Republican Convention vs. Democratic Convention

The speakers at the Republican National Convention were politicians, business owners, various Romneys, actress Janine Turner, Paralympic gold medalist Chris Devlin-Young, Gov. Bob McDonnell’s daughter Jeanine McDonnell, and Clint Eastwood. Without exception, they’re people with money and political connections.

The speakers list for the Democratic National Convention includes plenty of politicians and other public figures. It also includes Doug Stern, firefighter from Cincinnati, Ohio; Maria Ciano, “stay-at-home mother and former Republican voter”; Stacey Lihn, mother of a child with severe medical issues; Lilly Ledbetter, namesake of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act; Elaine Brye, teacher from Winona, Ohio; Johanny Adames, student and new U.S. citizen; Elizabeth Bruce, Planned Parenthood patient; Ed Meagher, Vietnam veteran who provides support services for wounded soldiers; Bill Butcher, small business owner; Benita Veliz, DREAM Act activist; Karen Eusanio, auto worker; and Randy Johnson, Cindy Hewitt and David Foster, former employees of companies bought by Bain Capital.

One might argue that the inclusion of ordinary people in the DNC lineup is just for show, to pander to the voters by orchestrating the message, “See? Your voice is important to us, we let some of you speak at our convention.” But by that cynical interpretation, the non-rich and non-powerful are so insignificant to the Republicans that they didn’t even bother to pander to them.

Where is Culture of Truth when we need him?

Republican chant: “We bilked it! We bilked it! USA! USA!”

The Republican National Convention definitely needs to be given the CoT treatment. His comments are here, but I would phrase it more like this:

Ann Romney: Women want to be loved, and Mitt’s a lover!
Chris Christie: Fahgeddabout love! Women want respect! And I respect ’em. Except teechurs.
The Hucksterbee (then): Mitt Romney doesn’t have a soul.
The Hucksterbee (now, donning Clinton mask): We can do better than Barack Obama. Like this Mormon guy.
Rice: Fortunately, you’re so well-indictrinated that you’ve forgotten that my husb…er, boss caused all this wreckage.
Rice: Thank goodness the Canadians are willing to trash their country so that we can trash the world.
Rice: GW Bush? Who’s that?
Rice: I could be president after Mitt loses.
Susana Martinez: Let’s not talk about Mitt. Let’s talk about me! I could be president after Mitt loses.

Please add your own.

This Is Perfect

The Republicans have chosen the site for their 2012 convention, and it’s going to be (drum roll, please):

Tampa!

Not New York City. Not St. Paul or Minneapolis. Tampa. Which is arguably Florida’s most conservative major metropolitan area.

No more venturing into deep-blue territory for these mokes! Nuh-uh — the insurance costs from the protests is a bit steep for that. But the choice of Tampa does pose two, ah, interesting issues for the RNC:

1. This is late August and early September we’re talking about. In the Gulf. Prime hurricane season. Rather like scheduling a major convention in Sioux Falls in January, except even stupider.

2. The beaches will still likely be studded with the occasional “drill baby drill” souvenir from the BP oil volcano. Just to remind them of the policy they probably will still support.

The wheels of justice grind slow, but exceedingly fine

We may hope that the MinnePaul police rioters will at last have to pay the price for trampling the press during the Republican National convention. From DemocracyNow:

And Democracy Now! host and executive producer Amy Goodman along with producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar are filing a federal lawsuit– today that challenges the police crackdown on journalists at the Republican National Convention in 2008. The suit is filed against the Minneapolis and St. Paul police departments, the Ramsey County Sheriff and unidentified Secret Service personnel. The lawsuit challenges the policies and conduct of law enforcement during the RNC that resulted in the arrests, one of dozens among journalists arrested in St. Paul. On the opening day of the convention, Nicole and Sharif were covering a police crackdown on a street protest. Nicole’s camera captured her arrest and assault by the officers.
…
The lawsuit seeks compensation and an injunction against law enforcement’s unjustified encroachment on First Amendment rights, including freedom of the press and the independence of the media.

Throw the book at ’em, judge.

Abu Ghraib comes home/update

The account by this 19-year old who was jailed at the Republican National Convention alleges that the Ramsey County jail used methods that amount to torture, including beatings, hooding, and neglect of medical conditions brought on by the beating. He claims that there was no basis for his arrest.

Other allegations of abuse of power by the police are detailed here. As much as I sympathize with officers, who have to do a difficult job, there’s enough smoke here to believe that there’s also fire.
__________
Update: Stormcrow notes that FDL has been on this story. Dr. Murphy’s comments are well worth reading.

Update: Mayor Coleman’s brother has stated in an OpEd that the police overreacted. For his pains, he got a couple of dozen mudballs from the kind of lowlifes that think that the LA riots were caused by the police being too mellow.

Agent provocateurs at Minnie/St. Paul protests?

Ray McGovern, Consortium News:

The young protesters had some success in exposing infiltrators in their ranks. During confrontations, members of the Welcoming Committee, in particular, took copious photos of law enforcement officers and then memorized the faces.

This tactic worked like a charm in one of the St. Paul parks, when a man who looked like a protester — dark clothes, backpack, a bit disheveled — walked by.

One of the protesters recognized the man’s face and searched through her camera until she found a photo of the man actually performing the raid on the Welcoming Committee’s headquarters on Friday night.

What do you talk about?

What do you talk about when you cannot explain the last eight years of failure? (via Atrios)

Sarah Palin: Obama’s Top Fundraiser

Check this out, courtesy of a commenter over at Glenn Greenwald’s shop at Salon:

Democrats reaction to the RNC hate: Outraise money 8:1!

This from the WSJ/Washington Wire:

Sarah Palin’s speech to the convention Wednesday night energized conservatives, allayed concerns of some nervous party insiders – and inspired excited Republicans to donate a cool $1 million to the Republican National Committee’s effort to elect John McCain.

But….

UPDATE: Bloomberg reported that Palin’s speech was even better for Democrats–Barack Obama has raised $8 million since Wednesday’s speech. “Sarah Palin’s attacks have rallied our supporters in ways we never expected,” Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said. “And we fully expect John McCain’s attacks tonight to help us make our grassroots organization even stronger.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/09/04/donations-pour-in-to-rnc-after-palin-speech/?mod=googlenews_wsj

So perhaps the Democratic reaction is through their wallets. Now lets see what the DNC/Obama does with the money.

— Ralfast

[Read Ralfast’s other letters]

Permalink Friday, September 5, 2008 08:55 AM

Sounds good to me.

Sounds good to me.

Minnesota’d wince

One of the amazing people to protest at the RNC convention was Cheri Honkala of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Program.

She did an interview with Amy Goodman that is worth listening to, or reading. Here’s an excerpt:

CHERI HONKALA: Yeah, I mean, I’ve been involved in large demonstrations for like the last twenty years, and I’m very ashamed of my home state. I’ve never seen so many reporters like yourself being detained. A Channel 5 reporter was trying to cover a story of us; he was thrown into an elevator. A couple other folks that we know that were trying to cover some of our events were also detained and then later released on two different occasions. We were inside the Capitol trying to have a peaceful demonstration during regular open hours of the Capitol, and the reporters were literally locked out of the Capitol and unable to come in, even though they showed their credentials. And so, I don’t quite get what is so horrible about covering a story of women and children and the elderly and people of all colors trying to come together to talk about the day-to-day reality of their lives….

we set up encampments, particularly during the Republican National Convention, for some place for people to sleep, because we can’t afford the W or the Hilton. And so, people were staying at the Bushville, and our first Bushville that we set up on Harriet Island, the first night we were surrounded by 200 police officers in riot gear. They turned on the sprinklers on our children while they were sleeping, turned off all the park lights and drove their police vehicles up onto the lawn with their brights on. And myself and a couple of our other leaders were then arrested, and our Bushville was torn down. Later through the week, they brought dogs to our Bushville, while the kids were sleeping, let the dogs bark and scare the kids, and then periodically would just go by and drive up and run their sirens at 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, just to make people afraid.

You know how few Christians there are in this country when police can use tactics like these against the poor.

I Am Officially Appalled

I have never watched a video of the attack on the World Trade Center. I avert my eyes from photographs, too.

I have two reasons for avoiding those images. One, I know that experiencing merely the images of horrific events can be traumatizing, and I don’t believe that traumatizing myself will give me any better appreciation of the events or greater sympathy for the victims. Two, I have too much respect for the people who really did experience the attack to pretend that watching a recording means I am sharing their experience and understand what it did to them.

No, wait. I have three reasons. The third is that I know there are people out there for whom replaying the attack isn’t a way to learn more about it and try to understand what happened, or a way to empathize with the victims. For those people it’s tragedy porn, and the way they get excited about the ghastly details is really, really creepy.

So you can probably guess my reaction when I learned that last night’s festivities at the Republican National Convention included slow-motion videos of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Not just videos, but slow-motion videos, the better to burn the horror into the viewers’ brains, or maybe to savor the thrilll of seeing violent death, or maybe to stir up mass rage in order to direct it at more accessible targets than the people who planned and carried out the attacks. If there’s a good reason for showing that video to the delegates and to the TV audience, I for damn sure don’t know what it is.

Those people have no concept of decency.