We’re at a bar instead of trying to find the Wonkette party. Just too tired and this place has scotch.
Oh, You Poor Babies
This made me laugh out loud:
I can’t speak for the delegates or ther foreign dignitaries, but many of the journalists I have spoken with here are appalled at the accommodations in Charlotte to which they were assigned by the DNC. National Review was assigned to two Knights Inn properties. Everyone who saw them fled immediately across state lines to an available Marriott in South Carolina rather than stay there. As one of our political correspondents reported:
The Knights Inn was the worst hotel I have ever seen, and I’ve stayed in many bad motels in my life. Two guys were dealing drugs in the room next to me, and a prostitute was working out of the parking lot. And this was in the early afternoon. The room itself was dirty, full of other people’s stuff, etc.
I have never requested a hotel change in 3 years at NR. This was the first time I felt absolutely compelled.
It’s not as if the DNC couldn’t have figured out something was wrong with the properties. TripAdvisor had these recent comments on one of the Knights Inn properties: “wouldn’t recommend it to my worst enemy,” “scared to death,” and “pimps and prostitutes at night.”
Nor was National Review singled out. Staff members from Politico and the Hill abandoned their assigned hotels, too. Staffers from the Hill found refuge in a cheap Microtel and considered it a comparative oasis.
I have no idea if they intentionally placed the wingnuts in shitty hotels (btw- Knights Inn is not a hotel), but I love it nonetheless. And maybe, since you weren’t singled out, they just put you in the best place they could find you. Regardless, maybe it is time to reflect on the value of union run hotels in other cities… I mean, this is your free market at work, Mr. Fund.
As an aside, one thing I discovered yesterday is that free drinks and buffet tables are the lifeblood of political reporters and bloggers. No one makes plans based on what place would be fun to go, but all I heard from everyone everywhere was “Let’s go to this party, they have an open buffet table.” And then, when the buffet table closes, they load up into cabs and move on to the next place. Must be a DC thing.
BTW- We’ve been calling this the Murder Hotel, but in all actuality, after you get over the fact it isn’t a Westin, it isn’t too bad. The WIFI is the best of any motel/hotel I’ve ever stayed, probably because I am the only one using it. Plus, even though this is allegedly the hood (something the guy running a restaurant next door told me), everyone has been super friendly and nice. Much nicer than the usual stuck up assholes I run into in elevators and the hotel bar when I travel and stay and luxury hotels. I was standing on the balcony looking out, and my neighbor came out, we chatted, I offered him a glass of wine, and we sat and talked for twenty minutes, he hooked me up on some great BBQ places to go, and it was just really pleasant.
It’s also kind of weird (for me, at least) being really the only white person around. I told Imani that now I know what it must be like to be black in West Virginia, and she told me – “No, now you know what it is like being black almost everywhere.”
Drinking With Wonkette
Getting hammered with Jim Newell and Rebecca Schoenkopf from Wonkette.
(John made me get my iPad out at the bar for this bullshit post. – ABLxx)
Loose in the Big City
Got my work done, and am going to hose myself off, throw some clothes on, and take a cab and meet ABL and her wrecking crew.
I’ll try to email DougJ from jail about maybe throwing up a bail fundraiser.
Speaking of Minority Outreach
They’re not just chucking peanuts at black people at the RNC:
An unscripted moment happened late this afternoon that caused the assembled mainstream media to turn away in the hope that it would disappear. As I was standing in line for a sandwich next to an Italian and a Puerto Rican correspondent, a controversy was unfolding on the floor. The RonPaulites, whose furious devotion to a single idea have made them the Ellen Jamesians of the right, were protesting a decision by RNC officials not to seat members of the Maine delegation, which was split between Paul and Romney supporters following rule changes made just prior to the convention. There were energetic shouts of “Aye!” and “Nay!” as a Puerto Rican party functionary—Zoraida Fonalledas, the chairwoman of the Committee on Permanent Organization—took her turn at the main-stage lectern. As she began speaking in her accented English, some in the crowd started shouting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”
They were also yelling go back home:
There is a reason the Romney/Ryan campaign has eagerly embraced racist dogwhistles and lies about welfare. When you are polling at o% with African Americans (and no, that is not a typo) and only slightly better with Latinos, all you’ve got left is angry white people voting for you. Once you realize that, you sort of get used to the fact that some of your base is cutting holes in their pillowcases before they come to the annual convention.
Donald Trump is really serious about being a Birther, you guys — and it’s not a joke.
Just this morning, RNC chairdouche Reince Preibus got clowned by Chris Matthews for exploiting race to win votes, and for doing and saying nothing in response to Mitt Romney alluding to the long-since debunked claim that President Obama was born in a pod somewhere in Kenya. Priebus called it a joke, and complained that Chris Matthews hates laughter. Matthews pointed out that it’s not a joke and nearly had a glorious aneurysm.
Tweety is right.
Last week, Romney also claimed it was a joke (it wasn’t), while Karl Rove had the chutzpah to complain that Obama “never said thank you” when Mitt Romney acknowledged that President Obama was born in the USA (is he fucking kidding?).
It’s not a joke.
See, here’s the thing: Making comments about the birth certificate issue plays to the racist wing of the GOP, just as the “Obama removed the work requirement from ‘welfare to work,'” line plays to the racist wing of the GOP whose greatest fear is that Negroes are trying to steal all their hard-earned money.
(And just in case you weren’t positive that Mitt Romney plans to race-bait his way into the White House if we let him, Romney told USA Today that he thinks Obama weakened the work requirement in welfare to “shore up his base.” Get it? Zero percent of black people support Mitt Romney because Obama has bought the black vote through handouts. Ni-CLANG!)
Mitt Romney Now Claims He is Hiding His Tax Returns Because of God
Render unto me a break.
Mitt Romney is so full of a shit that somebody really ought to call waste services and have his ass hauled off to a toxic waste plant:
“Our church doesn’t publish how much people have given,” Romney tells Parade magazine in an edition due out Sunday. “This is done entirely privately. One of the downsides of releasing one’s financial information is that this is now all public, but we had never intended our contributions to be known. It’s a very personal thing between ourselves and our commitment to our God and to our church.“
You know what, asshole? If you didn’t intend for your contributions to be known, you shouldn’t have run for president.
And by the way? You can’t send your wife out to talk about how super awesome and honest you are, and have her gush about how you give ten percent of your income to the LDS Church and then two weeks later claim that you want to keep the amount you donate to the church private because of Jesus.
Come on, bro. You cannot be serious.
[read full post at ABLC]
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