Early Friday morning students stream out of a cafeteria in The New School's Albert List Hall. Between 50 and 200 of them had been occupying a cafeteria in the building at various times during a 36 hour protest against the university administration. It's early. The students are tired, but in good spirits after university president Bob Kerrey agreed to most of their demands, including more student voice in university affairs and the creation of a committee on Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) to oversee university capital funds. They declare victory.

But they can also claim a key victory in a less obvious battle--the battle over message. For two and a half days students reported from inside the cafeteria using text messages, email, blog posts, Youtube videos, and Twitter feeds. They responded to New York Times' City Room blog posts with news updates and fact checks. They countered Kerrey's labeling of the occupation as a "security risk" by posting videos of security personnel using excessive force on occupiers. They made their demands and their decisions clear and free for all to read. It was all in real time--and it was all powered by the university's electricity and wireless Internet.

The use of these new technologies marks a new era in fighting and winning a message war during direct actions. Not only were the New School students able to quickly and inexpensively release updates and report on the scene, they were able to respond to accusations in real time, as the events were still unfolding. Getting the message out on a broad platform has never been faster, cheaper, or more accessible--and participants can do it all without leaving the scene.

This is especially important for student organizers who have long been on the margins of mainstream media. For young activists to have access to a national platform in which their voice can be heard unedited is unprecedented.

Compared to student actions in the 1960s and 70s, the New School occupiers have had a breeze. Debra Sweet, National Director of the activist group The World Can't Wait, remembers the difficulties of message control and information dissemination in the 1960s and 1970s. "It was very hard to get on the national stage at all," she said about actions she participated in at the time.

"We didn't have any access to the media," she said. "You had very primitive technology for making mimeograph fliers. And that was the main way you communicated. You'd hand deliver press releases to the news. There was no other way to quickly get the message to them. It wasn't easy."

Of course there was no guarantee that the information relayed to the press was being reported accurately. Sweet said, "There was a lot of shaping of the message and people were vilified."

MediaChannel's Danny Schechter draws the same conclusion about his experiences in student actions at Harvard and the London School of Economics. "We used to have demonstrations and we'd all go home at night and watch them do the reports on TV, which were never quite accurate." "Today," Schechter says, "you can see it immediately online."

The New School occupiers could be thankful for that as they used video footage to document their actions and hold the university administration and security personnel accountable. On Thursday at 8PM, the New School in Exile, as the students called their action, posted a Youtube video of a security officer using excessive force on students, throwing one female student to the ground and almost choking another male student. This was posted in direct response to a letter Bob Kerrey sent to the press, labeling the occupation a "security risk." In posting the video mere hours after the incident, the New School in Exile's makeshift website stated, "We encourage the public to watch and decide exactly who is using force against whom!"

"This is definitely something that is an emerging benefit of new media technology," says Chris Crews, a graduate student in Politics at New School and participant in the occupation.

"In the case of the Kerrey letter, we got it, were able to upload some video clips showing exactly the opposite was in fact happening, and then could use that to undermine his claims and bolster ours. That isn't something that could have been done even 20 years ago," Crews says, "and hardly even 10 years ago, at least not with this reach."

Sweet asks what some student actions would have looked like if protesters had had the technologies we do today. "What if there had been real time broadcast capability during Chicago '68?" she asks. "Especially during the various rebellions in the 60s where people were being shot down in the streets by the police. It took years to piece together and uncover what happened."

Schechter makes the ultimate claim about the value of new technologies and accountability. He says, "Using video cameras monitors abuses and prevents them. People don't like to be filmed while they're beating people up."

Crews said the use of video and other new media technologies was crucial to holding the administration and security detail in check. "It serves to document events in a way that words alone cannot," he said. "We can tell the press and the public that security is over-reacting, but when we show it, it is especially powerful."

We don't know what violence (if any) might have been prevented by the students' cameras. But we do know the students were quick to distribute all evidence they had to bolster their case. The New School occupiers can be thankful they were able to document instances of abuse and show clearly the posture of security forces, police, and students. Who was the aggressor? Go to the tape.

As for the actual events, the occupation was far less dramatic and violent than protests and occupations like Columbia University and the Students for a Democratic Society activities in Chicago in 1968. There is no doubt that this action was far more subdued than the 2006 student occupation of the Sorbonne in Paris.

But even as recent as the Sorbonne occupation of 2006 students were still at the whims of mainstream media. The new School in Exile may be one of the first actions in which the participants controlled the message. They were the authors, editors, and publishers of a message that found an international audience. Activists can now counter false reports and assumptions while documenting any grievances and infringements in real time.

Nixon famously claimed that Vietnam wasn't lost on the battlefield, but instead it was lost in the halls of Congress and the editorial rooms of great newspapers. According to him, Vietnam was a failure of message control, because for the first time Americans saw the atrocities of war on the nightly news.

But now as more and more average citizens find themselves the authors of journalism, even the framing power of the editorial rooms diminishes. Those on the ground check the framing of the journalist with comments left on blog posts and links to videos. They 'tweet' about the conditions on the ground, and take digital photographs. And they can do it all as fast as the events unfold.

--
Zachary Pickens is a Brooklyn-based writer and blogger on partisanscreammachine.blogspot.com. He first learned of the New School occupation through an email from a friend in Columbus, OH.

David Brooks sums up my expectations for the next administration pretty well. He expects a smart, well reasoned administration to buckle down and do what is right for the country, not wage ideological wars:

Walking into the Obama White House of my dreams will be like walking into the Gates Foundation. The people there will be ostentatiously pragmatic and data-driven. They'll hunt good ideas like venture capitalists. They'll have no faith in all-powerful bureaucrats issuing edicts from the center. Instead, they'll use that language of decentralized networks, bottom-up reform and scalable innovation.

This is, of course, a much different 'conservative' opinion than those being expressed on Townhall.com, Redstate.com, or Rush Limbaugh's radio program. Limbaugh yesterday continued to push the language of fear, affirming that what we do not know about Obama (what IS that exactly?) will scare us to death.

For what it's worth, credit where credit is due-- Sean Hannity gave a gracious and mature congratulations to President-elect Obama at the beginning of his radio show Wednesday afternoon. I respect the man a little more because of it. I wish I could find audio of it...

What does all this talk of racism and false accusations about Barack Obama's upbringing and religion really matter? Can't we agree that tempers flare during national elections? Didn't the same happen to George Bush in 2000 and 2004? But the difference is in people's expectations for the coming four-year administration. Their expectations are implied in their accusations.

When Barack Obama is called a terrorist or a Muslim (read terrorist), the expectations are clear--he stands against everything that Americans value. Who could possibly want to elect a president who secretly plans to destroy the state, or allow his co-terrorist/Muslims do it for him? If we are to heed the warnings of George W. Bush, we will know that there is no negotiating with terrorists. They are incapable of rational thinking. End of discussion. But what if a terrorist/Muslim were to find a way to be elected president of the United States? The prospects for good governance are presented with a major obstacle.

When I talked to a few people in Ohio this past week, I did get a few (off camera) statements about the prospects of an Obama presidency. One man kept it short and sweet. I simply asked him; "What does an Obama presidency look like to you?" His one word answer; "Scary." This was the same man that started our conversation by mentioning that Barack Obama's birth records had secretly been sealed by the governor of Hawaii, to protect the truth that he was actually born in Kenya. This is the same man that said he crossed party lines to vote for Hillary Clinton to be a part of Rush Limbaugh's primary season "Operation Chaos."

This man is not alone. With so much vitriol being aimed at Barack Obama it raises a serious question about the next four years. What if perosn is elected president who is accused of not only sympathizing, but also being friends with terrorists? What if we elect a president that is suspected to secretly be Muslim and a potential terrorist sleeper cell? What does this say about our government and democratic system?

Glenn Loury summed it up well on Bill Moyers Journal on Friday:

"Should Obama win, now you have a president of the United States who a lot of people think is illegitimate as a person who consorts with murderers, as a person who's sympathetic to terrorists. It's de-legitimating of the president of the United States. It's poisoning the well in a certain way.

You do what you have to do to win an election. But then after the election the person has to govern. And now what has been said about that person continues to echo in the minds of citizens. And I'm worried that in this case the suggestion that Obama is somehow going to get in the White House and, you know, sell out the country will hurt all of us should he win and need to govern."

This goes beyond misguided policy and hypocritical statements. This goes beyond cynical politics and feelings of helplessness on the part of the electorate. This is not just election year hyperbole. This strikes at the heart of the credibility of our government and our leaders' ability to solve the porblems with the economy and two wars. Not only in Barack Obama's ability to govern, but in the legitimacy of the US presidency and our democratic process.

Those that choose these lines of attack are sowing the seeds of hate that will have lasting effects long after the campaign ends. Just ask Bill Clinton about campaign 'hyperbole' in the case of Vince Foster. That didn't just go away. But of course we're talking about a line of attack that goes deeper than a shady suicde. We're talking about one man's quest to tank the most powerful nation on earth.

This campaign got ugly in october, but the sentiments had been there all along. Now as we wait to see the results tomorrow night, we cannot pretend as if all of the hate speech, myths, and flat out lies will just disappear. We don't know what will happen if Barack Obama is elected president, but we know what we have to do to fight racism and dangerous lies in our communities. Many with prejudice and dangerous beliefs have shown their true colors during this election. Now we must continue to stand up to them and fight back as we try to change this country for the better.

Zachary Pickens is a writer and blogger based in Brooklyn, NY.  He authors the blog partisanscreammachine.blogspot.com

Every election year undoubtedly brings out the worst in some people.  Tempers flare as politicos of all stripes gear up for battle with an arsenal of half-truths, gotcha attacks, and accusations of the evils to come if one's opponent is elected.  In this age of blogging, Youtube, and rapid information exchange, these rumors, myths, and flat-out lies can whip around the country in record time, being emailed from family member to family member, to friend, to colleague.

Unfortunately, one expects questionable politics during a campaign.  But to what degree?  How far do the attacks and character assassinations and crackpot theories go?  Can we say anything about the electorate based on the myths they read and pass on to their friends and family?  If the amount of web traffic and written content on the web is any indicator of what voters are talking about this election year, the level of attacks lobbed at Senator Barack Obama is astoundingly larger than those aimed at John McCain.  Not only are there more attacks in volume, but the attacks are more vitriolic and damning.  With some simple Google searches, we get a good picture of what kind of myths are being spread about the two candidates.

Despite the relative novelty of a candidate for US president being called a Muslim and a terrorist, Obama is not alone in his seeming attractiveness as the target for conspiracy theories and myths.  As could be expected in an environment where the freedom of speech is gleefully upheld to dizzying degrees on the Internet, a few myths float around blogs and information sites about John McCain.  The most prominent myth involves John McCain as the 'Manchurian Candidate.'  According to this myth, like the popular book and movie from the 1960s, John McCain was brainwashed during his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.  The Communist interrogators were able to crack McCain and install in him the psychological triggers the Communists need to take down the United States government from the inside out.  

We have two comparable myths of presidential candidates with secret agendas. In one, the candidate is a Muslim terrorist sleeper cell.  In the other, the candidate is a hidden weapon for the enemy.  But these myths differ in volume and widespread acceptance.

If we look at Google search terms as an indicator of the volume of discussion and debate on these topics, we see a clear difference between the two.  A Google search for the phrase "'John McCain' 'Manchurian Candidate'" yields 144,000 search results.  A Google search for the phrase "'Barack Obama' Muslim" yields more than 10 million search results.  If the contrast in volume of discussion on these topics isn't enough, the content of the top forty search results for each myth is even more telling.

In the case of Barack Obama, the formula is pretty clear and predictable. Barack Obama's detractors, for racial or political reasons (exploiting racist sentiments), accuse Obama of being a secret Muslim (as if that were a crime).  They say he will be sworn in on the Koran, take direction from Saudi Arabia, and bring down the United States from the inside out.  The top forty Google search results are a mixture of webpages spreading this myth or webpages denying it while giving the facts--Barack Obama is not a Muslim terrorist sleeper cell.

Those that propagate this myth of the Manchurian Candidate do so from a different perspective.  The majority of top forty Google search results for "'John McCain' 'Manchurian Candidate'" were from anti-globalism blogs and information sites that fear John McCain will bring on a one-world government. Furthermore, they appear to be motivated by discontent with John McCain's position in the POW-MIA community, saying he was a weak prisoner of war and stands against their interests on POW-MIA issues in Congress.  While equally ridiculous, this myth is not being propagated by McCain's political opposition (political leftists and liberals), but instead by those even further to the right of the Senator.

The role of myth in the Presidential election gets even more interesting if we consider the issue of birth certificates.  But here, instead of a situation where both myths may have been grounded in some very small element of truth--Barack Obama's father was born a Muslim, John McCain was a prisoner of war like the characters depicted in The Manchurian Candidate--the issue of birth certificates is incomparable. Barack Obama was born in the United States and John McCain was born in Panama.

Briefly, the myths follow a similar pattern to the previously-stated accusations.  Obama needs to release his 'real' birth certificate so America can see that either he is not a US citizen, or that he has a different mother and father.  Again, this is fueled by the assumption that Obama could very well have faked his way into natural born US citizen status to further his political goals.  Again, the top webpage results authors are conservatives that seek to discredit Obama or Obama's political defenders. The Google search for "'Barack Obama' 'birth certificate'" yields 343,000 results.  Again, these webpages are continuing to be authored to this day, despite the Obama Campaign having released Obama's birth records.

In the case of John McCain, we see something different.  The Google search for "'John McCain' 'birth certificate'" yields 111,000 results.  These webpages almost entirely date back to the Republican primaries in January and February of 2008.  The fact is John McCain was born in Panama while his father was serving in the United States Navy.  Congress passed a non-binding resolution to validate John McCain as a natural-born citizen of the United States hoping to avoid a legal challenge to his candidacy.  In the end, all debate over John McCain's birth certificate centered around a legitimate question about his status as a natural-born citizen of the United States--an issue that was resolved and dropped almost a year ago.

So while this election has made a lot of tempers flare, we have to think about the magnitude of the accusations being thrown at the two candidates.  While one might think that both candidates would see equally ridiculous myths and conspiracies being spread to their detriment, it has been Barack Obama's campaign that has had to endure the most, and the most damning.  The question is whether the vilification will stop on November 5th, or continue right on through an Obama Administration's first four years.  And if so, to what effect?

Zachary Pickens is a writer and blogger based in Brooklyn, NY.  He authors the blog partisanscreammachine.blogspot.com

If the suspicion surrounding the early days of Barack Obama's candidacy weren't bad enough, the fact that the 'stranger' card is still being played is puzzling, if not suspect.  Some of the nastiest rumors about Barack Obama started in the earliest days of his campaign, at a time when most people truly did not know about his family life, his home life, or his political life.  Rumors can fester quite easily when a candidate is fresh on the scene.  But the fact that these rumors are still being stoked by the insinuations of very prominent conservative writers and politicians gives one pause. 

After nearly two years of vetting and investigative reporting, columnists like Charles Krathammer still make the following statements in his August 29 piece, Self-Made Man or Mysterioius Stranger?:

"The oddity of [the Democratic National Convention] is that its central figure is the ultimate self-made man, a dazzling mysterious Gatsby. The palpable apprehension is that the anointed is a stranger -- a deeply engaging, elegant, brilliant stranger with whom the Democrats had a torrid affair. Having slowly woken up, they see the ring and wonder who exactly they married last night."

Barack Obama is a cunning outsider with unclear motivations, as the Gatsby metaphor goes.

Thomas Sowell has simialrly, and more recently made similar arguments about Obama's character and readiness to lead while making this statement about what we know of the man.  Starting the piece by calling Obama a 'phony' and 'dangerous,' he states:

"Of the four people running for President and Vice President on the Republican and Democratic tickets, the one we know the least about is the one leading in the polls-- Barack Obama."

Sowell goes on to make historical comparisons of people putting faith in inspiring leaders sush as Jim Jones, Hitler, and Communist Russia.  Again despite alomst two years on the campaign trail, in the public spotlight, Barack Obama is being called a mysterious man with questionable motives.

Just one week ago, Victor Davis Hanson continued to push the meme, calling Barack Obama an 'enigma' and 'the most unknown presidential candidate in its history."

Of course, calling a candidate unknown is not negative, per se.  But these allegations fly in the face of two years of hard campaigning in which Barack Obama has opened up his life, political and personal, to public scrutiny.  All of his policy positions are publicly available and backed up with experience where applicable.  He has even established a website to fight smears about his person, releasing his birth certificate and giving more intimate details of his life to stop operations at the rumor mill.  All the information these columnists need is out there.

The problem arises when an environment exists like today's.  When so many myths about Barack Obama float across the worldwide web and and are passed in conversation from neighbor to neighbor, a prominent columnist can easily stoke the flames by making such adamant claims about what we know and do not know about a man.  These articles have been relatively inspecific in detailing where they would like more information from the Obama campaign.  Instead they make blanket statements where many readers are able to fill in the blanks.

So maybe John McCain isn't wrong to ask, "Who is the real Barack Obama?"  But when the answer is screamed to his face--"Terrorist!"-- we know where some people's minds are.  And we know why continuing to claim that Obama is an unknown, a stranger, an outsider, is dangerous.

This leads me to my next topic of the prospects for the next four years and how an Obama presidency will be received.  Stay tuned.

Over the next week, before the election, I will be writing about the phenomena of Barack Obama as "Straw Man". People across the country witnessed the inexcusable behavior of many McCain/Palin supporters at rallies throughout October. I was appalled to see the level of demonization and "otherizing" of Barack Obama, as he was called a "terrorist," a "Muslim," an "Arab," a "socialist," and a turncoat. Gov. Palin herself accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists" and McCain constantly asked about the "real Barack Obama."

I say Obama is being demonized and otherized in all seriousness. The accusations being made about Obama are deeply personal and dehumanizing. Research I've performed and read concludes that "otherizing"--or making an opponent a member of an outgroup--is necessary to rationally vilify an opponent. Dehumanizing an opponent takes away any predisposition to expect reason and logic from an opponent. When an opponent is dehumanized, compromise and empathy are impossible, as the opponent is not capable of meeting this gesture in kind.

But this otherizing is predicated, to an alarming extent, on exaggerated relationships and policy positions, blatant lies, and elaborate baseless conspiracy theories. The Barack Obama the right otherizes is a Straw Man. It is a fabrication that has been blown up to extreme proportions by an extremely large percentage of the right.

From the beginning, it appeared to be Obama's 'outsider' status as a young, new Senator that fueled a lot of the initial myths. People did not know Barack Obama. They did not know where he had been in his life, who he had known, who he had worked with, or who gave him advise. Of course, the continuation of this myth about Obama being unknown, mysterious, and a 'stranger' is my motivation for writing today. The fact that these myths have been continuously spread about Obama this close to the election can only be seen as a deliberate campaign to discredit the man.

Below is the original email my father sent me way back in the Spring of 2007, when conspiracy theorists could easily breed on a population of voters that simply did not know who Barack Obama was For the record, my father does not actually believe the accusations that follow:

Who is Barack Obama?

Probable U. S. presidential candidate, Barack Hussein Obama was born in

Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a black Muslim from

Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya and Ann Dunham, a white atheist from Wichita,Kansas.



Obama's parents met at the University of Hawaii.

When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced. His father returned to Kenya.

His mother then married Lolo Soetoro, a radical Muslim from Indonesia.

When Obama was 6 years old, the family relocated to Indonesia.

Obama attended a Muslim school in Jakarta.

He also spent two years in a Catholic school.

Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim.

He Is quick to point out that, "He was once a Muslim, but that he also attended Catholic school."

Obama's political handlers are attempting to make it appear that Obama's introduction to Islam came via his father, and that this influence was temporary at best.

In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya Soon after the divorce, and never again had any direct influence over His son's education.

Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, introduced his stepson to Islam.

Obama was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta. Wahabism is the radical teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world. Since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when seeking Major public office in the United States, Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background.

Let us all remain alert concerning Obama's expected presidential candidacy.

Please forward to everyone you know. The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level.


In my next post, I'm going to expand on how these myths have been promoted and used in conservative discourse on Barack Obama and ask why it continues today. After two years of vetting as a presidential candidate, some prominent conservatives are still using racist insinuations to attack Barack Obama--but the Barack Obama they attack is nothing but a Straw Man as these politicos gear up for four years of entrenched disagreement with the Democratic president.

Later, I'm going to explore a simple case of most-comaparable cases. Given John McCain's status as a foreign born (albeit to a US military family) citizen and prisoner of war in Vietnam, why haven't accusations about John McCain's past been circulating around the internet blogs and newsrooms across the country? I'll take a look at the volume of equally ridiculous myths about the lives of Barack Obama and John McCain and ask why we see such a difference.

I fly to Akron tomorrow and will begin adding video and written accounts from then on.

You can find full coverage and video over the next week at: http://partisanscreammachine.blogspot.com/

When Facebook dramatically changed its format last month, users were in an uproar. They either couldn’t or didn’t want to navigate the new format.  How could they not be allowed to opt-out?  Why couldn’t things just stay the same?  Alas, the great wheel of progress rolls forward.

On November 4, voters will be faced with a similar dilemma.  The current administration has expired.  A new format will take place on January 20, 2009. But what hasn’t been articulated, at least thus far, is exactly what kind of an upgrade we’ll be getting. Senator Obama promises a totally new platform, a complete reboot.  A Palin Vice Presidency offers something less dramatic, albeit no less violent: George Bush 2.0.  By “2.0” of course I’m using internet-speak to say the second version.  But, as in Web 2.0, the second version doesn’t just mean new, it means improved, updated, and expanded upon.

In this case we have George Bush, an underexperienced president that has failed us from day one while giving a wink to the American people and a cold shoulder to the world.  George Bush 2.0 is fresh (With a new gender!), harder hitting and more galling (Now even more disrespect and arrogance!), more provincial (From deeper in the wilderness!  With even less familial connection to the East Coast establishment!), and even more fundamentalist in Christian belief (Dinosaurs now only 6,000 years old!).  Sarah Palin, my friends, is the George Bush that George Bush could only dream of being.

Barack Obama has been hammering John McCain as the new standard bearer of George Bush’s failed policies.  Understandably, it is not in Senator Obama’s strategic interest to address the vice presidential candidate and acknowledge her as an equal.  But, as her rally attendance numbers have shown, she is an energizing force in parts of the country where Senator McCain is simply seen as the least worst option.  In the popular Governor Palin we have a politician that would not only carry out Bush’s policies with even more conviction, but would exceed all measures of ignorance and arrogance, something John McCain just hasn’t quite mastered.

The key to understanding George Bush 2.0 is to understand the failures of George Bush 1.0 (much to the chagrin of George Bush 2.0) and then adding flat out lies.   George W. Bush had to learn foreign policy on the fly, while Al Gore sighed and tsk-tsked in the background.  George Bush 2.0 takes it to the extreme by unabashedly defending the value of being able to see a foreign country from her home state.  When asked to defend the claim that her position as commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard, McCain aides and Palin cannot site one specific example of a decision Gov. Palin has had to make.  Most importantly, after defending her position as a government reformer over and over based on her stance against the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska, it was revealed that she in fact fully supported the bridge until the funding had been retracted by the US Congress.  Not only does she not have the experience, like Bush 1.0, but she will blatantly lie and stretch the truth on tangential examples of her preparedness to lead.

She’s not lying about her smalltown life in Alaska, as her lack of international travel can attest to.  This is completely acceptable and not to be mocked.  But she may be cynically playing up her down home, folksy language for political gains.  Compare her gubernatorial debates in Alaska in 2006 to her Vice Presidential debate with Joe Biden last week.  In her gubernatorial debates she is professional, stern, and while not always on topic, eloquent. She presents a serious face, ready to take on serious challenges.  In her Vice Presidential debate, she uses the word ‘darn’ three times in the first ten minutes.  She winked more often than she gave a straight answer to a question.  It’s as if she and the American people were a part of one big inside joke that Senator Biden and Gwen Ifill just didn’t get.  One might reasonably expect that if Gov. Palin can be so professional in her role as gubernatorial candidate, she might equally rise to the occasion for an unarguably more important job interview as Vice Presidential candidate.

The new George Bush 2.0 has a disdain for history and level of disrespect for facts that was unimaginable under the beta version.  On multiple occasions she has disparaged Senators Obama and Biden for pointing fingers at the Bush administration while they campaign on forward-looking platform of change.  While certainly resisting exploding into laughter during the Vice Presidential debate, Senator Biden simply said, “Look, ‘Past is Prologue,’ Gwen.”  Obviously studying history is too elitist for Bush 2.0.  But since Bush 2.0 is such a populist, surely she saw The Dark Knight this summer, along with millions of other Americans. At a crucial moment in the psychological adventure that is Bruce Wayne, a young Wayne is schooled by his father, “Why do we fall? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.”

The fact is, for every time Bush 1.0 has proven his incompetence in the past, Bush 2.0 will be there in the future to not only carry it out, but also defend it.  For every ounce of make-believe cowboy in George 1.0, there’s a real-life moose hunter in Bush 2.0.  For every media blockade in the Bush 1.0 Administration, there will be a snarky, condescending attack on the media from Bush 2.0.  Palin has proven herself to be more genuinely incompetent, less well-read, more condescending and cynical, and less prepared to lead than the administration that preceded her.

So when McCain and Palin’s “Brownie” starts doing a “heckuva job”, at least we won’t be surprised.  We’ll have to take it as a genuine statement.  We’ll also know exactly what we got ourselves into.