Obama Rally Video & Postscript

Here's the video I was too worn out to edit & post last night. The opener there is Emanuel Cleaver. It's hard to understand anything he says on the video, but not to worry. I was there in person where I could discern each word clearly and it made little more sense. It was pure preaching, an emotional rampage.


Obamanation from Chixulub on Vimeo.

I didn't bother recording video of the other warm up speeches because they were, not to put too fine a point on it, boring. Even if you're a liberal Democrat, there's got to be a limit to the appeal of Ike Skelton telling you how he remembers the young Grover Cleveland or Kathleen Sebelius plugging Jay Nixon for Governor of Missouri.

A couple of observations: it sounds nice on the podium, but how do you cut the income taxes of people who don't pay income taxes? Because 95% of workers includes something like a third who pay no net income tax right now.

And in fairness to McCain, keeping tax rates where they are is not a tax cut for the wealthy. This is based on a bullshit assumption that the Bush tax cuts were temporary and must go up. With an economy in trouble, assuming you have to raise income taxes is like a scuba diver running out of air and deciding he better not get to the surface.

But most of all, the little pie anecdote Obama led off with, where he asks the die-hard Republican 'How's business?' is especially full of shit. Because the mess we're in was a totally bipartisan effort. This argument is one that should be left to Bob Barr or the member of another third party who can truly and honestly say they didn't contribute to these problems.

But, that's show-biz.

Postscript

Oh, and another observation I neglected in my last post on the rally: what a bunch of pigs. As the crowd dissipated there were thousands of water bottles and other detritus littering the ground. My friend and I were agog. And before you say I'm slamming Democrats, she's the one who posted the comment on that blog post about how Obama is the one who restored her 'hope and faith in the American government'

I'd have taken pictures, but my memory card was full and my camera doesn't do so well in low light anyway. But it was my ultra-liberal Democrat father who instilled in me, as much as anyone, that you just don't litter. You leave the place cleaner than you found it, I remember him saying as he improvised with paper towels to actually clean sub-par public bathrooms we'd just used. So here I am, almost certainly the only infidel in the VIP section, with two empty water bottles in my pants pockets until I can find a trash can, and the terrain is half dirt, half trash as we walk out of the park.