3. What we have here, on the part of the NY Post, is a repeat of what Hillary Clinton did late in the primaries. Frustrated the contest was slipping away, she drew a connection between Obama's nomination and the assassination of Robert Kennedy. (See BNN's: Killing The Electricity.) In that case, she was trolling for votes by way of the scare tactic that Obama's charisma, paired with his race, made him a less likely bet in terms of his "durability." In this case, The Post is flat out playing on hate, taking aim at Obama (and blacks in general, as the monkey is black) by way of GOP hostility to the stimulus bill.

4. To the extent Bush was widely and broadly identified with the chimp (1, 2, 3, etc.), not to mention the historic destruction of the American economy, one very insidious thing the image does -- in proposing/swapping Obama for The Chimpster -- is to start to unravel the association.