This photo and story is not selected because this 29-year old woman’s story is one of the worst stories of suffering. She probably could have written “I am one of the lucky ones.” I have selected this because the ultimate conclusion she draws is reasonable: not selling your soul to the corporate state is likely to put you in debt.

One of the memes the 1% crowd has been pushing, both locally and nationally, has been The Cost To The Taxpayer of the protests — usually in the form of utterly unnecessary (and local-economy-hurting) barricades, police presence, and surveillance of groups of largely self-disciplined and peaceful protesters — costs that one almost never sees tallied in discussions of, say, policing of sporting events such as the Minnesota Lynx’ win of the WNBA championship.

But it’s the price of foreclosures and bank bailouts that’s really costing the taxpayer.

More than 390,000 US military field reports from the Iraq War were released by WikiLeaks one year ago. The reports—the Iraq War Logs, which range from 2004 to 2009, revealed the truth of the US occupation of Iraq. When they were released, editor-in-chief Julian Assange hoped the logs would help correct the attacks on the truth that had occurred before, during and after the war’s official conclusion.

You can summarize the story of Peter Van Buren’s We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People with his assessment of the scams Iraqis pulled off with reconstruction dollars: “It wasn’t so much we were conned, it was as if we demanded to be cheated and would not take no for an answer.” The book describes what he saw of the various reconstruction efforts in Iraq, particularly his experience serving on a State Department Provisional Reconstruction Team in 2009.

Now that Mitt Romney has come out strongly in favor of keeping the troops in Iraq until a perfectly seamless nothing-could-possibly-go-wrong my-work-here-is-finished it’s-Miller-time-but-not-for-me-thanks-I’m-Mormon orderly transition is completed, it’s worth revisiting those hazy crazy days of Mitt’s youth when he had the opportunity to go to Vietnam and personally make The Case For American Greatness.

Everyone knew it was a losing battle, but everyone showed up anyway. In an uprising virtually unprecedented in its size, scope and diversity, malcontents united across Greece to push back against the government’s assault on working people.

Lisa was told to be on a phone call with NPR and WDAV Thursday morning, but NPR canceled the call without telling her, as she waited by the phone. NPR’s Anna Christopher Bross tells me that NPR spoke with WDAV about how to handle Simeone.

In some sense, the Obama Administration has taken the Pentagon strategy of “transformation” put forth by Donald Rumsfeld to its logical conclusion. Rumsfeld sought a light footprint in warmaking, a small, agile force that could quickly move through regions with superior firepower. The innovation from Obama’s Administration has been to get rid of the footprint altogether. Instead of standing armies occupying foreign countries, the move is toward shadow wars, and unmanned flying robots, and special operations forces. That is the new American way of war.

Spirits were high last night as occupiers were joined by 92-year-old folk legend Pete Seeger for a late night march to Columbus Circle, where a midnight performance featuring Seeger’s grandson Tao Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, composer David Amram, bluesman Guy Davis and others.

This is an extended response to wbgonne’s comment on the Occupy Wall Street liveblog. It is just some observations prompted by the comment.

There are some good insights in this comment. Let me tell you what I see going on from a variety of locations.