Isaac on track to strike Gulf Coast as hurricane
"Storm may alter scenario for Romney’s gala; Aides consider possibility of joy, disaster juxtaposed" by Matt Viser and Glen Johnson | Globe Staff, August 28, 2012
TAMPA — Advisers may be confronted with far different images: a festive party in Tampa, with delegates applauding and wearing funny hats, while residents along the Gulf Coast deal with a natural disaster.
Romney campaign advisers Monday were contemplating a variety of scenarios, including the possibility of canceling the convention, but emphasized that nothing was certain, with convention plans now as unpredictable as the weather....
Hey, I'm happy with a with a Monday. To me it is a subtle and almost harmless warning. I would have no other from the God in which I believe.
There quite literally could be a split screen, with television network coverage alternating between the hurricane’s destruction and the Republican celebration....
The convention had a low-key mood on Monday, with many of the activities on the floor canceled in anticipation of the storm. But the weather was less severe than expected. By midday the sun came out, and a charity golf tournament, Birdies for the Brave, still took place. Actor Jon Voight wandered around the convention area....
Related: At the Republican convention, events are all in a day’s work/play
I'm so turned off to the culture of indoctrinating and inculcating celebrity.
The storm is also a vivid reminder of Hurricane Katrina, which struck almost seven years ago to the day, and President George W. Bush’s much-criticized handling of the emergency response....
Some places still haven't been cleared or rebuilt.
Already, there appeared to be some off-key comments that Democrats were eager to point out. At a rally on Sunday, a US Senate candidate in Texas made a joke about the storm, saying Republicans should be happy about its arrival because it caused Vice President Joe Biden to cancel his trip to Tampa.
“We can be thankful for Hurricane Isaac,” Ted Cruz said at a Faith and Freedom Coalition rally. ”If nothing else it kept Joe Biden away.”
Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, said on Monday that he was “fine” with the storm hitting the Gulf Coast.
“I think what you have to remember is Republicans are going to take Washington by storm on Jan. 20 of next year. So if this is the first storm of Republicans taking control of our country again, making America competitive again, I’m fine with that,” Issa said at a California delegation breakfast, according to Politico. “I don’t care if we get blown in by a hurricane or a tornado; ultimately there’s going to be an earthquake in Washington next January.”
Issa is ill. I never wish for any storm, ever; however, it is ultimately out of my control. I just interpret events, folks, I don't cause them to happen.
Michael Robinson, executive vice president of Levick, a crisis communications firm that has advised on the gulf oil spill, said there were risks for Republicans in how they handle the next few days. But there also could be opportunities for Romney, who has been criticized as cold and aloof, to show a more emotional side.
Oh, that is really spooky.
Btw, who told him those towers were going to fall and why did he destroy a crime scene?
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"While far less powerful than Katrina, Isaac posed similar political challenges, a reminder of how the storm seven years ago became a symbol of government ignorance and ineptitude....
The part I was interested in from my printed paper where both parties are proving themselves to be ready, Obama to demonstrate his ability to guide us through disasters and Republican reassurance while readying for the "coronation' of Mitt Romney has been eliminated.
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Related: Isaac steers clear of direct blow on New Orleans
You see? My God has mercy although we all bemoan the loss of at least one soul.
Related: Ryan opposed new, Obama-backed disaster aid regime
I think the hot air out of both sides of the mouth steered the storm clear.
"Republican delegates put on hold for now; Lockdown, not Isaac, limiting movement in city" by Brian MacQuarrie and Bryan Bender | Globe Staff, August 28, 2012
TAMPA — Miles of fencing, dozens of checkpoints, Secret Service agents, helicopters, Coast Guard boats, and swarms of police — on foot, horseback, and bicycles — gave downtown Tampa a quiet feeling of locked-down martial law Monday. Yet, the security lockdown, not the weather, was topic number one among many delegates....
That's nothing new to some people:
"Impending storm doesn’t stop convention protesters" Associated Press, August 27, 2012
TAMPA — The few hundred protesters gathered under rainy skies in a park about a half-mile from the GOP convention on Sunday said an impending hurricane that is supposed to dump heavy rains on Tampa won’t deter them from trying to get out their message that America needs to change, especially for the middle class.
Giant blocks of ice spelling out the words ‘‘middle class’’ were melting on a warm, sticky day. Occupy protesters said it represented the melting away of the middle class in America. That message rings true for 52-year-old Tom Gaurapp and Cheryl Landecker from Freeport, Ill. Both worked for Sensata Technologies in the city of some 25,000 people and say 170 jobs there, including their own, were outsourced to China.
Occupy is a left-leaning protest group of people who generally believe that the financial system is stacked against a majority of people. Gaurapp and Landecker say that just a few years ago, they never would have considered joining such a protest.
Well, the left-leaning part is a little bit of a lie, but the other part is true.
‘‘But then again, we wouldn’t have dreamed our jobs would have gone to China,’’ Gaurapp said....
After 30 years of.... never mind.
The important thing to recognize is it is not China's fault. I wish I had a national government that jealously guarded it's national industrial and manufacturing base. Instead, my government gave corporations tax breaks to relocate to.... China. I know, I know, China is horrible to its workers, but that is a matter for the Chinese people to solve with actions like this.
Besides, what do you call that minimum wage you are slaving for, Amerikan?
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"Presidential convention cities set to manage protests; Activist groups chafe at security restrictions" by Bryan Bender | Globe Staff, August 28, 2012
WASHINGTON — Now the enclave is called “Romneyville,” a not-so-flattering tribute to the shanty towns of the Great Depression derisively known as Hoovervilles, after President Herbert Hoover. When its organizers pack it up and move north next week, it will have a new name.
They are called tent cities now.
Obamaville.
As the Republican National Convention gets underway in Tampa and their Democratic counterparts prepare to converge on Charlotte, N.C., the encampments are intended to be the center of a series of protest marches by homeless, poor, and unemployed citizens and other peaceful demonstrations that coincide with the gatherings of the nation’s political elite....
Just doing God's work.
Police in Tampa and Charlotte have been bracing for thousands of convention protesters inundating their cities. The vast majority of participants are expected to be peaceful, but officials say they are also preparing for the potential that a handful of anarchists or other extremists will seek to disrupt the events.
Those will be the government infiltrators meant to discredit.
In Tampa, a potent police presence and howling winds and rain from Tropical Storm Isaac have dampened activity so far. Only a few hundred protesters marched in a rally Monday morning, instead of the 5,000 people organizers had predicted.
Tampa and Charlotte have tried to stay a step ahead of the protesters.
Tampa passed a temporary ordinance requiring groups of 50 or more to secure a permit in order to demonstrate, and the city leased a lot a few hundred feet from the Tampa Convention Center in an attempt to keep the protesters in one spot.
Charlotte passed a law allowing the city manager to give the police authority to cordon off and search large areas and small items — including individuals’ backpacks — and to confiscate seemingly harmless items such as face-covering scarves. Under the orders, police can also arrest anyone carring items that could be used to cause injury.
And they called it freedom!
Hundreds of police officers and heavily armed members of the Florida National Guard patrolled downtown Tampa Monday.
The 60 organizing groups for the protests there included labor unions, Students for a Democratic Society, Veterans for Peace, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Occupy Wall Street, and Code Pink, according to the Associated Press.
Another offshoot of the Occupy movement has pledged to recreate the 2011 Occupy Charlotte demonstrations that descended on what is one of the nation’s banking centers.
“We will continue to hold President Obama’s administration accountable,” the loosely connected group said in a statement, citing a host of issues from economic inequality to immigration and the war in Afghanistan among its grievances.
But for local police and the Secret Service, which is responsible for overall security at the conventions, there is more to worry about at events considered prime targets for domestic or international terrorists.
Last week, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin to law enforcement agencies saying the agencies “assess with high confidence” the probability that anarchist extremists could attempt to attack critical sites.
I'm sorry, guys, I'm simply exhausted by the yo-yo false flags and patsy plots.
The agencies urged local law enforcement to be on the lookout for extremists groups such as white supremacists who may have been seeking weapons training or explosive materials.
(Blog editor sighs)
The activists in such groups as ResistRNC vow to be peaceful. They complain that some measures taken by the cities, including restrictions on what protesters can carry and the fact that the designated protest area in Tampa will be fenced in, overly restrict their First Amendment right to free speech.
“The public viewing area is close to the forum, so thank you for the location,” organizer Amos Miers wrote Tampa officials. “However, the way it is proposed to be managed is still problematic. Fencing it in, and requiring further restrictions upon entering the compound smacks the face of liberty. I don’t understand how a cage can be designed for guests of our city and be also considered something that belongs in a democracy.”
That is why organizers sought to make sure “Romneyville” and “Obamaville” will be located on private property.
“We don't have a permit and we’re going to march as long as we want,” Wright said. “We don’t believe we need a permit for our constitutional right.”
Other groups, including ResistRNC, plan to use the modern shanty town as a staging ground.
“From this site, activists can take refuge from the effects of the militarized zone,” it instructs participants, “as this is private property and not subject to the . . . ordinance. And of course once refreshed get back into the action, stronger than ever.”
Yet even city officials who support the message of the protesters and raised questions about some of the restrictive security precautions believe there will be ample opportunity for demonstrators to exercise their rights.
I don't. They would have been heard by now.
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"With 15,000 media in Tampa, protests and proselytizing abound" by Brian C. Mooney | Globe Staff, August 30, 2012
TAMPA —A grand bazaar of American sideshows, subplots, and causes.
I'm reading one.
All of this political agitation and entrepreneurship is in stark contrast to the well-heeled financiers and elite of the party, who are attending invitation-only or unpublicized soirees in and around Tampa.
You won’t find publicists promoting the whereabouts of casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, who seems on course to reach or exceed the $100 million he said he might give this year to groups advancing conservative candidates and causes.
The same goes for his fellow billionaires, Koch brothers Charles and David, who are also helping to bankroll groups targeting congressional Democrats or President Obama, primarily with donations that do not have to be disclosed.
On the other side is “Romneyville,” the ragged tent encampment of dozens of protesters who were trying to disrupt the anointment of Mitt Romney as the Republican presidential nominee by drawing attention to the plight of the “99 percent” who they say are struggling in this economy. Amid a massive and well-coordinated police presence, the demonstrations have been tame and not as well attended as at recent conventions.
Then there are the squadrons of Ron Paul disciples, patrolling downtown street corners or marching around the convention center’s security perimeter in a futile effort to gin up support for their failed presidential candidate to speak at the convention or to have more Paul delegates seated. Their hopes were snuffed out quickly by party officials on Tuesday, the first day of the convention.
And thus the world can see our democracy for the fraud that it is.
Advocacy groups such as the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and Generation Opportunity, both nonprofits, have been given access by convention officials to the vast media work space on several acres of floor in the Tampa Convention Center. Representatives prowl the aisles and drop in and out of the curtained work stations trying to interest reporters in the employment and medical problems of returning vets or efforts to mobilize underemployed “millennials,” those ages 18 to 29, in the political process.
Hawkers abound, such as the one handing out free desktop cellphone holders (“patent pending”) and promoting a free phone application offered by PolitiFact.com, the fact-checking arm of the Tampa Bay Times.
Street protests have been frequent but restrained. As of Tuesday there had been three arrests, compared to hundreds four years ago at the GOP convention in St. Paul and in 2004 in New York City.
“This is a nonevent for all intents and purposes,” said Al Crespo, a Miami-based photojournalist and blogger who has covered every convention and the accompanying protests since 2000. Instead of demonstrations with 1,000 or more participants, often led by militant anarchists, the marches and rallies in Tampa have attracted anywhere from a half-dozen to several hundred activists.
“The government crackdown on dissent is working,” said Amos Miers, a Tampa resident active in the coordinating committee resistRNC at “Romneyville,” an echo of the Hooverville shantytowns of the Great Depression. The activists remain committed, he said, even if their numbers are down.
A loose federation of activists is engaging in a series of demonstrations and marches with daily themes of economic rights, human rights, the environment, and antiwar/peace. One of the largest gatherings drew about 400 on Tuesday to Centennial Park in historic Ybor City for a rally against what participants called Republican efforts to suppress voter turnout among the poor and minorities. A protester wore a papier-mache puppet likeness of Mitt Romney, dubbing him “King of the 1%.”
As at every such event, scores of police and deputy sheriffs surrounded the proceedings.
They probably outnumber the protesters if the corporate paper is to be believed.
The official area designated for demonstrations and parades is a forlorn patch surrounded by Jersey barriers and chain-link fence several hundred yards from the Tampa Bay Times Forum, site of the convention proceedings.
It's a JAIL YARD!
The City of Tampa Parks and Recreation Department provided a portable “showmobile” with a stage for speakers who reserve time. Squads of up to 10 police officers on bicycles pass by every 15 minutes or so, and at one point about 30 sheriff’s deputies from Broward County in South Florida marched by.
How much is show of tyranny this costing taxpayers?
Doctors for America, a group of more than 50 physicians in Tampa, is scheduled to march to the portable stage Thursday, part of a bus tour that will next visit three other cities en route to Charlotte, N.C., site of next week’s Democratic National Convention.
“We’re working to educate people about the Affordable Care Act, to let them know it’s the law of the land and what benefits folks can get now,” said Samantha Galing, who booked the stage for the group. “We’re not endorsing any particular candidate, but we want politicians to put patients ahead of politics and stop making it a partisan issue.”
Not all the activists are leftists or good-government types at this bazaar of free expression.
On Tuesday, six activists from Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., known for their incendiary antigay protests and signs like “God Hates Fags,” were among those with an appointment for the stage.
“The main message is that your destruction is imminent,” Shirley Phelps-Roper, attorney and leader of the group, said in a telephone interview earlier in the day. “We’re so thrilled that the God of Isaac has sent [the storm] Isaac to turn attention away from Romney and onto what God is doing to this country, this border of wickedness.”
I disassociate myself from those remarks.
Ron Paul supporters mounted a futile effort to have the Texas congressman address the GOP convention. That was rejected by party officials on the first day of the convention (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images).
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"Denied role at convention, Ron Paul rallies faithful; Texas legislator says libertarian cause will thrive" by Brian C. Mooney | Globe Staff, August 27, 2012
TAMPA — For Representative Ron Paul, it was the second time in four years he has held his own rally near the GOP convention, drawing thousands of supporters who intend to continue his fight against what they see as government incursions into civil liberties, the economy, and foreign nations.
But somehow nobody voted for him.
Sunday’s event at the mostly full Sun Dome arena on the campus of the University of South Florida was called “We Are the Future.” Four years ago in Minneapolis, the Paul backers nearly filled the Target Center with a “Rally for the Republic” before the convention in nearby St. Paul....
By the Associated Press count, Paul has 177 committed delegates of the nearly 2,300 who will attend the convention....
And they didn't even call his name when they did the roll.
Paul’s gatherings are a motley array of libertarians, with strict constitutionalists, veterans, fiscal conservatives, and young people.
I take that backhanded elitist insult as a compliment now.
He is viewed with deep skepticism in many quarters of the Republican Party because his beliefs, particularly his noninterventionist foreign policy and support for drug decriminalization, fall well outside the mainstream of party orthodoxy.
Translation: he is what the people wanted, and there is no way the corporate mon$ter that controls both parties will allow that. Look what the did to Nader.
But his supporters share a deep resentment of the expansion of government into their lives and overlap in their beliefs at points with a variety of other political activists on the right and the left.
During Sunday’s rally, the targets of boos ranged from Obama and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke to Romney and Rick Santorum, another of Romney’s defeated rivals. Garnering cheers from the crowd were marijuana (which Paul proposes to decriminalize), raw milk, a sound currency policy, and Barry Goldwater (whose son, former California congressman Barry Goldwater Jr., was among the speakers).
Paul’s initiative to audit the Federal Reserve received wide bipartisan support in the House and is part of the Republican Party’s platform this year....
Look, they threw us all a crumb!
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Also see: Republican platform targets social issues
"Representative Ron Paul’s delegates are trying to mount a floor fight over new GOP rules designed to limit the ability of insurgent presidential candidates to amass delegates to future Republican conventions....
I wasn't aware Ron Paul supporters were fighting U.S. occupations and killing AmeriKan soldiers, were you?
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"The day was also marked by discord, with the convention upended by a delegate dispute involving Ron Paul and his supporters, who were incensed at rules changes that unseated 10 Paul delegates from Maine.
Yes, I had CNN on for about five minutes and Wolf and the gang were in an uproar.
Paul strode onto the floor in the afternoon, posing for photos and signing autographs. His supporters chanted his name, shouted “Let him speak,” and some delegates shouted at Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, as he tried to gavel the hall into order. Several Maine delegates walked out of the convention hall in protest over the rules changes.
Oh, my, they ACTUALLY LET HIM IN the BUILDING THIS TIME!!
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Related:
"The delegation also has a large contingent of supporters of one of Romney’s vanquished opponents, libertarian-leaning Ron Paul, after the Paul forces overran Romney-backed candidates for delegate slots at caucuses last spring....
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Related: Access to Mass. delegates restricted
And Romney will be getting his attention any minute now:
"This work of “humanizing” Romney began Tuesday night, with Ann Romney’s well-received address extolling her husband’s capacity for love and commitment.
Related:
"Ann Romney spoke of the funny boy she fell in love with" at the high school dance.
Yeah, he was a real great guy when we wasn't being a bully and posing as a cop!!
Just his way of saying I love you, right?
That work continues Thursday leading up to Romney’s speech, when a parade of people from his life — from the Mormon church, from his administration as Massachusetts governor, and from the Olympics — will testify to his character, leadership, and experience....
With polls showing voters trusting Romney more than President Obama to fix the economy, it’s clear the Mr. Fix-it image is the one Republicans most want to project.
Neither one of these guys can fix the economy without standing up to the bankers and recalling the empire.
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"Evoking the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — referring to ‘‘a plume of smoke on a clear blue morning’’ — Romney said protecting the country is the president’s highest duty....
Then he lied to Israel?
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So what is he going to do, start some more wars?
Related: How Romney can win the foreign policy debate
Also see: Jane Romney says brother, Mitt, will not allow a ban on abortions
Romney looks to stress family-man qualities
Romney is the man to deliver
Mitt Romney is no washout
I'll bet he does deliver a good speech tonight. Too bad I' will be missing it.
