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... Raymond Chandler, the sergeant major of the Army, tells Army Times correspondent Lance Bacon that in preparing updated Army regulations on grooming and appearance, he's taken to Facebook to debate the finer points of French manicures, earrings, pony tails, and tattoos for U.S. troops...

With the US economy suffering through its deepest slump since the Great Depression, the Obama administration has designed a political strategy to match, with echoes of the campaign rhetoric deployed by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s. Throwing out the standard presidential playbook dictating an aspirational pitch to centrist voters, the White House is cementing a high-risk message that strikes firmly at wealth and privilege.

Scott Olsen survived two tours of Iraq, but his life could be over after being critically injured by a police projectile at Occupy Oakland, The Guardian reports. He's 24 years old. As we know, Occupy Oakland got incredibly ugly this week as police tried to remove protesters from their camp in front of City Hall by using tear gas, fire crackers, and rubber bullets. Olsen suffered a head injury on Tuesday night, and is now in critical condition in Oakland's Highland Hospital. Jay Finneburgh, a photographer on the scene, managed to witness and take pictures of the incident. Police policy...

After being struck by a projectile at Tuesday's Occupy Oakland evictions, Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen is lucid and awaiting brain surgery. The Guardian reports Olsen "responded with a very large smile" when his parents arrived from Wisconsin to visit him at the hospital. Medical officials say Olsen's able to write and hear, but is having trouble speaking. Meanwhile, Oakland's Mayor Jean Quan who left town after authorizing the raid, has separated herself from the police. Quan said, "I only asked the chief to do one thing: to do it when it was the safest for both the police and...

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore plans to visit Occupy Oakland's re-established tent city today, according to his blog. At the end of an Thursday blog post entitled "Life Among the 1%," Moore writes "P.S. I will go to Oakland tomorrow afternoon to stand with Occupy Oakland against the out-of-control police." Moore is among a growing list of celebrities and organizations critical of the city's actions and Mayor Jean Quan's role in evicting protesters three days ago, when police moved in using tear gas and other devices. Injuries sustained by Iraq veteran Scott Olsen in the melee have sparked criticism from many...

In an interview with former White House press secretary and Obama campaign advisor Robert Gibbs on Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer fretted over a report showing "the rich are getting richer" and pleaded: "So what responsibility does President Obama have in terms of dealing with income distribution in this country?" [Audio available here] Lauer began his push from the left by explaining: "Some of these young people are the same young people who are occupying parks across the country and they're out there protesting Wall Street. They're also protesting the White House."

OAKLAND, CALIF.—Anti-Wall Street demonstrators held vigils for an Iraq War veteran seriously injured during a protest clash with police in California as some occupy encampments came under growing pressure from authorities to abandon sites in parks and plazas. A crowd of at least 1,000 people, many holding candles, gathered Thursday night in Oakland in honour of 24-year-old Scott Olsen, who is hospitalized with a fractured skull. In Nashville, police cracked down overnight on an Occupy protest camp near the Capitol under a new policy setting a curfew for the complex. They moved in a little after 3 a.m. and arrested...

Meanwhile, in Oakland’s city center, about three dozen tents had sprung up by Friday morning on the lawn where an Occupy encampment was razed earlier in the week. That mirrored action in San Francisco, where city officials had removed tents only to see them return. “For every action there’s a reaction,” Saiid Shabazz, 35, of Oakland, said of the razing of the camp early Tuesday and the massive protests that followed. "The people are going to continue to use this camp as a training facility, an educational facility, a healing facility and a place to live facility.” Olsen, 24, a...

Marines have been flocking to the social networking/aggregator site Reddit to voice their anger at the life-threatening injury inflicted on 24-year-old Iraqi war veteran Scott Olsen by Oakland police during the recent Occupy protests. Video showed Olsen go down after taking a tear gas canister to the head. As fellow protesters tried to assist him, police lobbed a flash grenade into their midst–right next to Olsen’s already fractured skull.The picture above, submitted by Reddit user aburger, has generated well over 1,000 comments on the site–many from fellow Marines who are absolutely livid at the injury to one of their own...

Scott Olsen is the Marine Corps veteran critically injured at Occupy Oakland Tuesday night, during a confrontation between the protesters and the police. The latest news is good: his condition has been upgraded from critical to fair and he is apparently conscious and able to respond to doctors and family members. I sincerely wish him a full recovery, and I also hope that a proper investigation is conducted to determine whether police misconduct is responsible for his injuries. But I ran across something this evening that may add a new dimension to this story. It has been widely reported that...

(AP) SAN DIEGO — Three San Diego Marine corporals have been discharged for bad conduct after admitting they faked their marriages to receive housing allowances.

(snip) McCain, who identified herself early in the program as heterosexual, spoke candidly about her own support for a battery of LGBTQ issues on stage...at one point, McCain even indicted pro-Don't Ask, Don't Tell politicians as being "dangerously out of touch.""I support equality," she said. "You can't call this country free if people are being discriminated against. "I'm scared by people who don't evolve," said McCain later on, frustrated by the static nature of conservative politics. The blogger, whose views contradict much of the religious rights' stance on homosexuality, suffered extreme backlash from news pundits throughout her father's campaign. (snip)

LISTEN TO THE REAL REVEREND JESSE ON THE INTERNET OR A RADIO STATION IN YOUR AREA......BOND Action, Inc...Educating, Motivating and Rallying Americans! The Jesse Lee Peterson Radio Show Streamed live online from 6-9 a.m. PST / 9-12 a.m. EST. Call in the same times usually. For Live Questions or Comments Call 1-888-77-JESSE(5-3773) You can email comments and questions to radio@bondaction.org For more information on getting The Jesse Lee Peterson Show picked up on a station in your local area call Ermias Alemayehu at 1-877-WE ACT77 (932-2877) Home of the South Central L.A. Tea Party!

With the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, lots of military bases are getting free copies of LGBT newspapers - to help the Gay population adjust to the sea-change. I'd thought I would help them out with the debut issue of "The Daily Rear Admiral"! Not copyrighted - feel free to pass around!

An organization representing more than 2,000 of the nation’s 5,000 military chaplains announced Wednesday they would join forces with Catholic Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for Military Service, saying they will not perform same-sex ceremonies. The 2,000 members of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, a group of evangelical clergy, are concerned about the Pentagon’s memorandum – issued 10 days after the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal took effect – that authorizes chaplains to officiate “any private ceremony.” A Sept. 20 order lifted the military’s long-standing DADT policy, allowing homosexuals to openly serve in the armed forces. While the...

VIDEO

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday he supports the Obama administration's decision to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy banning gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military -- a move that was staunchly opposed by most top Republicans. "I think the decision that's been made with respect to allowing gays to serve openly in the military is a good one" Cheney told CNN's Candy Crowley on "State of the Union." "It's the right thing to do." The policy, first enacted during the Clinton administration, was officially repealed on September 20. Over 14,000 people were kicked out...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon has decided that military chaplains may perform same-sex unions, whether on or off a military installation. The ruling announced Friday by the Pentagon's personnel chief follows the Sept. 20 repeal of a law that had prohibited gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A federal appeals court refused Thursday to decide the constitutionality of the military's now-repealed "don't ask, don't tell" policy banning openly gay troops, saying the issue has been resolved since Americans can enlist and serve in the armed forces without regard to sexual orientation. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco tossed out a lawsuit that had challenged the military policy as a violation of gay service members' civil rights. In doing so, the appeals court also dismissed a Southern California trial judge's year-old ruling that the policy was...

With homosexuals now able to serve openly in the military, the gay rights movement’s next battleground is to persuade the Obama administration to end the armed forces’ ban on “transgenders,” a group that includes transsexuals and cross-dressers. “Our position is that the military should re-examine the policy, the medical regulations, so as to allow open service for transgender people,” said Vincent Paolo Villano, spokesman for the 6,000-member Center for Transgender Equality. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), which pushed to end the military’s gay ban, is urging President Obama to sign an executive order prohibiting discrimination based on “gender identity.”...