This is Fox 11's Gigi Graciette. Gigi doesn't cover Dodger games or the Rose Parade by mentioning the debris discarded by attendees, but apparently that's how she covers a international protest's local chapter: they have trash left behind after they've been arrested en masse. Gross trash, too. Way to inform the public.

No question as to why 292 Angelenos all but volunteered to be arrested last night. No mention of what nonviolent struggle has accomplished in American history (ahem civil rights). No mention of the cruel irony of the protesters getting evicted because they brought homeless people to the steps of City Hall instead of the usual safe distance of two blocks east. No mention of the politics involve and how the City decided to support the protest, then negotiated with them and then suddenly reneged - made apparent by the 1400 LAPD officers in riot helmets on the streets of Los Angeles last night.

But here's the thing that really makes this clip disgusting from a basic journalism perspective: Gigi doesn't know and didn't find out what that mysterious white liquid was in those water bottles before she reported on them. She didn't know and instead of being hesitant to make accusations or start any rumors - she just does it without pause. I saw her there at around 11pm - she was there all night and never asked anyone what it was before she went live?! You're supposed to know MORE than the people on their couches watching you - because you're on the scene! This is hackery at its worse.

The white liquid is more than likely Maloxx. They had it on site because it is supposed to neutralize the pain of pepper spray and tear gas. Yes, there's a story - there were hundreds of Angelenos willing to be pepper sprayed for a political statement. They were (their phrase) militantly nonviolent and had been spending days training and planning to be raided by police and THAT is what that mysterious white liquid symbolized - that's what it meant. They were willing, to quote Mario Savio "put their bodies upon the gears."

Since I will always assume the best in people, I will guess it's just laziness. Just not caring about telling a real story about Occupy LA and opting for the easy "look at the stuff on the ground" to fill up airtime. I say laziness and not incompetence or malice. But I'm feeling generous today.

Scott Olsen, the Iraq War veteran injured at the Occupy Oakland encampment on Oct. 25th has since been released from the hospital and gave his first interview yesterday.

In the interview Scott talks about the challenges he faces after being hit in the head by a projectile at Occupy Oakland, specifically the traumatic brain injury he sustained and the weeks of therapy it took for him to regain his speech. In the video it is evident that he still struggles a bit with speaking. But Olsen states that he is doing much better than he was.

Olsen also addresses the city of Oakland and the Oakland Police Department who are investigating the incident, stating that he is waiting to see what they are going to say about themselves in their own investigations. He has not been interviewed by anyone investigating for the police department, nor has he heard anything at all from the District Attorney's office.

Olsen also conveys at end of the interview that the Occupy Movement was intended to be peaceful and should remain that way, that by working together and being open with one another would solve most of the problems that the movement faces with bureaucracy.

Scott looks great, and it's obvious that he has worked very hard to regain his speech. He also has scars that are hidden underneath a bandana in the video. We wish him all the best, and a speedy, complete recovery.

You can follow the full story online here.

(Publisher's Note) John Amato:

This is the last time you can donate to C&L's Scott Olsen Solidarity Funder: 'We Are All Scott Olsen'

You can also snail mail a check to our address. Please write "Scott Olsen" in the notes section.:

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We plan to have a C&L member deliver a check to Scott directly so please help out if you can spare a few bucks..

United Wisconsin, the group coordinating the recall against Wisconsin's Republican Gov. Scott Walker, announced that they had gathered 300,000 petitions towards the recall in the first 12 days of the recall efforts, reaching the halfway mark in less than a quarter of the time necessary to gather the petitions. 540,208 valid petitions have to be gathered by January 17, 2012, the end of the 60-day timeframe to make the recall official.

Scott Walker has taken to the airwaves, supported by millions in corporate cash, to defend his record of job loss and full-scale assault on Wisconsin's institutions and values," United Wisconsin Executive Director Meagan Mahaffey said in a statement. "But all over Wisconsin, the people are seeing through Walker's deceptions and are moving to take our state back."

In the first 96 hours of the recall effort, United Wisconsin and its supporters collected more than 105,000 signatures from all 72 counties in the state.

An election could occur as early as March 27, although it will likely be later if Republicans challenge the petition signatures or file lawsuits.

Democrats are waiting until after the petition drive to begin discussing potential opponents for the recall election. United Wisconsin lists the top 10 reasons to recall Walker:

1. Walker was elected on a promise to create 250,000 private sector jobs in Wisconsin. After seeing the impacts of his disastrous policies, his administration has acknowledged that Walker won’t get anywhere close to fulfilling his campaign promise.

2. Walker’s budget cut over $800 million from our public schools, while at the same time placing caps on the amount of money school districts in Wisconsin can collect in property taxes to fund their schools.

3. Walker cut over $500 million from the BadgerCare program. More than 200,000 Wisconsinites could face premium increases, and over 50,000 people may be cut from their state insurance plan completely as a result of this cut.

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“The media,” as it’s referred to, is not a monolith. We don’t just have one channel, one paper or one site with one nefarious dude pulling levers. “The media” consists of books, newspapers, magazines, television, billboards, radio, blogs, vlogs, ebooks, webcasts, podcasts and movies etc. The media is a vast and (kind of) diverse way of communicating information.

Let’s talk news. And where the majority of Americans – as in over 50 percent (by most estimates) – still get their news – from their local nightly news show. Any discussion about how unaware Americans are when it comes to news needs to have its finger pointed at the proper culprit: Your local broadcast.

Yes, everyone hates Congress but loves their Congressman. Everyone thinks “the media” is biased, wrong and awful – but tunes in to their local anchor with admiration and trust. A pox on them all, except our guy…

Last week a PublicMind FDU poll went viral with the line, “Fox News [viewers] are five-points more likely than those who watch no news at all, to incorrectly say it’s the U.S. that is bailing out European countries.” The under-reported story (buried lede as we call it in “the media”) was of those polled 67 percent said they watched their local news. And that could explain why 36 percent said they didn’t know who was bailing out Europe and only 30 percent gave the correct answer (Germany).

Did you know that Iceland is having a revolution as a direct result of the economic meltdown centered in the U.S. housing market? How about Syria being sanctioned by the Arab League? Vladamir Putin has gotten himself back on the ballot in Russia?

And it’s not just the “reading off BBC headlines” news the local news misses – it’s the actual local news: Investigative news in the public interest. News about the economy, politics and local issues.

Your local news opts to put a camera in the face of a crime victim and be a staple of “fear porn” rather than ever tackle difficult segments holding the school board/city council/mayor/state legislature/governor accountable for anything.

Why can I assume without sitting down and watching a week of your local newscast that they’re more than likely gleefully doing a recap of what happened on Dancing With the Stars/American Idol/Survivor tonight? Because your local broadcast news is more than likely ratings driven. And because of the last couple of decades of ratings driven local news our Edward R. Murrows have all become Harvey Levins.

Why are Americans not even rising to the level of ill informed and topping out at totally clueless? Because as Homo sapiens, we are effectively distracted by shiny objects and Kardashians. Plus our monkey brains got a chance to evolve this long by being on hyper-alert for danger, so we eat up any story telling us about “the hidden dangers lurking in our homes!” So of course we tune-in as told and in that way reward our local yokels for their reportage. And local yokels as Homo sapiens … also like rewards. It’s a vicious circle.

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Back in June of this year, Governor Rick Snyder and the Republican legislature in Michigan were fiercely debating ways to limit government contributions for public pensions and health care costs. One of the strategies was to switch the public contribution from a fixed percentage of premiums to a fixed dollar amount, and that initiative ultimately passed in September.

For 2012, school districts could not spend more than a fixed amount for health insurance, or else they would have to opt for an 80/20 percent cost-sharing plan where teachers paid 20 percent with the district picking up the 80 percent. This law was passed in advance of contracts being negotiated for the 2012 year, so that they would have to include it as part of the negotiation. In other words, the legislators tied unions' bargaining ability in a knot.

This legislation was just part of a multi-pronged attack on unions and public education in general. Other bills have been passed along party lines changing tenure rules and criteria for firing teachers, allowing outsourcing of teachers in charter schools, changing union dues rules, attacking collective bargaining, lifting limitations on state payments to cyber schools, and even lifting anti-bullying rules.

It's not an accident that this is happening in Michigan. Michigan, after all, is the home of Betsy and Dick DeVos, ardent opponents of all public schools. They aren't afraid to throw millions at that goal, either. One of her very favorite charities, along with her pals the Kochs, is the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Ostensibly a think tank, Mackinac is a non-profit organization which exists to write, lobby and serve as advocate for right wing dream legislation.

Emails published on Monday by the Michigan Education Association clearly show that Mackinac was coordinating with Republican state legislators in Michigan to not only limit teachers' collective bargaining rights, but they were also deeply involved in the policy surrounding health care costs. In one email from Jack McHugh, Mackinac senior legislative analyst and editor of MichiganVotes.org to state Representative (and chair of the House Education Committee) Tom McMillin with copies to several other Mackinac policy wonks, McHugh says this:

I personal think 20 percent is OK, because it changes the employee incentives (and we do believe in incentives!)

But a hard cap is OK too.

Do we care who runs the operation? Maybe, for this reason: Our goal is outlaw government collective bargaining in Michigan, which in practical terms means no more MEA.

I'm reminded of our calls to eliminate ISDs [Internal Service Departments] (and Ruth's work to expose them): The legislature keeps giving them more things to do, making it ever more difficult to abolish them.

Mackinac's stated purpose and programs on its 990 filing are as follows:

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The publisher of a conservative New Hampshire newspaper says Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has the best chance against President Barack Obama in 2012 because former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney "sort of represents the 1 percent."

"We would rather back someone with whom we may sometimes disagree than one who tells us what he thinks we want to hear," The New Hampshire Union Leader declared in a front-page editorial Sunday.

Appearing on Fox News Monday, publisher Joe McQuaid explained that statement was a dig at Romney.

"We don't think he's got it," McQuaid remarked. "We think he's the managerial type, but he's sort of a blank slate and he's going to go with the winds too much."

"I think -- and this is crazy, but so are we -- that Gingrich is going to have a a better time in the general election than Mitt Romney. I think it's going to be Obama's 99 [percent] versus the 1 percent, and Romney sort of represent the 1 percent."

McQuaid has a point that with a net worth of $250 million, Romney embodies the 1 percent of wealthiest Americans.

Gingrich, however, also has a net worth of at least $6.7 million, putting him well within the top 1 percent.

Romney reportedly earned $9.3 million in 2010, while Gingrich made a more modest $2.6 million that same year.

Over the summer, Gingrich explained an interest-free $1.5 million line of credit at Tiffany's by saying it was "a normal way of doing business."

"As a private citizen who has done well, I think I'm allowed to pick and choose what I prefer doing," he told CBS host Bob Schieffer.

Via Christian Science Monitor, it's good news that SCOTUS seemingly isn't all that eager to strike down all handgun regulation - and a bit of a shock, considering these are the same conservatives who ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller:

The US Supreme Court declined Monday to take up a potentially important gun rights case examining whether a federal regulation banning loaded firearms from vehicles in a government park violated the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Lawyers for a Virginia man had asked the justices to examine a question left largely unresolved in the high court’s two prior landmark rulings identifying the scope and substance of Second Amendment protections. The question is: Does the Second Amendment guarantee a right to bear arms in public for personal protection?

The court dismissed the case in a one-line order without comment. The action leaves lower court rulings intact and postpones the prospect of high court clarification on a key gun rights issue.

In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment establishes a fundamental right of law-abiding individuals to keep a handgun in their home for self-protection. In 2010, the high court extended that ruling to apply Second Amendment guarantees beyond federal enclaves like Washington, D.C., to all state and local jurisdictions.

The dismissed appeal, Masciandaro v. US (10-11212), had asked the court to examine whether Americans have a right to carry loaded weapons in public places for self defense.

How the justices answered that question would have established guideposts for future gun regulations at the local, state, and national levels of government.

In the 2008 decision, District of Columbia v. Heller, the court said that gun rights are not unlimited. The court said there is no right to “carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

Gun rights advocates say that statement confirms a right to carry at least some weapons, in some manner, for some purpose.

The high court also said that “laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places” would not necessarily violate the Constitution. Gun rights advocates counter that the statement, again, suggests that a right to carry firearms must therefore exist in non-sensitive places.

This post is written as part of the Media Matters Gun Facts fellowship. The purpose of the fellowship is to further Media Matters’ mission to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, gun violence, and extremism, the fellowship program is designed to fight this misinformation with facts.

Occasional Planet: How to stand up to Republicans – lessons from Truman and Eagleton.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Race-IQ 'Blackout.'

The Inverse Square: "A bias toward knowing what I'm talking about."

Mad Kane: We don't want Newt-education.

Guest post by Batocchio. Email tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.

99% indeed. Open thread below...

Ten years ago today, we lost a legend. R.I.P. George.