There's nothing wrong with being born with a silver spoon in your mouth. It's what you do with that good fortune that matters. And that is at the heart of Mitt Romney's problem with the American people. With his proclamations and policies, the same man who denounces President Obama as "out of touch" and "Marie Antoinette," shows his aloof detachment and stunning incomprehension of the struggles Americans face every day. And yet, they don't begrudge him either his privileged past or financial success. Instead, they just want him to acknowledge the debt he owes to the society that made it possible.

Alas, Romney's empathy gap was once again on display in response to President Obama's comment about all Americans deserving a "fair shot," even those who, like him, weren't "born with a sliver spoon in [their] mouth." (That rhetorical device, by the way, is one Obama has been using for years.) As he has for months, Mitt Romney took umbrage:

"I'm certainly not going to apologize for my dad and his success in life. He was born poor. He worked his way to become very successful despite the fact that he didn't have a college degree. And one of the things he wanted to do was provide for me and for my brother and sisters."

But that's not all George Romney did. As Rick Perlstein recalled of Mitt's dad, the Michigan Governor and American Motors magnate (who ironically also met with that infamous community organizer Saul Alinsky):

As a CEO he would give back part of his salary and bonus to the company when he thought they were too high. He offered a pioneering profit-sharing plan to his employees. Most strikingly, asked about the idea that "rugged individualism" was the key to America's success, he snapped back, "It's nothing but a political banner to cover up greed."

That doesn't sound anything like the son who boasted that "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me." And while Mitt Romney certainly never had to worry about "getting a pink slip," he stills gets a chuckle thinking about those who did when his father moved AMC jobs from Michigan to Wisconsin.

To be sure, Romney's repeated and comical failures to present himself as a "man of the people" have only deepened his yawning empathy gap. Romney, who explained that over the last decade "my income comes overwhelmingly from some investments made in the past," joked with jobless voters that "I'm also unemployed." The $250 million man similarly declared himself "part of the 80 to 90 percent of us" who are middle class, when just the "not very much" $374,000 he earned in speaking fees last year puts him in the top one percent of income earners. Whether or not he really enjoys firing people, Mitt Romney almost certainly never pooped in a bucket during his time as a missionary at a toney Paris mansion. (Who else would lecture a child about his plans to divvy up his estate among his 16 grandchildren or endorse rooftop canine waterboarding?) And there's no doubt that the man who spent $12 million to buy his third home (none of which are located on "the real streets of America") didn't win any friends when he offered this prescription for the housing market crisis:

"Don't try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom, allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up."

It's no surprise Mitt Romney believes income inequality should only be discussed in "quiet rooms." But it certainly didn't help matters when his wife Ann joked "Mitt doesn't even know the answer to that" when asked how many dressage horses she owns while her husband slanders Democrats as "the party of monarchists." It's no wonder his ally and Massachusetts GOP Senator Scott Brown urged Romney to release his tax returns:

"He's in a category, a lot of those folks are in categories that we don't really understand."

Brown was only saying what most Americans were thinking when he acknowledged that Romney is living in "a different world from me."

And in that world, the rules most Americans play by simply don't apply to Mitt Romney.

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As many of you know I've been covering the Occupy Movement since Day 1. I've been to eight Occupy camps in two countries: One raid. One near-arrest. One march on the U.S. Consulate. A couple of barricaded streets. I was at the largest GA the movement has had thus far (Cal Berkeley) and at the first ever national one (in DC). I'm on various text message alert lists with all the news...many of it at 2am. In short: I've been following this movement closely. And for a handful of publications.

Today I wrote a piece for Alternet about how the movement is on the brink of being marginalized:

The Occupy Movement, “the 99 percent,” has, ironically, been hijacked by a small minority within its ranks. I speak of a small percentage of Occupiers who are okay with property destruction. As we saw in Oakland over the weekend: They’re okay with breaking windows, trashing city buildings and throwing bottles at the police. In short: They are not nonviolent. They are willing to commit petty criminal acts masked as a political statement.

These are Black Bloc tactics and they're historically ineffective at spurring change. The now Gingrich-vilified Saul Alinsky in 1970 said the Weather Underground (the terrorist wing of the anti-war movement) should be on the Establishment’s payroll. “Because they are strengthening the Establishment,” said the “professional radical” Alinsky. Nothing kneecapped the call for the war to end quicker than buildings being bombed in solidarity with pacifist sentiments.

Here’s the key point: Occupy is not an armed conflict – it’s a PR war. Nonviolent struggle is a PR war. Gandhi had embedded journalists on his Salt March. He wasn’t a saint. That was a consciously cultivated media image. He used the press and its power to gain sympathy for his cause. What he didn’t do is say he was nonviolent “unless the cops are d*cks,” a sentiment voiced at Occupy. Nonviolent struggle has nothing to do with how the cops react. In actual nonviolent movements they welcome police overreaction because it helps the cause they’re fighting for.

The whole piece is here.

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Thanks to Newt Gingrich, it appears that a refresher course in Saul Alinsky and his teachings are in order, because clearly Bill O'Reilly and his sidekick Monica Crowley have no clue, even with Alan Colmes there to try and set the record straight.

Let's start with the end of this clip, where Colmes correctly asserts that the group most effectively employing Alinsky's tactics is the tea party. It's true. Tea party organizing has been exactly what Alinsky advised young radicals to do.

Via The Guardian:

It hurt me to see the American army with bayonets advancing on American boys and girls. But the answer I gave to the young radicals seemed to me the only realistic one: "Do one of three things. One, go and find a wailing wall and feel sorry for yourselves. Two, go psycho and start bombing – but this will only swing people to the right. Three, learn a lesson. Go home, organise, build power and at the next convention, you be the delegates.

The tea party did this quite well, and the Occupy movement has taken some steps in that direction as well. Alinsky's message is clear: Don't simply protest. Act.

There's nothing radical about that at all, but to hear O'Reilly go on about it, it's just socialism, writ large. It's not socialism; it's democracy. Here was Alinsky's stated purpose, as laid out in "Rules for Radicals":

“What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. ‘The Prince’ was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. ‘Rules for Radicals’ is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”

In a democracy, the power can only be with the people when the people stand up and speak for themselves, and then act on the collective message by inserting themselves into the political process. Tea partiers did this by protesting, and then running for school boards, state assemblies, state senates, and the United States Congress. It's classic Alinsky, which absolutely horrified Billo when Alan Colmes calmly pointed it out.

Bill O'Reilly isn't a fool. He knows this. But as long as he can keep the audience terrified of the name Alinsky without actually pointing out that the man was not some kind of radical socialist but one who believed in the power of communities and the disempowered to self-empower, he keeps the lie alive.

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Wow, keep it up tea partiers. This is really stunning. A 15-year old student asks a legitimate question about voting rights and is completely ripped on by Bill O'Brien, New Hampshire's Speaker of the House. Way to alienate young people from conservatism there, Billy-boy.

Here's the backstory, from "michael" on Blue Hampshire:

However, this is when I lifted my hand and asked my question. I asked him about the aforementioned quote about students and whether or not he believed that there should be a litmus test based on ideology determining who gets to vote easily and conveniently. His response was not to answer the question I quite politely posed, but to start speaking in a rather untoward, declamatory manner about how I "demonized" him and how liberals "demonize" conservatives instead of talking about the important issues of the day- namely, supporting business, lowering taxes, cutting spending and family values. He then went on to distemperately rant about Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals", bitterly implying that I, a flipping fifteen year old, am a Communist subversive, sandwiched between lines about me demonizing Republicans.

I think it's worth reading the transcript of Michael's question:

First, you mentioned in a conversation with several Tea Party members at a Tea Party meeting that you wanted a law passed that would stop out-of-state students from voting in New Hampshire because, quote -- Students, when they're in college -- I'm paraphrasing here -- Students, when they're in college, they're sitting around, they're voting their feelings, they're being foolish, they're voting liberal.

What is the threshold for when someone can actually exercise their Constitutional right to vote? Is someone's ideology supposed to be a litmus test? Or age, when it's Constitutionally allowed, intended on being a litmus test on who can vote? I mean --

OBRIEN: No, no, no. What's your second question? There's a series of questions. What's your second question?

What do you think, C&L readers? Fair question? I think so, particularly in light of the ongoing war on voting happening around this country, courtesy of the Tea Party and conservatives.

But the answer is just...well, it's like Glenn Beck's more-evil twin was sitting at the front of the room.

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