Well, my usual level of organization pays off.
Due to an annoying computer crash, I failed to get my application to get into Big Tent Denver. My pass as a speaker for Common Cause only covers me for tomorrow. My alternate arrangement has run into a bit of difficulty. And, of course, such is my fame among the progressive blogger community that no one here knows who the $@! I am or why they should care.
I had hoped to take Henry Cohen up on his offer to see the wireless microphones for the convention in action. Alas, the DNC convention is locked down like a drum, and Henry — despite massive efforts — could not get me in today to see the tech operations. The DNC and RNC conventions have got to be like the superbowl for wireless microphones, so this is also rather disappointing.
So I am sitting in a delightful bookstore/coffee house down the block from Big Tent, contemplating wandering over to the main convention to see if protesters are using sophisticated technologies to outwit security –or not. I will confess that despite news stories of tight security, I was able to drive past the convention center this morning no problem.
If all else fails, I will spend a pleasant day in Denver and can catch up on some other work and various blog things.
UPDATE: Thanks to the amazing work of Katie Flemming at Common Cause Colorodo, I am now inside with a pass.
Stay tuned . . . .
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> Alas, the DNC convention is locked down like a drum
I love how increasingly open our political process is becoming.
Just Mike:
After 9/11, I was riding in a cab with a cabbie who had come from another country. He was saying that he appreciated how open our public buildings were, because in his country the government buildings were for the elite and the regular people could not approach. In the U.S., where the government was for the people, we accepted the risk.
I reflect on that rather sadly given how things have evolved since then.
Harold,
Well,the progressive blogger community may not have known who you were when you got there, but some of them are damn well going to know who you are by the time you leave, that’s what I say.
My own foray into the progressive blogger “community”, when I attended Eschacon, did not exactly get me into the clique. But it was alright, I guess. I may not be regarded as “one of them”, but at least I know what some of them look like.
Security on gov’t buildings has been getting progressively tighter at least since the 1970s. One day in college I had taken a trip to DC, was wandering around the Capitol, walking up & down random corridors (I had a map), and at one point found myself *behind* one of the ropes that said “not open to the public.”
In 12th grade (1982), we had a class trip to DC, and were a bit late getting from an app’t in the House to an app’t in the Senate. So Herbert, who had been a House page the previous summer, [you remember from my wedding? he was the other witness] and who thus knew all the secret ways around the Capitol, led us down into the subbasement, along the long corridor that runs straight across the whole building, past the kitchens, and up into the Senate side. I somehow doubt we could get into that corridor today, or even in 2000.
Same went for City Hall. No metal-detector at the basement door in 1981, I could go in that way (the handicapped entrance) and wander all over the building on a Sunday, pop into the City Council and Board of Estimate chambers, etc. Nowadays, no way. Metal detectors at all the doors, officious guards asking “what are you doing here”, etc. And that started already during the Dinkins era.
From some site:
CBS4 has now learned at least four people are under arrest in connection with a possible plot to kill Barack Obama at his Thursday night acceptance speech in Denver. All are being held on either drug or weapons charges.
CBS4 Investigator Brian Maass reported one of the suspects told authorities they were “going to shoot Obama from a high vantage point using a … rifle … sighted at 750 yards.”
http://cbs4denver.com/crime…
I’m calling bullshit on this one.