Reason to be hopeful, reason to be appalled

By Pistol Tanker Palin

I don't know what to say anymore.

There has to be a level. A place where decency and humanity, respect and tolerance are the guidelines followed by a vast majority of citizens. I am beginning to see that I equate it with all that is good, and not some neutral place where all is neither very good, nor very bad.

There is good, and there is bad. I have decided today that there is no qualification of either that can work.

I am struggling as a human being who wants all of us in the place where good governs our behavior towards one another, our fellow creatures of the earth, and our planet itself.

I count the numbers coming one by one, couple by couple, family by family, group of friends by group of friends, teams of advocates for society and good government by teams of like.

200,000 in Berlin
My American brother from Austin, traveling in Europe with another American friend from Houston was there.

75,000 in Portland, Oregon

84,000 in Denver, Colorado

175,000 in St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri, and

50,000 in Orlando, Florida
October 20, 2008

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/20/204232/88/740/636921

Sarah Palin says she can raise those kinds of crowds, if they'll give her a chance. Whose stopping her? Even if she could, they'd never look or act like these crowds.

Update, October 22: This is from my friend, Jericho, who was at the Miami rally he next morning:

What a contrast to a McCain / Palin rally: 30,000 strangers gathered in the hot afternoon sun and we left as 30,000 friends. No one shouted out "Kill Him!" or "Terrorist" or anything negative - heck, the folks on the podium attempt to start a wave during the break between the Mayor's talk and the Obama's arrival.

About the only disappointment I heard all day was from people who could not see over the throngs of other people to get a look at Obama and the other speakers. So you know what people started doing?

Passing back their expensive digital cameras through the crown so that people could see!

Which do you want to be a part of?

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The Palin mobs

They have yelled "Treason!" and "Kill him!" and "Off with his head."

They have compared him to Charles Manson.

And, they have done these things within the sight and hearing of Senator John McCain, his wife, Governor Sarah Palin, and her husband, and they did not tell them no. They did not tell them to stop. They did not ask them to lower their signs because the offenses written were not true, to still their accusations because they are unjustified and unjustifiable.

In fairness, McCain has responded a few times, but the fear and the anger are bigger than he is. I am genuinely confused by him. When Keith Olbermann compared Sarah Palin to 90-year-old Addie Polk, saying "They are both in situations that are beyond their ability to cope, they are both stuck in a crucible caused by forces they cannot comprehend, they are both unable to understand what they are doing," he wasn't thinking of John McCain, but I think he forgive him right along with Sarah Palin and Addie Polk now, too.

My French husband in shocked by this behavior, and he cannot understand why we give press attention to these terrible things. Why do we not treat them like the aberrations they are, and kill these happenings off by depriving them of attention, like we deprive bacteria of air? I can understand what he is saying, but we cannot. Or, maybe he is right. Perhaps it would be better. Deal with them quietly. Do not give encouragement to those who would agree. Isolate them.

It is another way to understand it. But, we shine a light on it, call it out, excoriate it, and it continues to happen.

And tens of thousands continue to come to show their support for Senator Barack Obama. They are coming to show their support for what they believe in, for the rules that govern their lives: love they fellow neighbor as you love yourself.

It's that simple. It's hard to do, but once you start, and once you reach out your hand to the person next to you, and you look at him and see him for what he is, a black man, an Asian woman, an elderly white woman, a young white man, a teenage black girl, a child, and you say, "I see you. I see your race and your gender, your age and your life in your face and body, and I accept you," we begin to form crowds so big that no one can stop us, shoulder to shoulder, saying, "No, you will not destroy decency. You will act to hurt, and you will cause hurt, but you will not stop us. We will only get stronger."

Obama rally with Hillary Clinton
Orlando, Florida
October 20, 2008

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Anti-Palin or Pro-Obama?

We need to refrain from the sort of spectacle that anti-Palin protestors made in Grand Junction, Colorado yesterday, when they ran out in front of her motorcade. The difference is anti-Palin versus pro-Obama. You can see it in the behavior of those who came to protest, or to show their support yesterday. There is no Obama supporter who is pro-Palin, but we show our support, and talk about our reasons for deploring Sarah Palin.

The Reverend Martin Luther King called for peaceful demonstrations for social justice. We have to hold back. He have to let the rule of law take care of those who hurt and kill in their fear and ignorance. Where the forces of the law will not act, we must gather and force action, peacefully.

We can do it because we are far greater in number and strength. We always were. It's nothing new. The difference is that we recognize one another now, we have left the comfort of our homes and isolated lives to communicate, to exchange, to learn about one another, to care about one another, and to work together to elect Senator Obama president.

We have laughed, argued policy and point of view, we have formed families through our commonly held beliefs and caring. Our families are multi-racial. They cross state and country boundaries. They include teenagers and middle-aged people and retired folks who talk to one another, save each other from despair, plan for the future, share information and encourage one another.

We have learned that we do not want to live without one another anymore, even though we have never met. We might never have been the image of a friend or brother the other would have imagined for herself, but we have learned that appearance means nothing. In our virtual world, it is taken away, and all that remains is what we offer of ourselves.

We can spot the psychopaths, and we turn them out. They can try to harm us, tell us how to do things, and take away what we make for ourselves and enjoy, but they cannot succeed. We are smarter and we are more resourceful, and we are far more committed.

We can spot the trolls. They don't even try to conceal themselves. They are the immature, the scared, the belligerent. They don't respond to a reminder that rules of engagement need only be respected for them to be welcome, even if they disagree.

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And, it's okay to say, "F*** you, Sarah Palin."

Jon Stewart in Boston
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It's alright because,

These Americans shot a bear

I need to count those numbers coming to the Obama rallies. I need to count them and repeat them like my rosary, my Hail Mary, my prayer against the kind of sickness showing itself in my first country, the country I grew up in, the one that taught me what democracy, freedom, decency and Hope meant. I need them because they shot a bear cub.

And they dumped it at the entrance to the Western University of Carolina entrance, at the base of the Catamount Statue, and they covered it's head with stapled Obama signs.

Someone suggested in the comments that we shouldn't make to much of this, saying it was probably just teenagers in hunting season with a dead bear cub on their hands who didn't know what to do with it and turned it into a joke.

A joke? That is a joke?

They shot a bear cub. Not a 500 lb trophy-bear, but a cub. They didn't know what to do with it? Try skinning it and eating the meat, not making a disgraceful political exhibit of its body.

Looks like we'll have to add political to the list of hate crimes punishable by law.

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As goes Missouri, so goes the Union

Barack Obama
Kansas City, Missouri
October 18, 2008

These photographs are from Icebergslim's post at the Daily Kos today. I organized them into a slide show for your enjoyment, and my memories.

As Jericho put it, there are 4 million eligible voters in the state of Missouri. 1 in 40 of them were at the rally, "If each one of them has a conversation with 20 of their friends, neighbors and coworkers, that is 2M citizens who will have a personal story of just why Barack Obama is the candidate who cares about their issues."

With today's rally in Kansas City added to the number present in St. Louis, 1.75 in 40 have now attended an Obama rally in Missouri. They only need to speak to about 13 friends (check my math, Jericho) now.

As goes the bellwether state goes the nation.

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The long-anticipated, much hoped-for
Powell endorsement

“Mr. McCain says that he’s a washed-out terrorist,” Mr. Powell said. “Well, then, why do we keep talking about him?”




"This has never been about me, it's about you," Barack Obama told us at Invesco Field in August and has said again and again since, and he was right. What he did was find the words to call us together, and then give us the means to find one another in our support for the message he brought.

America has her ear to the ground, and she can hear a nation of people rising and walking together to her true Manifest Destiny, the realization of her promise and purpose.

In Boston in 2004, he told us:

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our Nation -- not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable right, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

-- Illinois State Senator Barack Obama, DNC 2004 -- Fleet Center, Boston

And it is this year, in this election that we are finally called upon to reaffirm our values and our commitments, having had that opportunity stolen in 2004, to hold them against that hard reality of which Obama spoke, harder still than the one we faced in 2004, and "see how we're measuring up to the legacy of our forbearers and the promise of future generation."

And he echoed the words of President Lyndon B. Johnson, spoken at the moment of his signing of the Voting Rights Act, March 15, 1965, as he went on to say that there is not a Black America and White America:

It is that fundamental belief -- It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother' skeeper. I am my sister's keeper that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.
E pluribus unum: "Out of many, one."

No even as I speakm there are those who are preparing to divide us -- the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of "anything goes." Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there's the United States of America.

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Hope -- Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!

In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.

I believe that we can give our middle class relief and provide working families with a road to opportunity.

I believe that we can provide jobs to the jobless, homes to the homeless, and reclaim young people in cities across America from violence and despair.

I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices, and meet the challenges that face us.

America! Tonight, if you fell the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do -- if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November, and John Kerry wil be sworn in as President, and John Edwards will be sworn in as Vice President, and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come.

Barack, we were waiting for you.

Oh, we would have taken John Kerry and John Edwards, but it took you. These were your words, not theirs. This was your passion, not theirs. It was you who dared to speak of our hope and the renewal and reclamation of our country by our people, for ourselves.

We heard you. We hear you, and we will see to it that you are sworn in as President of the United States and that Joe Biden is sworn in as Vice President of the United States, and all together, we will work with you to bring our middle class relief, our working families that road to opportunity, and we will bring jobs to the jobless and homes to the homesless, and we will reclaim those young people from despair. They are only waiting.

And we will do this not because we are liberals, and we will do this not because we are socialists, we will do this because we understand that it is the work of the government of a great nation to see to the needs of all of her people, if she is moral and responsible.

And we are.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

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C.H.A.O.S.: The Obama sign

Due to the acts and the intentions of a troubled individual, we are no longer able to watch the Obama sign by live streaming.

But we are with TeachKid and SignKid. CHAOS lives. True bonds of fellowship and purpose can never be broken.
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