Using their iconic mic-check speaking style, the protestors spoke out against Ron Paul’s campaign pledge to close the Environmental Protection Agency if elected.

Sitting arm in arm, the members of the Occupy movement chanted; “We are fighting for the future generations. In order to live we need clean air, clean water, and safe food. Don’t dismantle the EPA. We won’t allow this business to open before our demands are met.”

Police gave the protestors the opportunity to move from the private entrance to the public sidewalk twenty feet away. Some complied, but five refused to move and were arrested.

Many of the occupy demonstrators claimed sympathy, if not outright support for the ideology of Ron Paul, which made this protest especially uncomfortable for both the occupiers and the campaign.

One of the arrested protester’s named Clark Davidson claimed to be a Ron Paul precinct captain as he was led away in handcuffs.

“I don’t believe with Ron Paul on every single issue…I came to stand with my sisters. I came to address that with the campaign and I just got arrested,” Davidson said.

And then we have this…

Yep. Pretty inspiring.

Inspiring enough to go on Iranian state TV and crap all over your own country?

You betcha.

Cue Paul’s supporters who will now tout the endorsements of noted political gurus Barry Manilow and Kelly Clarkson for his candidacy, since he’s the only candidate who can tell the truth and understand the constitution.

And chemtrails.

IT’S NOT THAT COMPLICATED

Jim Lacey’s piece at National Review about Iraq and its lessons for our military is a must-read. An excerpt…

The corps commander in Iraq during the surge, now the Army chief of staff, General Raymond Odierno, reportedly said that nothing he was doing before the Army published its new counterinsurgency doctrine changed once it was published. A new doctrine did not break the back of the counterinsurgency in Iraq. That was done by the addition of 50,000 more soldiers and Marines to the fight. Note: These were not aid workers or even forces imbued with a new doctrine (most of them had never read it). Rather, they were 50,000 mostly combat troops, prepared to take the fight to the enemy. And it was a hard and vicious fight — one that often required the full combined-arms panoply (armor, artillery, close air support) to win. Somehow, much of the true narrative of this fight is being lost in favor of one that emphasizes getting along with the locals, building schools, and helping farmers. All of these activities were, of course, important, but they pale in comparison to the benefits of increased security, which was only bought by hard fighting. One brigade commander captured it perfectly when he said, “I know all about counterinsurgency doctrine. It means shake hands in the light and kill at night.”

WHY I HATE THE LEFT; OR, GORBACHEV RETURNS TO SPEW BULLSHIT

This ran in the putrescent pages of the left-wing mung rag The Nation. Written by one Mikhail Gorbachev, who tells us it’s a damn shame that the good ol’ Soviet Union isn’t around to guarantee peace and prosperity…

This event led to euphoria and a “winner’s complex” among the American political elite. The United States could not resist the temptation to announce its “victory” in the cold war. The “sole remaining superpower” staked a claim to monopoly leadership in world affairs. That, and the equating of the breakup of the Soviet Union with the end of the cold war, which in reality had ended two years before, has had far-reaching consequences. Therein are the roots of many mistakes that have brought the world to its current troubled state…

Within such a matrix, the United Nations and its Security Council become expendable or at best an impediment, while international law is viewed as a burdensome legacy of the past. That was the attitude taken by the United States and its supporters in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and in Iraq in 2003. American pundits started talking about the United States as more than just a superpower, calling it a “hyperpower” capable of creating “a new kind of empire.”…

In short, the world without the Soviet Union has not become safer, more just or more stable. Instead of a new world order—that is, enough global governance to prevent international affairs from becoming dangerously unpredictable—we have had global turmoil, a world drifting in uncharted waters. The global economic crisis that broke out in 2008 made that abundantly clear.

The West must undertake a critical reassessment of all that preceded this painful crisis. It is more than just a crisis of global finance or even a crisis of an economic model based on a race for hyperprofits and excessive consumption that grinds down the earth’s resources and ruins nature. The crisis grew out of the arrogant conviction of “the collective West” that it had the recipes to solve all problems and that there was no alternative to the “Washington Consensus,” which claimed to work equally well for all countries.

The issue here isn’t that Gorbachev would put his name to such claptrap; after all, he’s a deposed communist dictator and it’s hardly a surprise someone from that background would offer risible bilge as political analysis.

What’s more instructive is that an American publication would find it worthy of print.

This guy got a bad rap. We should build a monument to him.