A Slow Start

My first day on the job! Which, due to Hurricane Gustav, consisted of sitting around all day waiting for anything to happen. All the big events were canceled for the day on John McCain's orders. The upshot is that I had plenty of free time to poke around and take photos.

I spent my morning sitting in the al-Hurra media trailer, watching coverage of Gustav and waiting for someone to give me something to do. Gradually, I realized this wasn't going to happen, and so I decided to look around. The first thing I found? Protestors. (I apologize for the size of the video--I don't have any editing software.)



Police estimate that almost 10,000 protestors showed up today. The protest march you see here went on for a long time--I watched this scene for about ten minutes, and never saw the end. Apparently, a separate protest group attempted to overrun riot police. An officer nearly maced a fellow student of mine reporting on the scene.

The floor of the convention wasn't quite so exciting. I managed to get in just as the convention began, and sat through a number of votes on procedural matters. That didn't bother me, though--the arena is spectacular, as you can see from the photo at the top of this post. At one point, a very nice gentleman sat next to me and struck up a conversation. He turned out to be an alternate delegate from Virginia, and asked me about myself. An awkward situation--I was loathe to reveal that I was not in fact a loyal Republican. Fortunately, he never asked me anything that forced me to disclose my affiliation, and we had a very friendly chat.

The schedule for the rest of the week is still up in the air, but I'm inclined to believe that the RNC will be back on track tomorrow. Gustav seems to have done less damage than expected, and the Republicans are certainly eager to make use of the enormous monetary investment in the convention. (To say nothing of the Twin Cities business community, which has been watching Gustav as though the hurricane were coming straight for them.) I'll let you know what's going on tomorrow.