What if we all lived happily in round, comfy tents inspired by Mongolian invaders? Think about it.

And as you contemplate, perhaps for the first time, the beauty of yurt-living, the unprecedented Occupy Wall Street Movement continues. Occupy Wall Street, or #OWS in tweet-speak, has inexplicably captured the imagination of the American populace. Or, if not the populace, at least the editorial pages of America’s newspapers, which, as far as the media is concerned, is the same thing. #OWS recently caught the eye of conventional wisdom sage Tom Friedman, who, commenting on the phenomenon, noted

“This is where the civil rights movements, this is where the women’s rights women came from. People ultimately got to get out in the street.” Unlike past eras, however, social media has been an integral component of the protests, which Friedman says just won’t cut it. “Get out of Facebook and get into someone’s face, ultimately is the only way you really get change.”

Mr. Friedman likely noticed the protesters in New York while perched atop

The World Seems Flat When Viewed from Tom Friedman's Roof

the hot, flat and crowded observation deck of his modest house outside of Baltimore.
While a Friedman or Zakaria endorsement represents major currency in many circles, it nonetheless does not put food on one’s table, so to speak. And so the #OWS movement, in the long run, will need more than editorial support to truly sustain itself. And the one thing that this movement lacks right now is a list of demands to focus the faithful.

Not having demands early on was likely a design feature, not a bug for #OWS. In Starfish and the Spider –like fashion, the decentralized, ambiguous nature of the movement allowed individuals and organization to latch onto it, and project their dissatisfaction with various aspects of our society and politics into the mix; thus, those dissatisfied with corporate greed found common cause with anti-war activists. President Obama, as a candidate, employed the same blank-screen ambiguity to propel himslef to the White House.
As time goes on, however, the movement’s opaque nature will likely prove to be an Achilles heel. Lacking concrete demands, one can foresee the final act of #OWS. Strident groups, leftist, anarchist or the like, may hijack the

Missing the Point Entirely. . .

movement for their own ends, and end it with a few cathartic acts of urban violence. Either that, or cold weather, or bad press, will do the movement in altogether. Or frivolous commercial adoption of the “Occupy Mantra” will dilute the meaningfulness of the movement. Bring your kids to #OWS, a recent promotion, seems ominous in a shark-jumping sort of way.
So that is why I suggest, “Occupy Yurts.(c)” Rather than cede six weeks of hard work and goodwill to nihilists, how about picking a modest, albeit altogether unexpected goal for the movement, and just going with it?

#OWS Endstate: #Yurt Nation!

And what is more innocuous than occupying a yurt? The Backwoods Home types, who are neither republican nor democrat exclusively, have been singing the praises of yurts for decades. Yurts are low cost, small-footprint dwellings that represent a major break from last decade’s infatuation with mcmansions and the damaging, interest-only loans that facilitated them. Wouldn’t the encouragement of choosing a new way to dwell in America be indicative of major societal change, the type which many #OWS activists purportedly seek? Yurts, mongolian-inspired tent-like structures, are largely manufactured in the United States, so mass adoption would directly benefit non-corporate small businesses, many of which advertise in progressive mags like Mother Jones and Mother Earth News. A four-season yurt costs less than $5000, so mass adoption of yurts would considerably decrease the American dependency on mortgage debt, thus reducing the power of banks substantially. And yurt-living would likely foster a pioneer spirit long considered extinct in America, and give a common point of reference for all Americans heretofore absent since the Second World War.
Sure, it seems frivoulous to pursue yurt living

Recapture the American Pioneer Spirit: Occupy a Yurt!

as a goal for a movement with such high aspirations. But inspiring people to select an alternative, sustainable lifestyle is more realistic a goal than, say, the forgiveness of all debt, an early, project mayhem-esque goal of the movement. And it is certainly more positive than causing a run on banks, also discussed as another of the movement’s proposed goals.
So get with it America, and occupy a yurt!

A Customized Laurel Nest Yurt

UPDATE: It looks like Laurel Nest Yurts, an American Yurt supplier,  is picking up on my yurt living theme. From the Laurel Yurt Website:

What can we do and what do want to do to make the world better?  I can’t make it out NYC to Wall Street join the protestors, even though I person

ally support what they are

fighting for.  I already bank with a local bank; I backed out of Bank of America years ago because I don’t like the way they treat people or conduct their business.  I try to encourage trade and enjoy energetic exchange.  I live in a yurt and am grateful that my life has not tied me up to a mortgage.  Through our company, Laurel Nest Yurts, I try to help others get out of the box and live a lighter life that is less dependent on the grid and grind.  But, still we can always do more.  .  .“The time has come of self-value. And the question is not: ‘To be or not to be;’ the statement is: ‘To be to be. I am, I am.” ~Yogi Bhajan

Remember, you heard it here first!

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

-Obama Inaugural Address, JAN 20,2009

Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat [Fox News like a legitimate news organization.]We’re not going to treat them that way.

-David Axelrod on ABC News, October 19^th 2009

The Obama administration says it is attempting to marginalize and isolate Fox News. Even if the channel’s content is biased, isn’t this a monumentally bad idea on every single level?

First of all, the administration comes off petty to all but the most fervent I’m-already-sold-on-you type supporters. The country’s in the midst of a recession, unemployment is intolerably high, the entire Washington establishment has spent the past several weeks wringing its hands over which way to go in the Afghan war, and the President’s front office ventures forth  to smack down.  .  .Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly? Come on!

Are less people going to watch the channel because of you do not like it? Fox’s ratings are up 20% this year, so that seems unlikely. Are sponsors going to bolt because of the administration’s constant chastising of the administration? Probably not. But if they do,and  if other democrats refuse to come on the showdue to pressure from the White House, is that a  good thing in this country?

If you are trying to unite the country and increase support for your policies, wouldn’t it be better to send smart people from the front office to defend your policies and decisions on the channel? Most people who watch O’Reilly do not watch Olbermann, so wouldn’t you reach more people, and perhaps change a few minds by defending your complex, life-altering policies there? And if Fox comes off as a bunch of jackasses with your people, they lose anyway. Remember Tucker Carlson and Jon Stewart? Stewart tore Carlson apart, and he wasn’t around much after that, was he?

Hopefully the administration will bury the hatchet, drop its petty grievances and send its best and brightest on Fox’s programs. You cannot unite the country on Rachel Maddow’s and George Stephanopolos’s shows alone! And It is better to use the power of persuasion to sell ideas in this country, than to encourage censorship. Leave that authoritarian message-control garbage to the Castros and Chavezes of the world, and beat your opponents out in the open, and on the air.

Update: Fox is running this clip of  its chief administration antagonist Anita Dunn extolling the virtues of Chairman Mao, responsible for totalitarian rule and millions of deaths during the cultural revolution and great leap forward, which no doubt is helping to sell more fence-sitters on the Administration’s agenda!

UPDATE:  Olbermann writes “Never Mind“.

Did you ever hear this fairly obscure song by David Bowie? It’s  called “Bring Me the Disco King”:

The song’s refrain go something like this:

Feed me no lies
I don’t know about you, I don’t know about you
Breathe through the years
I don’t know about you, I don’t know about you
Bring me the disco king
I don’t know about you, I don’t know about you
Dead or alive, bring me the disco king
Bring me the disco king, bring me the disco king
Bring me the disco king

Here’s a similar refrain, posted by Keith Olbermann in his Daily Kos diary, entitled “Send Me Everything You Can Find About Glenn Beck“

]]> http://acreofindependence.net/2009/09/07/bring-me-the-disco-king-and-glenn-beck/feed/ 0 Bob W. Bowie olbermann http://acreofindependence.net/2009/09/07/is-capitalism-really-that-bad/ http://acreofindependence.net/2009/09/07/is-capitalism-really-that-bad/#comments Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:51:02 +0000 Bob W. http://acreofindependence.com/?p=1122 Continue reading →]]> From the Freakanomics Blog:

James McWilliams, [a] historian at Texas State University-San Marcos  was driving in Austin when he passed a (presumably) homeless man holding up this sign:

McWilliams liked the sign so much that he offered the man $10 for it. “Evidently,” McWilliams says, “more than his labor was for sale.” The sign now hangs in McWilliams’s office. Perhaps capitalism doesn’t suck as much as the man thought.

Indeed. Maybe someone should discuss the benefits of capitalism with Michael Moore, too.

UPDATE: In case anyone’s forgotten about the recent events, here are these stats presented in a slightly different way:

Jones is Gone, Will Print Media Soon Follow?

Is “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones’s ouster (sudden ouster, if the New York Times is your primary news source), a harbinger of print media’s imminent (or at least sooner rather than later) demise?

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama’s adviser Van Jones has resigned amid controversy over past inflammatory statements, the White House said early Sunday. Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly “green jobs” with the White House Council on Environmental Quality was linked to efforts suggesting a government role in the 2001 terror attacks and to derogatory comments about Republicans. The resignation comes as Obama is working to regain his footing in the contentious health care debate.

For the past two week, the internet was abuzz with stories of Jones purported radicalism. A few years back, he signed a 9/11 “Truther” petition, a statement by a (kinda nutty) organization whose members believe the Bush Administration either failed to act on 9/11 or were complicit in the terror actions (along with a whole bunch of other conspiratorial cover-up stuff involving insider trading, technical explanations of implosions vs plane strike, etc; like I wrote before kinda nutty.)  During the week it also came out that Jones had been a member of  Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, a defunct organization with Marxist leanings. So, Jones was kinda nutty, and sorta commie. Finally, to top it all off, he said some things that were better left unsaid, I guess.

And now he’s gone, which everyone knows if you read the FIRST AND ONLY ARTICLE ABOUT THE VAN JONES CONTROVERSY IN THE NYT WHEN THE PAPER FINALLY PRINTS AN ARTICLE ABOUT IT TOMORROW!!! UPDATE: If you read the NYT story this a.m., you STILL don’t really, truly understand why the Administration ousted Jones. Here is the paragraph summarizing the reason for Jones’s sudden departure:

The adviser, Van Jones, a controversial and charismatic community organizer and “green jobs” advocate from the San Francisco Bay Area, signed a petition in 2004 questioning whether the Bush administration had allowed the terrorist attacks of September 2001 to provide a pretext for war in the Middle East [emph added].

A light reading of that sentence could lead the uninitiated to believe  the 9/11 Truther petition was protesting the use of 9/11 attacks to drum up support for the war in Iraq, a fairly mainstream proposition. In fact, 9/11 Truthers believe (and the wording in the petition clearly alludes to the fact) that the Bush Administration as a minimum allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen, or were complicit in them. That is well within the realm of nutty, no? Why airbrush over the fact that signing this petition is damning in and of itself? Mickey Kaus has a few theories.  At the bare minimum, the Times could have  provided deeper context by investigating whether Jones truly knew what he was signing (as Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs has done). Probably too hard to do for an outfit on a shoestring budget, though.

And the New York Times is hardly alone; none of the other major publications gave Van Jones, a man commissioned my President Obama to spend over $60 billion of taxpayers’ money on so-called green jobs, more than a cursory glance at the man’s fitness to do so. And when they finally were forced to commit words to print, the Times’s milquetoast  article chalked up the imbroglio to a victory of the relentless conservatives over the administration, too. No question of the administration’s judgement, or vetting process, or depth, or context.

Notable blogger and pundit Mickey Kaus recently wrote “I’ve been waiting for the day when a prominent pol resigns and for print MSM readers it appears to be out-of-the-blue, though everyone on the Web knows the whole story”;  we were practically there with the Van Jones deal, and once we get there,  how many people will be willing to pay for a print newspaper? Besides households with parakeets and puppies, that is.

Update: Related thoughts HERE and HERE.

Update 2: Check out Thomas Friedman and Tom Brokaw, as they discuss Van Jones’s firing and spew about the dangers of the internets. I especially love Brokaw’s comment about the sanctity of the MSM “vetting” process, classic. UPDATE: My friend BM, who is incapable of posting a comment on any blog for some reason emails: “Hey, Maybe Brokaw or Dan Rather can go get a job in the administration as ‘The Vetting Czar’.” Cool!

Anyway, here’s the vid, and as they say, “My dear friends, welcome to Jurassic Park”:

Kia Sorento, (Soon to be) American Made

Korean automaker Kia is opening a new manufacturing plant in North America, in the small town of West Point, Georgia

The plant, which will make Kia’s Sorento sport utility vehicle, has hired 500 workers. By the time the factory opens, Kia hopes to hire 2,000 more. A smattering of Kia supply companies will eventually employ 7,500 additional workers. ” A lot of people feel that we are the savior for this area, which I hope we will be,” said Randy Jackson, director of human resources for the manufacturing plant. “We got 43,013 applications; 75 percent of those applications came from Georgia, and about 20 percent came from our neighboring state of Alabama.” Some of those applications are coming from auto workers around the country, including Detroit, Michigan, Jackson said. Overall, West Point stands to gain 20,000 jobs as a result of the factory during the next five years, Ferguson said [emph added].

Amazing that Kia opted to locate in Georgia, rather than the American auto manufacturing mecca of Detroit, isn’t it? After all, Michigan’s unemployment rate is 13.9 percent, one of the highest in the nation. No doubt there are many autoworkers and skilled machinists among those seeking work in the greater Detroit area.  And the average price for a house in Detroit is a bargain at only $7500.00, so housing a rapidly expanding

One of the Abandoned Factories That Ring Detroit

workforce could have been done easily as well. And what about land for manufacturing? Well, there is, uh, excess manufacturing capacity sitting idle in Detroit, that’s for certain. And if Kia had wanted to start anew with a modern facility and still take advantage of Michigan’s manufacturing acumen, they could have broken ground in nearby Flint; after all, leaders there have considered abandoning parts of the city altogether and letting the wilderness reclaim it.

Nonetheless, Kia has opted to build its new plant in hot, humid Georgia, and their decision on location was likely based more philosophical than economically based. It appears Kia is betting  American autoworkers might be better off building cars somewhere else, anywhere else, besides Detroit. And along with that line of thought, they are wagering American consumers would rather buy a car made anywhere else but Detroit, too.

So West Point, Georgia it is. My guess is the boat launch at West Point lake is going to be jammed with new, decked out bass boats in the coming years, one of the unintended side effects of success, but so be it.

Arizona Biltmore, The Site of 'Pressing Government Business'

The Social Security Administration, which manages programs on track to be utterly insolvent by 2037, just spent a heap of taxpayer (read: YOUR!) money sending its executives and family members to a weekend getaway at a lavish spa:

A Social Security Administration motivational management conference held at a high-end Valley resort this week cost $700,000, the SSA told the ABC15 INVESTIGATORS. Costs for the conference at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa included airfare, hotel, entertainment, dancers, motivational speakers, and food, an administration official said. The SSA provided ABC15 with a list of courses provided at the conference, which included “Techniques to Empower You,” “Mentoring the Generations,” and “Emotional Intelligence.” But the information provided by the SSA does not mention an after-hours casino trip, family members staying at the hotel, or the 20-minute dance party ABC15 observed. The conference cost was still a tough pill to swallow for taxpayers. “It sounds like a big rip off to me,” one Phoenix resident said.[EMPH Added].

$700,000 could buy plenty of video-teleconferencing equipment, obviating the need for expensive conferences at posh resorts, no? Of course, the dancing lessons are hard to do over a VTC I’m told, and probably not as fun, either.  Here’s a little video to go along with the post, too. Hat Tip: Just a Girl!