Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report

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An estimated 250 people turned out for the Occupy Wall Street (Nevada County) rally in Brunswick Basin.

One of the supporters was world famous: legendary Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser, who has been called the “Michael Jordan of scottish fiddling.” He has played at the Lincoln Center in New York, among other venues, as his record label notes.

“Amazing turnout!” Fraser of Nevada City wrote on Facebook. “Exciting times. Let’s move with this newfound energy. We are near the brink and people are pushing back.”

As his record label states: “Fraser has been featured on over 100 television and radio shows in the UK, and on several nationally-broadcast programs in the US, including CBS Sunday Morning, NPR Morning Edition, A Prairie Home Companion, and The Thistle & Shamrock. On The Kennedy Center Honors (CBS TV) Fraser played a special solo tribute to honoree Sean Connery, a fellow Scot, in a segment that included Catherine Zeta-Jones.

“Alasdair has made guest appearances with groups as diverse as Los Angeles Master Chorale, The Waterboys and The Chieftains, and as featured soloist along with Itzhak Perlman at New York’s Lincoln Center. His film credits include solo performances on the soundtracks of several major films, including The Last of the Mohicans and Titanic.”

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Editor’s note: The local, vocal hard right/tea party supporters are apoplectic about a local peaceful rally by Occupy Wall Street supporters. The commentary is mean-spirited and nasty. Barry Pruett went so far as to drive to the demonstration and have his daughter snap photos of the crowd, at least according to his blog. Weird. Local moderate GOPers, and our GOP Central Committee, should be embarrassed.

From Barry Pruett’s blog:

“Here is a picture of the ‘Occupy Brunswick Road’ crew. To be fair to the group, there were more people than this picture tends to show — maybe 150 occupying the four corners. My daughter did her best with her iPod, as we waited for the light to change at the corner of Brunswick and Sutton.

“I think that I saw every member of the Nevada County Democratic Central Committee.

If I were them, I would be careful about aligning with the Occupy anything group. I know that they will not take my advice from the right-side of the aisle, but maybe they would listen to one of their own.”

Then in the comments:

Todd Juvinall said…

Anyone try to poop on a cop car?

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“Texas Gov. Rick Perry would like to avoid being compared to his gaffe-prone predecessor, former President George W. Bush, but he didn’t help himself late Tuesday when he suggested that the American Revolution took place in the 16th century,” CBS News is reporting.

“Following a Republican presidential candidate debate at Dartmouth College, Perry made a stop at the school’s Beta Theta Pi fraternity house a few blocks away, where he spoke briefly with students and answered a few questions. One participant pressed the governor on the issue of states’ rights.

“Perry, a favorite of Tea Party Republicans, replied, ‘Our Founding Fathers never meant for Washington, D.C. to be the fount of all wisdom. As a matter of fact, they were very much afraid of that because they’d just had this experience with this far-away government that had centralized thought process and planning and what have you, and then it was actually the reason that we fought the revolution in the 16th century, was to get away from that kind of onerous crown if you will.’

The American Revolution, of course, was fought during the 18th century.

The rest of the article is here.

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“Most tea partiers will talk eagerly about the failures of the Republican Party, and the Occupy Wall Street folks with whom I’ve spoken are disappointed with the Democrats,” according to The Atlantic. “Disillusionment with both parties is a precursor to marching in the streets. Yet both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street seem to be investing in a political approach where the strategy is to bring about a bigger triumph for Team Republican or Team Democrat.

“We’ve seen both kinds of victories in the past decade. Both Republicans and Democrats emerged disillusioned. Yet the widespread belief persists that next time will be different.

“There’s a better approach. Tea partiers and Occupy Wall Street protestors could vote for different candidates in 2012, fight vociferously about the ideal size of the federal government, and meanwhile cooperate to prevent big business and co-opted bureaucrats from capturing money that could be better spent (on tax cuts or deficit reduction or infrastructure or social welfare benefits, depending on the outcome of another fight).

“If the United States and the USSR struck mutually beneficial treaty agreements during the 1980s, if the ACLU and the NRA have usefully allied on civil liberties issues, despite their strikingly different donor bases, there is no reason save stubbornness and political immaturity that the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street can’t find areas on which to cooperate. Perhaps the Cato Institute and the Center for American Progress can co-host the summit, and Rand Paul and Dennis Kucinich can co-sponsor the resulting reform legislation.”

The rest of the article is here.

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“As in most other big American cities, it would be hard to walk 100 feet in Washington and not slam into somebody who’s using something that Apple created — an iPhone or an iPad or a Macbook Pro,” writes Matt Bai in the New York Times.

“And so it’s staggering to contemplate just how little of Steve Jobs’s genius ever permeated the nation’s politics, and how much he understood about modern America that those who govern it still don’t.

“After all, if you wanted to really get a picture of how the national culture has evolved in the last few decades, particularly in the urban areas that drive economic growth, you could do a lot worse than to study Apple’s string of innovations.

“Mr. Jobs understood, intuitively, that Americans were breaking away from the last era’s large institutions and centralized decision-making, that technology would free them from traditional workplaces and the limits of a physical marketplace.

“This was the underlying point of ‘think different’ — that our choices were no longer dictated by the whims of huge companies or the offerings at the local mall.

“And no politician wants to really innovate without focus groups, to make a sustained argument for any solution that might entail risk or imagination. Our parties are less like Apple and more like General Motors, churning out this year’s streamlined model of the same cars it was asking you to buy 20 years ago.

“Even the circuitry of the democracy remains essentially unchanged; a nation of voters who can find their cars and pay their mortgages online still can’t envision the day when they can cast their votes from an iPad.

“This cultural gulf, between Mr. Jobs’s America and the one our political leaders inhabit, is largely generational, and it goes long way toward explaining the enthusiasm among younger voters for Barack Obama in 2008.

“Mr. Obama’s campaign, conceived outside the party establishment and built on a platform of online membership, felt like a high-tech reimagining of politics. It seemed to presage an age of government that could champion both individuality and community, a government that made programs more responsive and flexible without eroding our sense of shared responsibility.

“But generations will, inevitably, turn over, and Americans who grew up using Steve Jobs’s gizmos and apps will ultimately inherit a governing culture that feels dated and stifling. Perhaps then Mr. Jobs’s contributions to the American culture will at last reach the city where his Apple logo has become so visible, inspiring a government to try to think a little bit different, too.”

The rest of the article is here.

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I saw this on the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams last night:

“Everything is going fine until the wildebeest lunges toward the cyclist, seemingly out of nowhere,” as the Toronto Star reports.

“And it doesn’t miss.

“The video of a 17-year-old South African biker getting smoked by a red buck has gone viral, reaching more than 2 million hits on YouTube after being posted on Monday.

“It happened during a race at Albert Falls Dam in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Evan van der Spuy navigates the rough trail in the middle of the nature reserve, while his teammate Travis Walker films from behind.

“Then comes the warning.

“’Watch the buck,’ Walker tells him.”

The rest of the article is here.

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