OWS is IMO representative of a bipartisan belief that both parties represent the 1% at the expense of the 99%.

Even so, I think the Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz was as accurate as anyone is likely to be when he pronounced our age--and our government--to be one "of the one percent, by the one percent, for the one percent." link

When I said that it was the job of policy intellectuals to fill in the details for the Occupy Wall Street protestors, I didn't mean "don't worry your pretty little heads about it, we'll work it out". I meant job literally as in responsibility: people like Joe Stiglitz and me have an obligation to work on this, helping to translate what justifiably angry citizens are saying into more fleshed-out proposals. That doesn't mean taking the public out of the loop; it means putting whatever expertise you have to work on the public's behalf. link

One of the most constant complaints one hears in DC about #OccupyWallStreet is that the group has no demands. Its message isn't tight. It has no leaders. It has no policy agenda. Just what does "it" want, anyway? On the other side of the aisle, one hears a sort of sneering "get a job" line, an angry reaction to a phenomenon no one in power really understands. The gnashing of teeth veers quickly from condescension to irritation and back. Many liberal groups want to "help" by offering a more mainstream version, by explaining it to the press, by cheering how great the occupation is while carefully ensuring that wiser and more experienced hands eventually take over. These impulses are guiding by the received assumptions about how power works in modern America. Power must flow through narrow media channels, it must be packaged and financed by corporations, unions, or foundations, it must be turned into revenue flows that can then be securitized. It must scale so leaders can channel it efficiently into the preset creek bed of modern capitalism. True public spaces like this one are complete mysteries to these people; left, right, center in America are used to shopping mall politics.

And further to Matt's point, power doesn't work differently - and the results of it have not been an improvement - just because that power resides in the hands of those who purport to represent the views of Democrats and liberals/progressives - at least not the current crop of power-holders.

Disappointing to me is that Krugman sees the movement as a potential boon to Democrats; he's completely missed the fact that it isn't just Republicans or conservatives or Wall Street and banksters alone who have taken us down this garden path - it is the current administration, and the staffing choices this president made that inextricably tie into and are a part of the whole debacle.  

And even more disappointing is that Krugman, even as he disses those who have mocked the irrelevant aspects of OWS - how people are dressed, for example - ends up belittling it by rhetorically patting them on the head and more or less saying, "thanks - the people who really know what they're doing can take over now."  

Well, that's the point - no they can't.  And they won't.  A second chance for Democrats?  Come on, this president has had chance after chance after chance to do the right thing - and he hasn't.  Ditto for Congress.

I added a few photos to my photostream, kept up the ones from the March on Wednesday.  Have a few more to add, when I can figure out how to.

Photo Link.

We all agreed that this practice is poor governance. Additionally, we agreed on a)Afghanistan, b) McChrystal (Had to be fired after the article, period, and he wasn't even fired, another sign of weakness), c)the LCD theory of politics... one has to be morally lacking enough to even run for office, and d) the supreme court right now is scary bad... based on the political money rulings alone.

People are getting fed up... Obama's the man at the top, so a lot gets blamed on him.

But he's at the top, and his weakness/vacillating/hands-off/ vapors don't help.

Said my sister, "It's no wonder the rest of the world is pi$$ed of at us after Bush and Obama."

I fear that OWS and the backlash against it by the right are going to create a situation in which it all burns while they fight.

If people knew how the coming disaster could impact them directly, everyone (liberals and conservatives) would be protesting the EU . . . and demanding that they stop screwing around and avoid disaster.

I don't think there is any more important factor impacting our employment numbers over the next year than how the EU addresses this crisis.  Based on what I am hearing and reading, I don't think this can be understated.

And I fault Obama starting now for not preparing the country for it now.