We haven’t been fans of Occupy Wall Street — to say the least — but we have to give them partial credit for changing the national conversation. When’s the last time you heard about the deficit?

The rest of the credit goes to various police departments in Our Exceptional Nation, starting and — late last night — apparently ending with the NYPD, which forcefully cleared Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park.

Without the NYPD — ably assisted more recently by Oakland’s Finest — the movement would have labored in the obscurity under which it began. But move some riot cops into a bored crowd of unarmed hippies, and you have ratings gold.

Police Begin Clearing Zuccotti Park of Protesters [NYT]

Photo: @JoshHarkinson

ThinkProgress, compiling a helpful list of Barack Obama’s foreign-policy “successes” to throw at your wingnut relatives, saw fit to include this item:

Obama’s policy: President Obama ordered a drone attack that killed al Qaeda propagandist Anwar Al Awlaki, a U.S.-Yemeni dual citizen.

This is, to say the least, astonishing. As noted, Awlaki was an American citizen. And whatever you might think of his behavior, we have means of dealing with that. Constitutional means. Article III, Section 3, to be precise:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

But fine, we live in Exceptional Times. What’s astonishing is that ThinkProgress doesn’t even bother to sex up the dossier: By their account, we’re supposed to cheer Obama because he took out a propagandist.

We have a simple test for situations like this: Substitute “Bush” for “Obama”, and listen to your gut. If your reaction is the same, you may congratulate yourself on your judgment. But if not, you may want to avoid looking in mirrors, because what you’ll see is nothing but a fucking hack.

Obama’s Foreign Policy Successes [ThinkProgress, via Greenwald]

Ashton Kutcher, whose many talents include appearing in television commercials that pitch cameras to douchebags, took to the Twitters Wednesday night to express his sympathy for a hapless Republican who wasn’t at the debate:

How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste

A gazillion retweets later, he deleted the remark and posted an explanation:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzMYNONhfs4

When we saw this clip on Rachel last night, it was amusingly presented as a “video briefing” that the CIA presented to Saint Ronnie, who supposedly preferred this kind of thing to his one-page memos.

But when we go to the NBC background story, the spin is quite different:

CIA Historian Nick Dujmovic suggests the president’s reported reliance on videos were part of the myth of the “insubstantial president,” suggesting that there were only a small number of videos produced (each of which took a month to put together). Dujmovic adds that the idea did not come from Reagan or the White House but from the CIA, which in the summer of 1981 suggested some videos already in production might be “helpful for Reagan.”

Well, darn. Still, this video — which Reagan did watch in 1982 — is amusing in itself, if only for the fabulous Fifties retro presentation. And the reason we can present it here is even more amusing: It’s from the CIA’s YouTube channel.

One of the oddest claims — not weirdest, but oddest — from Herman Cain!’s press conference Tuesday was that dark forces are working to deny him the White House because he’s a “businessman”.

Cain! also said that as the leader of The Other NRA, he spent most of his time giving speeches.

Which leads us to wonder: How long has it been since Herman Cain! was a practicing businessman?

Answer: Sixteen years. He left Godfather’s Pizza in 1995.

In the process of hunting down the date — we were curious when the Statute of Limitations expires on that claim — we stumbled across an interesting article about Herman Cain!’s years in the corporate saddle:

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We don’t recall whether our career as a high-school journalist lasted one year or two, but we can state with confidence that we were an abject failure: Not once did we piss off the Administration.

Don’t worry — we atoned for our sin in college. Big time. But that’s another story.

Sadly, we lack the confidence to proclaim that we would have handled our Fantasy Indiscretion properly. For all we know, we would have made the same fundamental mistake as our colleagues in Seattle:

A proposal being considered by the Seattle School Board could have a chilling impact on free speech in the city’s high schools, First Amendment activists say.

The proposed policy would give principals the authority to review high-school newspapers before they are published and would allow them to stop publication if they deem material to be libelous, obscene or “not in keeping with the school’s instructional mission and values,” among other criteria.

Do you see the problem here? How about a telling clue?

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Ross Douthat, ignoring all evidence to the contrary, as well as common sense and a humanity he must have lost in a tragic childhood accident, thinks the last decade was a failure of meritocracy:

For decades, the United States has been opening paths to privilege for its brightest and most determined young people, culling the best and the brightest from Illinois and Mississippi and Montana and placing them in positions of power in Manhattan and Washington. By elevating the children of farmers and janitors as well as lawyers and stockbrokers, we’ve created what seems like the most capable, hardworking, high-I.Q. elite in all of human history.

And for the last 10 years, we’ve watched this same elite lead us off a cliff — mostly by being too smart for its own good.

We can’t disagree with Douthat’s general point that humility is the cure for hubris — the idea goes back to at least Socrates, who argued that acknowledging your own ignorance is the path to wisdom.

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