Friday, October 24, 2008
Early voting in Evansville
I squeaked in just before the 7pm deadline to find two very frustrated poll workers and a line of a couple dozen people, due to problems with the computerized voting system not accepting people's driver's licenses. It was taking about 7-10 minutes per person just to get the computer to accept them as valid and to print out their ballot, causing very long delays.
For me the most moving moment came when the family in front of me, comprising probably 4 generations of voters (including an 18 year old girl voting for her first time and a 90-something hunched-over grandmother), got their turn to vote. When the old woman left the voting booth she made it about halfway to the door before collapsing in a nearby chair, where she began weeping uncontrollably. When we rushed over to help we realized that she wasn't in trouble at all but she had not truly believed, until she left the booth, that she would ever live long enough to cast a vote for an African-American for president. Anyone who doesn't think that African-American turnout will absolutely SHATTER every existing record is in for a very rude surprise.
There were about 20 people in front of me but remarkably not a single person left the room without voting over the 2 hours it took to get through the line.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
What if things were switched around.....think about it.
Could racism be the culprit?
Ponder the following:
What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage, including a
three month old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?
What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was a divorcee?
What if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife after a severe
disfiguring car accident, when she no longer measured up to his standards?
What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair while he
was still married?
What if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to pain
killers but also acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
What if Obama had been a member of the Keating Five? (The Keating Five were
five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major
political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late
1980s and early 1990s.)
What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?
What if Obama couldn't read from a teleprompter?
What if Obama was the one who had military experience that included discipline
problems and a record of crashing seven planes?
What if Obama was the one who was known to display publicly, on many occasions,
a serious anger management problem?
What if Michelle Obama's family had made their money from beer
distribution?
What if the Obamas had adopted a white child?
You could easily add to this list. If these questions reflected reality, do
you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?
This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive
qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when
there is a color difference.
Educational Background:
Barack Obama:
Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in
International Relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude
Joseph Biden:
University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)
vs.
John McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899
Sarah Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism
Education isn't everything, but this is about the two highest offices in
the land as well as our standing in the world.
There has to be a reason that, in spite of the above, we are where we are
today. Racism is one of the keys. Of course, there is a generous dosage of
country-wide stupidity too.
This is Country First?
--
As people tried to exercise their right to vote in North Carolina on Sunday, an angry crowd of mostly white McCain supporters heckled them shouting anti-Obama slogans.
This attempt to scare and intimidate the line of mostly Black voters occurred hours after an Obama rally during which the tires of at least 30 cars parked outside of the Obama rally were slashed.
Fox Family Feud Over ‘Family Guy’
A Sunday night episode of the Fox animated series “Family Guy” stirred up trouble by suggesting rather directly that Nazi officers would have supported the McCain-Palin ticket. And it was another arm of the News Corp. conglomerate, Fox News Channel, that first reported on the episode.
Fox (the broadcast network) aired the episode in which Stewie, the obnoxious baby character at the center of the series, and Brian, a talking dog, traveled back in time to Poland during the 1939 German invasion. The characters ambush Nazi soldiers in an alley and steal their uniforms so they can travel without drawing attention. Putting on an overcoat, Stewie notices a McCain-Palin campaign button affixed to the lapel. “Huh, that’s weird,” Stewie remarks.
“Family Guy” has never been known for its taste level. One recent episode depicted Jesus binge drinking, and the hit show once got in trouble with the Federal Communications Commission for showing a partially nude cartoon character. The series’ creator, Seth MacFarlane, is a prominent supporter of Barack Obama’s presidential bid. So fans of the program seemed to take the scene in stride: by mid-day Monday, the vast majority of blog mentions of the episode were favorable.
And the phones at the network’s Los Angeles press office were silent until … a call arrived from the Fox News Channel asking for comment for a story it was preparing and which subsequently appeared on the Fox News Web site.
According to a Fox executive who would not talk on the record for fear of angering his News Corporation colleagues, this generated more calls from other reporters.
