"Act as if ye had faith, and faith will be given to you."
This quote is a very late addition to the Christian religion, and although almost everyone who hears it or reads it assumes that St. Paul wrote it, it was apparently first pronounced by St. Paul Newman in the role of "Frank Galvin" in 1982, and later repeated and popularized by "Leo McGarry" on The West Wing.
This bogus commandment is probably an appropriate motto for those of us who post readers' blogs on political websites, because all the evidence suggests that everything we write is absolutely useless, and we can barely influence each other, much less anybody else...
...but if an imaginary lawyer in an almost forgotten movie can introduce new dogma into Christianity after 2000 years of heresies and Crusades, who can say that even we may not rattle the foundations of such another historical institution, or alter the course of apparently ineluctable historical forces?
hilarious. on a full plane out of the twin cities, loaded with republicans. no matter how often the crew says to be mindful of space, people keep taking extra room in the overhead compartments, putting bags sideways, laying out suitbags, putting computers above instead of under seats. and they dont know how to resolve it, since they sort of respect each other's expansionist real estate instincts.
With yet more scandals around Palin, including her firing of a police chief who 'stepped' on her campaign contributors, the question tonight is whether independent voters will meet this young, attractive and charismatic woman and believe her story about being a small town mayor and reformer in Alaska who is being criticized solely because the media and political establishments hate outsiders. This photo is being passed around over email, with obvious class overtones, just as the irritation of Republican elites with the Palin choice was picked up accidentally over a microphone on MSNBC.
That is the bet Jay Rosen and Digby speaks of, it's a bet on backlash and anger towards the political elite. It's tough to make this work, even if this speech is powerful. More scandals around Palin are going to emerge, and it is too difficult to inoculate a Republican when there are open systems involved by portraying her opponents as elitists. But it is possible, and depends on how the Obama camp reacts.
Normally this is the partisan meat convention night, when only activists and political junkies are watching. People are incredibly hungry for information about Palin, so this is probably going to be a heavily viewed speech by all sorts of people, not just your standard activist crowd. So her speech, which is heavy on resentment and attacks, may not play particularly well to an audience of independents who just want to know who she is. She'll be introduced tonight as an angry, resentful, and defensive VP pick that the media doesn't like.
Maybe that'll work, I don't know. This country is really pissed off. On the other hand, there are real questions about her qualifications, and she might just come off looking like she doesn't want to answer them.
Protesters in St. Paul are being tear gassed. What does it look like? Well, in the YouTube age, citizen journalists come close to the action to find out and then get lumped into the crowd when special tactics are used.
In the above link, Marta and Brian, the two-person crew of the vlog Gnooze (the G is silent - www.Gnooze.com) visit the protests in St. Paul on Tuesday night. They are taking shots of the crowd when the gas starts to go off. They report to have heard no official announcement from the St. Paul police, just a word of mouth as people in the front of the protest whispered back into the crowd reports of police readying canisters.
If you've ever wondered what it might look like to have lines of authorities fire tear gas and flash grenades at you in a dark and unfamiliar city, click on the link. While the footage is disturbing, that fact that there is actually footage speaks worlds of citizen journalism.
I got into the Pepsi Center once in Denver, and had to sit behind the stage in the worst seats in the house because I arrived late, that is, two hours before the program started. Every other time I tried to get in, with really good credentials, I was turned away because the fire marshal shut it down due to overcapacity. The pictures I put up yesterday of an almost entirely empty Xcel Center were taken at around 5:30pm, an hour before the program started. I don't have a credential today, so I can't go inside to witness the lonely stench of embarrassed dead-enders. But I'm watching a bit of cable news, and I see that behind the pundits who are sitting in the Xcel Center looking out onto the floor are rows and rows of empty seats.
Yesterday, even after the program started, here's what it looked like.
I managed to snag a credential to walk around the Xcel Center where the Republicans are holding their convention. Most political conventions are designed around glitter and glitz, and a nagging feeling that there's a backroom you have to get into where important decisions are being made. Credentials are highly sought after, and the sense of history is palpable. But this one feels different. The glitz and glamor is half-assed, the Republican themselves seem mostly irrelevant, and there are probably more security guards than delegates and spectators. It feels like a funeral, or the scene of a disgraced CEO returning to his company to clean out his desk. The sense I get here is... embarrassment.
The soundtrack of this convention so far is helicopter noise, kind of like the final scenes in Goodfellas. Amy Goodman has apparently been arrested (video is here), and the police are detaining lawyers and medics as well as people doing actual property damage.
The spin operation is starting, though calling it spin really does a disservice to the term. I just got back from a press conference with Mayor Chris Coleman (no relationship to Norm Coleman) and the chief of police, John Harrington, in which Harrington lauded the heroism and professionalism of the police department in the face of mass criminal behavior. The event included every stupid police press conference cliche, from stuttering overly bureaucratic excuses to sycophantic journalists asking about damage estimates and calling him 'chief' to get his attention to heroic uniformed sternly worded descriptions of frightening protesters throwing rocks at officers. The end literally was the PR officer walking out of the room in a dramatic huff.
The city is on ridiculous lockdown, with humvees in the streets, officers patrolling with shotguns and machine guns, and the national guard out. I expected Harrington to announce that he has not yet ascertained the identity of the Batman but that he is working hard and the city of Gotham is safe. Video soon, and a full set of pictures is here.
I'm trying to upload photos and am having trouble with the internets. I'm at the Uptake, an office set aside for bloggers right near the security perimeter outside the Excel Center. The scene here in St Paul is downright creepy. It's deserted, with chain link fences and barbed wire surrounding the downtown area and riot police running down the empty streets, chanting out load cheers like they are on a military missions. There are a few Republican delegates, some young Republican operatives, a few people hawking wares, and a scattered group of protesters with signs that takl about war and profit. It is anything but festive, a far cry from Denver in both the level of excitement and the overt fascist overtones.
"In a world of 1s and 0s...are you a zero, or The One?" The Matrix (1999)
The recent line of right-wing attacks on Barack Obama have been to emphasize his popularity and turn it against him by painting him as nothing more than a celebrity -- "an empty suit" was the phrase I heard one pundit use. Right-wing trolls and bloggers have commonly taken to referring to Senator Obama online as "The One." This attempt at sarcasm is a reference to the character 'Neo' from the movie, The Matrix. As they do this, I have to wonder if they realize who this makes them in their self-created Matrix scenario: Agents? Sentinels? If, in a world of ones and zeros, Barack Obama is "The One," what is John McCain?
