Berkeley retreats, middle finger held high

Update:

So the Berkeley City Council, in the wee hours of this morning, finally got around to making a decision, according to MediaNews.

On a 7-2 vote, it decided to amend its nasty letter to the Marines to recognize “the recruiters’ right to locate in our city and the right of others to protest or support their presence,” while stating that the council opposes “the recruitment of our young people into this war.”

A motion to formally apologize for calling the Marines uninvited, unwelcome intruders in the city failed. Big shock there.

The council also kept in place its previous decisions to give Code Pink’s fascists a free parking space and noise permit for its anti-American protests, order staff to sue the Marines for alleged gay rights violations, and a resolution encouraging “all people to avoid cooperation with the Marine Corps recruiting station.”

Amid all the testimony heard, this statement from a Berkeley High School student stood out:

Lily Wynkoop, 14, told the council she would like to see the recruiters leave town. The recruiting office is a few blocks from the high school. “We should feel safe on our own school grounds,” Wynkoop said. “But when (the Marines) come around, that’s not the environment we get. To those who say Berkeley is un-American, we say we love America, but we hate war.”

The child’s obviously been taught to fear(!) the people who would fight harder than anyone to keep her and her family safe. Yet, she’s also been brainwashed into thinking love for America equals being against war. Not just the current war, but apparently “WAR.” Missing in her education, obviously, is the realization that America did not start this war and the Marines and other troops are the reason she can go safely to her little school where the teachers indoctrinate her into fascism.

There are no words adequate to describe how sad that little girl’s comments are. We can only pray that someday she will leave Berkeley and become acquainted with the America she thinks she loves.

Berkeley, meanwhile, had better hope all those hippies are wrong about karma. …

Showdown in Berkeley

In a town known for its raucous protests, Tuesday was a doozy even for Berkeley.

The City Council, meeting last night, appeared set to rescind its resolution telling the Marines they were unwelcome intruders and urging members of a recruitment office to get out of town.

It only took a massive outpouring of anger from across the country, threats of losing pork-barrel project money and thousands of protesters during a daylong confrontation yesterday to get the council to this point. Even as its members considered rescinding the one resolution, however, they made no move to rescind other actions that had been passed at the same time that also slapped the Marines in the face.

Code Pink, a radical group of aging leftists, still gets its free parking space in front of the recruitment office and its free noise permit to protest the Marines. And the city staff is still directed to find a way to sue the Marines over alleged violations of gay rights (”don’t ask, don’t tell”).

Liberal hypocrisy was on full display throughout the day’s protests, with one left-winger after another saying they support the troops but just hate everything they do. Yelled Ann Wright, 61, through a megaphone: “We don’t support an illegal and immoral war … we want this recruiting station out of here. They lie, they cheat and this system is sucking our young men and women in.” But she supports the troops.

Three people were arrested. One was  a pro-military supporter arrested for brandishing a knife after a  horde of Code Pink wackos tried to tie him up with a pink banner and he used the knife to free himself. The other two were teen-agers who tried to pick a fight with military supporters.

Joining the professional protesters were many Berkeley high school students who skipped school at the urging of their professors, also among the anti-war demonstrators. By all counts, however, the military supporters outnumbered the Berkeley anti-American radicals.

The petulant childishness of the Berkeley left was on prominent display as the protests dragged on and the degenerates began lighting fires, including burning bicycles and an American flag.

This Oakland Tribune picture by Alex Molloy captured the moment as 7-year-old Kayden Elmer-Schurr, hugging his blanket, and his mother watch the boy’s bicycle burn after some bonehead lit a nearby sign on fire.

The war protesters like to pretend that they are for peace, but they stir up trouble and violence on purpose. They pretend they want to chase the Marines out of town to “help the children,” but you can see from the above picture how that works out.

It’s too much to expect that the flakes, bullies, fascists and assorted nuts in Berkeley would have a sudden realization about how trivial, backwards, ungrateful and downright nasty they seem to the rest of the world. It’s too much to expect them to change.

But maybe, if we’re lucky, they’ll remember the resistance they encountered when they attacked the Marines and they’ll think twice next time.