This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of. This group is completely insane. Guess what, clowns?
Some people are more important than others. Using their rules, I wonder how they would have a real debate about anything useful?
If you enjoy the content at iBankCoin, please follow us on TwitterRep. John Lewis is one of 435 members of the House interminably frustrated by the arcane ways of the Senate. At an Occupy Atlanta protest, he encountered a process arguably worse.
A lengthy video posted online over the weekend showed what happened when the Democratic congressman tried to address an “assembly” of protesters in his home state. Instead of giving the floor to a man who is not just a longtime U.S. representative but a revered civil rights icon, the protesters employed a tangle of parliamentary procedures to ultimately prevent him from speaking.
A stunned Lewis could be seen watching the whole thing unfold before ambling away.
Asked about the incident Monday, a Lewis spokeswoman told FoxNews.com “the only comment that we’re going to give is the comments already made.” In a prior interview about the matter with the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Lewis said, “It’s okay,” and that “they didn’t really deny me.”
The end result, though, was that Lewis did not get to speak to the protesters.
The procedures they used — rather, invented — would make the Senate blush. Imagine some combination of Model U.N., Lord of the Flies and a Phish concert.
The central premise, it appeared, was that no one person is inherently more valuable than anyone else. So when the group’s leader, a bespectacled man with a bullhorn, said anything, he spoke in clipped fragments so the rest of the crowd could repeat what he was saying back to him. Another rule — no clapping, because “clapping can prevent someone else who is addressing the assembly from being heard.”
Instead, the leader urged everyone to use effusive hand signals to show approval.
With these fundamentals in place, the assembly spent 10 minutes debating whether Lewis should be allowed to speak before the crowd, which had gathered as one of many offshoots of the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York.
When the leader put the question to the group, he asked if there were any “blocks.”
Indeed there were. Another demonstrator spoke out to say that while he respects Lewis’ contribution to society, the protesters were trying to start “a democratic process in which no singular human being is inherently more valuable than any other human being.”
Lewis nodded his head in approval, then appeared to display the makings of a hand signal before giving up and keeping his hands loosely clasped while the debate mounted.
After more commentary from the assembly, the leader took a “temperature check” — which is not quite a vote. It was evident the group was divided about letting Lewis speak.
So the leader called for a “straw poll.” More hand signals followed, and from this the leader was able to infer “the group is very divided about this issue.”
Warning that consensus would be elusive on the matter, he proposed continuing “with the agenda.”
At this point, Lewis began to make his way out of the crowd. Some started shouting, “Let him speak.”
But it was not to be. Another person shouted: “John Lewis is not better than anyone! Democracy won!”
The leader closed by restating the rules. “This group makes its decisions by consensus. We do not have a consensus,” he said.
They continued with the agenda.
Ellsworth Toohey would be proud.
No kidding. The Borg would also have made a suitable joke, if you’re into that Treky sort of thing.
This is all a design as the democrats anarchist side along with the republican’s “tea party” to take down the government making it easier for the order to be created out of chaos involving a bigger global political-economical government.
Don’t mix the Tea Party up with that collectivist anarchist dilettante group.
All the Tea Party wants is smaller, less intrusive gov’t… not “NO gov’t.”
They want power devolved to the states and localities, where it can be most effective and least intrusive (because people will have the power to move away if it does so). In other words… aiming for a more Constitution-based polity.
Is this too much to ask? You ought to try it for a bit, as freedom can be addictive.
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“All the Tea Party wants is smaller, less intrusive gov’t”
Also, no niggers.
Charming.
Yet, your thorough analysis doesn’t explain why Herman Cain is doing so well among Tea Partiers.
Now, back to your pro-acorn pamphlet printing.
I’m just glad to see how Ottnott’s “secret”
nastiness has got nowhere to go sometimes, and despite how bad it makes him look, it leaks out here every now and again.
The above is a triumph. Could anyone in such a short order — a mere three words! — better exemplify both the moral bankruptcy, and the bottom-of-the-barrel lack of ammunition left in the Marxist cause?
“Don’t look back now, Comrade Toonces! We play the Race Card to the End”
(Car goes over the cliff, Curtain)
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“Since the public has become aware of the data, several people have come forward to challenge our initial findings, specifically, that supporters of the Tea Party appear racially intolerant. …As the figure shows, even as we account for conservatism and partisanship, support for the Tea Party remains a valid predictor of racial resentment.”
http://depts.washington.edu/uwiser/resent.pdf
“Multivariate Analysis of Racial Resentment and Selected Civil Liberties Among Whites
Since the public has become aware of the data, several people have come forward to challenge our initial findings, specifically, that supporters of the Tea Party appear racially intolerant. A principal charge, one not without intellectual merit, is that the observed relationship between support for the Tea Party and racial resentment is more about the relatively conservative politics of Tea Partiers than racism. Indeed, conservatives tend to believe in a small government, one that doesn’t do much to help people who, they believe, should make an effort to do for themselves. This is certainly a legitimate view; it’s one to which many Americans have adhered from the beginning of the Republic. In short, some of our critics charge that, instead of the racism we observe associated with support for the Tea Party, we’re merely observing Tea Partiers’ conservatism at work. In other words, support for the Tea Party, they suggest, is simply a proxy for conservatism.
To address this issue, we turn to regression, a statistical technique that allows analysts to tease out how one variable affects another. This is important because it permits us to account for the presence of other variables that may also affect the outcome while isolating the impact of the effect of the variable of interest on the result. So, in this case, if support for the Tea Party is truly a proxy for conservatism, the relationship between racial resentment and support for the Tea Party should evaporate once we control for conservatism. Otherwise, there’s something else going on with support for the Tea Party; it’s not just conservatism. To make things a little easier, we combined all of the items (questions) that comprise racial resentment, making them into a scale.
As the figure shows, even as we account for conservatism and partisanship, support for the Tea Party remains a valid predictor of racial resentment.”
No doubt friends of yours in the Ivory Tower Know Nada Cadre?
One wonders, what would ever drive a bunch of narrow-minded liberal academics to research such an arcane subject?
Lol. Giving new meaning to the term “double blind experimental research.”
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not this specific story, just the occupy wallstreet movement.
Good for them for recognizing him as the political stooge that he is. This movement was born out of a frustration with these people and their actions. They have no place speaking at these events, their point of view has been and is heard every day.
What is the “POV” of the OWS?
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