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| Notes from the convention |
Itsdb |
05/03/07 |
The California Democratic Party Convention was just held in San Diego. Here are some items of interest thanks to the staff at the San Diego Union-Tribune...
From the Convention report card:
Candidate: Mike Gravel
Appropriate career: Shock jock.
Convention presence: None.
Followers: None.
Speech: Nothing to main convention—spoke during Friday reception while delegates grappled over the free crab cakes and hummus.
X-factor: Pronounces name with emphasis on last syllable. Sounds French to us. Luckily, support cannot get below zero.
Grade: A. May have enhanced name recognition.
Candidate: Chris Dodd
Appropriate career: Senator. Dude really looks like a senator.
Convention presence: Not much. Media showed scant interest.
Followers: One. And we think he's on the payroll.
Speech: Theme of "When I was young" more likely to generate guilty calls to grandparents than votes.
X-factor: Never trust a candidate when you can't see his eyes for his eyebrows.
Grade: C. Why is he running?
Candidate: Dennis Kucinich
Appropriate career: Cult leader.
Convention presence: Ubiquitous. Kucinich and his foxy red-haired Viking of a wife appeared at several of the caucuses and spent all Saturday in San Diego. He didn't spend money on much besides signs. Aging hippies promoted him for free.
Followers: Somewhat smelly.
Speech: For Kucinich, speeches are performance art, a full-body dance in which he and his audience rise and fall together. For a few minutes, he owned the room, but then he stopped and the Dems returned to the fluorescent light of reality.
X-factor: After listening to Kucinich speak for 10 minutes, listeners lose the power of reason and logic. They begin to sway back and forth, muttering the words "Yes, Master."
Grade: A. The right fit for liberal Californians.
Sensory overload, Seen and heard at the convention
• Quote of the weekend: "Let's all get up and exercise out lower extremities."—State chairman Art Torres.
• The Kucinich hootenanny wrapped up in just an hour on Friday night. We've been to some hootenannies, we've worked at hootenannies, and, Mr. Kucinich, that was no hootenanny.
• The Guerilla Media workshop on Friday lasted half an hour and consisted of Dems complaining that Harry Reid had been misquoted when he said we lost the war. Good thing they had a workshop.
• The Gore-Obama ticket pushed by some dreamers on Friday sounds good to us, but who's the top and who's the bottom?
• City Councilmember Toni Atkins was a delegate this year. She attended a "small breakfast in La Jolla"with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Atkins said Pelosi told a story about admonishing the president to his face for suggesting "that the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives ‘just stay at home' in his comments about her trip to Syria.”
• The Progressive Democrats of America offered impeach-mints to passers-by.
• Does Dennis Kucinich remind anyone else of Mr. Sulu?
• The Edwards campaign gets the award for the most arrogant theme song. After his speech, Edwards was played off with Foo Fighters singing, "There goes my hero. / Watch him as he goes.”
• The Lyndon LaRouchians were out in force, but mainly they demonstrated why we need to put more money into our schools. One told CityBeat that "Abe Lincoln kicked the British ass in the civil War."Another argued that folk music is based on rock 'n' roll.
• Gov. Bill Richardson, in his press conference, made the gaffe of the weekend, one-upping the LaRouchians by telling reporters that Byron White's U.S. Supreme Court stint didn't last past the ླྀs. White retired in 1993.
• Democrats have bad hair, but the balding guy with the mullet really took the cake. The business in front closed, and the party in back should have ended long ago.
• The convention crowd on Saturday wouldn't let Congresswoman Maxine Waters leave after her speech without coming back for an encore. She returned to the podium and shouted, "Not another nickel. Not another dime. Not another soldier. Not this time!”
• There's never enough free food, but the shortage of free forks at the Friday reception was baffling. Luckily, neither Dems nor CityBeat reporters are above eating hummus with their fingers.
• This guy at the Progressive Caucus held above his head a sign that read "What is depleted uranium?"for, like, an hour. Talk about a feat of stamina. We were impressed.
Raucous caucus
• The first motion from the Children's Caucus was to have refreshments at the next meeting. The second was to have soft drinks.
• The Environmental Caucus turned the lights off for a minute to save energy. Of course, the meeting had to be a minute longer, to finish its work. Also, if you want to get in with that environmentalist hottie you've been eyeing, bring up incandescent light bulbs. It seems to get them in a lather.
• There was a three-way tie for most lively caucus: Progressives, the LGBT and the old folks in the Senior Caucus. Of course, they may have been loud just so they could hear each other.
• Only one standing officer survived from the last meeting of the Senior Caucus to the current one.
• The Progressives are the biggest, and their ranks may have been the most rank, which, trust us, is saying something. Our reporter had to change places several times to find a less aromatic seat.
• The Business and Professional Caucus had the fewest members. Sure, they had a professional-looking easel with a giant pad, but that does not seem to have lured people from their actual paying jobs.
• Everybody wants to get with the Labor Caucus. They have rules limiting who can speak, including a requirement that you be a member of the caucus. But they spent so much time recognizing officials in the room who were running for office that they didn't actually get anything done.
• When members of the Chicano-Latino Caucus wanted to vote yea for a measure, they held up their membership cards, which were green. So, the chair would say, "Those in favor hold your green cards up!"which was awesome.
In pictures
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Does that outfit remind you of anything? Maybe Chief George Earl in Demolition Man?
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Maybe Hillary can tell us how to use those $#!! three seashells. |
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