Mel, with regard to your sentiments about the Occupy Movement, you and I are on the same page. It seems to me that the resistance that the protestors are meeting has a very decided reflexive quality about it; it seems purely defensive, as opposed to being based on any cogent rationale. Just another moat around the castle in the clouds. And the diminishing middle class seems to diminish more every day.

As to the pepper spray incident, I woke up Saturday (I think it was Saturday) morning, and that was the first image I saw when I turned the tv on. Initially, I thought it was in Greece or something... then realized that it was in California! I watched that footage, stupefied.

I know there is an ongoing investigation into the incident now, but this was not crowd control. It was a systematic, cruel, deliberate act of subjugation that gave me pause, to put it mildly. It's been asserted that the officers were being cut off from their reinforcements. I'm not buying it. To me, it looked a lot like BillyBob the Frustrated Rent-a-Cop availing himself of an opportunity to momentarily indulge some of his boyhood fantasies. Sadly, these sorts of individuals find "law enforcement" occupations attractive. And his actions suggest a potentially much larger problem, I'm afraid.

Similarly, the Supercommittee's impotence leaves me speechless, but not surprised. Both factions embarrass me, frankly, as an American. Perhaps there is some solace in the fact that some measure of deficit reduction action (particularly defense spending) will be triggered by the inaction. Consider the possibility that a trimmer defense coffer will force more temperate decision making in that realm.

TC



~ Friends I never met took my hand to steady themselves

with wisdom I thought life had primed me to imbue.
But in truth the privilege was theirs to confer,
young eyes, as pools, reflections of a me I never knew. ~

TC

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