The UWS Mission

Conventions, campaigns, and elections. The flat, lifeless world of post-millennial politics. Occupy is supposed to demonstrate the opposite : how the previously dead world of detached sound bites and scripted speeches is transformed by direct citizen participation. The two contrasting approaches become more distinct as the 2012 campaign enters its final heat, creating a national buzz of discussion.

RNC and DNC are done, their impassioned but security-muted protests now a memory. Occupy wants to make a statement, of sorts, in NYC with a week of actions beginning September 15^th and leading up to the one year anniversary on September 17^th. Crowds are expected but no one can venture a guess as to how many, what kind, or how loud they'll be. Occupiers say the whole system is broken. To what extent they back the Prez is an open question.

File Under : No Sh-t... is that lower than the Kardashians? Visions of protesters upstaging the convention, cops and guardsmen clubbing and kettling joined-together occupiers mobbing the streets of Charlotte - all fail to materialize. DNC and RNC stage nearly identical spectacles  : entirely locked-down affairs, leaving citizens intent on forcing their issues left on the surrounding sidewalks, in the rain. Or hemmed in to now ubiquitous protester pens.

The prospect of facing, much less challenging, the military-police show of force, is daunting to all but the most hardy activists, such as Code Pink's Medea Benjamin, present in Charlotte as in Tampa. Huffpost

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. Mr. Spock

I love you women! I hear your voices! Ann Romney RNC 2012

Isaac rolls through Louisiana, do the levees hold? Partial flooding through-out New Orleans. Concerns abound as the region – and nation - waits for the storm to pass – and assess the damage. Washington Post

Ordinarily this space leaves politics to the pundits, pooh-bahs, and politicos paid to slog through the stuff . But RNC has too many good story-lines for us to ignore. One of the most carefully calibrated events in human history has seemingly left nothing to chance – except the uncontrollable weather. History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man. (video, above)

Media specialists and learned commentators will burn midnight oil, weighing if Citizen Romney can act like a normal kind of guy. It falls to his loyal wife, perpetually perky Ann Romney, to paint a different picture of her stand-offish, snobbish hubby. Good luck Ann. Even if you hit the ball out of the park – and we won't be surprised when you do – your work will end up being undone by the candidate's anti-climactic appearance at the political snooze-fest. politico