This week’s holiday mandates giving thanks. For many Americans, that is complicated by the harsh years since 2008.

There’s the bitterness of lost jobs, foreclosed homes and diminished opportunity. There’s the resentment over bailing out Wall Street, then watching banksters grant themselves sensational bonuses while denying Main Street loans to save businesses. There’s the fear generated by county club conservatives demanding draconian cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

It’s hard to muster gratitude while suffering, to feel appreciative while dreading a meaner future.

City to city, officials are deciding it is time for occupiers to pack up and go home. And, city to city there are occupations that are just springing up or re-establishing themselves in new areas of cities.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis downgraded GDP growth for the third quarter back to 2% from 2.5%. This follows a 1.3% second quarter. The slow growth is simply not enough to catch up to trend growth and increase demand to a level that can reduce unemployment.

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a request by Protect Marriage Washington that the state be blocked from releasing further copies of Referendum 71 petitions while PMW appeals an earlier Federal District Court decision that ordered their release.

Bank of America has been dealing with extreme liabilities since they made the terrible twin purchases of Countrywide and Merrill Lynch. Their liabilities stem from foreclosure fraud and a huge pile of non-performing mortgages, plus some exposure to Europe’s debt. Now regulators are directly warning them to improve their financial condition.

Even Politico can’t spin the GOP’s intransigence in their ‘insiders’ writeup of what happened on the Stupid-Committee. Seeking faux balance, the reporters claim new bipartisan friendships, but as usually, the examples describe a one-way street.

While police are legally empowered to use violence to maintain peace, that empowerment is only to prevent individuals from using violence against others. Under our Constitution, the empowerment laws are not intended to give police carte blanche authority to use violence against individuals who pose no threat or harm to anyone. For law enforcement to use violence outside these specific conditions is itself a crime.

Now that the Super Committee has failed — or succeeded — by doing nothing, the media are starting to notice that doing nothing would slash the federal deficits far more that anything the Committee, Catfood Commissions or White House have been proposing.

Lt. Pike, the cop who pepper sprayed UC Davis students protesting against economic inequality and injustice in America, is now the poster boy for authoritarianism against citizens rising up to change the world.

President Obama promised to veto any Congressional attempt to undo the trigger of spending cuts from the Super Committee’s failure. But he’s left unclear how Congress can be induced to renew unemployment benefits or other stimulus measures.