From the Department Of Shameless Self Promotion

I've never done this before on this blog, but I need to make a plug.

We're renting out a room during the Convention.

Here's a quick virtual tour:

Strings Or No Strings?

Last week The Democratic National Convention CEO, Leah Daughtry, held a press conference to announce the ticketing process for Obama's acceptance speech at Mile High/Invesco Field. The press conference itself didn't go so well near the end, but everyone was pretty glad to hear that there was a process to get tickets to the event.

There's an FAQ page about the tickets which seems straightforward, including this:

Q: Do I need to volunteer with the Obama For America campaign
to receive a Community Credential?

A: As part of the application process, individuals applying for credentials will have the opportunity to request more information from the Colorado Campaign for Change regarding volunteering and outreach opportunities both before and after the Convention. While volunteering is not a prerequisite for recipients, Coloradans who volunteer with the Campaign for Change will have the opportunity
to receive all-star seating for Barack Obama’s speech. [emphasis mine]

So far so good.

But wait; you get a confirmation call about your ticket standing. Listen here to the call that Jess got, and she did not check the "volunteer" option to get better seats:

Six volunteer hours per ticket - whether you checked that option or not.

But then later today, Westword got a clarification from Matt Chandler at Obama headquarters.

Westword just got a clarification call from Matt Chandler at Obama headquarters. No matter the contents of the message left for Jessica Centers's friend (and if you listen, my guess is that you'll agree the caller implied that anyone who wanted a seat at Obama's speech would need to volunteer six hours), here's the deal: Only people who indicated they wanted to volunteer got the notification regarding these "all-star volunteer" credentials, which involve preferred seating. For everyone else, "there's absolutely no volunteering tied to it," Chandler says. These people are eligible for "community" credentials, and they should hear if they've made the cut -- on strictly a first-come, first-served basis -- by 9 p.m. Friday. If they're on a wait list, they'll be notified later.

And what's the ratio of "all-star" to "community" credentials? Although
the numbers have yet to be determined, "the vast, vast majority" will be
community, Chandler says. No volunteering strings attached.

OK, so which way is it? The campaign needs to clear up any confusion and get the outbound calls under control with a better script with the real info in it, the right script if you're volunteering to get better seats, or a plain confirmation if you're just getting tickets. Otherwise they're going to piss off a lot of locals. And why not just call them tickets instead of community credentials?

Thievery!

Yep - I'm just going to go ahead and steal this from TexBetsy at Mock Paper Scissors.

How about praying for a brain instead?
from The Carpetbagger Report by Carpetbagger

Guest Post by Morbo

Stuart Shepard is the type of right-wing Christian whose vision of faith
is more informed by the mean-spirited, vengeful God of the Old Testament than
the founder of the religion he so claims to cherish.

Shepard makes his living producing short videos for James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, the largest, best-funded Religious Right group in the nation. Shepard undoubtedly believes these videos are hip and clever. I suppose they are — if you’re a benighted fundamentalist Christian who just got web access last week. (”Look,
Ma, I’m surfing the ‘internets.’”)

Consider Shepard’s most recent effort. He asks Christians to pray for rain on the evening of Aug. 28, when Sen. Barack Obama is scheduled to give an outdoor address at Denver’s Mile High Stadium during the Democratic National Convention.

Shepard calls for “abundant rain, torrential rain … flood-advisory rain.” He adds, “I’m talking about umbrella-ain’t-gonna-help-you rain … swamp-the-intersections rain.” (He later denies he wants people to be flooded out of their homes, however.)

Why would Shepard pray for this? As he puts it, “I’m still pro-life, and I’m still in favor or marriage being between one man and one woman.”

Oh, I see.

Obama favors legal abortion and supports rights for gay people, and thus God should smote him with a downpour. But why stop with rain? If Obama’s views are this evil, wouldn’t it make more sense to pray for an earthquake, too? That would teach Obama and all of the secular humanists who support him.

Shepard denies he wants anyone to be harmed by this deluge, but a rain that swamps intersections and sparks flood advisories is not be trifled with. I’d guess that people in the Midwest, who grappled with rains like this recently, would not find Shepard’s comments amusing.

Shepard’s suggestion isn’t funny, witty or clever. It’s just mean-spirited and immature. It is also nothing like what Jesus would do.

My Report on UFO Hunting At Devil's Tower

Not really. I just like to say "UFO Hunting" whenever I go up to Devil's tower, ever since Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

I took a little road trip with my Dad on August 1st and 2nd up to northern Wyoming, and WHO KNEW that it was the same time as all the Harly folks riding to Sturgis for their rally! I hadn't thought a thing of it, but the preferred rides include a bunch of the same parts of Wyoming where we were travelling. Here's a little map to put it in perspective:

Also I misspoke in the video below about the first town. The bar and the Dogie theater are in Newcastle and that's where we stayed overnight; not Sundance.

So there - now you have a first hand look at the countryside where all this Harley riders and Sturgis blather was happening this week.

Some Dem Convention News

A couple items:

The police and Secret Service are bracing -

The Secret Service is wary of discussing threats against the people they protect, but with Obama poised to become the first black presidential nominee, there are special worries. While law enforcement officials say there are no specific, credible threats against Obama, they expressed concern about low-level chatter on Web sites frequented by white separatists who spew hate about Obama's race and what they perceive as his liberal agenda.

One recent scheduling change caused a major shift in security plans. When Obama announced last month that he would accept his party's nomination not at the Pepsi Center in downtown Denver, where the convention is being held, but at Invesco Field, home of the Denver Broncos, the Secret Service scrambled to work out plans with local authorities to secure the open-air stadium, which seats more than 75,000 people. Invesco is also adjacent to Interstate 25, a major corridor through the Northern Rockies that will most likely be closed for at least part of Obama's acceptance speech.

"The magnitude of the event has expanded," said John W.

Hickenlooper, the mayor of Denver and a Democrat. "It's bigger and more profound than we expected." Officials acknowledge that their projections for the number of protesters are based more on a worst-case chain of events than specific information about who will show up, but they say they cannot take any chances.

As a result, the Secret Service, the Pentagon, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and scores of police departments are moving thousands of agents, analysts, officers and employees to Denver for the Aug. 25-28 convention. They will operate through a complex hierarchy of command centers, steering committees and protocols to respond to disruptions.

National political conventions are a chance for federal agencies to test their latest and most sophisticated technology, and this year is no different. There was a brief flare-up recently between the FBI and the Secret Service, when each wanted to patrol the skies over the convention with their surveillance aircraft, packed with infrared cameras and other electronics. The issue was resolved in favor of the Secret Service, according to people briefed on the matter.

And speaking of the acceptance speech complicating the security issue, yesterday afternoon the DNC released details about how to get tickets, called Community Credentials for Obama's speech.

Q: What is the deadline for applying for Community Credentials?

A: The deadline for applying is August 12. After that, people will start to be notified that they were selected to receive Community Credentials. Starting August 20, unused credentials will be cycled back through the system and offered to people signed up on the waiting list.

Q: Who will receive Community Credentials? Have individuals who would have
otherwise been at the Pepsi Center already been assigned credentials for INVESCO Field at Mile High?

A: More than half of the seats at INVESCO Field at Mile High will go to Colorado residents. Nearly two-thirds of seats will go to residents of the Mountain West and Southwest regions – both areas of growth for the Democratic Party. Each state, the District of Columbia, Democrats Abroad, and the four territories will receive an allocation of Community Credentials. Colorado and states in the neighboring Mountain West region will receive a larger share of these credentials. Delegates, alternate delegates, pages or guests credentialed for the Pepsi Center will also be seated for events at INVESCO Field at Mile High.

And lastly, it appears that Security trumps Free Speech. Like that wasn't damn obvious.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Friends Service Committee
and others argued that the rules would keep them too far away from delegates to
get their message across during the convention, which is scheduled for Aug 25-28
at the city's downtown Pepsi Center.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Krieger agreed that the protesters would suffer
some infringement on their freedom of expression but said those interests had to
be balanced with security concerns.

"The restrictions inhibit the plaintiffs' ability to engage in some forms of expressive conduct, (but) ... the plaintiffs have a wide variety of alternative means of expression that will allow them to effectively communicate their messages," Krieger wrote in her 71-page ruling.

Oh well.

Eroding Soul

These soldiers don't realize it at this moment, but they are losing their humanity.

Notice a couple things here:

- The tank soldiers aren't worried about the taxi being a car bomb or anything. They would be inside the tank, rather than popping their heads out of it and reversing to crush the taxi again. Also, those who are filming arent worried about it being a car bomb, and exclaim "Do it again!"

- Way at the back of the alley, observe closely and you will see several Iraqi kids come out to see what's happening. In their eyes, is this not wanton destruction and cruelty? It sure is in mine.

We can't get the military out of there fast enough.

And by the way, just my opinion, I don't think we should redeploy to Afghanistan either. It will just be more of the same. Deprogramming these kids, both sets, Iraqi children and American soldiers, from the horrors that they've either seen or inflicted should be one of our highest national priorities.


TAGS: Iraq Occupation, Blood for Oil, Withdraw from Iraq Now!, LWHat they and we face, when the soldiers come home

Bizzy!

Dear Blogosphere - very light posting and commenting for a bit.

I have to pay some very serious attention to Meat World right now, but I shall return with Unconventional Hoo Hah as soon as I can.

-UC