Obama is going into campaign phase with great vigor, woe that he doesn't approach his job with the same gleam in his eye. We thought we were electing a man with radical new ideas, we instead received an accommodator who wants to show everybody his willingness to meet his enemies halfway.

I think that the President is a very cynical man. He knows that because of Roe v. Wade I will be forced to hold my nose and vote for him. It's all about the Supreme Court, baby. But talk about a disappointment. So eager to take on the GOP, Romney may be right when he complains about Obama's  early election ranting and attacks. Stop apologizing for your ineptitude and stop campaigning and try leading this country.

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Another arch conservative, Fred Barnes at the Weekly Standard, has an interesting take on the President today Obama ♥ the Big Guys. Strange when the conservatives go after Wall Street.

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Was talking at dinner the other night about strange bedfellows and role reversals. My dinner companions were talking about how the Republican Party was the original party touting birth control, during the eugenics movement popular in the early twentieth century. Now they are the religious moralists. Somewhere along the line there was a shift.

Republicans like to tell you that they were the original emancipators and they are also largely correct. Lincoln and in the sixties, segregation was the battle cry for lots of southern democrats like Russell and Wallace. Need a scorecard to figure the whole thing out sometimes.

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Rich sends along a conservative blog, Gates of Vienna that gets it right occasionally and that you might want to peruse.

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Bravo to John McCain for not selling out. He bucked his GOP candidate cronies and went after them for their stance on waterboarding. I may rarely agree with the man but he is true to his convictions.

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Ron Paul called Elizabeth Warren a socialist the other day. When queried, he said that she supports public education. Like every other semi-rational candidate, Ron. I guess they are all commies, huh?

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My mom called today. I saw her on the phone but it was sort of an inconvenient time to talk to her. In another minute I heard the electronic sound announcing her voice mail pinging on the server. I looked at the google voice translation and it transliterated, "Bob, I have to talk to you." Shit, maybe it was serious, the family? So, I called her back.

"What's up, Mom?"

"You know, you are an incredible writer."

I was shocked and highly complimented. My mother is a writer and an ex high powered New York editor. She gave me a few more accolades that I am too embarrassed to divulge. She told me that she always loved my photography but thought me a better writer. She was a little bugged when I called her a hypochondriac.

So now my mother is reading the blog. Shit.