Protesters in St. Paul
ST. PAUL, MINN. – A pending natural disaster may scrap the schedule of a major party’s political convention, but protest marches continue as scheduled.
An estimated 200 people – with some wearing orange coveralls to represent prisoners held in detention camps at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba – marched today in front of the Xcel Energy Center in downtown St. Paul. The U.S. considers the detainees enemy combatants in the global war on terrorirsm; the protestors ccomplained they are being held illegally.…
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Louisiana delegation committed to GOP convention
MINNEAPOLIS – Roger Villere Jr. is thinking about his wife and family he left behind in New Orleans, but the chairman of the Louisiana Republican Party says his national duty is to be here to nominate U.S. Sen. John McCain as president.“
“The whole thing is it’s so very important to what we’re doing,” said Villere, a New Orleans florist. “We’re going to nominate the next president and vice president of the United States. This is the process and there’s nothing in the rules to stop the process.…
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Rock-Obama
Signing off from Denver after a, um, challenging day at Invesco Field, where Sen. Barack Obama charged up an estimated 84,000 people _ all of whom had to go through metal detectors to get in. Here’s the line I was stuck in for over an hour (this is actually near the end of it; it’s just as long behind this shot):
Probably should have gotten there earlier, because by the time I got in, the stadium was really filling up:
Did get there in time for Sheryl Crow:
Thank goodness for the jumbo screens.…
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Invisible OK Dems?
Four Oklahoma Republicans are scheduled to speak at their party’s convention next week _ Sen. Tom Coburn, Reps. Tom Cole and Mary Fallin and Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett _ while not a single Oklahoma Democrat has been featured on the podium here in Denver.
The state has a Democratic governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and other statewide officers. And it has one Democratic congressman, Dan Boren (though the fact that he has refused to endorse Sen. Barack Obama, the party’s presidential nominee, certainly might explain his lack of podium time).…
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Demos and Dinosaurs
“You’ve got a lot of great dinosaurs in Oklahoma,” famous paleontologist Paul Sereno told Oklahoma Democrats at their convention breakfast today.
Some of the Democrats may have thought he was referring to Sen. Jim Inhofe, but he wasn’t. He was talking about the beasts that used to roam the earth and whose bones are now scattered all around said earth. People like Sereno find the bones and tell us things about the earth we wouldn’t have otherwise known.
Sereno, who is also a professor at the University of Chicago (and I’m going to tie this in to politics soon, I swear), discovered a “green sahara” in Niger in 2000 that is the focus of a story in September’s National Geographic magazine.…
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OK Dems Get Around
Since the Democratic convention began, a couple of the Oklahomans, delegate Joe Carter and longtime fundraiser Mike Turpen, have been Zelig-like _ popping up everywhere, sometimes with famous people. And they’re armed with cell phone cameras.
Here’s Joe Carter, of Norman, with the Rev. Al Sharpton:
Carter wrote his own caption for this one: The reverend and the redneck make peace after the nomination of Barack.
A footnote: I actually saw Sharpton outside the Pepsi Center and thought of taking a picture of him but didn’t know exactly what I’d use it for.…
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Afro Donkey
Oklahoma state Sen. Judy Eason McIntyre, on the right, who seemingly hasn’t missed a t-shirt vendor hawking at the Democratic National Convention, poses here with her sister, Syliva Dean, with their donkey with an afro shirt (the donkey being the longtime symbol of the Democratic Party). And that is apparently what used to be called a pick in the Afro.
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Biden Their Time
Two bad puns in a row using the word Time. Sorry.
Turpen Time, by the way, was actually his campaign slogan when he ran for state attorney general in 1982.
The headliner at the Democratic National Convention tonight is, of course, Sen. Joe Biden, the vice presidential candidate. Before him, though, is former President Bill Clinton (reportedly not happy with his slot because it’s national security night themewise and Clinton wanted to talk about the economy).
But before all that will be the traditional roll call of the states, when some designated person from each state gets to shout out what the state is most proud of being “home to” before shouting out how many votes they’re pledging to the nominee.…
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Moving on to November
While a recount is being sought in theHouse District 57 race, where Lyle Miller lost by eight votes to Harold Wright, the victors in Tuesday’s other two House runoff contests are focusing on their next contests in November.
In the House District 59 race, Mike Sanders defeated Chris Cameron in the Republican runoff for House District 59. Sanders won 1,458 votes, or 54 percent, to Cameron’s 1,240 votes. Sanders and Cameron are both businessmen in Kingfisher.
Sanders, who nearly won the seat in last month’s primary when he garnered 49.6 percent of the vote in a three-way race, credited his work ethic and his experience for his runoff victory.…
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It's Turpen Time
Mike Turpen _ Oklahoma City attorney, former state attorney general, television talk show host and fundraiser extraordinaire _ was walking by the press stand at the Pepsi Center last night, and he graciously stopped for a picture.
Turpen is a longtime fundraiser for the Clintons, a loyalist who badly wanted Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to get the nomination. But he said he doesn’t understand the people who have been reluctant to accept Clinton’s defeat and get fully behind Obama.
Turpen said that after Clinton conceded, he met with her and Obama in Washington.…
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