At Occupy Madison, the occupation is accomplished not so much with human beings.

It's more... vegetables and corrugated cardboard:



Who knew you could claim an entire city park for yourself with litter? "Occupy Everything," indeed.



Later, there are a few more folks there, all male, for some reason...



... or maybe you can see the reason.



"This is CLASS WARFARE."

Herman Cain and numerology.

I've already expressed my concerns...

It's not conservative to trash the entire system of funding the federal government and replace it with something concocted more out of numerology than economics.

... but Michelle Cottle really makes the connection:

In Chapter Nine of This Is Herman Cain—entitled “‘Forty-Five’—A Special Number,” Cain notes that his “conception, gestation, and birth all occurred within” the year 1945 (true of pretty much anyone born in the last three months of that year). He then launches into a detailed account of how “45 keeps on popping up as I go about the business of being elected—you guessed it—as the forty-fifth president of the United States of America.”

"'We need organic feed'?"

"Perhaps some kind person should bring them a couple of big bags of Purina Monkey Chow."

"Wisconsin should know we're coming... our lineman are getting after the quarterback. And they're going to hurt him."

Said Michigan State safety Isaiah Lewis the other day about Wisconsin's quarterback Russell Wilson.

Well, the game is on right now, and after the first play, Isaiah Lewis was holding his wrist, complaining, and had to be looked after and escorted off the field.

Be careful, delicate Spartans!

UPDATE: Karma is a bitch.

"Occupy Wall Street, Occupy State Street, Occupy Everything and Never Give It Back!"

That's the chant at one point in this video — shot by Meade and me, edited by me — of the Occupy Madison protest at the Capitol Square today here in Madison, Wisconsin. The Dane County Farmers' Market was going on at the same time and, as you'll see, one farmer-vendor takes action.



ADDED: These protesters have a variety of topics, but they keep coming back to Monsanto and GMO. At 1:50, when the chant is "Organic feed/Is what we need," a Farmers' Market vendor — who has walked right up to them — retorts "What we need is for you to get out of here!" She continues: "We can't make any money with you guys yelling around here and scaring the customers! Get out of here!"

At the Roundleaf Café...

... drop in for a while.

"It is a picture that seems at first to be quite beautiful."

"Only as the eye lingers do you fully realise its shocking context."

"Lech Walesa Not Attending #OccupyWallStreet in New York After Discovering Hard-Left Organizers."

"Discovering" = hearing from Breitbart's Big Government.

"[W]hen your product is so repulsive that no one wants to buy it in the open market..."

"... you have to somehow find a way to borrow the market for someone else's more attractive product."

"I cannot stop until I feel like I've conquered it."

It being the pumpkin. It's Ray Villafane, the master of pumpkin carving.

"But He Gave Up Golf."

Remember how the press treated George Bush?

(Story at the link originally blogged here.)

"Who are these people who live in Manhattan expecting peace and quiet? New York is loud, dirty, and fabulous!"

Who are these people who need to sleep at night and object to human feces on their doorstep? New York is loud, dirty, and fabulous!

"Jewish groups that have sensitive antennas for eruptions of bigotry have not criticized the protesters."

The NYT takes a look at whether there's anti-Semitism in Occupy Wall Street. The quote in the post title in the NYT characterization of the sounds of the absence of criticism. We get a specific quote from a representative of one Jewish group:

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, ... said, “There are manifestations in the movement of anti-Semitism, but they are not expressing or representing a larger view.” 

Foxman observed that polls show that 1 in 6 Americans think Jews have too much political and economic power: “So it’s not surprising that in a movement that deals with economic issues you’re going to get bigots that believe in this stereotype....."

Romney: "President Obama’s astonishing failure to secure an orderly transition in Iraq..."

"... has unnecessarily put at risk the victories that were won through the blood and sacrifice of thousands of American men and women."

Obama campaign answers: "Mitt Romney didn't lay out a plan to end the war in Iraq in his foreign policy agenda - he barely even mentioned Iraq - but he is apparently willing to leave American troops there without identifying a new mission."

ADDED: Spencer Ackerman: "But the fact is America’s military efforts in Iraq aren’t coming to an end. They are instead entering a new phase. On January 1, 2012, the State Department will command a hired army of about 5,500 security contractors, all to protect the largest U.S. diplomatic presence anywhere overseas."

"The Occupy Austin rally enjoys a calm, relaxing sunset."

"Presumably it's a little more active earlier in the day."



(Video by my son Chris.)

Cattails.

This evening on Lake Wingra.

A new student organization based on modesty, chastity, marriage and charity.

The Anscombe Society.

ADDED: The Anscombe Society is new at the University of Texas, but it's been around a while, and, in fact, I've blogged about it before — here.

Wingra sunset.

This evening.

Anticipating disruption from Occupy Philadelphia, Eric Cantor cancels his speech on income equality at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Daily Pennsylvanian reports that a sophomore said, "Yeah, it’s definitely really ironic." And an English professor said, "I think it’s a shame that a speech at a university should not occur because of some fear that there will be skeptics and critics in the audience."

The word "audience" refers to people listening. Didn't these protesters intend to chant or shout or otherwise wreck the speech? If a university arranges a speaking event for someone who is invited as an honored guest and the event transmogrifies into one in which he will serve as a platform for other people who want to yell out their ideas, then the university should expect him to decline to participate in what has become an alternate event of a sort that he would never have accepted if it had been the original invitation. To portray the erstwhile honored guest as fearful of critics and skeptics is demagoguery.

You can read the speech Cantor would have given here. Excerpt:

There are politicians and others who want to demonize people that have earned success in certain sectors of our society....

Instead of talking about a fair share or spending time trying to push those at the top down, elected leaders in Washington should be trying to ensure that everyone has a fair shot and the opportunity to earn success up the ladder. The goal shouldn’t be for everyone to meet in the middle of the ladder....

We must ensure that those who abuse the rules are punished. We must ensure that the solution to wealth disparity is wealth mobility. We must give everyone the chance to move up. Stability plus mobility equals agility. In an agile economy and an agile society, people are climbing and succeeding.

Justice Scalia defines "pizza."

"I do indeed like so-called 'deep dish pizza.' It's very tasty... But it should not be called pizza. It should be called a tomato pie. Real pizza is Neapolitan. It is thin. It is chewy and crispy, OK?"

Okay.* I know... words have meaning. And Justice Scalia is the man to tell us what that meaning is.

_________

* I know Justice Scalia spells "okay" "OK," okay? But I don't. Example:

Unlike a clear constitutional holding that racial preferences in state educational institutions are impermissible, or even a clear anticonstitutional holding that racial preferences in state educational institutions are OK, today’s Grutter-Gratz split double header seems perversely designed to prolong the controversy and the litigation.

Ah... notice the baseball. There's baseball in the above-linked article too. Asked by his Chicago audience "White Sox or Cubs?," Scalia said "Yankees."