Phil_Shuman's Blog

Outside the Excel Center in downtown St Paul, where the repubs were supposed to party, there's like a 50 foot tall video screen that all day long was on fox's coverage of gustav....sorry, st paul.  of course, to get to see that, you had to first navigate closed freeway exits, closed downtown streets,          

grimy  steel fences suitable for a WWE death match,

dogs, secret service, local cops... metal detectors.. and that's just to get inside the PERIMETER of the excel center.. once you're in the inner sanctum, you're still outside, and you gotta do it all again to actually get into the arena..... the claim to fame is that it's home to a professional lacrosse team  ( ok also an nhl team)... the point  is that conventions post 9/11 are just so security conscious that it's almost overwhelming and is certainly oppressive.  do we understand it ? yes.   is it too much ? perhaps... have things stayed safe due to security precuations ? yes.... so... let's just deal.. meantime, the manholes are sealed,

the credentialed are hologrammed, the machine guns are loaded, and sean hannity's hairspray  supply  has been re-stocked.. all is well....  (( see u tube)).  The hope here is that Gustav turns out to be meeker than expected and things can quickly get back to ''normal'' here where St Paulites are desparate to emerge from the shadow of their bigger, better known twin city... ( that would be ??? minneapolis )..... and yes.. st paul is where ''that mall '' is the 8 billion square foot Mall of America.. hope to get there for a story.. a convention related event was scheduled there for tues.. before everything was tossed up in the air.   more later