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Written by Chet
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Here is a list of the North Dakota delegates to the Denver Convention who have provided biographical information to NorthDecoder.com. If you're interested in seeing what, exactly, each of these is doing at the convention, click here for a list of ALL the delegates.
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Written by Chet
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 Today's Fargo Forum editorial nails the head on the hit three -- yes THREE -- times today. Check it...
PRAIRIE ROSES: To Democratic-NPL candidate for North Dakota governor, state Sen. Tim Mathern, Fargo, for advancing the state’s energy debate. Last week the veteran legislator revealed his wind energy initiative in which he called for producing 15,000 megawatts from wind by the year 2030. It’s an ambitious goal, and one that could very well be reached within current trends of wind power investments in the state. [ ] LEAFY SPURGE: To the chronically partisan defenders of “public service” ads by North Dakota Insurance Commissioner Adam Hamm – ads that were as political as they get. No less than the Federal Communications Commission concluded that the ads were political. The FCC said Hamm’s opponent in the November election, Rep. Jasper Schneider, D-Fargo, deserved equal time because Hamm’s ads crossed the political line. Schneider began running his ads last week. Hamm has insisted the ads were useful public information about the Medicare drug prescription program. They were. [ ] PRAIRIE ROSES: To Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and leaders at North Dakota State University for securing research contracts with two major federal laboratories. Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state will work with NDSU on solar cells, polymers and radio frequency identification. This is a major research milestone for NDSU that comes about as a result of Dorgan’s hosting the directors of several national labs last year during a visit to NDSU and the University of North Dakota. [ ] Fargo Forum
The publisher and editors must all be on vacation. The Forum NEVER gets three things right in the same newspaper. We sat with Sen. Mathern at the North Dakota Delegation breakfast this morning and visited, briefly, about his energy plan. Being here in Colorado at an incredibly green convention, Mathern's plan relaly hits home. A lot of North Dakotans -- including John Hoeven -- think global climate change will just go away if we ignore it. Luckily one of our candidates for Governor is paying attention. Don't look for the Forum to go three for three again until after the election. |
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Written by Chet
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 [UPDATED X 1] I'll post more information about the Red Rocks concert when I get downtown, but for now, I'll point you to a few of the hundreds of photos we took last night.
To look at a few of the photos we took, click here. [UPDATE #1: So... On Thursday I got an email that said we had been approved for two media credentials to go to the concert at Red Rocks. It said that if we wanted to do any interviews, we needed to check with the media liason who would take us to Dressing Room 3. You know when you're sitting at a concert, you look down in the front row and see all the "beautiful people" sitting in the front row watching the show and you think to yourself, "Some day I'd like to sit in the front row." We were the people sitting/standing in front of those people in the front row. It was an amazing show. Rather than write about it, I'll point you to a couple posts someone else wrote about it. Click here and click here and here. We roamed around backstage (it's actually "under"-stage) for a bit, tried to track down the "media liason" but didn't have much luck. We visited with a video crew from "Level 3" and they said they had had to wrangle people out of the hall to interview them. While down there we saw some of the talent and the speakers, but they seemed busy, so we left them alone. I didn't feel like "wrangling," so we watched Level 3 do an interview of Colorado's governor, and then headed back up top to listen to Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds. I'm a big Sheryl Crow fan and an even bigger Dave Matthews/Tim Reynolds fan (get their Luther College CD), so I felt incredibly fortunate to be in the amphatheatre. Being down in front and back stage was frosting. Really, really good frosting. Now -- today -- we're at the Big Tent, for now, and will head over to the Pepsi Center to check out the facility and see if I can find anybody to interview and/or snap some photos. Here's a photo of part of the work room in the Big Tent. There are a few other areas, too, including a big area that looks a lot like a coffee shop, with couches an coffee tables, etc. Upstairs is the DIGG stage. There's a panel discussion going on right now and all day. Anyway, lunchtime now, catered by Chipotle. I'll be back later.] |
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Written by Chet
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 We won't be able to get into the Pepsi Center perimeter until tomorrow. The Big Tent apparently isn't ready yet, so we can't get in until tomorrow. So we're blogging from "illegal pete's," a restaurant and bar around the corner from the Big Tent.
Code Pink just walked by... (picture). I'm posting pictures on Picasaweb. For those of you who are new at this, I'm also posting Twitters and utters. Click on the widgets in the columns to see the pictures, audio, microblog posts and (maybe) video that we post there. Code Pink just walked by going the other direction. Update X1 - Adam So we have had a couple of people stop by and chat with us while we were here. One was a guy from Austrailia that wanted our take on the influence of blogs and grassroots politics. He has an interesting perspective on the difference in Austrailian politics to American. There are no "Blue dogs" in the Labor party, it's pretty tightly controlled. If you don't vote party line you get kicked out of the party. It makes you appreciate sometime(even though I dislike it when bad bills get through congress) the fact that there is dissent in the Democratic party. The old saying still applies: "I'm not a member of an organized political party, I'm a Democrat!" Then we had a person that worked for the DSCC(Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee) sit and chat with us. She used to work for John Edwards and we chatted about that for a while. It further confirms for me how much of an idiot he was to start that campaign and to lie about it the whole way through. She spent a few months of her life supporting him and his lie. Yeah, he's an idiot. It's exciting to meet all these people with a common bond of being Democrats. Fun stuff. Update X2 - Adam Daily Kos Founder Markos Moulitsas just walked through. Chad shook his hand and said "Hi." Sweet! We'll see all those people in the tent as well. Hobknobbing along... |
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Written by Adam
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Here's a piece of republican snark gone bad:   
Obama riding into denver on a donkey...with palm branches... So what, we're supposed to crucify him on Friday? Really, with all the threats of political assassination and insinuations made, what idiots would compare Obama arriving today with palm sunday and holy week? Oh yeah, Bill Krostol and The Weekly Standard. They're neocons and they're immune to criticism...nevermind. No story here. |
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Written by Chet
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How To Save A Life... The Fray is a Denver-based band. Hence.... |
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Written by Chet
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 We're in Denver now. We arrived last night after about 12 hours of driving.
So far we've stopped at the Sheraton to get our credentials and rode the bus down 16th Street from there to close to the Big Tent. At the Sheraton, we went downstairs to where all the media organizations pick up their credentials and got ours. They had a table set up with people giving out credentials to different segments of the alphabet. There were long lines for every segment except the section for "N" (as in NorthDecoder.com). There was nobody in that line. That was a good omen. Then we headed out to the lobby downstairs to grab our DNCC media SHWAG bags. A notebook made up of all recycled ingredients; a Denver visitors' guide; an empty water bottle; a can of joint juice; yadda, yadda, yadda. Lots of goodies. There's a free shuttle bus that runs all the way through the downtown area. It didn't get us all the way down Wynkoop to the Big Tent because they stopped all the buses to deal with an accident in the middle of downtown. It got us close enough. Our next stop was The Big Tent. That's the Big Tent you see in the picture (above, right). They were busy finishing it up today. It's not open until tomorrow, but we got our credentials and our SHWAG bags. All kinds of goodies in the SHWAG bag. I gotta say; that place looks pretty cool. Big sign on the door at the top of the stairs says "VIP AREA". That's us. VIP. Heh. Next stop: illegal pete's. It's a restaurant/bar about a block from the Big Tent. Nice place for a breakfast burrito. That's where we are right now. Plugging away on the free downtown Denver wireless. By the way... I'm posting photographs that I take along the way at this website (click here). (shoot me a note if that link doesn't work) I saw an editorial in the Minot Herald today. Here's a snippet: The Legislature's interim Correctional Facility Review Committee endorsed the idea, which would add 251 beds to the main prison, build a new cell block, a new medical clinic, new segregation cells and and [sic] expanded orientation center for new prisoners. We completely agree with decision by the six-member committee. The problem is, this is a decision that was basically made during the 2007 session until some lawmakers decided they knew more than the officials at the Department of Corrections and discussed the idea to death in the legislature. Ultimately, nothing in the way of construction was accomplished. Instead, they stashed $41 million of the $42 million set aside in 2007 by Gov. John Hoeven, and then spent $250,000 and nearly two years worth of valuable construction time to decide on a plan that is virtually the same as the one supported by Department of Correction officials and some lawmakers during the 2007 session. Minot Daily New
You know why this happens in North Dakota? A lack of leadership. A worthwhile governor would have walked down the hall ONCE during the legislative session and brokered a deal that would have saved the taxpayers of North Dakota millions of dollar. He didn't. We pay. Thanks John. |
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Written by Chet
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 David Lasden is a frustrated Republican. He is going to the Republican convention in Minneapolis-St.Paul as a delegate in a couple weeks, and he's got a bone to pick with the Republican Party. He's wondering where have all the Republican statesmen (and stateswomen?) of old disappeared to. He wonders what happened to the quaint, old-fashioned spirit of "compromise" and "working together." He's wondering when the Republican Party became a protectorate for inflexible, single-issue interest groups. He wants to do something to change the direction of the Republican Party. He wants to change the party and he wants to do it by presenting the problem in a documentary film.
And I'm going to help him. David can't be in Denver next week and so he has asked me to get some video footage from the Democratic Convention so he can use it in his movie. I'll be doing my best to get interviews of politicians, politicos, reporters, bloggers, delegates and convention lingerers of all stripes while in Denver. I'll try to mix that in between shooting pictures for you guys, streaming video and writing blog content that you can read here. David's project has a website, and he's looking for help funding the film. If you are interested in what he is doing, check out his website at http://www.wheresthepartydoc.com/. Why would I want to help some Republican fix the Republican Party? Well, I actually have quite a few friends who are Republicans. Believe it or not, I think there was a time -- a long time ago -- when Republicans actually stood for something. Some people would say that was back when Reagan was president, but those people don't know what they're talking about. Many Republicans feel the same way David does. They used to be proud of their party, and now they feel like they don't have a political party anymore; that their party has been taken over by the ________________ (fill in the blank). You might have put the word "fundamentalist, right-wing Christians" in that blank. Or you might have put the word "corporatists." Or you might have put the word "super-rich" in there. Or "neo-cons." Some of you left-wing kooks might have inserted "the Bush crime-family." It's hard to say. The Republican party just doesn't belong to the people anymore, if it ever did. I think the whole world would benefit if both political parties belonged to the people again. I sometimes feel the same way about the Democratic Party too, by the way, but with different words in the blank. It's just that I haven't been asked by a Democratic film producer to help him/her with his/her documentary. Yet. |
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Written by Chet
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One? No cheating. |
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