The Right Wing blogs have picked up a little bit from Rachel Maddow and Bill Maher and, well, I have to agree that these two are just way off base.

Adding to my dismay is that a lot of tweets from Occupy Wall Streeters, particularly from Josh Harkinson of Mother Jones, seem to be itching for a fight with the cops, as if that's the next level their protest needs to take to really gain some legitimacy. And I hate to break it to the Occupy people and their defenders (which I'd like to be, but I just see too many issues with the movement) but adding violence into the mix isn't going to help anything. Adding a clear voice and, ready the eye rolls from cynics and anarchists, organizing an actual voting bloc is what Occupy needs to do.

What really kills me about Maddow and Maher is that they overlook what I always took as the watershed movement for The Tea Party. The reason that the Republicans now kowtow to the Tea Party is because in the 2010 elections, the Tea Party disrupted the Republican plans by upsetting a number of the party's chosen candidates for nominations. Perhaps the biggest blow was when the Tea Party derailed the Right's best shot at taking out Senate majority leader Harry Reid in Nevada by getting loose cannon Sharon Angle the nomination. The Tea Party rallied to organize and then made a clear statement to conservatives that if they want to get power and/or stay in power, they better be going off of the Tea Party playbook.

Occupy Wall St.? Well, they've seized a few parks. Yes, I know that's understating what's going on but the way that the protesters are handling this, I won't be the least bit surprised if that is all these protests amount to in a few years because not only is the Occupy movement barely organized but it has no agreed up goals. Ask ten Occupy people what they are there for and you'll get seven different answers. Occupy needs to take a page from the Tea Party and come up with their own Contract for America. They need to focus their rallies. Don't just randomly march towards rich people's houses. Stand up for something specific. Fight against the T-Mobile-AT&T merger that will not only limit cell phone plan competition but will also consolidate the net more and give AT&T an even more leverage against the Net Neutrality Act. But most importantly, start raising some money and getting some potential House and Senate candidates to run and at least make some noise in next year's political cycle. Although the way that the Occupy movement is headed, I'm not sure they could agree on a candidate or even a party line. They might be better off taking a page from Hollywood and remaking an idea from the 80's - Monty Brewster's "None of the Above" campaign.

And this is where the resolve of the movement will REALLY be tested. Can they do what the Tea Party did and allow their rivals to gain or stay in power in order to get their point across? Would the Occupiers be willing to basically help a Republican gain the White House in order to send a clear message to the liberals in power? The Tea Party's blind (at times, ignorant) adherence to their ideals allowed them to make this sacrifice. I'm not sure if enough liberals are ready or willing to do that. While it may seem counterintuitive, the sad fact of the matter is that things do indeed have to get even worse to get enough people to see how the system needs to be changed. (The more and more I think about it, the more I'm questioning the bailout. It was our best chance to break up the banks and maybe also move towards breaking up some of these Too Big to Fail (or, from our politicians' viewpoint Too Rich Not to Bend Over For) corporations as well. The fact of the matter is that there's going to be short term pain if there's ever going to be long term solutions to the country's ills.

So while I agree with many of the ideas that Occupy Wall Street is... occupying for (campaign finance, breaking up some of these Too Big to Fail banks and corporations, regulation to make sure that corporations aren't imperiling the public for their own financial gain, etc.), they need to get people to come together and take over the ballot box, not a park bench. And to do that, they need to clarify their message or else I think they'll end up like MacBeth's poor player, "That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale, Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." In this case, sound and the fury is important and necessary for the good of the country but unless there's more organization and a clear plan, it will all indeed end up signifying nothing.

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