I received an email from my Mom which contained a forwarded message from the Obama campaign.  She was in Denver last week and her opinion of the city seems to be that it is the barf of the Mountain West that you must hold your nose and pass through as quickly as possible to get to the vast, beautiful expanses of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and parts of Colorado not named after a country music singer.  It’s also apparent that she might be willing to hold her nose long enough to experience Obama-palooza. – Correction: upon re-reading her email she says she’d rather repeat the second grade than experience a political convention.  We’re in agreement. Here’s the email she was sent:

From: David Plouffe, BarackObama.com
Date: Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 1:10 PM
Subject: Big announcement
To: Rachael

Rachael —

I wanted you to be the first to hear the news.

At the Democratic National Convention next month, we’re going to kick
off the general election with an event that opens up the political
process the same way we’ve opened it up throughout this campaign.

Barack has made it clear that this is your convention, not his.

On Thursday, August 28th, he’s scheduled to formally accept the
Democratic nomination in a speech at the convention hall in front of
the assembled delegates.

Instead, Barack will leave the convention hall and join more
than 75,000 people for a huge, free, open-air event where he will
deliver his acceptance speech to the American people.

It’s going to be an amazing event, and Barack would like you
to join him. Free tickets will become available as the date approaches,
but we’ve reserved a special place for a few of the people who brought
us this far and who continue to drive this campaign.

If you make a donation of $5 or more between now and midnight
on July 31st, you could be one of 10 supporters chosen to fly to Denver
and spend two days and nights at the convention, meet Barack backstage,
and watch his acceptance speech in person. Each of the ten supporters
who are selected will be able to bring one guest to join them.

Make a donation now and you could have a front row seat to history:

https://donate.barackobama.com/demconvention

We’ll follow up with more details on this and other convention
activities as we get closer, but please take a moment and pass this
note to someone you know who might like to be there.

It will be an event you’ll never forget.

Thank you,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

This all sounded kind of like a typical faux-love-in that today’s politicians pass off as populism until I read this on Fec’s blog:

From Leslie Wayne at the NYT:

“Everything that the Democrats did got off to a late start,” said Peggy
Beck, a co-owner of Three Tomatoes Catering. “It was such an ordeal.
We’ve jumped through hoops and hoops to bid on their stuff, and we had
to have certain color food so the plates would be colorful.” In the
end, the parties that she had been bidding on were canceled to save
money. “This was some of the silliest stuff ever,” she added.

From the Denver Post:

Leasing the Pepsi Center for the seven weeks of construction, the week
of the convention and the remaining two weeks of reconstruction, means
$6.5 million for Kroenke.

(That’s $1.5 million more than the host committee for the
Republicans is raising to pay rent for the Xcel Energy Center in
Minneapolis-St. Paul, according to The Associated Press.)

The tree huggers are running amok:

The DNCC wants garbage sent to landfills trimmed to a spartan 15
percent, all with the aim of making the 2008 nominating event the
greenest ever, one that produces virtually no waste and that offsets
most of the carbon its jet-setting delegates produce – all on a
volunteer basis.