It's nice to see projects like Twitter's Bootstrap[1] being used to help reduce the amount of time it takes to get a site and its information on the web.
The leftist bias of academia is present all over the country, so I'm not surprised that there is a young constituency for a vague leftist protest movement in most geographic areas.
Occupy is about an end to corruption and getting money out of politics. There's no irony in using Facebook to organize these events... unless you believe Facebook is bribing our governments?
Occupy Wall St is about whatever anyone is holding a sign up against and speaking against and that includes large corporations that are run by billionaires.
I find it exactly as fascinating as the Tea Party movement, which is to say silly and ignorant. I hate when political posts make it on hacker news with just enough hacker context to qualify under the site guidelines.
Friend of mine (and very successful entrepreneur, so he is not really nobody) said: the end of recession will be when you stop seeing banks renting the most expensive real-estate available (important intersections, downtown, etc.) for their offices.
Indeed. I urge everyone to be vigilant with flagging, since "groups of people with agendas" are one of the things which HN needs a strong immune response against.
On your first point, I totally agree. It reminds me of the Civilization game series, where cities often go into civil unrest for no apparent reason other than population growth. These Wall Street protests have no real objective except for expressing anger at the current economic situation.
It's ironic in my opinion because most of these people have 1080p televisions, iPhones, cars, shelter, Internet, and an indefinite supply of food. We don't have oppressive dictators suppressing our freedoms like in Egypt and Libya. I mean obviously things could be improved with more people employed, but their anger seems disproportional and misdirected. It amuses me to think that even if employment levels become good again, 10 years down the road people will become angry for whatever reason. Nothing is ever good enough, and the grass is always greener.
On your second point, I also agree that they have no place here, although this link doesn't have a political agenda. It surprises me actually that there aren't more political posts, considering what the frontpage of Reddit has looked like recently.
[1] http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/