Rules are here. Possible comment fodder follows. Other topics are also fair game.

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Obama-endorsed (proof here, here, and here) Occupy Update:

• New York (HT JWF) — “At Zuccotti Square members of the press now outnumber protesters.”
• At National Review — “The OWS Legal Team; The radical lawyers who sought to bring occupiers back to Zuccotti Park.”
• Zombie at PJ Media — “Occupy Cal time-travels back to the ’60s.” Sad, pathetic, funny, and infuriating all at once.
• New York (HT John at Powerline, whose title I am using) — “Why Zuccotti Park Needed to Be Cleaned Up.” A tasty sampler of reasons: “the park became a firetrap,” scabies, lice, lung ailments, dirty hypodermic needles, moldy food, “a sealed pickle bucket which … (cleanup crews) suspected was filled with human waste” … Had enough yet?
• BigGovernment.com is carrying an Accuracy In Media video (“Union PAYS #Occupy Protesters”). AIM “infiltrated the National Nurses United for the duration of their Occupy DC protest tour. As the footage reveals, NNU in association with the AFL-CIO sent over 1,000 nurses from across the country, public and private sector, all expenses paid (to Occupy sites).”
• New York (HT Atlas Shrugs) — “Angry mother of EMT injured during Zuccotti Park raid praises crackdown.”
• Cincinnati: “Rev. Jesse Jackson rallies Occupy Cincinnati protesters.” Thanks to Jackson’s “inspiration,” Cincinnati police “arrested 15 Occupy Cincinnati protesters at Piatt Park early Wednesday.” In case they care, these arrests, assuming the justice system does its job (unfortunately doubtful) will show up in criminal background checks done during reviews of employment applications, and could keep many of those who were “inspired” from getting the good jobs they supposedly desire. Thanks, Jesse.
• Speaking of background checks (HT OWS Exposed), “Man Arrested For Child Porn ‘No Longer Welcome’ At Occupy Chicago.” This of course implies that he once was welcome. He says he was involved with Occupy security, which of course the Occupiers deny. Do your homework, people.

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Today’s Occupy Mayhem Update is in a separate segment because it is sponsored by California Congresswoman Maxine Waters.

Just three months ago, Waters told a Los Angeles audience that “The Tea Party can go to hell.”

CNS News (HTs to PJ Tatler; Hot Air) reports that on Wednesday Waters, after a Congressional Progressive Caucus-sponsored event at the Capitol, “when asked to comment Wednesday about the deaths and crimes that have occurred around Occupy protests being held across the country, … said ‘that’s life and it happens.’”

Ms. Waters will therefore not object to yours truly informing readers that as of early this morning:

• According to OWSexposed.com, the Occupy “That’s Life” death toll remains at 7.
• At BigJournalism.com, John Nolte’s incomplete but nevertheless useful “It Happens” incident count stands at 256.

The Democratic Party — Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and its politicians — all own the Occupy movement, and it’s far too late for them to even think about walking it back, no matter what happens at today’s Day of Occupation “events” and in future “Occupy” efforts.

Too bad, so sad Update (“Tweets, e-mails, phone calls and texts keep OWS strong”; HT JWF) — “The key people are in jail, that’s kind of the tough thing.”

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Needed reinforcement of an important point made here ten days ago: “Public school teachers aren’t underpaid.”

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At the Epoch Times (HT Breaking Economics via commenter dscott) — “Chinese TV Host Says Regime Nearly Bankrupt.” Specifically, “Larry Lang, chair professor of Finance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in a lecture that he didn’t think was being recorded that the Chinese regime is in a serious economic crisis—on the brink of bankruptcy. In his memorable formulation: every province in China is Greece.”

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Also via commenter dscott, at Infowars — “MF Global Looted Customers’ Accounts Via Internal Bank Run.” Specifically, “Days before the doomed financial broker filed for bankruptcy, MF Global conducted ‘unexplained wire transfers’ that led to a $900 million shortfall in client funds, leading customers like Gerald Celente to learn that their accounts had been looted and setting the precedent for internal bank runs as more big firms go bust.” Meanwhile, Paul Joseph Watson alleges that “Big players got warning ahead of time that financial broker was set to collapse.” Related: “Gerald Celente’s gold account was emptied by MF Global.”

From Vatican City:

Nov 16, 2011 / 02:37 pm

Pope Benedict XVI will light up the largest Christmas tree in the world on Dec. 7 located in the Italian city of Gubbio in the region of Umbria.

Vatican Radio radio reported that the Pope will use an iPad to turn on the tree’s lights from his residence in the Papal Apartments.

Built in 1981, the Christmas tree stretches more than 2,000 feet up the face of Mount Igino outside Gubbio. It contains hundreds of lights and more than 25,000 feet of electrical cables and is considered the largest electric tree in the world according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

Go here for the rest of the story.

Five weeks ago, Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center’s Culture & Media Institute thoroughly documented (at NewsBusters; at MRC) how “two separate news unions, including the newspaper guild, the recognized union for many print and online journalists, and the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) are fully behind the radical message of Occupy Wall Street.”

Now that the Occupy encampments are largely being put out of their disease-infested, crime-plagued misery by big-city mayors finally recovering a tiny bit of their sanity, a visit to the home page of The Newspaper Guild, which, as Dan noted, is part of the CWA (Communications Workers of America) and represents workers at the Associated Press and many individual publications, indicates that they are fully behind what the Occupiers hope is the next stage of their disorderly incoherence. The graphic currently at the top of the guild’s home page, which is the same as the one currently found in an entry at OWS’s main site, follows the jump:

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You would think that a story headlined “GOP says Energy Dept. tried to delay solar layoffs” would have a quote or two from a Republican Party spokesperson, politician, candidate or even a rank-and-file party member alleging that, well, the Energy Department tried to delay layoffs at now-bankrupt Solyndra. It doesn’t. The “trifling” matter clearly didn’t concern the headline writer at the Associated Press, which one again is showing that it deserves to be called “The Administration’s Press.”

Without attribution, Matthew Daly’s early afternoon story (saved here at host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) largely relays and only slightly builds on what Carol D. Leonnig and Joe Stephens reported yesterday at the Washington Post. What follows are selected paragraphs from Daly’s report, including two (in bold) which only generically cite GOP criticism:

The Obama administration wanted the failing solar energy company Solyndra to delay announcing employee layoffs last year until after the 2010 midterm elections, according to newly released emails.

An October 2010 email from a Solyndra investment adviser to a colleague said Energy Department officials were pushing “very hard” to delay making the layoffs public until Nov. 3, 2010 – the day after the midterm elections.

“Oddly they didn’t give a reason for that date,” the email states. The email was released Wednesday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, along with dozens of other emails related to the Solyndra investigation.

Last week, the White House said congressional Republicans were using the Solyndra investigation as a partisan “political football.” Spokesman Jay Carney said at the time that GOP lawmakers have “cherry-picked” certain documents trying to create controversy over a decision-making process that the White House insists involved no political influence.

… Solyndra announced dozens of layoffs on Nov. 3, 2010, after the election, but continued to receive federal assistance.

… The Oct. 30, 2010, email was from Steve Mitchell, managing director of Argonaut Private Equity, a major Solyndra investor, to Ken Levit, executive director of the George Kaiser Family Foundation. Both organizations are controlled by George Kaiser, an Oklahoma billionaire who was a “bundler” for President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and a frequent White House visitor in 2009 and 2010. Argonaut invested $400 million in the solar company. Mitchell also served on Solyndra’s board of directors.

… Solyndra’s implosion and revelations that administration officials rushed to complete the loan in time for a September 2009 groundbreaking have become an embarrassment for Obama and a rallying cry for GOP critics of his green energy program.

Getting back to the story’s misleading headline (which also could have mentioned Solyndra by name, but avoided doing so): Daly quotes no one from the Republican Party. He quotes no current GOP candidate, officeholder, party official, or even a run-of-them-mill voter. Yet the headline gives readers the impression that GOP criticism is what the story is entirely about.

The Administration’s Press apparently can’t publish a story which puts the Obama administration in a bad light without engaging in some kind of tactic to make it appear as if it’s really about what the opposition has said instead of what the administration has done. In this case, it was a “don’t read this; it’s just the same-old same-old about Republican attacks” headline. Daly also fails the collegial decency test by acting as if it he learned everything in his story on his own.

Somehow, merely calling this “disgraceful” doesn’t suffice.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Rules are here. Possible comment fodder follows. Other topics are also fair game.

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Obama-endorsed (proof here, here, and here) Occupy Update:

• New York (warning: large doses of profanity — “Protester talking about throwing Molotov Cocktails at Macy’s.” Readers unable to endure the full four minutes will get the point after the opening 20 seconds of “We’re going to burn your (bleeping) city to the ground.
• From Manhattan, via the Blaze — “Occupy Wall Street protesters cut through a fence on a lot owned by Trinity Church, a major landowner in Manhattan.” They wanted to use a lot owned by the church as a new Occupy site. The church said no. A video at the link shows that Occupiers did not handle it well.
• From Iowa — “Occupy protesters force Cain Iowa cancellation.”
• From Seattle, At OWS Exposed — “There have been reports of public defecation in numerous communities, but now we actually have a video of an occupier in the act. Disgusting.”
• Oakland, at the San Jose Mercury News — “Oakland says it has spent an estimated $2.4 million in its efforts to contain the Occupy Oakland protests.” Context: Oakland’s annual budget is in the neighborhood of $420 million, and the city was facing a $35 million deficit even after some union “concessions” this summer.
• Dan Riehl at BigGovernment.com — “Supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement took to Twitter to enlist the help of hacker group Anonymous in targeting New York Supreme Court Justice Michael Stallman within minutes of his ruling that Occupy Wall Street protesters could not return to camp in Zuccotti Park.”
• Santa Cruz — “Police said there have been reports of ringworm and scabies at the camp in recent days.”
• New York City (HT OWS Exposed) — “City claims occupiers stockpiling weapons.”
• Death toll, via OWS Exposed: 7. Incident count (clearly understated), via John Nolte at BigJournalism.com: 248.

As I noted previously … Andrew Breitbart asks: “How many more rapes, how many more deaths, how many more acts of violence have to occur before President Obama and the Democratic Party withdraw their support and condemn these lawless protests?” My response: It’s too late for that, Andrew. They’ve had weeks to distance themselves from the disgusting criminal mayhem, and haven’t. They own it now, and they always will. No amount of attempted distancing from this point on can change that.

Besides, they haven’t made any attempt to withdraw their support. Now that most of the sites have once again become true freedom zones (i.e., now that the largely illegal Occupiers have been removed), it’s too late by any reasonable yardstick. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the Democratic Party own it in perpetuity. It’s who they are.

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UPDATE: At the Hill — “Dems criticize eviction of Occupy protesters.”

From “60 Minutes Overtime” (video at link; HT Daryn Kagan):

October 30, 2011 6:53 PM

“I was as big time as it gets,” linebacker Mark Herzlich recalls about his junior year at Boston College. At 6′ 4″ tall, Herzlich was 240 pounds of high-speed muscle and determination. After graduation, the All-American was expected to grab the golden ring of sports and be chosen in the first round of the NFL draft.

But Herzlich’s life didn’t go that way. In the spring of 2009, Herzlich was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma. It’s rare bone cancer, striking fewer than 400 Americans a year, and it can be deadly: 30% don’t survive.

As Byron Pitts reports this week on “60 Minutes” – “for the next two years, Mark Herzlich would wage two battles: one of his life, the other for a future in football.”

Watch Byron Pitt’s report, “All-American,” by clicking here.

Herzlich didn’t go into these battles alone. In addition to his family, Herzlich had childhood friend Zack Migeot, whose loyalty so impressed us at “60 Minutes Overtime” that we decided to delve into it this week in our piece “Best friends forever, fighting cancer together.”

Mark Herzlich has described his friend Zack as his “secret weapon,” “someone sent from God,” and “a brother” in his battle against cancer. As Byron Pitt’s told Overtime, “There’s an old saying: Sometimes in life you have to go to the mattresses. And when you go to the mattresses, you want people who will fight for you. That’s the kind of friend that Zack is.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Give Ben Hirschler and Kate Kelland at Reuters credit for a fair presentation this morning of the relative progress made in adult stem cell research compared to that achieved thus far in the embryonic arena. Maybe it was because they were reporting from London, where the constraints of insufferable political advocacy in journalism seem (sad to say) less present than they are in the U.S. Meanwhile, Health Writer Matthew Perrone at the Associated Press couldn’t even bring himself to recognize the existence of adult stem cells in his Monday afternoon report, and in the process wrote a flat-out fib about the number of FDA-approved stem cell clinical trials taking place.

The occasion for coverage was Geron Corp.’s decision to halt the first government-approved clinical trial involving embryonic stem cells. What follows after the jump are the first six paragraphs from the Reuters analysis:

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At the Associated Press this afternoon, White House Correspondent Ben Feller relayed the essence of a statement by Obama administration spokesman Jay Carney about how the President believes that, in Feller’s words, “it’s up to New York and other municipalities to decide how much force to use in dealing with Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.” Feller failed to mention both the President’s previous endorsement of the goals of the Occupy protesters, and his inexcusable silence as the encampments have devolved into disease-infested swamps of criminal and antisocial behavior. How convenient.

Most of Feller’s brief report follows:

It must be nice for the President can be so noncommittal now while Feller lets slide the fact that Obama was a big OWS booster in the beginning:

(Devin Dwyer at ABC News, October 18)

President Obama, who has become a target of the Occupy Wall Street protests sweeping the country, today embraced the economic frustration voiced on the streets and said in an exclusive interview with ABC News that his vision for the U.S. economic system is best suited to resolve protesters’ concerns.

“I understand the frustrations being expressed in those protests,” Obama told ABC News senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper in the interview to air this evening on ABC News “Nightline” from Jamestown, N.C.

(At the Weekly Standard’s Blog, October 18)

In an interview that will be aired tonight on ABC News, President Obama continues to express his commitment to the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

“The most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side, and that we want to set up a system in which hard work, responsibility, doing what you’re supposed to do, is rewarded,” Obama tells ABC News. “And that people who are irresponsible, who are reckless, who don’t feel a sense of obligation to their communities and their companies and their workers that those folks aren’t rewarded.”

The president also compares the protesters to the Tea Party.

(At BlackAgendaReport.com, week of October 10)

Obama Endorses Wall Street Protests

Comedian and social activist Dick Gregory had a “bulletin” for the protesters at the kickoff of the occupation of Freedom Plaza, in Washington, DC, last week: “President Obama endorsed what you all are doing here!”

The final excerpt goes on to note that Gregory’s audience “was skeptical, to put it mildly.” But Obama said what he said, and Gregory interpreted it correctly.

A Republican or conservative who had endorsed an activist movement decaying into lawlessness would have been hounded relentlessly (and appropriately) but the press to see if he or she was still sticking with the activists. With Obama, it’s just another free pass in what has been almost three interrupted years of them.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

… which is why Israel looks like one, while its neighbors to the east and south look like, well, desert outposts.

Great presentation:

Western thinking: “You build the bridges in your mind” to get to where you want to be. Here’s how, as Whittle explains –

• Imagination
• Ambition
• Skill
• Work Ethic
• Perseverance

Also watch Whittle apply these factors to the Occupy crowd. The result is not pretty, but is quite accurate.

I’ve been looking for a long time for a coherent attempt by those who profess to be pro-life to explain to me why pursuing individual state personhood amendments is a bad idea.

Personhood amendments would place into state law, subject to inevitable court challenge, the idea that for legal purposes fertilization is the point at which “personhood” begins. It is a direct attempt to nullify Roe v. Wade by turning the judicial majority’s own words around (“If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case [or Roe's case] collapses, for the fetus’ right to life is then guaranteed by the 14th Amendment”).

Sounds like it’s worth a try to me.

So did a lot of people in Mississippi, where a personhood initiative was on the ballot a week ago.

But the Catholic bishop there didn’t take a position on the initiative, and it apparently got no help and perhaps even some opposition from national pro-life organizations. The initiative failed 42%-58%.

Then the rationalizations began, first via Steve Ertelt at LifeNews.com, along with a Sunday item at the Catholic News Agency by Benjamin Mann.

Before I go on, I want to make it very clear that I believe that both gentlemen and the mainstream pro-life movement are well-intentioned. That said, I think that Ertelt, Mann, and those they went to for support are wrong.

I expected to find one truly pertinent argument against personhood somewhere in the two items. I didn’t find one. Per Ertelt, Mann, and those they quoted, it would appear that the only reason to oppose personhood is basically this: “We’re afraid that the Supreme Court won’t like it.”

And if they don’t, exactly how is the prolife movement any worse off? (Roe has already been “affirmed.” So what if another “affirmation” occurs?)

Both gentlemen appear to believe that incremental approaches will eventually work. Mann quotes Joseph Scheidler, who says that “Maybe we need to bring people first to recognize the humanity of the child at 20 weeks, at 10 weeks, at 5 weeks, and save all the babies we can right now.” There’s nothing wrong with that, unless and until you use it as an excuse not to go for complete victory. Then I start having a real problem. Unfortunately, that’s where I believe too much of the pro-life movement is.

For better or worse and after some hesitation, I ended up posting the following comment at Mann’s column (CNA indicates that the comment was “edited by a moderator,” but that was only to remove my blog’s URL, which for some reason it didn’t want listed):

This is pathetic.

Why not at least support trying the personhood approach when the opportunity arises instead of refusing to engage in the fight because you somehow “know” that it would fail in the courts?

I don’t agree with the folks who say “personhood or nothing” because you must try to save those who can be saved in the meantime with measures such as heartbeat bills, but to just give up on personhood because of the Supreme Court’s current makeup, which appears to the be the only thing resembling an argument raised against pursuing personhood efforts by the folks involved is, well … it’s painful to say it because I know the people involved are generally well-intentioned and believe in what they’re doing, but I don’t know what other word fits … cowardly.

I should also have asked, “Do we no longer believe that God can change hearts and minds?”

There’s also the argument, with which I agree, that a truly courageous, conscientious, and committed president could and would declare that when the Supreme Court ruled on Roe, it issued an opinion, not a law (which is a fact), and that for Roe v. Wade to become “the law of the land,” Congress will have to pass an actual law saying that it is (good luck with that). Instead of that impossibility, he (or she) will instead work to have Congress pass a law which will be declared ineligible for judicial review (a constitutionally permissible option) declaring the scientifically obvious truth that human life begins at conception. Oh, and in the meantime, the constitutional foundation known as the Declaration of Independence, which declares that life is a fundamental, God-given right without qualification as to stage, will be in force. Presto, America once again becomes a pro-life nation true to its stated values, and the Supreme Court’s anti-life majority can pound sand. Unfortunately, a credible presidential candidate willing to do all of this has never come along in the 38 years since the Roe ruling.

Reader reax is welcome, though I probably won’t get to review and/or clear comments until late this afternoon.

Blogger John at Verum Serum has unmasked yet another instance where initial claims by “leaders” at an Occupy site claiming non-involvement with crime fell apart after a short while. Even worse, after his post went up, a subsequent report on the same incident a few hours later scrubbed the truth to again make Occupiers appear not culpable .

After the jump, readers will see the initial and then revised stories about what happened at Occupy Orlando on Monday, each via Local TV station “News 13.”

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It’s here.

It will go up here at BizzyBlog on Thursday (link won’t work until then) after the blackout expires.

The myths are:
1. It’s unrealistic to expect economic growth of 4% or more.
2. Regulations really aren’t that excessive — and besides, they don’t cause jobs losses.
3. The flat economy is hurting government employees, while the private sector is doing okay.

Get the details, as well as even compelling evidence than readers here have previously seen that we are enduring the worst post-recession economy since World War II by far at the column.

More evidence of Myth 2 found after the column was submitted is hopefully coming later.