Occupy Wall Street protests spread across Europe

It's an interesting question, raised by a CNN article, as to whether OWS is spreading across the globe, or whether the Spanish protests begun months and months ago helped to create OWS. But to some degree, it doesn't matter. The protests speak for themselves. At least in the US. I have to say I'm always skeptical of protests in Europe. Honestly, they've always struck me as too easy. When I lived in France, there were protests for everything - and every time hundreds of thousands of, if not a million, people would show up. It was a bit too Stepford for my tastes.

It's awfully hard to organize a good protest in America. And maybe in the same way that some say death gives value to life, Americans' inherent disinterest to protest makes an actual successful protest on our soil that much more meaningful when it's pulled off well. So whether it started in Spain or started in NYC, it's surprising and impressive that it's gone on this long and seems to be spreading.

The Republicans manufactured fake protests motivated by a lie and the media naively accepted it as a sign of something new in American life.  It wasn't new.  It was the same old trick they tried in 2000 during Bush v Gore.  Just get a GOP crowd to yell and scream and the Democrats will back down, while the media fawns. The Tea Party isn't a party, it isn't a movement.  It's the work of Dick Armey and the Koch brothers, and its members are conservative Republicans who are naive enough to believe that Barack Obama is a socialist, and that they create something real.  No.  It was created by liars and run by fools.

OWS, in spite of Reuters' best effort to claim the contrary for about 6 hours before they got caught, isn't a front for anybody, and it's not based on a lie.  While a lot of us still aren't sure who exactly is attending the protests, and whether we're kindred spirits on every political issue, it's hard to disagree with the real anger people are feeling against the brightest minds of Wall Street who screwed a nation, and the world, and got away with it.

We've got one political party that's lost its mind, and seems hell bent on making things worse, and another that's too afraid of its own shadow to truly make things better.  A little righteous anger based in truth may be just what the doctor ordered.