Tampa moves to silence and intimidate protesters at the 2012 RNC convention

I can’t seem to find a link to a page that describes this neutrally, so I will just talk about it instead.

The Republican Party is so worried that some people (mostly poor people who are harmed by Republican policies) will come wave protest signs too close to the billionaire Republicans for comfort, that the City of Tampa, Florida will be setting up “exclusion zones” and “official protest areas” way out of sight of the convention area.

If this works out like it did in 2008 and 2004, this will mean that Florida taxpayers get billed for many hours of police overtime for thousands of police officers. It also means that the police will again, probably slip plain clothed officers into the crowd, disguised as protesters, to start throwing rocks and bottles at the uniformed police officers, to give them an excuse to move in and be brutal thugs. They’ll use these “agent provocateurs” to give them an excuse to taser, beat, pepper spray, and shoot the crowd.

Fox News, which is a criminal organization ran by the far-right, will then move in and blame “violent protesters” for causing the police brutality.

If the protesters manage to take a peaceful protest too close to rich business criminal and Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney, they could be arrested, charged, and imprisoned under the “Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act”. The Occupy Wall Street movement is widely expected to show up to protest Mitt Romney and the rest of the Republicans.

Maybe Ron Paul will get his 15 minute speech at the RNC, and maybe his supporters will get to rewrite some of the official platform, but the Republican Party is so corrupt overall that this will mostly just annoy them as they ignore the new platform and anything that Mr. Paul says.

In other news, as President Obama spent the entire day, Sunday, in Colorado, talking to the victims of the Batman Shooter (which itself was enabled by lax gun laws), Mitt Romney was “leaving on a jet plane” to go to London to consort with other rich business criminals. It might have been political theater on Obama’s part, but Romney won’t even pretend to care about this tragedy. He can openly show his contempt for normal people because normal people already know what Mitt Romney is.

On another note, Election Projection site Electoral-Vote.com is now providing an alternate map that doesn’t consider Rasmussen polling at all. As you may or may not know, Rasmussen is basically owned by Fox News and cooks up poll results to always give the Republican candidates a 4-5 percentage point benefit of the doubt. The new map looks much better for President Obama.

On the subject of polling, it would be great if we could get another poll on the Indiana US Senate race. The Tea Party managed to defeat a very popular Republican Senator (Richard Lugar) which had broad support from Democratic and Republican voters alike, and replace him with Indiana’s former part-time state treasurer, Richard Mourdock.

You may have heard about Mourdock’s work as state treasurer already. He lost track of $600 million of state money during the middle of the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, which forced local governments to up their taxation rate. Due largely to Mr. Mourdock’s questionable competence, I am recommending Joe Donnelly to Indiana voters.