The Commentariat -- September 27

I've posted a comments page on the question "Whatever Happened to the American Left?" on Off Times Square. You can write on this or something else.

** CW: Why I Love -- Frank Rich: "From the moment Obama arrived at the White House, the Beltway elites have been coaxing him further down the politically suicidal path of appeasement and inertia even as his opponents geared up for war.... Only when the tea-party cabal in the House took Washington hostage did it fully dawn on the Beltway gentry that the country was in danger." Rich goes on to blast the phony third-party advocacy groups (those of you who think these groups are a good idea, please read Rich) & his former colleagues at the Times -- except Krugman! "Extremism in defense of liberty may be a vice, but so is retreat in the face of extremism." ...

... Less eloquently put, but on the same track, here's Greg Sargent on the "centrist" Third-Party Solution: "Calling for a third party is a quick and easy way to get yourself booked for a round of cable TV appearances. But many of those calling for a third party are refusing to reckon with an inconvenient fact: One of the two parties already occupies the approximate ideological space that these commentators themselves are describing.... That party is known as the 'Democratic Party,' and it already holds many of the positions these commentators want a third party to espouse." ...

... AND like Rich, Paul Krugman manages to squish Tom Friedman on his third-party quackery. ...

... CW: After reading Rich's takedown of Brooks & Friedman, I wondered if one of the reasons he left the Times was to -- take down Brooks & Friedman. If Krugman --who lambasted Brooks several times during the past couple of months, & now dings Tommy Boy -- I may have to go, too.

Finally, Obama Is Listening to Us. CW: All of the sudden, President Obama is spouting what the left has been screaming to deaf ears: here's this from Mark Landler's New York Times report on yesterday's Linkedin townhall meeting (see also video of the event under yesterday's Ledes):

The income of folks at the top has gone up exponentially over the last couple of decades, whereas the incomes and wages of the middle class have flat-lined over the last 15 years. -- Barack Obama

Jeanne Mansfield in the Boston Review on "Why I was maced at the Wall Street protests." CW: well, actually, no there is no "why." There was no reason. Read Mansfield's account, which sounds truthful to me, then watch the video, which is a demonstration of police brutality reminiscent of the civil rights era, and see if you think the police acted "appropriately," as they claimed to the New York Times (linked in yesterday's Commentariat). ...

... Karen McVeigh of the Guardian: "A senior New York police officer accused of pepper-spraying young women on the 'Occupy Wall Street' demonstrations is the subject of a pending legal action over his conduct at another protest in the city.... The officer, named by activists as deputy inspector Anthony Bologna, stands accused of false arrest and civil rights violations in a claim brought by a protester involved in the 2004 demonstrations at the Republican national convention." ...

... Who's Minding the Store? Ben Smith: "It's Mike Bloomberg's third term, and it seems to be going pretty much like the third terms of many politicians who can't quite let go after eight years: Very badly."

CW: as I've said, the Solyndra debacle began with the Bush administration. Something I didn't know -- Dana Milbank: "Bush’s Energy Department apparently adjusted its regulations to make sure that Solyndra would be eligible for the guarantees. It hadn’t originally contemplated including the photovoltaic-panel manufacturing that Solyndra did but changed the regulation before it was finalized. The only project that benefited was Solyndra’s." And the most vociferous Congressional critics of the Obama administration's loan to Solyndra voted for the bill. The sponsor of the House bill was none other than Oily Joe Barton (R-Texas) who still can't figure out how oil got to Alaska. This forces me to once again embed this video, the funniest part of which is that Barton is so fucking stupid, he thinks he's stumped Energy Secretary & physicist Steven Chu, who obviously can't believe Oily Joe is, well, so fucking stupid:

    ... Barton later proudly tweeted that he had "baffled" physics Nobel laureate Chu. Yeah, he did. ...

... Steve Mufson & Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post write an interesting overview of government-backed clean-energy loan guarantees. One takeaway from the report, which is largely critical of the Bush-Obama program: "Economists note that the government might never have gotten involved in loan guarantees if Congress had been willing to tax fossil fuels, introduce feed-in tariffs (a subsidized price) for renewable energy or approve a cap-and-trade policy that would penalize fossil fuels. Feed-in tariffs have made Spain, Italy and Germany the world’s largest markets for solar power. And they don’t anoint winners and losers."

"Governments Don't Rule the World -- Goldman Sachs Does": Alessio Rastani, an independent trader, talks to the BBC about how he views what he's certain is a coming crash of the market & the Euro. "Tyler Durden" of the Business Insider comments on the anchor's "gobsmacked" response:

Right Wing World * 

Mark Benjamin of Time: what Rick Perry knew -- and when -- about forensic evidence in the Cameron Todd Willingham case. Bottom line: both Willingham supporters and Perry's own staff confirm that Perry knew in the hours before Willingham's execution that there was powerful forensic evidence refuting the claims of so-called expert witnesses who testified at Willingham's trial. The recognized expert said arson was not the cause of the fire that killed Willingham's three daughters & for which he was no doubt wrongfully executed. With the evidence in hand, Perry refused to stay Willingham's execution.

CW: Yesterday I ran a link to a story by Howie Kurtz, who claimed that Fox "News" was moving toward the center after becoming disenchanted with teabaggers. So here are Keith Olbermann & Markos Moulitsas discussing Howie's Excellent Analysis. Um, apparently they're not buying it:

* ... Is apparently still right-wing.

Local News

Terry Van Oot of the Sacramento Bee: "Three wealthy Californians have launched a new effort aimed at helping elect state legislators who demonstrate the 'courage' to tackle major issues facing the Golden State. "Govern for California" is backed by Democrat David Crane, who worked as an advisor to former GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican investor Ron Conway, and Greg Penner, a WalMart Board of Directors member who is registered decline-to-state." Thanks to reader James S. for the link.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey failed to address intense speculation about his presidential ambitions Tuesday night as he delivered a foreign policy speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California."

President Obama spoke at a Denver, Colorado, high school this afternoon. New York Times: "After two days of energetically raising money in the rarefied precincts of Hollywood and Silicon Valley, President Obama stopped at a big-city high school [in Denver, Colorado] on Tuesday to push for new ways to spend money."

AP: "President Barack Obama's chief political adviser on Tuesday conceded that a dark cloud looms over the American economy and Obama's political future, describing the president's road to a second term in the White House as 'a titanic struggle.' ... [David] Axelrod said the president would ultimately win re-election, in part because of the flawed field of Republican candidates. He characterized their plans to repair the nation's ailing economy as the same kind of deregulation and tax cuts that caused the downturn in the first place."

AP: "As many as 14 people have died from possible listeria illnesses traced to Colorado cantaloupes, health officials say — a death toll that would make the food outbreak the deadliest in more than a decade. The Centers for Disease Control said last week that 55 illnesses and eight deaths were linked to the outbreak. Since then, state and local health departments in Kansas, Nebraska, Texas and Wyoming have reported six additional deaths that may be linked to the tainted fruit." ...

... New York Times: "Faced with a lawsuit by a major produce grower, the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday lifted import restrictions on cantaloupes from a Guatemala farm that had been linked to a multistate salmonella outbreak. That outbreak, which led to a recall in March by the importer, Del Monte Fresh Produce, is not related to the current deadly outbreak of illness from another pathogen, listeria, which has been linked to tainted cantaloupes grown in Colorado."

The National Park Service released this video, shot by a fixed security camera inside the Washington Monument as an earthquake with its epicenter in Virginia hit in August. The camera was in the observation deck near the top of the monument:

Washington Post: "The National Park Service said Monday that the Washington Monument will be closed indefinitely and that the 5.8-magnitude earthquake in August had done more damage to it than had been previously disclosed. Officials said a “debris field,” made up mostly of mortar that had fallen during the quake, had been found at the base and that more substantial pieces of stone had fallen loose inside the monument." See video above. ...

     ... AP Update: "Bad weather delayed the daredevil work of engineers who will rappel down the Washington Monument for a visual inspection, but ... for several hours, engineer Dave Megerle was perched atop the 555-foot monument, setting up a rope system and other equipment that will allow the rappelling team to traverse the exterior of the monument looking for cracks, chips and other damage. To get there, he climbed through a hatch that hadn't been opened in 11 years."

The Commentariat -- September 26

Off Times Square today highlights the Amazon.com sweatshop in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Links to related stories are on OTS.

Contra Ross Orderliness-before-Justice Douthat, his bosses at the New York Times write in an editorial: "It is time Americans acknowledged that the death penalty cannot be made to comply with the Constitution and is in every way indefensible." So why do they keep Douthat on? To defend the indefensible? ...

... E. J. Dionne: "... winning this battle [against capital punishment] will require converting Americans who are not liberals. The good news is that many are open to persuasion.... If a majority is open to persuasion, the best persuaders will be conservatives, particularly religious conservatives and abortion opponents, who have moral objections to the state-sanctioned taking of life or see the grave moral hazard involved in the risk of executing an innocent person." ...

... Richard Oppel of the New York Times: "After decades of new laws to toughen sentencing for criminals, prosecutors have gained greater leverage to extract guilty pleas from defendants and reduce the number of cases that go to trial, often by using the threat of more serious charges with mandatory sentences or other harsher penalties. Some experts say the process has become coercive in many state and federal jurisdictions, forcing defendants to weigh their options based on the relative risks of facing a judge and jury rather than simple matters of guilt or innocence. In effect, prosecutors are giving defendants more reasons to avoid having their day in court."

** "Whatever Happened to the American Left?" Prof. Michael Kazin in a New York Times op-ed: "... the left must realize that when progressives achieved success in the past, whether at organizing unions or fighting for equal rights, they seldom bet their future on politicians. They fashioned their own institutions — unions, women’s groups, community and immigrant centers and a witty, anti-authoritarian press — in which they spoke up for themselves and for the interests of wage-earning Americans."

The least charitable view ties it directly to campaign donations. The most charitable view, it’s a bunch of Wall Street hacks in the position of economic advisers who truly believe that giving billions to banks will trickle down to the middle class.... There are a lot of progressives, and frankly everyday voters, who wish this White House would cut their ties with Wall Street, stop the sucking up to Wall Street. -- Adam Green, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, on the subprime mortgage settlement agreement being negotiated between banks and states attorneys general & the DOJ ...

... Sellout! Again! Edward-Issac Dovere of Politico: The subprime mortgage settlement, "a collaboration between the Justice Department and the 50 state attorneys general..., would mean a lump-sum payment from the banks in exchange for a release from liability. But with negotiators in Washington this week trying to finalize a deal, it’s become the latest flashpoint of left-wing disenchantment with Obama." CW: I'll say. Read the whole article

Paul Krugman: "European policy makers ... don’t seem at all ready to acknowledge a crucial fact — namely, that without more expansionary fiscal and monetary policies in Europe’s stronger economies, all of their rescue attempts will fail."

Karen Garcia has an excellent post on the New York Times' so-called "coverage" of the Wall Street protests, "coverage" of which I briefly complained yesterday. To find out what's going on in downtown Manhattan, a few short blocks (and in NYC, they are short blocks) from Times Square, you have to go to Qatar (Al Jazeera) & London (the Guardian). The Times sent a fucking arts critic! Hey, it's like street theater. ...

... Jim Fallows of The Atlantic decries an NYPD officer's pepper-spraying women who were obeying police & doing to provoke them during the Wall Street demonstrations. (Includes video different from the one I posted yesterday, tho of the same incident.) ...

... Joseph Goldstein of the New York Times reports that a police spokesman said the officer acted "appropriately." A retired NYPD deputy chief who used to run the Disorder Control Unit pretty much said, "Yeah, well, better than clubbing 'em with a night stick."

They're Taking Away Our Freedoms (and this time, it's true.) Dorothy Samuels of the New York Times: States have passed "a huge number of new abortion restrictions, traceable in part to the 2010 mid-term elections, which increased the number of anti-abortion governors and state legislatures controlled by abortion opponents, who keep concocting new schemes to make terminating a pregnancy a right on paper only. The spate of new laws comes on top of many state and federal abortion curbs already in place."

As a Solicitor General, your job is to try to figure out how to persuade nine Supreme Court justices to take a particular position. And now my job is to figure out how to persuade eight. -- Elena Kagan, Solicitor General before becoming a Supreme Court Justice ...

... Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The first justice in more than 40 years who had never been a judge, [Elena] Kagan established herself quickly as a forceful and insightful questioner on a court filled with strong personalities. While Kagan’s writings as an academic did not suggest a strong legal philosophy, her opinions and dissents from the bench have shown a conversational, confident writer, at times as sarcastic and cutting as a veteran."

Erik Eckholm of the New York Times: "A handful of advocates, armed with nothing more than their keyboards, have put many of the country’s largest retailers, including Apple, Microsoft, Netflix and Wal-Mart, on the spot over their indirect and, until recently, unnoticed roles in funneling money to Christian groups that are vocal in opposing homosexuality."

Matt Miller of the Washington Post argues for a third party. "... with America on the road to slow decline, the stakes are too high for 'inadequate' and 'retrograde' to be our only choices." If you think Miller's idea is a good one, maybe your eyes won't glaze over when you try to read (I couldn't begin to finish it) his idea for a rousing stump speech by some independent candidate. Loser.

If You Believe This, I've Got a Bridge...." Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post: President Obama asserted last week that Republicans in Congress are holding up reconstruction of the Brent Spence Bridge between Ohio & Kentucky by not passing the American Jobs Act. Er, not exactly.

And You Think the Government Is Bad? Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post reviews the shady history of Hewlitt-Packard's management, and the massive losses caused by its board & their hand-picked incompetent CEOs. It's a soap opera with no happy ending. If there's a cliffhanger, it's -- Will Meg Whitman, HP's newest CEO, do as ineffective a job for HP as she did running her campaign for U.S. Senate?

Right Wing World

Has anybody been watching the debates lately? You've got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change. -- Barack Obama, at a California fundraiser yesterday

CW: Yet another profile of Fox "News"' Roger Ailes, this one by that phoney Howie Kurtz. But Kurtz does discover something I wouldn't, since I don't watch Fox:

Privately, Fox executives say the entire network took a hard right turn after Obama’s election, but, as the Tea Party’s popularity fades, is edging back toward the mainstream. While Fox reporters ply their trade under Ailes’s much-mocked 'fair and balanced' banner, the opinion arm of the operation has been told to lower the temperature. After the Gabrielle Giffords shooting triggered a debate about feverish rhetoric, Ailes ordered his troops to tone things down. It was, in his view, a chance to boost profits by grabbing a more moderate audience.

Yesterday on Off Times Square we were discussing colorful language, so reader Bob M. sent me a link to a video of Gov. Rick Perry, well, using colorful language when he thought he was off-camera. The backstory is here, but I couldn't get the video to load. So I looked for a YouTube version, and here it is:

... While I was looking, I found this video by Steve Brooks, uploaded in 2010. I kinda love it:

Prof. Matthew Sutton, in a New York Times op-ed, on how fundamentalist Christian apocalyptic fears/hopes are driving political discourse as right-wing candidates cash in on & stoke them. CW: while the views of these fundamentalists are, well, nuts, the Republicans' embrace & exploitation of them is alarming. Reading Sutton's piece should make you think twice about home-schooling, too.

News Ledes

Washington Post: "Senate leaders reached an agreement Monday evening that is almost certain to avert a federal government shutdown.... The new pact, which the Senate approved 79 to 12 and the House is expected to ratify next week, will keep federal agencies open until Nov. 18 at a level of spending that represents a 1.5 percent cut from this year’s levels.... Senate leaders agreed to a compromise that provides less money for disaster relief than Democrats sought, but also strips away spending cuts that Republicans had advanced." New York Times story here.

Washington Post: "The constitutionality of the 2010 health-care law will likely be determined by the Supreme Court this term, meaning the decision could come next summer in the thick of the 2012 presidential campaign.... Although the department declined further comment, the logical next step for the Obama administration is to ask the justices to make what would be the final determination on the law’s fate."

The Hill: "Facebook confirmed it filed paperwork on Monday to start its own political action committee. 'FB PAC will give our employees a way to make their voice heard in the political process by supporting candidates who share our goals of promoting the value of innovation to our economy while giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected,' said a spokesman...."

President Obama spoke at a campaign event in San Diego, California this afternoon & at campaign events in Los Angeles this evening.

     ... Los Angeles Times story here: "Raise my taxes, please."

President Obama participated in a townhall meeting this morning. AP: "President Barack Obama is on the road selling his jobs plan — and his re-election hopes — to plugged-in networkers in Silicon Valley and around the country. He was to appear Monday at a town hall-style event hosted by the career-focused social networking site LinkedIn to pitch his nearly $450 billion jobs proposal as he travels through California scooping up campaign cash."

Washington Post: "With time running out, Congress returns Monday to try to pass a short-term funding measure to avert a government shutdown and avoid yet another market-rattling showdown over the federal budget. The Democratic-led Senate, which on Friday blocked a GOP House measure to fund the government through Nov. 18, will vote late Monday on its own version of the bill."

AP: "President Barack Obama charged Sunday that the GOP vision of government would 'fundamentally cripple America,' as he tried out his newly combative message on the liberal West Coast."

AP: Americans "Joshua Fattal ... and Shane Bauer ... spoke for the first time in public about their ordeal of more than two years at the hands of Iranians — accused of spying for their country by illegally walking across the Iran-Iraq border."

Reuters: "Protesters in Sanaa are preparing for a long, messy revolt after President Ali Abdullah Saleh offered no clear path to a handover on his return to Yemen from three months of convalescence after an attempt on his life."

Washington Post: "A group of defectors calling themselves the Free Syrian Army is attempting the first effort to organize an armed challenge to President Bashar al-Assad’s rule, signaling what some hope and others fear may be a new phase in what has been an overwhelmingly peaceful Syrian protest movement."

Reuters: "Scottish prosecutors have asked Libya's interim rulers for help in tracking down information which could lead to others, even deposed leader Muammar Gaddafi, being charged over the 1988 bombing of a U.S.-bound airliner over Lockerbie in Scotland."

The Commentariat -- September 25

Whether you can win or not in a fight that’s worth fighting, get caught trying. -- Bill Clinton

Activist Sally Kohn offers up some ideas in this Washington Post op-ed that are pretty impractical, but some of you-all will like them. Most of her ideas are do-able and reasonable.

... I've posted a comments page for Kohn's op-ed on Off Times Square.

Frank Bruni of the New York Times never really answers his own question, but he gives you reason to answer it for yourself: "HAS American political life become a carnival so invasive, indiscriminate and sometimes even crude that it repels some of the best potential officeholders and almost guarantees that the most important business of the country won’t be properly done?

As Karen Garcia noted in a blogpost some months ago, if you want to find out about protests in New York City, you'll have better luck going to Al Jazeera than to the New York Times. On today's front page, the Times has teeny links to two blogposts about the protests (both linked under today's Ledes), one of which has a glaring error -- at least at this writing the post embedded the same video twice, although the caption accompanying one of the videos refers to another one, which was not posted. But wait! The Times front page does link to a "real" article (as opposed to a blogpost) about the protesters by one Ginia Bellafante, who devotes her report to documenting how few, how clueless & how disorganized the young protesters are. See, they're as dumb as teabaggers.

Ross Douthat argues that Troy Davis's death sentence was a real boon for him, because if he'd received a lesser sentence, his case would not have got all that public attention. Douthat doesn't dwell on the fact that part of Davis's good fortune included being executed for a crime in which it turned out there was plenty of reasonable doubt of his guilt. Instead, Douthat argues, "Abolishing capital punishment ... would tell the public that our laws and courts and juries are fundamentally incapable of delivering what most Americans consider genuine justice. It could encourage a more cynical and utilitarian view of why police forces and prisons exist, and what moral standards we should hold them to. And while it would put an end to wrongful executions, it might well lead to more overall injustice." In other words, capital punishment is a good thing because it "sends a message" that our justice system works, and we should have confidence in it.

Really? In a comment, Gemli from Boston responds. Read Gemli's whole comment, & recommend it, please:

When I was young and innocent, and didn't know the difference between liberals and conservatives, I read a quote that said as far as criminal justice was concerned, 'Conservatives prefer unfairness to disorder.' I always thought that was an exaggeration just to make a point. Who could be so lacking in human empathy that one could punish someone, even put them to death, with a cloud of innocence hanging over them? But here is an entire column making that case.

** "The Fraying of a Nation's Decency." Anand Giridharadas of the New York Times highlights the Morning Call story we linked last week on Amazon.com's Allentown, Pennsylvania, sweatshop (If you haven't read the Morning Call story, it's here, and it's horrifying.). "Amazon.com, the books-to-diapers-to-machetes Internet superstore, is a perfect snapshot of the American Dream, circa 2011.... And what the story revealed about Amazon could be said of the country, too: that on the road to high and glorious things, it somehow let go of decency....Far beyond official Washington, we would seem to be witnessing a fraying of the bonds of empathy, decency, common purpose.... It doesn’t feel like one nation when a company like Amazon, with such resources to its name, treats vulnerable people so badly just because it can.... People who run companies like Amazon operate as though it never occurred to them that it could have been them crawling through the aisles.... What is creeping into the culture is simple dehumanization, a failure to imagine the lives others lead."

CW: Several readers have asked me privately about the White House "We the People" petition facility, which allows citizen to post petitions to the Obama administration. Any petition that receives at least 5,000 signers will receive "consideration" from White House staff. As Karen Garcia reports, "The winner and undisputed champion on the White House's new citizen petition webpage is the legalization of marijuana." Read Garcia's post, which I think is about right. In today's Off Times Square Kate Madison highlights another petition to recognize the Wall Street protesters. IMHO, the so-called petition capability is a way to shut you up by giving you the satisfaction you've "done something" for the causes that interest you. Since the site also requires you to provide basic information about yourself in order to sign a petition (which is SOP) & provides you the "opportunity" to get e-mails from the White House, obviously "We the People" is also a tool for the re-election campaign. Expect a fundraising letter in your inbox. But heck, maybe President Obama will get into the weed.

When I was a kid, I inhaled frequently. That was the point. -- Barack Obama, ca. 2006

Right Wing World

"Nice Try." Maureen Dowd: "[Rick] Perry is proving to be [Mitt] Romney's best asset." ...

... Maggie Haberman & Jonathan Martin of Politico: "With the party’s front-runner sagging, Chris Christie is reconsidering pleas from Republican elites and donors to run for president in 2012.... The New Jersey governor has indicated he is listening to big-money and Republican influence-makers, and will let them know in roughly a week whether he has moved off his threat-of-suicide vow...."

News Ledes

New York Times: "In his first speech since returning to Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh confirmed on Sunday that his deputy remained authorized to sign a transfer-of-power agreement that would lead to early presidential elections, but he did not make any new concessions."

New York Times: "King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on Sunday granted women the right to vote and run in future municipal elections, the biggest change in a decade for women in a puritanical kingdom that practices strict separation of the sexes, including banning women from driving."

AP: "After eight months of contract-wrangling and negotiations that dragged past a strike deadline, supermarket workers in Southern California will stay on the job.... Members of the region's United Food and Commercial Workers voted to ratify a new contract with three major grocery chains..., averting a strike of more than 60,000 workers that could have crippled the industry and left shoppers scrambling."

AP: "Pakistan's army chief will convene a special meeting of senior commanders Sunday following U.S. allegations that the military's spy agency helped militants attack American targets in Afghanistan, the army said."

Reuters: Pope Benedict said on Saturday the Catholic Church could not accept gay marriage and urged young people to root out evil in society and shun a 'lukewarm' faith that damages their Church. The 84-year-old pope ended the third day in his homeland with a rally for more about 30,000 young people at a fairground outside the southern city of Freiburg, a Catholic area where he received the warmest welcome of his trip so far."

CNN: "Two American hikers freed last week from an Iranian prison are expected to arrive in the United States on Sunday. Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer were released by Iran on Wednesday and were flown to Muscat, Oman's capital, where they enjoyed several days of freedom after more than two years in prison." ...

... New York Daily News: Actor & activist "Sean Penn played a real-life role in the mediation that secured the release of two American hikers who were held captive in Iran for more than two years. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged his ally, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to release the hikers after the South American leader was lobbied by pals in U.S. 'intellectual circles,' Reuters reported. One of those Americans was Penn, who flew to Venezuela to meet with Chavez and push him to talk to Ahmadinejad."

AP: "About 80 people were arrested Saturday as demonstrators who were camped out near the New York Stock Exchange marched through lower Manhattan, police said. The 'Occupy Wall Street' protest is entering its second week. Demonstrators said Saturday they were protesting against bank bailouts and the mortgage crisis; some also held signs decrying Georgia's execution of Troy Davis.... At Manhattan's Union Square, police tried to corral the demonstrators using orange plastic netting.... Activists posted the videos online. One video appears to show officers using pepper spray on women who already were cordoned off." New York Times item here. Two videos here. Al Jazeera video above. ...

... Firedoglake has a liveblog here.

Guardian: "Police have been accused of heavy-handed tactics after making 80 arrests on Saturday when protesters marched uptown from their makeshift camp in a private park in the financial district. Footage has emerged on YouTube showing stocky police officers coralling a group of young female protesters and then spraying them with mace, despite being surrounded and apparently posing threats of only the verbal kind":

     ... The Times post -- linked above -- makes reference to this video, but does not embed it.

     ... CW Note: this video is of the full speech to the CBC. I had posted a clip earlier.

AP: "In a fiery summons to an important voting bloc, President Barack Obama told blacks on Saturday to quit crying and complaining and 'put on your marching shoes' to follow him into battle for jobs and opportunity. And though he didn't say it directly, for a second term, too."