Friday, April 11, 2008

They Need Special Laws

I've got to say, it just wouldn't occur to me to think like this.

The GOP is going to have its convention in the Twin Cities. But there's a problem: the bars close at night.

They couldn't just go back to their hotel rooms at the end of the night like everybody else:
Bar and restaurant hours during the Republican National Convention might be able to stretch into the wee hours of the morning after all, with new legislation that some prior naysayers are tentatively embracing.

A proposal for allowing bars to remain open until 4 a.m. around the time of the convention passed unanimously Tuesday through the House Commerce and Labor Committee.

The action follows the failure of two previous proposals — including one by Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, which was removed from a budget bill Thursday.

In contrast, the new bill allows bars within the seven-county metro area — including the border cities of Northfield and New Prague — to stay open later from the evening of Sunday, Aug. 31, through the early morning of Friday, Sept. 5. That's five nights, rather than 11 — and no Friday or Saturday. Minnesota House committee OKs later bar-close times, with restrictions, for GOP convention

There's more to this article. I don't know, I just found it interesting that they changed the law to allow the Republicans to drink more, rather than asking them to obey the law that's good enough for the locals.

9 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jim, Jim, you deluded fool.

The bars and restaurants are getting extended hours because of the rare opportunity for an influx of business from tourists and the associated tax revenue.

If it was the Democratic convention, they'd probably be allowing round-the-clock gay strip clubs.

April 11, 2008 1:18 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

We almost need Bill CLinton back in the White House just for the sake of advancing late-night comedy in America. These two are the best duo since George Burns and Gracie Allen:

"WASHINGTON (April 11) - Former President Clinton has added to the falsehoods surrounding his wife's tale of her trip to Bosnia 12 years ago.

In Indiana on Thursday, Bill Clinton defended his wife's mistake in claiming that she landed under sniper fire in Bosnia, accusing the media of treating her like "she'd robbed a bank" for confusing the facts.

The New York senator had repeatedly described a harrowing scene in Tuzla, Bosnia, in which she and her daughter, Chelsea, had to run for cover as soon as they landed for a visit in 1996. Video footage of the day instead showed a peaceful reception in which an 8-year-old girl greeted the first lady.

Hillary Clinton has acknowledged that she got the facts wrong in retelling the tale. Bill Clinton's inaccuracies don't involve long-ago memories, but misstatements about how his wife has handled the story.

THE SPIN:

"A lot of the way this whole campaign has been covered has amused me," Bill Clinton said in Boonville, Ind. "But there was a lot of fulminating because Hillary, one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995.

"Did y'all see all that? Oh, they blew it up," the former president continued. "Let me just tell you. The president of Bosnia and Gen. Wesley Clark - who was there making peace where we'd lost three peacekeepers who had to ride on a dangerous mountain road because it was too dangerous to go the regular, safe way - both defended her because they pointed out that when her plane landed in Bosnia, she had to go up to the bulletproof part of the plane, in the front. Everybody else had to put their flak jackets underneath the seat in case they got shot at. And everywhere they went they were covered by Apache helicopters. So they just abbreviated the arrival ceremony.

"Now I say that because, what really has mattered is that even then she was interested in our troops," he said. "And I think she was the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone. And you would of thought, you know, that she'd robbed a bank the way they all carried on about this. And some of them when they're 60 they'll forget something when they're tired at 11 o'clock at night, too."

THE FACTS:

Bill Clinton has many of the facts wrong.

His wife didn't make the sniper fire claim "one time late at night when she was exhausted." She actually told the story several times, including during prepared remarks on foreign policy delivered the morning of March 17.

It's also not true that she "immediately apologized for it." Clinton has never apologized and only acknowledged that she "misspoke" a week after the March 17 speech, after the video of her peaceful tarmac reception emerged.

It's also not true that she was the "first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone" - a claim that Hillary Clinton has also made when talking about the trip. Pat Nixon traveled to Saigon during the Vietnam war and Barbara Bush went to Saudi Arabia two months before the launching of Desert Storm.

The trip also was not in 1995, but 1996.

Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer responded to the former president's remarks Friday by saying, "Senator Clinton appreciates her husband standing up for her, but this was her mistake and she takes responsibility for it."

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press."

April 11, 2008 3:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

andrea- not anon
I'd want to get drunk too if I was a republican delegate.

April 11, 2008 3:28 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You're probably gonna wanna get drunk on the night of Nov 4, Andrea.

You and Al Franken.

April 11, 2008 3:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Is there nothing that can be done to silence this "Anonymous" troll? I am thinking that I will stop reading here because he has hijacked this site and blabbers on and on without stop. He is small-minded, bigoted, mean-spirited, nasty...in short, a TWIT. (I won't, however, because that is probably the top objective of his agenda) Most of what he prattles about has absolutely nothing to do with what I thought was the intent of this blog site.

April 11, 2008 5:31 PM  
Blogger JimK said...

I can easily block him from commenting, but I hate to do that. I have only had to block one commenter in the three and a half years we've been here. I can also delete particular posts, and if people think that would make this a better place I will start doing that.

In particular I would delete comments that introduce partisan politics without any justification, comments that repeat counterfactual points that have already been discussed, comments that make personal references and innuendoes, comments that are unnecessarily inflammatory, etc.

Got that, Anon? I told you last week, you're getting on people's nerves. If you want to continue the merriment you will have to exercise a little self-control. You know I know your IP numbers at home and at work, it is nothing at all to put them into our server's blocking application. Feel free to express opinions, even conservative opinions, about the subject at hand, but I won't let you hijack the discussions with your inanity any more.

JimK

April 11, 2008 6:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

" they'd probably be allowing round-the-clock gay strip clubs."

The problem with this being...?

April 11, 2008 6:35 PM  
Blogger Orin Ryssman said...

Jim writes,

There's more to this article. I don't know, I just found it interesting that they changed the law to allow the Republicans to drink more, rather than asking them to obey the law that's good enough for the locals.

Like Anonymous, I suspect that the locals are really the folks that want this temporary change. Heck, our state legislature is changing the law requiring all liquor stores to close on Sunday (originally intended to enforce some vague notion of religiosity; now more simply an enforced day off for all so that nobody can get the advantage). And when the Democrats come to Denver this summer, trust me, we will have some of the best booze around...esp. craft beers.

But really now, why I bothered to leave any comment is that Jim's comment struck me as petty in a way that is inconsistent with someone that fancies himself "liberal". Sigh...I guess times and people do change.

April 12, 2008 1:13 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm with Andrea. I bet the GOP wants the booze to flow until the wee hours of the morning because they expect they'll need to self-medicate after passing through the airport that holds Minneapolis' newest international tourist attraction, the Senator "Wide-Stance" Craig bathroom stall.

April 12, 2008 8:41 AM  

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