“I am not a number. I am a HUMAN BEING!”
Below the fold lies painful, hurtful snark. For those who may object on issues of taste and decorum, all I can say is “I warned you”.
My least impactful diary ever. I’ll never delete it.
Oddly enough my activist brother has work that sometimes takes him to exotic places like Tulsa Oklahoma and just got back from New Orleans where he said the most surprising feature was the number of people sporting Saints paraphenalia on game day.
I admit that like some being trapped in Tampa with grounded Gulfstreams rain is a minor inconvenience, but smart conventioneers know that nothing ever really happens except in the back rooms and parties.
The clubhouse as I remember was worse, much worse than I had expected. It was a mess. This was supposed to be a smart, horsey clubhouse, oozing with money and gentry, but what I saw had me skulking in corners. It was worse than the night I spent on Skid Row a month later, back in New York. My feet crunched broken glass on the floor. There seemed no difference between a telephone booth and a urinal; both were used for the same purpose. Foul messages were scrawled in human excrement on the walls and bull-necked men, in what had once been white, but were smeared and stained, seersucker suits, were doing awful things to younger but equally depraved men around every corner. The place reminded me of a cowshed that hadn’t been cleaned in fifteen years. Somehow I knew I had to look and observe. It was my job. What was I being paid for? I was lucky to be here. Lots of people would give their drawing arm to be able to see the actual Kentucky Derby which was now hardly an hour away. Hunter understood and was watching me as much as he was watching the scene before us.
Something splattered the page I was drawing on and, as I moved to wipe it away, I realized too late it was somebody’s vomit. During the worst days of the Weimar Republic, when Hitler was rising faster than a bull on heat, George Grosz, the savage satirical painter, had used human shit as a violent method of colouring his drawings. It is a shade of brown like no other and its use makes an ultimate statement about the subject.
…
The race was now getting a frenzied response as Dust Commander began to make the running. Bangles and jewels rattled on suntanned, wobbling flesh and even the pillar men in suits were now on tip-toe, creased skin under double-chins stretched to the limit into long furrows that curved down into tight collars.Mouths opened and closed and veins pulsed in unison as the frenzy reached its climax. One or two slumped back as their horses failed, but the mass hysteria rose to a final orgasmic shriek, at last bubbling over into whoops of joy, hugging and back slapping. I turned to face the track again, but it was all over. That was it.
‘I think it’s time I was thinking of getting back to New York. Let’s have a meal somewhere and I can phone the airline for plane times. What day is it, we seem to have lost a weekend. I need a drink.’
‘You need a lynching. You’ve upset my friends and I haven’t written a goddamn word. I’ve been too busy looking after you. Your work here is done. I can never come back here again. This whole thing will probably finish me as a writer. I have no story.’
‘Well I know we got a bit pissed and let things slip a bit but there’s lots of colour. Lots happened.’
‘Holy Shit! You scumbag! This is Kentucky, not Skid Row. I love these people. They are my friends and you treated them like scum.’
Ralph Steadman- The Joke’s Over
I had planned on getting the jump on Jon and Stephen by actually watching the Monday Mess (and I did, the whole 30 seconds of session, the Obama slam, and the invocation before Faux Noise decided it was too boring for even their viewers and switched to the parade of blondes). Instead I am as rained out as Game 6.
Storm Rewrites G.O.P.’s Script for Convention
By JIM RUTENBERG and MICHAEL D. SHEAR, The New York Times
Published: August 26, 2012
Should the hurricane continue to pick up steam toward the coast, one official said on the condition of anonymity, another delay or a suspension would be likely because Mr. Romney’s strategists would not be “politically tone deaf to people negatively impacted by a hurricane.”
…
The most important order of business, Mr. Romney’s formal nomination through a roll-call vote of delegates, is now set to take place on Tuesday. But convention officials were closely monitoring the storm and did not rule out the possibility of making additional changes.Officials said they had pored through arcane party rules and determined that no matter what happens, they will be able to formalize Mr. Romney’s nomination by the end of the week, an especially critical piece of business that lets his campaign begin spending his huge general election bank account.
According to Politico as of 8/27/12 11:21 AM EDT this is what they are planning on doing tomorrow-
2:00 p.m.
* Color Guard Knights of Columbus
* Pledge of Allegiance by former Gov. Tim Babcock (Mont.)/ Tom Hogan (Fla.)
* National anthem sung by Philip Alongi
* Invocation by Rabbi Meir Soloveichik
* Opening procedural steps, appointment of convention committees
Welcoming remarks, and House and Senate candidates and RNC auxiliaries including:
* RNC Chairman Reince Priebus
* RNC Co-Chairman Sharon Day
* Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn
* Convention Chief Executive Officer William Harris
* Chairman of Tampa Bay Host Committee Al Austin
* Republican congressional candidates
* State Delegate Barbara Comstock (Va.)
* Rep. Tim Griffin (Ark.)
* Republican Senate candidates
* Republican National Committee auxiliaries
(And then all the official business that happens at the Convention- ek)
* Consideration of convention committee reports
* Committee on Credentials Chairman Mike Duncan
* Committee on Permanent Organization Chairwoman Zoraida Fonalledas
* Convention Permanent Chairman Speaker John Boehner, presiding
* Official convention photograph
* Committee on Rules Chairman John Sununu
* Committee on Resolutions Chairman Gov. Bob McDonnell, R-Va.
* Committee on Resolutions Co-Chairman Sen. John Hoeven
* Committee on Resolutions Co-Chairman Rep. Marsha Blackburn
* Roll call for nomination of president of the United States
* Roll call for nomination of vice president of the United States
6:40 p.m.: Recess
(And that’s it. No more reason to watch except for the speeches. Did I mention media is switching resources to Isaac and many more delegates have found excuses to cancel?- ek)
7 p.m.
* Speaker John Boehner
* RNC Chairman Reince Priebus
* Video and Mayor Mia Love (Saratoga Springs, Utah), U.S. congressional candidate
* Janine Turner
* Former Sen. Rick Santorum
* Host, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers
8 p.m.
* Sen. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), accompanied by Jack Gilchrist
* Gov. John Kasich (Ohio)
* Gov. Mary Fallin (Okla.)
* Gov. Bob McDonnell (Va.), accompanied by Bev Gray
* Gov. Scott Walker (Wis.)
9 p.m.
* Gov. Brian Sandoval (Nev.)
* Sher Valenzuela (small-business owner, candidate for Delaware lt. governor)
* Senate Republican candidate Ted Cruz (Texas)
* Former Rep. Artur Davis
* Gov. Nikki Haley (S.C.)
10 p.m.:
* Mrs. Lucé Vela Fortuño
* Mrs. Ann Romney
* Gov. Chris Christie (N.J.)
* Benediction by Sammy Rodriguez
Santana and Maine and pray for rain.
He’s Singing in Korean
Rain Rivalry Challenge
Rain Dance
Stephen vs. Rain
Most of this I’m going to share later tonight with the TDS/TCR crowd, but it does give you a broad idea of what you can expect in RNC coverage this week. I won’t really trust any ‘official’ schedule until I see it happen.
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