Big Brother Godfrey is Watching YOU!

And various election 2007 tidbits - UPDATED

We were shocked this morning to learn from the Standard-Examiner that there are already 150 surveillance cameras scattered all over Emerald City, monitoring the lumpencitizens' every move 24/7, from downtown's Two-five Drive to our east-bench trailheads. And according to this morning's front page story, Boss Godfrey's administration plans to add 22 more surveillance devices very soon. And for those readers who may leap to the conclusion that the situation is more than slightly Orwellian, we submit that it's merely Godfreyesque. If this technology had been available to Boss Godfrey in 2006, he could have saved himself lots of trouble and bad publicity, we think. How incongruous it seems, gentle readers, that the mayor who operates under a constant cloak of secrecy finds it entirely appropriate to monitor the activity of the lumpencitizens night and day. Watch your step, citizens of Emerald City. Big Brother Godfrey is watching YOU.

And speaking of secrecy, we'll highlight this morning's Robert W. Belka letter to the editor, which expands on the subject of Godfrey's secrecy and deceit. Among other things, Mr. Belka includes a link to the Ogden Sierra Club website, where readers can find a fine collection of well-documented articles chronicaling Boss Godfrey's history in this regard.

Notably, Mr. Belka also chides the Standard-Examiner and several Godfreyite letter contributors for their false accusations about mayor candidate Van Hooser's willingness to debate. As we are well aware, Van Hooser has already debated Godfrey once already, and has calendered two more such events within the upcoming two weeks.

While we're digging through the letters column, we can't fail to mention this Jason Wood masterpiece. In a marvellous display of journalistic craftsmanship, WCF's own Jason W. efficiently hammers four separate election issues in this morning's letter: 1) the "gondola," 2) the $50 million downtown "renaissance" bowling alley/pizza joint, 3) Godfrey's mendacious "crime fighting" statistics and 4) Vangate. Nice work, Jason.

Having mentioned a couple of today's anti-Godfrey letters above, we'll also highlight a couple of pro-Godfrey ones -- in fairness -- and this morning we have two real "gems."

First, we find this letter from gondolist Mike Gale, who chants the Godfrey the Economic Savior mantra. Gale's company fled Ogden City like a rat off a sinking ship at some unspecified time in the past, according to Mr. Gale. Now that Emerald City is basking in the economic revival that's being experienced all up and down the Wasatch Front, Mr. Gale is bringing his company back to Ogden, to "cash in."

Secondly, we'll put the focus on this letter from Blake Fowers, the penultimate Emerald City gondolist. Mr. Fowers is apparently a little bit peeved that he had to cough up a measly ten bucks when he "crashed" a Van Hooser fund raiser. Mr. Fowers of course, like Mr. Gale above, is a credentialled member of the gondolist "A" Team. Most recently he became semi-famous in "Captain" Geiger's 9/1/07 "lawn-sign caper." He's the fellow, according to our ever-reliable sources, who uttered the now-infamous words, "dude, there's no way she's going to believe that!" This is not to suggest in any way that Mr. Fowers might be biased, of course.

Before closing, we'll also highlight this most excellent Curmudgeon comment, gleaned from one of the lower comment sections. Gentle Reader Curmudgeon has been regularly monitoring the Ogden/Weber Chamber of Commerce website, which finally (and belatedly) "got the memo" that "gondola" is a forbidden word for any person or entity on the re-elect Boss Godfrey team.

That's it folks. The floor is all yours. Last one out -- please turn out the lights.

Update 10/22/07 12:12 p.m. MT: One of our alert readers has been prowling the Ogden/Weber Chamber of Commerce website this morning, and has discovered that all the original information about the so-called Ogden/Malan's Basin Development Project (the "Peterson Project") remains on the site intact and undeleted. The Chamber webmaster has merely removed (temporarily?) the link to these pages from the Chamber's home page, in which connection we suggest, quite reasonably we think, that Chamber leadership knows this project is far from dead. The undeleted material can be viewed here. Imagine that....