The 2011 Ames Straw Poll Photo Tour, Vol. 1

Mixing free food,  free goodies, free entertainment, political activism, large crowds, and candidates desperate for votes makes for a unique experience under any circumstance, but the circus that is the Ames Straw Poll beats anything I’ve ever seen. Wandering through the University of Iowa grounds with my trusty Canon Digital Rebel, I did my best to capture the sights. Here is my experience in chronological order:

 

The bus to Ames we were on was packed with self proclaimed “terrorists” and “hobbits” who had so much fun together it should have been outlawed. Maybe I shouldn’t have written that, the government might get ideas.

Once we were disembarked, we found some of the campaigns had volunteers to greet us at the entrance to the grounds. First up were from the Rick Santorum campaign.

This gal from the Ron Paul volunteers was happy to smile for the camera.

There was a small stage with flood lights that messed with my first attempt to photograph these two gentlemen from the Tim Pawlenty campaign. They didn’t hesitate to move to a better position when asked. Having a big camera confers unusual power, I found out.

This is Jerry Lanser, one of what I call “micro-candidates” running for President. He was handing out business cards and was very frustrated at being barred from the debate. There were more like him who don’t have a prayer, but Mr. Lanser was the only one I was able to talk to.

Michelle Bachmann had a lot of gals walking around to show her colors. Her organization was very impressive.

A couple of volunteers from the Herman Cain campaign. He’s my favorite candidate and doesn’t have much of a chance at the nomination. I have to say his supporters were the mellowest of the bunch there.

You see a lot of advocacy groups at the Straw Poll, but this year it was amazing how much “green” energy groups dominated. While the Iowa Republicans were enthusiastic about it, many of the people attending from out of state weren’t.

Patch.com was there and I had no clue what they were about. Looking at their website, it appears to be a social network with news and views oriented around community hubs.

The Faith Family Freedom Fund had their Values Bus there. You guessed it, they promote family values.

Citizens United Productions were selling DVDs from this tent. Traffic was a little higher later in the day. No doubt it was hard to compete with the freebies being given away.

Another vendor was selling T-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers. Oddly there were no free bumper stickers being given away by candidates or advocacy groups, which is the norm at big political gatherings.

Mike Huckabee was everywhere and I managed to miss him every time. But his people from his PAC were all over the place. He hasn’t lost any of his popularity in Iowa.

The NRA presence was much bigger than in 2007. Even bigger was its popularity, people were swarming the tents. Fortunately for me, I got there early enough to score one of the extremely popular blaze orange NRA hats they were giving to new members. Good thing I mentioned I was a lifetime member or I wouldn’t have gotten the hat.

Another micro-candidate was Fred Karger. Having no clue who he was, I looked up his web site. Karger is extremely far left socially and his only claim to fame is that he’s the only gay Republican running for president. Running on a platform lowering the voting age to 16, legalizing marijuana, federal gay marriage, and amnesty for illegals isn’t going to get you far. I wonder what goes through some of these candidates’ heads.

 

Across from the NRA tents was the Iowa Gun Owners tent. Like the NRA tent it ended up getting huge traffic as the day went on.

The National Association for Gun Rights was there and got decent traffic, but nothing like the NRA. They are a more recent rival to the NRA and formed by people who didn’t think the NRA was right wing enough.

The bulk of the candidates were in back of the coliseum where the actual vote takes place. The busiest tent there was Bachmann’s and I never did get decent photos since I vowed not to stand in any lines. Her bus was parked outside the huge air conditioned tent.

 

Drifting above the massive tent was a balloon. At first I though it had come unmoored but discovered there was another line besides the one with streamers. My 18-55mm IS lens did a good job and I never had to get the big lens out.

I finally found Herman Cain’s tents when I spotted the bus.

Cain never had the huge crowds Bachmann and Santorum had in the same lot, but I saw a lot of supporters from other campaigns avidly watch him speak. I never heard a disparaging word about him and suspect he was the number two choice for many of them. Cain even sang a couple of gospel tunes and was accompanied by Mike Huckabee on base guitar on one of them.

Cain and McCotter both had inflatable rubber rooms for the little kids, which I thought was a nice touch. There were a lot of young families in attendance.

To get in Bachmann’s tent, you had to stand in line and get a paper bracelet taped around your wrist. This did not deter people and I later heard  she had bussed in 6000 supporters. I can’t verify that but it looked like that many. Like mentioned before, she had the best organization on the grounds.

To be continued…

Off to See the Circus

It is that strange time again in politics when the straw poll is held in Ames, Iowa. I’ll be heading to the Twin Cities today to catch a bus down there on Saturday if all goes according to plan. That’s something that could change, but I’m going ahead anyway.

Describing the Ames Straw Poll as a circus is pretty accurate. In 2007, I went there to see it first hand and how the Fairtax pavilion was doing. If you have ever gone to a county or state fair, you have a good idea of what it is like. The only difference is that almost everything is free.

For some reason, I failed to blog about it four years ago in 2007. So here are a few pictures with some hazy memories to accompany them.

Entering the grounds it looks just like a county fair.

Every candidate had their own pavilion. There was live music later at Mitt Romney’s which was a very posh setup.

Mike Huckabee’s wasn’t as elaborate, but got a lot more attention.

Tommy Thompson’s run fizzled shortly after this but the bikers who came out in force for him made an impression while driving there. They were a fun bunch.

Tom Tancredo failed to drum up much excitement. This time around he’s sitting out and sniping at Perry over illegal immigration issues. Perry isn’t as conservative as people believe he is.

John Cox was one of the micro candidates who show up at affairs like this – desperately hoping to gain any kind of traction. Hardly anybody was there.

Ron Paul supporters were ever present and stridently marched around shouting his name to drown out other candidates interviews with reporters or discussions with others. As you can see, there is a heavy hippie influence. Some people were very uptight around Paul’s supporters and you could see they were afraid of them. Not a good impression.

Duncan Hunter had an Elvis impersonator performing. Make your own jokes here.

C-Span made a big deal about having their bus there. I don’t remember getting to see what the fuss was about.

Lance Armstrong’s charity was there. Why? I have no clue.

I have even less of a clue what they were about.

There was no escaping the Ron Paul presence. Nowhere was safe. Nowhere.

Over at the Fairtax pavilion, we had a Ferris wheel giving rides. It was a heavily trafficked pavilion.

One of the less crowded moments in the pavilion. I saw a lot of families in there and the atmosphere was good.

Uncle Sam costumes are always popular at these events.

You see some strange sights at political gatherings.

This is the closest I got to a crowd shot. I was so busy trying to get photos of specific things that I failed to capture just how many people were there. One of these days I should get a wide angle lens.

It was hot down there and misting fans were very popular. A good idea by the Fairtax bunch.

That’s what it looked like in 2007. I wonder what I’ll find tomorrow? At least I’ll have a better camera this time.

Health 8-11-2011

Yesterday was not wonderful. Had to go out and activate the new cellphone, which is annoying in itself. But the real problem was how badly I was shaking. We picked up cheap sandwiches and drinks at Kwik Trip and I could barely hold on to them.

My hands always shake to some degree, but this included the arms as well. Later I overheated while we were sorting family photos to finally put into albums after decades of neglect. Today isn’t as bad, but I am very spacey.

Having to drive five miles to get a password text message to create an online account didn’t help things. That became a race against the secure page expiring on the PC at home. At least that race was won.

Crossword puzzle was easy, Audiosurf very mixed as I faded out quickly – no endurance.

Not a good sign for the trip up to the Cities tomorrow and the bus trip to Ames, Iowa the next day. Only dread one day at a time, like my mother taught me.

Life in the Fast Lane

It has been a very nice improvement going to 7.7M down on the DSL service. No longer do I have to check if my father is online and streaming something when I want to myself. Downloading walkaround pictures of aircraft doesn’t consume vast amounts of time. Best of all, I can click on news videos without worrying about buffering.

In a similar vein, high speed access is coming to many church meetinghouses too. I like the fact that you’ll log in using your LDS account and there will be extensive filtering which is a very good thing. Nice to see a wiki up on the Internet too, this page on filtering should be bookmarked by every Latter-day Saint household. From personal experience, I heavily recommend using OpenDNS to filter things at the router level.

Our meetinghouse already has high speed Internet, but protected access only. This should be a great help to Sunday school teachers, though I hope the temptation to use media too much is avoided. Nothing beats real discourse.

Across the river, the GOP in Wisconsin held the state senate, only losing two seats in the recall efforts. But those could be regained elswhere in next weeks recalls against Democrats. This is all very silly – recalls should be for serious malfeasance only.

Locally, Kapanke was toast due to his screwing up and being corrupt in transferring campaign funds to a business he owned. Doing that once is bad enough, but being caught doing it again is sheer stupidity in an age of quick news dissemination.

Just got a call from a FedEx driver, my Verizon pay as you go cellphone will be here this morning. After multiple difficulties with TracPhone, I gave up on them and have been without a mobile phone this year. One has to love being able to order a cellphone online and have it delivered to your house that has no reception. The irony is splendid.

Of course Verizon’s union workers went on strike as soon as I ordered the thing. I wonder which company I should cause trouble for next…

Health 8-9-2011

My dislike of talking about my health has translated to procrastinating in posting about it here. This is actually about problems on the 6th and 7th.

Saturday wasn’t wonderful, but I made it into the city for a gaming session. By the end of it I was in more pain than usual and got home late. Sleep did not come easily with an excruciating flare up of the abdominal pain I’ve been experiencing.

Sunday wasn’t just an endurance run, but a torture run. By the third hour of church I was in considerable pain again and missed the baptism afterwards because I knew I was fading fast. The drive home was miserable and I went to bed soon after arriving.

Eventually things improved and I have to wonder if the elderly hot dogs I ate on Saturday were the cause of the severe distress. I still am dealing with twinges but they are not nearly as bad as during the weekend. With things up in the air for the week, I’m not considering going to the doctor until next week. If I do, that is.

I keep hoping this will pass.

Addendum

Forgot to write that I’ve been sneezing and dopey since Sunday night. Might be a bug involved since it affected more than the sinuses. Not a great week so far.

Bleach Episode 5: Beat the Invisible Enemy!

Mix a possessed parakeet and ridiculous feats of strength with a vicious monster and you should get your standard fun action episode, right?  But this spotlight on Chad and Rukia turns into something a little more poignant before it ends.

After a quick recap that condenses Rukia’s fight with the Hollow…

I should warn that Bleach suffers from recaps at the beginning of most episodes and eventually became notorious for eating up minutes of time on them. At this point in the series it isn’t a big problem, but be warned. Fortunately, DVD players have fast forward buttons!

Err, back to the episode itself. Rukia is still fighting the Hollow pursuing the parakeet that houses the soul of a little boy, Shibata. Hoping that her Soul Reaper powers have recovered enough turns out to be a mistake. Luckily for her, Ichigo’s overgrown friend, Chad, is around to punch the monster out. Unluckily, he can’t see or hear the Hollow and is punching air more than anything solid.

Meanwhile, Ichigo is racing back to the scene after taking his sister Karin back home. He’s deeply rattled by her crying over the parakeet because she hasn’t done that since their mother died. It is clear the wounds from that death are still very deep. The focus on the Kurosaki family lends surprising depth to what should be just a hack and slash fighting cartoon.

Last episode, Chad showed superhuman strength and an ability to take insane damage when a steel girder fell on him. That was no fluke as he rips out a telephone pole to swat the now flying Hollow!  Just what is he?

The Hollow is just as surprised, exclaiming, “T-this is crazy!” It is an amusing moment in a fight that is darkly comedic before turning very dark indeed.

Moments later, we see a nod to the X-Men as Chad stands in for Colossus throwing a “fastball special” with Rukia subbing for Wolverine. I don’t know if this was a deliberate homage, but it is suspicious given some comments in an upcoming episode.

The heroes don’t fare too well and it takes Ichigo to save the day which is pretty much standard anime fare. The substitute Soul Reaper is acting oddly though. Instead of killing the sadistic Hollow, he angrily interrogates him at sword point demanding to know if he killed the boy’s mother.

The answers given take Bleach into much darker territory than it has explored previously. It also raises questions about the afterlife in this fictional universe and Ichigo shows signs of being a much more complicated young man than we thought. Both brutality and compassion follow, leading to another bittersweet ending.

Thoughts

Watching these older episodes has caused me to notice how young the characters look. Three hundred plus episodes later they look older, which isn’t a bad thing at all. It gives a sense that time does pass and in real life I can’t believe how fast kids grow, especially the teenagers.

One thing Kubo Tite, the creator of Bleach, doesn’t get credit for is how well he weaves themes through the story arcs. While he’s on record saying he makes it all up as he goes, I’m beginning to think he’s dissembling. Too many plot developments have hints or setups dropped in that don’t pay off until much farther down the road.

A strong sense of justice and compassion pervades these early episodes. The characters all have very human moments amidst all the violence and comedy. Consequently, I found myself expecting character development to come whenever a new one popped up.

The theme of Ichigo being good with kids and a natural big brother to them is reinforced in this episode.

Technical

Since this is the first episode on Disc 2 of the first box set, I’ll go into the differences from the first disc. Other than the episodes and title screen, there aren’t any. Even the extras are the same.

The English dub is even more annoying compared to the subtitled Japanese than I’d realized. Chibata, the parakeet, suffers the most from the change in voice actors. I’m also noticing the dialogue changes are bigger than I’d like.

While I’d hoped to be able to review two episodes at a time, it isn’t working out due to how elements of the plot are carried over week to week. Back to one episode at a time.

BEWARE! HERE BE SPOILERS!

 

 

 

Ichigo’s reaction to finding out that the Hollow was the murderer of the little boy’s mother is more than normal outrage. He’s as sadistic in brutalizing the monster as the former serial killer was to his victims. Knowing what happens in the next few episodes, this parakeet two-parter was really about Ichigo and his family. A lot of clues are being dropped about the tragedy that shaped the teen.

Previously, we’d been shown that Hollows aren’t necessarily truly evil and that slicing their mask will purify them so they can go to Soul Society. Here we find out that isn’t the case for those who were evil in mortality. They are taken violently and painfully through the Gates to the Underworld, or Hell. This idea won’t be revisited until the fourth Bleach movie.

Chibata’s departure to Soul Society is a touching scene, with him behaving like a little child would. Both Chad and Ichigo score big brother points in handling the traumatized boy. Each makes a promise to him that helps him move on, but Ichigo’s is unknowingly a lie. We’ll see Chibata again.