Obama Holds Memorial Day Vet Visit in Secret….McCain visits ABQ in PUBLIC

Well, it appears that part of what I said to my mother yesterday was correct…that PRIVATE was the most key word to describe the Obama visit to Las Cruces today.

As it turns out, it seems that EVERYTHING today is completely private…right down to there being a NEWS BLACKOUT! I don’t know if there will be “other events” as was originally reported but the main event has been carefully scripted.  (And if there ARE any other events, you can bet they’ll be in homes or another secret venue and money will be flowing.) As I told my mother yesterday, the paper announced the visit, then the cell phone calls, text messages and emails went out to Obama supporters to create a nice media event for the press to fawn over.

Yesterday’s Las Cruces Sun-News had a headline across the top heralding Obama’s visit, with very few details. (See my post from Sunday, May 25.) Today, I expected to see more news about this trumpeted on page 1.

But there was NO MENTION of Obama. I listed to the oldies station, which does local news, and heard…nothing! There was nothing updated on the paper’s website or on radio station site (although I did find an interesting poll there, which I’ll comment on in a moment). I visited a couple of New Mexico political blogs…just the old news of the original announcement. I searched Yahoo News and came up with the old news from the Sun-News and sister papers. Finally, on Google News I found an El Paso Times story (one of the sister newspapers) that was 5 hours old:

Obama, McCain to spend Memorial Day in New Mexico

Times staff report

Article Launched: 05/26/2008 07:51:04 AM MDT

Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama will be in New Mexico today at separate Memorial Day events.Obama will join New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson at a Memorial Day Veterans Town Hall in Las Cruces. It is an invitation-only event.

McCain will join Sen. Pete Domenici at a memorial ceremony in Albuquerque honoring fallen military men and women. The public event starts at 9 a.m.

Interesting that McCain is in the state today, too, and his event is PUBLIC.

Meanwhile, I finally found the blog at the El Paso Times with this info:

…And though the event is not open to the public, you can read about all the action as it happens right here at Best of Times. Later today, elpasotimes.com will have stories, photos and video from the event, as well. Check back here for continuous coverage beginning about noon.

I will be checking back to see the reports which, I bet, will be GLOWING. This whole arrangement…closed event in front of select audience, no general PUBLIC allowed, the press seeing only positives to report (or in this case, probably not reporting on any tough questions asked by vets and vet family members) REEKS of Bill Richardson. As I observed a few weeks back in a post on this blog about “Richardson’s Rules,” Richardson has organized this sort of event before. That one was to drum up for the spaceport-welfare program for Richard Branson, using school kids and their parents by holding an assembly in a school which the public was NOT ALLOWED to attend. Scuffles and police were the result.

I can only recall that 4 years ago, when Wes Clark visited here a couple of times, there was press information and PUBLIC events. I was working on his campaign and made calls to Democratic voters and a couple of the volunteers who were vets reached out to local posts. We were a little band of about 10-15 people who worked our butts off and the party regulars themselves also put out the word, while the Clark campaign figured out the venues. This time around, Richardson is doing his specialty—CLOSED and SELECT, and engineered for the press to be complicit.

Now, back to that interesting poll on 101 Gold. Totally unscientific, of course, but interesting anyway…sorry the little graphs doesn’t copy….

Hillary Clinton has all but lost her chance at the top of the ticket, although Barack Obama doesn’t yet have enough delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination for President. What do you think
Answers Votes Percent 1. She should have gotten out long ago 23 20% 2. She should get out now 8 7% 3. She should stay in until the convention 30 26% 4. I don’t want either Hillary or Barack in the White House 10 9% 5. How about Obama/Clinton ’08 3 3% 6. How about Clinton/Obama ’08 3 3% 7. John McCain all the way, who cares what the Democrats do 40 34%

Look who’s winning….John McCain. Not unexpected, given the huge military presence in this area. Next, Clinton should STAY IN.

Stay tuned….I’ll be updating…