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| Politics Don't Mess With Grandma How a 78-year-old retiree may help the Kochs in their battle against Occupy Wall Street. Posted Monday, Nov 07, 2011, at 08:48 PM ET  The video is titled "Occupy DC Pushes Grandma Down Stairs." The conservative blog Powerline links to it with the title "Rampaging Occupiers Attack 78-Year Old Woman." That's not quite what happened, but it's the official story out of the conference, a rallying cry for Tea Partiers against the Occupiers. In the culture war between the left and right over who can save the economy, this round goes to the Tea Party. Occupy protesters will tell you that it wasn't supposed to get ugly. Progressive activists had known for months that Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party group chaired by the industrialist/philanthropist David Koch, would spend the first weekend of November in Washington for its Defending the American Dream Summit. It was a soft, bloated target. Progressives have been protesting the Koch apparatus all year. In January, they'd marched outside the semiannual invite-only political summit that David and his brother Charles (combined net worth: $32 billion) put on for fellow Masters of the Universe. In February, the gonzo journalist Ian Murphy posed as "David Koch" on the phone to draw Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker into a lengthy, awkward, recorded conversation about how to crush protesters. They had "changed the conversation" about the Kochs, prompting stories about Republican "ties" to the brothers, as if they were capos of some criminal enterprise. "The Koch brothers are at the head of the snake," Occupy protester Cecilia Azurduy told me, "but what they represent is a lot more insidious—this ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Hitchens: Why It's So Hard To Speak Honestly About Allegations of Sexual Harassment Did Penn State Campus Police Have the Power To Arrest Coach Sandusky? The One Graph That Explains Why America Is Losing Power So Quickly | Advertisement   |
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