push-back

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-- The push-back against the Occupy Wall Street movement appears to be gaining momentum. It doesn't take much imagination to fill in the blanks of those who see the enormously popular movement that took shape Sept. 17, 2011, as a threat. The popularity kept them at bay for a while. But incrementally, the issues of "health" or "safety" or "trespass" or "illegal" began to weave itself into an acceptable mesh that would allow for the combating of fears similar to those the Chinese are well-versed in. On the surface, it's all legal and 'concerned.' Beneath the surface it's a deep-seated sense that the equilibrium of haves and have-not's, powerful and weak, leaders and followers cannot be allow for a serious challenge. And the protesters themselves gave vent to their own pent-up anger yesterday as "chaos" broke out in Oakland, Calif., and "police in riot gear arrest(ed) dozens of protesters who had marched through downtown to break into a vacant building, shattering windows, spraying graffiti and setting fires along the way."

Simultaneously, a make-shift shrine in Oakland honors an Iraq war veteran hospitalized after being hit by a projectile during a violent Occupy confrontation with police. "The fact that this war veteran fell wounded not on a battlefield in Iraq but in an American city, apparently as a result of police action, strikes many who have followed the Occupy movement as ironic."
 
--  In another sign of what feels like a general crumbling of the social turrets, the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team will go on sale. The Chinese are said to be interested. Bankruptcy for the little guy touches bankruptcy for the big guy.

Jean Shepherd

-- The House of Representatives, meanwhile, took 35 minutes out of its important schedule to reaffirm that "In God We Trust" should remain the official motto of the United States. What an incomprehensible blessing these twits are! Reminds me of the old Jean Shepherd book entitled, "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash." Jean Shepherd who -- long before the hippies and yippies and Vietnam protests and marches for equality, long before the movie "Network" urged people to scream into the night, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!" and long before Michael Moore made his trenchant celluloid observations -- would encourage late-night radio listeners to open their windows, stick their heads out and holler, "Excelsior!"


-- And in the good-news-bad-news department, scientists have found a drug that appears to halt the signs of aging... at least in mice. Look out wrinkles and turkey-neck, beware! In its nascent stages, the drug seems to attack wrinkles and muscle loss and other physical traits. No word on whether the mind could keep pace with the new-found youth.
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