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Jo Freeman: There’s Plenty To Do at the RNC – If You Have the Right Credentials
by Jo Freeman
Every national nominating convention has plenty of auxiliary events, some authorized, some not. Getting space can be a challenge; getting the word out even more so. But they do it nonetheless. Press were given a RNC 2024 Master Event Calendar, which was updated a few days later. Events began on Sunday and ended on Thursday. The actual convention sessions were just one item on the list. The calendar said if an event was Open or Closed to press, and also whom to contact to register. I’m going to describe some of the events, including a couple I went to, and a couple I was turned away from.
Since my focus is on women, I obviously wanted to go to those events – if I could.
The National Federation of Republican Women is the largest grassroots Republican women's organization in the country with hundreds of clubs. Founded in 1938, its members made the phone calls and knocked on the doors that elected Republican candidates for decades. It’s Tuesday luncheon featured Arkansas Governor Sarah Sanders. The Master Calendar said it was SOLD OUT and they wouldn’t let me in. I was able to get into their lounge at the Fiserv Forum Wednesday evening, where I was repeatedly asked if I was a member, and if not, would I join. “I’m press,” I said. “I can’t join anything partisan.” I then said: “What brings you here?” On hearing that, finding anyone willing to chat with me was like pulling teeth.
Moms for Liberty met in a concert hall that afternoon. I had pre-registered, and I got in. From high in a balcony seat I listened to several people talk about the evils of transgenderism. It’s webpage says WE BELIEVE Power Belongs to the People. Sound Familiar? With a focus is on parental rights, it wants to “STOP WOKE indoctrination.”
Tuesday I went to “The New Mavericks” reception co-hosted by the Black Republican Mayors Association and the Georgia Republican Party. They honored Sen. Tim Scott, four Congressmen and two Georgia delegates – all male. There was only one mayor on stage, from Aurora, IL. The chair of the Georgia Republican Party was the one white man on the stage. At that event, women served; they didn’t speak. The RNC reported that 55 delegates to the 2024 convention are Black, up from 18 in 2016.
I missed the Independent Women’s Forum toast to “Women Who Make Our Country Great” because I went to Convention Fest: The Official Delegate Experience, which was held in the streets outside the Fiserve Forum and Baird Hall as well as some space inside Baird. To get to that one you not only needed a credential of some sort, but a USSS pass (which I have).
Concerned Women for America parked its pink bus across from the Baird Center the week before the RNC. No one was home. When Convention Fest opened on Tuesday afternoon, they set up a pink tent, from which its leaders preached to whomever passed by. It calls itself “the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization” but its focus is evangelical Christian. The slogan on the side of its pink bus captures this emphasis: “She Prays, She Votes.” A prayer precedes each sermon.
Impaired Driving and Excessive Speeding: The National Transportation Safety Board and Alcohol Impairment Detection Systems
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Findings Suggest COVID-19 Rebound Not Caused by Impaired Immune Response: Robust Cellular Immune Response to Residual Viral RNA?
"Larger, more detailed epidemiologic studies are needed to further understand the clinical importance and epidemiologic consequences of COVID-19 rebound, the authors write. The authors note that the current data support the need for isolation in symptomatic rebound persons and the need to evaluate, in a clinical trial, longer courses of Paxlovid in immunocompromised individuals where the immune response may be ineffective." more »
Gender and Labor Markets by Diego Mendez-Carbajo* : "Sure [Fred Astaire] was great, but don't forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did…backwards and in high heels." — Robert Thaves1
"...Recent research suggests that the key to understanding at least part of the unexplained portion of the gender wage gap might have to do with marriage. Although the gender wage gap between never-married men and never-married women is small, married men earn much higher wages than everybody else in the labor force. It is not immediately clear why married men earn more than single men, but the fact that they do earn so much more than other workers helps explain, at least in part, the presence of a wage and earnings gap between genders..." more »
Ferida Wolff's Backyard: Dandelion Landing
Ferida Wolff Writes: "It was a pleasant afternoon, sunny but not too hot. Just right for being out back on the patio reading a book. But then something took my attention away from what I was reading, a puffy seed flipping over my legs. I reached out for it but it slipped off my palm and hurried off. Then I noticed other seeds frolicking over the lawn, all determined to be on their way." more »
