Stormtroopers unleash thunderous salvo after salvo of tear gas grenades at peaceful protesters at Republican National Convention. Hat tip to GNOOZE for actually doing some journalism at the RNC. The talking head chick completely loses her shit at one point, but then she collects herself and does her job and you are in the moment. And what a sadistic moment it is. Forget Denver, this is Chicago ’68 redux. And then there’s this. I don’t remember seeing this on the news. Did we invade Minnesota?
HURRICANE SARAH: Palin’s Rev. Wright Problem
POLITICAL PUNCH: An intense “she said”/”she said” has emerged over whether Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was ever a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, the third-largest political party in the 49th state. The AIP wants Alaskans to get an opportunity to vote on whether or not they will remain a state, or become a commonwealth, or split off as an independent nation. Officials of the AIP say Palin was once a member, but the McCain campaign — providing what it says is complete voter registration documentation — says Palin has been according to official records a lifelong Republican. MORE TALKING […]
GOP: Is It OK To Be Dicks Again?
KEYSTONE PACHYDERM: Pennsylvania Delegation, RNC, Chicago, 1912 THE CAUCUS: It took resources, coordination and lots of volunteers, but the McCain campaign managed to push back the dreaded split-screen between St. Paul and Hurricane Gustav and save the Republican convention from a flood of bad Katrina memories. Organizers turned the political event into a pageant of penance and patriotic redemption, a chance to don sackcloth and ashes and get the disaster relief effort right this time. Viewers did not see Republican fat cats in limos or delegates in funny hats knocking back shots. In a convention hall so solemnly lighted it […]
FREE THE PRESS: Democracy Now! Host Amy Goodman Arrested By Stormtroopers At RNC
WHITE RIOT: Battle-ready Minneapolis Police jealously guard toy store. [Photo via NEWSHOUR] ST. PAUL, MN — Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was unlawfully arrested in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota at approximately 5 p.m. local time. Police violently manhandled Goodman, yanking her arm, as they arrested her. Video of her arrest can be seen [below]. Goodman was arrested while attempting to free two Democracy Now! producers who were being unlawfully detained. They are Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. Kouddous and Salazar were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention. Goodman’s […]
RIP: Edwin Guthman, Ex-Inquirer Editor, Bobby Kennedy Press Sec. & Nixon ‘Enemy’, Dead At 89
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Edwin O. Guthman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was on the infamous “enemies list” prepared by aides of President Richard Nixon and who served as press secretary to Robert F. Kennedy, has died at 89. Guthman was the Los Angeles Times’ national editor from 1965 to 1977, then served for a decade as editorial page editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 1950 for his stories in The Seattle Times on the Washington Legislature’s Un-American Activities Committee. His reporting cleared a University of Washington professor of allegations that he was […]
BIG TENT: The Knocked Up Teens Of Pro-Life Mothers
REUTERS: The 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said on Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child. Bristol Palin, one of Alaska Gov. Palin’s five children with her husband, Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said in a statement released by the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain. Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said. […]
RETURN OF THE EVIL EMPIRE: Anti-Kremlin Blogger Gets Bullet In The Head From Russian Police
WASHINGTON POST: MOSCOW, Aug. 31 — A leading opposition figure in Russia’s volatile Ingushetia province was shot and killed Sunday after being detained by police, authorities said. His colleagues issued a call for protests in response, and human rights groups demanded an investigation. Magomed Yevloyev [pictured, right], a businessman and the owner of a Web site that angered Kremlin-backed local leaders with its coverage of official corruption and police abuse, suffered a gunshot wound to his head while in a police car taking him to a station for interrogation, a spokesman for the Russian prosecutor’s office told the Interfax news […]
MEOW MIX: You’ve Come A Long Way, Maybe
Why did John McCain choose Alaska’s Sarah Palin, the Hottest Governor In America (a title she’ll only hold until Gavin Newsom wins California, but whatever) as his pick for vice-president? And come to think of it, given the two had only reportedly met once before she was tapped, is the former beauty queen even really his pick or just a Hillary Lite spokesmodel for social conservatives?…DEVELOPING… People don’t know anything about her, so the first words thrown out about her by right-wing pundits, “a maverick in Alaska,” threaten to stick. Look for a lot of talk in Minneapolis about where […]
MCCAIN VEEP: It’s A Girl!
WASHINGTON POST: The McCain campaign had make little secret of the fact that they wanted to pick a woman as the Arizona senator’s running mate, believing that the rift caused by the protracted primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton gave them an opportunity to pick up scads of disgruntled women. PHAWKER: Three thoughts up front. 1.) You can measure the fear of a man by the extremity of his choices. 2.) His choice is a response to the Democratic party circa last week. Not the Democratic party circa now. 3.) This is like saying to black people, ‘Here’s […]
MILE HIGH: Live And Direct From Denver
[Photos by LenEdgerly & DemConvention] Our DNC correspondent Nick Powell has managed to elbow out a space at the table in the press room. He will be sending us reports from on the ground — God and WiFi willing. Also, our analysts Amy Z. Quinn and Jonathan Valania will be parsing Obama’s speech. 9:55 PM AZQ: gotta go get the kid in pjs back in a sec 9:56 PJV: Oh great, I’ll tell Obama I am SURE he can stall for five minutes just start this John Lennon record over sure nobody will notice 9:58 PM Durbin. This […]
45 YEARS AGO TODAY: A Man Had A Dream
“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former […]
MILE HIGH: Live And Direct From Denver
SEMPER FI: Marine at Rage Against The Machine concert, Denver, 2:49 PM. [Photo by NICK POWELL] BY NICK POWELL DNC CORRESPONDENT My knees are throbbing, my shirt is drenched in mile-high perspiration, and I’m a little cranky after spending the afternoon with the iron-fisted leaders of the Iraq Veterans Against The War and following their attempt at an anti-war protest through the streets of Denver. The IVAW, who sponsored this afternoon’s concert with Rage Against The Machine, The Flobots, and others, sucked all of the protesting spirit out of the march by refusing media access to some of the vets […]
RECONSIDER THIS: Don DeLillo’s Underworld
BY DAVE ALLEN Not long after Don DeLillo’s Underworld was published in 1997, it was canonized by critics and readers alike as the Next Great American Novel, and a 2006 survey in the New York Times cemented its cornerstone status among modern American letters. The praise, whether long-passed or more recent, is justified: DeLillo unseals nearly 50 years of American history from the stifling amber of nostalgia, while the narrative spans both coasts and the vast spaces between them without leeching the intimacies that connect them. In short, it contains multitudes. Many of the characters, after dissipating their energies through […]