More than 50 arrested in San Diego as police continue to throttle efforts by local organizers:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/28/MN9B1LNR18.DTL

Here’s a rather bizarre piece that shows that the mainstream media is struggling to find a handle for the Occupation Movement. Only problem, it doesn’t exist. Try this from Allen Mc Duffee that quotes an article which tries to sell the notion that OWS protesters are “a bunch of people that are conservatives, they just don’t know it.” Huh?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/think-tanked/post/occupy-wall-street-protestors-only-win-if-obama-loses-in-2012-says-aeis-jonah-goldberg/2011/10/28/gIQAsi6aPM_blog.html

Huffington Post published this take on a “profile” of OWS protesters which may or may not be accurate due to limited sampling involved:

“In his recent article Polling the Occupy Wall Street Crowd, prominent pollster Douglas Schoen makes the case that embracing the Occupy Wall Street movement would cost President Obama and the Democratic Party leadership the 2012 elections. Schoen argues that the protesters "are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies," with "values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people." We recently conducted 100 interviews in Zuccotti Park (October 22-23) and 95 interviews at the site of Occupy Boston (October 23) and our data presents a very different picture.

“Results of our interviews show a population more motivated by reform than massive overhauls of existing systems, a group well-educated and well-versed on relevant policy issues rather than a radical movement likely to resort to violence. Moreover, our data suggests that casting them as deeply committed to ‘radical left-wing policies’ tells us less about this movement and more about the biased frameworks being applied to ascertain their policy positions.”

Read the rest here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-hayat/occupy-wall-street_b_1064544.html

Fox News continues to look for a way to portray the Occupation Movement as some sort of shady enterprise that is somehow engaged in nefarious activity. This effort now includes the defunct group ACORN which went bankrupt due to negative publicity. The guilt-by-association angle is predictable, especially when you consider the source. Here’s a reply by Mark Howard:

http://www.alternet.org/media/152889/how_the_bitter_elitists_at_fox_news_keep_trying_--_and_failing_--_to_dampen_support_for_occupy_wall_street

It should be noted that the bogus stories that have surfaced are only substantiated by isolated interviews with certain Fox News-friendlies who seem to know what type of slanderous accusations Fox finds useful at a particular time, (like the comments by the LAUSD teacher who was fired for anti-Semitic comments here in Los Angeles). And incidentally, I’ve been told that the Comments section of this site have been used for the same purpose. The Comments are difficult to patrol for this sort of thing, but we will remove these comments when they are brought to our attention. We ask for the help of readers to point these things out when they are posted.

The code of conduct for Comments and Forum posts is very simple. We ask that participants refrain from personal attacks, insults or defamatory language, especially when it refers to a person or organization that has not broken the rules when they posted their commentary. Stick with policy issues. Say what you mean. You’ll find there is no reason to attack others with different views unless you lack the ability to articulate your own.