I sit in on my local Chamber of Commerce. To be very charitable, I find your experience VERY different from mine. Around here, they’re in the service of the community provided that community is making more than $150k or so a year–if not, they’re in favor of the community shutting up and accepting as low wages as possible.
I wouldn’t put them in the same universe as Kiwanis, Rotary, Lion’s, etc., all of which have been composed of generally decent people in my experience.
My dad wouldn’t, and he’s going on 35 years in business and happy as a clam.
Neither would my current company, 15 years in business and counting.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but being socially responsible in business is a damn good plan. SOMEONE has got to buy your shit, and paying your own employees enough to buy lots of stuff is the A-1 way of creating an economy in which that happens.
At 27 seconds, which you specify, there is a smallish jostling crowd. In the background, we see one youngish, bearded man’s head above the crowd, facing us, and what may very well be the granny-lady in question, moving past him to our left. Maybe. Hair color matches, and we get a flash of the red clothing, so likely her.
His head disappears suddenly, the camera pans to shoes, and the next thing we see is the aforementioned granny lady, lying on the sidewalk. If I were to take a stab at it, I would say it looked to me as if someone shoved the bearded guy back and he fell, his head disappears so suddenly. So maybe? Somebody shoved him, he lost his balance, toppled her as well? Maybe she shoved him? *
But even that has to be conjecture, there just isn’t enough there to make a judgment. I mean, for me, apparently not for you.
In the case of the injured soldier, there is no such ambiguity. Equivalence epic fail.
*Actually sort of happened to me. I live in cold and icy winters here. One day, many years ago, I was walking downtown in full counterculture regalia. (We wore peaches in our regalia, onions were not yet the style…) Anyway, sauntering along, and I hit one of those spots in the sidewalk where liquid oxygen pools reduce the friction to about zero. One step, and involuntarily airborne. I went into Minnesota reflex mode, alerting all body parts especially southward body parts that impact with the sidewalk is imminent. And, of course, flailing my arms about wildly.
Story short: seized a little old lady and flung her bodily to the ground. Suddenly, I’m lying on the sidewalk surrounded by glaring, scowling people, some with eyes darting about as if seeking a convenient lamppost. Apologies unavailing, I slunk away as best I could. Oh, and cracked a rib. Which I didn’t really know until I sneezed. Ever spend two weeks praying you don’t sneeze again?
Now, I have my faults, and its a long damn list, but hurling little old ladies to the ground ain’t on it. Shit happens. Mostly.
Reminds me of the story (probably apocryphal) of Henry Ford II and UAW president Walter Reuther walking through a Ford factory. Ford gestures at all the robotic assembly machines and says to Reuther, “How are you going to get them to pay union dues, Walter?” With missing a beat, Reuther shoots back, “How are you going to get them to buy cars, Henry?”
Confused from Minneapolis writes: This what you think of them, and you “sit in on my local Chamber of Commerce”? Clearly, I’m missing something here. Sure, “Belly of the Beast”, maybe, but still…?
And the anti-cootie protocol? In that environment, you would have to go all out, weapons-grade pachouli oil, which I cannot, in any other circumstance, recommend.
Advise.
http://web.bryant.edu/~ehu/h364proj/summ_99/armoush/page3.html
*The Five Dollar Day *
Boiled down, Ford offered very high pay for his workers, at least in part to address the very point of the anecdote. He also insisted on a paternalistic intrusion into their lives as a condition
He is quoted as saying “The payment of five dollars a day for an eight-hour day was one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made,”.
As for some of his other views, the less said the better…
May generally be a local thing. Our Chamber is pretty cool. Im sure not all are.
Seems like lately I’ve heard of local Chambers disassociating themselves with the national body, due to concerns about its poltical stances.
For instance:
If there’s never one progressive voice, there probably won’t ever be two. Then four. Etc.
Gotta do what you gotta do. The only way it’ll GET to the idyllic highs that Scylla waxes rapturous about is one voice at a time and one vote at a time.
No shit, Sherlock. Only a fool would think that the protesters deliberately and maliciously singled out the elderly woman and thew her down the steps.
What the protesters did was (1) set the stage by being densely packed and aggressive in front of the door and at the steps, and (2) did not make way for the elderly woman who was trying to exit the area. That resulted in the jostling that knocked her down. Quite simply indefensible, for they did not take reasonable care and consideration in their actions. Absence of malice is not relevant.
Your analysis is consistent with the evidence, but isn’t supported by it. There is very little to go on, here.
The Daily Caller?? They make Fox News look fair, balanced, and like actual journalists by comparison.
Next you’ll be citing Herman Cain.
CBO, “Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007,” October 2011.
OK, so he was threatening people with a loaded shotgun, but hey! At least he has a proper respect for private property!
From Scylla’s cite, quoted by Arty, above
Just the part where you are bullshitting. For instance, the sum total of evidence you have to offer about letting the guy go so he could come back is in the ABC link, where Mayor Bloomberg says:
I trust that the difference between “there have been reports” and proof is not lost on you?
So this was just the usual lying bullshit that I’ve come to expect from my favorite, trolling drama queen.
Is anything you say ever true?
Do you ever actually do what you say?
You sure laid it on thick, and I let you have the last word. I didn’t even respond to all that.
I kinda figured that if you weren’t trolling you would do what you said you would, and the most honorable thing I could do would be to just let it go, which I did.
On the other side of the coin, what I figured was that if you were just being an asshole and a troll, if you didn’t get the reaction you wanted from that you’d come back and try again. You wouldn’t be able to help it, even if it proves you to be a liar.
I didn’t have to wait long to see which way that would go, did I?
Go ahead and tell me some more about what I am. You’ve proven what you are.
How was he threatening anyone? If I was walking by and saw him doing that I wouldn’t have feel threatened. Maybe that’s because I had no plans pr desire to enter his building and create havoc. But that’s just me.
You read the part about where he “racked” (cocked) the shotgun, yes? While not necessarily a hostile gesture in and of itself, it is preperatory to a hostile gesture, i.e., blowing your shit away.
They generally won’t fire without a round in the chamber.
Personally, I disagree with what the man did. I would never display a gun as a warning.
Well that’s why I never put a round in the chamber. And just to be extra safe, I don’t have the chamber, either.