Kelly Ripa doen't like Occupy Chicago.

So I'm watching LIVE WITH KELLY with Kelly Ripa and guest co-host Taye Diggs--and it's the opening of the show where current events get discussed along with the usual personal anecdotes. And Kelly mentions a bride coming out of a wedding in Chicago who got upset because Occupy Chicago happened to be nearby. Essentially, Kelly served up this story up with the not-so-subtle dig at the Occupy movement for being annoying eyesores--now, I eagerly await Kelly Ripa dissing Occupy's message on CNN's ERIN BURNETT OUT FRONT.

Barney Frank unexpurgated--the complete interview transcript.

Soon-to-be-retired Congressman Barney Frank gave an interview to NEW YORK magazine.  The edited version runs about nine pages.  But here's a link to all fifteen pages of unfiltered Frank--with content sure to irritate both the Left and the Right:

http://nymag.com/news/features/barney-frank-full-transcript-2012-4/

Democratic Party e-mail re this year's convention reveals moral tone-deafness.

This e-mail from the Democratic Party came the other day to my inbox.

Here's a portion (highlighting by me):
Terry --




We're making some big changes to this year's Democratic National Convention.



Just like we broke with conventions of the past in 2008, we're moving the final night of this year's convention to Bank of America Stadium, home of the Carolina Panthers. There will be room for 70,000 people, so more folks will be able to come out and celebrate as President Obama accepts the Democratic nomination for re-election.



It should be a wonderful night -- and it's not the only way we're doing things differently this year. In the upcoming months, we'll be asking folks for their ideas on how to make this convention more open and accessible than ever before.

Re those arrested during Tuesday night's de-occupation of L.A. City Hall

http://www.scpr.org/news/2011/12/02/30170/prosecutors-file-criminal-charges-against-46-occup/

Key passage from the article (highlighting by me):
Most of those released qualified for a pre-filing diversion program, which allows nonviolent offenders without a criminal record to choose to complete a 90-day educational program to avoid prosecution for a $375 or $400 fee, [Earl]Thomas [chief of the criminal division for the City Attorney's office] said. He said they will receive information on the program in the mail.




The City Attorney’s Office can still file charges for a year according to the statue of limitations, Thomas said.



“If they complete the program and stay out of trouble for that year, while the statue is running, they have an opportunity to keep their record clear,” Thomas said.



The curriculum includes information about being a good citizen, the government, constitutional rights and the consequences of an arrest, among other issues. The course can be completed from home and fee payment can be made in installments, Thomas said. He said officials are looking at bringing in constitutional experts on the First Amendment including retired Supreme Court Justices to talk to participants.




The City Attorney’s Office made a request Thursday to include a condition within the release that would prevent people from returning to the City Hall lawn, but the court apparently denied that request, Thomas said. He said the Office has not had a chance to review cases processed Friday.

Various links/Twitter posts on the fall of Occupy L.A. City Hall.

"During the park closure, a First Amendment area will remain open on the Spring Street City Hall steps." --[Los Angeles mayor Antonio] Villaraigosa--Neon Tommy (via Twitter)

Dear Media: When the police tell you to leave IS WHEN YOU STAY. You're supposed to be a check on this kind of power!--Wil Wheaton (via Twitter)




Notable unlawful assemblies: Second Constitutional Congress, Southern lunch counter sit-ins.--Devin Faraci (via Twitter)

For Context for non-LA ppl, #occupyLA is about 3 blocks from a permanent tent city for the homeless, never shut down for health reasons.--Nick Robinson (via Twitter)

RT @KPCCLive: As far as we can tell, LAPD did not ever employ non-lethal enforcement like bean bags, tear gas.--Kevin Roderick (LA OBSERVED) via Twitter.

‎3:14 AM Just now on OccupyFreedomLA Ustream, a witness says she is looking at about 20 undercover police officers fist bumping with uniformed officers. They apparently looked just like all the occupiers clad in 99% t-shirts--via laist.com


http://laist.com/2011/11/30/occupy_la_raid_the_morning_after.php
 

#OccupyLA peaceful protestors held on $5,000 bail for "unlawful assembly" To date, Wall Street Banksters go uncharged & are free. #OWS~OA--Official Occup L.A. tweet


http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/media-choreography-and-the-occupy-la-raid/249277/

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/30/occupy_wall_street_camps_in_los

Ruth Fowler of Occupy L.A. on what happened outside the LAPD-allowed "media pool":
http://www.occupylosangeles.org/?q=node%2F2445

HERDING OCCUPY L.A. OUT OF SIGHT OUT OF MIND BLUES

Remember the Bonus Army of 1932 in wake of Occupy crackdowns.

Below is a history lesson that, ideally, should be read by people like NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and L.A. OBSERVED business columnist Mark Lacter (both of which fulminated on the Occupy movement last week, throwing out the usual "dirty, intellectually incoherent, unrealistic hippies" stereotypes).

Wikipedia entry on the Bonus Army of World War One veterans who occupied Washington D.C. in 1932:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army

From the Wikipedia article:
Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded the infantry and cavalry supported by six tanks. The Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned.
A second, smaller Bonus March in 1933 at the start of the Roosevelt Administration was defused with promises instead of military action. In 1936, Congress overrode President Franklin D. Roosevelt's veto to pay the veterans their bonus years early.

Observations for this Thanksgiving Day.

Thanksgiving originally was a holiday celebrating diverse cultures being able to sit together and share a meal, marinating in good will towards people other than themselves.  In 2011, Thanksgiving is a holiday where employees of megastores get to curtail their family time to go to work very late/very early to service
consumers on what is now known as "Black Friday."

"Black Friday" was once an inside-business term for the Friday-after-Thanksgiving sales.  In recent years, the store-opening times were switched to ungodly hours like 5:00 a.m.  This year, because megastores expect the economy to improve enough to strip $20 billion from consumer wallets, Black Friday has turned into Black Thursday-and-Friday.

In 2011, families will sacrifice their family togetherness/good will to stand in front of megastores most of Thanksgiving Day to enter stores as early as 10:00 p.m to buy high-tech items at low low prices.  Or, if they're interested in shopping at Best Buy, they're already sleeping outside or in tents--a method of occupying public space that's more acceptable to government/corporate cultures than the Occupy movement that's being beaten/pepper-sprayed in a city near you.

Speaking of Occupy Los Angeles as it celebrates Thanksgiving before its inevitable forced retreat from L.A.'s City Hall: it's rather pitiful that the city of Los Angeles is unwilling to heed the economic inequity message of the movement instead of making half-assed offers of dollar-a-year store space in the L.A. Mall underneath the Fletcher Bowron Plaza.

[Sidebar: I'm imagining how quickly Occupy Los Angeles would have been crushed by the LAPD/L.A. City Council if the tents/protestors had appeared in, say, Beverly Hills or Century City rather than around City Hall--a part of Downtown that hasn't yet become completely gentrified.]

And, closing this post, here's a Hall of Shame re naysayers towards the Occupy movement:
1. CHUCK HENRY--everybody's favorite blowdried ex-travel host (EYE ON L.A.) turned inexplicably long-running KNBC-TV anchorman made a sort of yucky smiley-face the other night when introducing a story about Occupy L.A.; it was the most contemptuous "they're a bunch of dirty hippies" grin/grimace worthy of the next person on this list.
2. MICHAEL BLOOMBERG--curious if anyone caught MSNBC Tuesday morning to see the grotesque farce of the New York City mayor defending his recent misbehavior to Andrea Mitchell; Ms. Mitchell is married to one-time economic majordomo Alan Greenspan, who helped create the masters-and-serfs feudalism that's the United States in 2011.
3. BERNARD PARKS/THE LOS ANGELES TIMES--the ex-LAPD chief trotted out a whopper of an unlikely scenario--that "neo-Nazis" could one day occupy the space around City Hall ; the city's Newspaper of Record thought Parks' overstatement was so nice, it repeated it twice (both in a "news" article and an editorial).

Various links on the end of Act One of Occupy Wall Street.

Glenn Greenwald of SALON.com: http://www.salon.com/2011/11/15/a_police_raid_suffused_with_symbolism/singleton/

The Wall Street-friendly NEW YORK magazine:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/11/can-occupy-wall-street-avenge-its-eviction.html

Re the fate of the OWS library after the Zuccotti Park raid in NYC:
http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/11/16/ows_library_reports_missing_books_property_.html

The LOS ANGELES TIMES on "Where to go after Zuccotti Park?":
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-occupy-future-20111116,0,5328113.story?page=1&obref=obnetwork

From DEMOCRACY NOW:
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/16/police_crackdowns_on_occupy_protests_from

From THE VILLAGE VOICE:
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/11/occupy_wall_str_32.php

SLATE's Dahlia Lithwick makes it perfectly clear what the people protesting with OWS want.

Highlighting by me:

For the past several years, while the mainstream media was dutifully reporting on all things Kardashian or (more recently) a wholly manufactured debt-ceiling crisis, ordinary people were losing their health care, their homes, their jobs, and their savings. Those people have taken that narrative to Facebook and Twitter—just as citizens took to those alternative forms of media throughout the Middle East as part of the Arab Spring. And just to be clear: They aren’t holding up signs that say “I want Bill O’Reilly’s stuff.” They aren’t holding up signs that say “I am animated by toxic levels of envy and entitlement.” They are holding up signs that are perfectly and intrinsically clear: They want accountability for the banks that took their money, they want to end corporate control of government. They want their jobs back. They would like to feed their children. They want—wait, no, we want—to be heard by a media that has devoted four mind-numbing years to channeling and interpreting every word uttered by a member of the Palin family while ignoring the voices of everyone else.


And there’s this. The mainstream media thrives on simple solutions. It has no idea whatsoever of how to report on a story that isn’t about easy fixes so much as it is about anguished human frustration and fear. The media prides itself on its ability to tell you how to clear your clutter, regrout your shower, or purge your closet of anything that makes you look fat—in 24 minutes or less. It is bound to be flummoxed by a protest that offers up no happy endings. Luckily for us, #OWS doesn’t seem to care.
 
The entirety of Ms. Lithwick's article can be found here:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2011/10/how_ows_confuses_and_ignores_fox_news_and_the_pundit_class_.html

Latest mainstream media response to Occupy protests.

It's safe to say that there are three essential responses by the mainstream media to demonstrations organized by progressives/liberals/The Left :

1. They're unseemly!


2. They're full of all sorts of groups with different agendas!


3. Not THAT many people are out there demonstrating!

And now here's Number 4--
They're costing cities lots of money!

From today's LOS ANGELES TIMES:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-occupy-lawn-web-20111020,0,6466227.story

Photos of signs from Occupy San Francisco.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=2383801309729&set=a.1487038371216.65354.1091624981&type=3&theater
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1487038371216.65354.1091624981&type=3#!/photo.php?fbid=2383827950395&set=a.1487038371216.65354.1091624981&type=3&theater
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1487038371216.65354.1091624981&type=3#!/photo.php?fbid=2383807269878&set=a.1487038371216.65354.1091624981&type=3&theater

The right-wing San Francisco EXAMINER hates banker fraud almost as much as Occupy protesters.

The San Francisco EXAMINER is a free daily newspaper that, to put it subtly, tilts right.

On today's cover is a headline called USED AND ABUSED.
Underneath the headline is this text:
Taxpayers foot bill for bailout while SF bankers allegedly cooked books and deceived feds.

The article by Ari Burack starts out like this:
"San Francisco bank executives [of the former United Commercial Bank] cooked their books
and lied to auditors just before they accepted a $298 million taxpayer bailout, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
They now have the distinction of being the first senior executives of a bank that received federal bailout
funds to be criminally charged [by the SEC] in connection with a scheme to defraud the government
and American taxpayers."

Something that the Left and Right could find some common cause about--one would hope.

Flip over to the editorial page and, again, there's a cartoon lampooning the Occupy movement.

Today, they're being described as Commies.

Here's the text of Nate Beeler's cartoon:
"All we are saaaayyiiinng....is give the death of capitalism and a new era of Soviet-style repression and stasis that we won't call 'Communism' a chaaance!"

Re media coverage of--and responses to the Occupy protests.

It's safe to say that there are three essential responses by the mainstream media to demonstrations:
1. They're unseemly! 
2. They're full of all sorts of groups with different agendas!
3. Not THAT many people are out there demonstrating!

Here's a recent Glenn Greenwald Salon.com article about responses to Occupy Wall Street:
http://politics.salon.com/2011/09/28/protests_21/

Links to articles about Occupy Wall Street and Los Angeles protests:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/10/protesters-set-up-camp-in-front-of-los-angeles-city-hall.html
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2011/10/occupy_la_wall_street_proteste.php
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/29/nation/la-na-wall-street-protest-20110930

Now, some observations from commenters on the KABC-7 website:
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/los_angeles&id=8375524
"A bunch of losers possessed with a sense of entitlement. Where's a firing squad when you need one?"
"The 60's was a FAD for me but it seems to be a lifestyle for these people... somehow they haven't grown past it!"
"Wow. That's the best negative comments you can make? Pathetic. My husband and many friends went today, they ALL have jobs and they ALL pay taxes. Corporations don't. That needs to change."

[UPDATE 10/4/11: Some more recent links to pro-and-con Occupy Wall Street articles:]
http://www.observer.com/2011/10/from-blackout-to-circus-the-evolution-of-media-coverage-at-occupy-wall-street/
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2011/10/occupy_wall_street_and_the_creation_of_the_post_obama_left_.html
http://politics.salon.com/2011/10/04/andrew_ross_sorkins_assignment_editor/
http://politics.salon.com/2011/10/04/occupy_wall_st_right_wing/
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163767/we-are-all-human-microphones-now?rel=emailNation