I know they dislike that comparison, but I still think it dead on; Tea Partiers dislike people drawing similarities between them and a group whose GOALS are so diametrically opposed to theirs, but the myriad murky MOTIVES are undeniably the same in many cases. There is something to the notion that the two groups simply identify (or misidentify) very different causes of the same problems, and in many cases do not identify a cause at all, only object to the problem. Which, of course, is one of the objections to OWS, and one I happen to share, but I think it exists to just as great an extent with the Tea Party, and many members of both groups find it much easier to just blame groups they already despised than make a sincere effort to learn about and accurately diagnose the problem. Why face the difficult task of seeking the cause of and solution to complex problems when it is so much easier and more convenient to make them a pretext to attack groups one already wished to cripple or destroy?

Perhaps the most constructive, if unlikely, thing (and it would REALLY upset the apple cart in Washington) would be for OWS and the Tea Party to initiate dialogs between each other over common interests like their shared disgust with our disconnected ineffective national leaders so disinterested in anyone who cannot drop millions in personal, corporate, PAC and party campaign donations in their lap. That is the primary thing that prevented the ground swell of Tea Party support from taking over the Republican Party last year, the thing that is slowly and steadily nominating the ONLY GOP presidential candidate NONE of the Tea Party actually wants. It is also the most egregious and staggering betrayal by Barack Obama; just a few days ago I read RON PAUL, of all people, disputing his fellow candidates claims that Obamacare is socialism, instead insisting (rightly) that corporate power expressed through government is actually fascism (in fact, that is pretty how Mussolini defined fascism when he came up with the concept.) It may be a long shot, but if the populist left AND right got together against the government AND corporate elite ignoring the rest of the country, there is no telling how it would all end, but I doubt the plutocratic establishment could hold out for long without implementing real and large scale changes.