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Labor Day Peace March in Saint Paul

These shots were taken before things got out of hand. There were a few rowdy kids, but mostly it was very peaceful. Some of the cops with the black helmets seemed pretty wired, so it wasn't hard to imagine things could get out of hand in a hurry. The media seems to have bought the official BS about the dangerous violent radicals ready to riot, so the cops probably figure they can bust a few heads without getting into any trouble.

John McCain is a Pathetic Panderer

In his own words:

Olbermann at his best

Big Shoulders

All this talk about Obama got me thinking of Chicago. All the work that's going to have to get done to clean up Bush's many messes is going to require some very big shoulders.

Chicago has always been a tough town. When my dad went off to fly bombers in the Army in World War 2 (there was no separate Air Force back then), he had to take a train packed with recruits across the country to training. When another future soldier asked where he was from, he answered "Chicago." The other kid responded excitedly: "Oh yeah? Let me see your gun!"

Carl Sandburg is more eloquent:

Chicago

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people, Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

The Audacity of War

Inspiration

I went to see Obama at the Target Center in Minneapolis today with about 18,000 others. This video captures the spirit of the movement about as well as anything I've seen.

See also:
http://www.dipdive.com/ (high res version)
http://will-i-am.blackeyedpeas.com/blog/689747 (will.i.am's blog entry)

Freedom is about Authority

58 years after Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four was published, we have a presidential candidate who espouses the ideals of Orwell's nightmare:

"Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."
-Rudy Giuliani

http://www.csindy.com/csindy/2007-08-09/news2.html

Gee, that sounds familiar:

"War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength."
- Campaign slogan of the Inner Party

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

Supporting the Troops

With the story that's recently come to light about the mistreatment of wounded vets at Walter Reed, it's perfectly clear that this administration has no real desire to "support the troops", except in using that phrase as a bludgeon on anyone who fails to bow down to Dear Leader. As Steve Gilliard puts it, "The GOP no more cares about soldiers than farms care about shit."

Tell ABC To Tell The Truth About 9/11

Apparently, ABC thinks it's dandy to blame Clinton for 9/11. Yeah, right. It was him reading The Pet Goat too.

An open letter to Randy Kelly

Dear Mayor Kelly,

We were amused by your pathetic and desperate attempt to elevate your image by trashing Chris Coleman with a typical Karl Rove smear. The Bush camp used their deceitful "flip-flop" theme so often, it wouldn't surprise us to learn they had it trademarked. It's their hallmark nonetheless. When we received your retreaded "flip-flop" postcard in yesterday's mail, the only logical explanation we could see for your using it was that you must truly be in Bush's camp, if not his pocket. Mayor Kelly -- THIS IS WHY YOUR CAMPAIGN IS HURTING IN THE FIRST PLACE! Is this your attempt to win over Bush Republicans without changing your party, and still save face? So sad.

Any Democrat misguided enough to still consider voting for you will surely think twice now -- your "flip-flop" smear postcard only reminds them that your Bush-endorsement has pegged you the consummate "flip-flopper" who now shamefully resorts to smearing the other guy in tried-and-true Bush-fashion, rather than having the dignity to focus on your own meager accomplishments. Here's a tip: You're embarrassing yourself.

Jan Mendez and Hal Eckhart
St. Paul

Election Day

November 2nd, 2004 started for me at 4:30, when I awoke restless about the day ahead. A lifelong malcontent, this was to be one of my first ever days spent actually working on a campaign; helping MoveOn do what needed to be done on election day. I'd finally finished the awful project I'd been working on, so the day was free to volunteer.

An hour later I dragged myself out of bed, sat at my laptop and sucked down some coffee, looking for any late developments and weeding out Rolex spam. The weather forecast said sunny. Yeah, right.

At 6:40, I drove up the hill in a light cold drizzle, and had to park surprisingly far from the seminary polling station. I joined about a hundred of my neighbors waiting in long covered hallway for the door to open a 7. At the appointed hour, the doors opened, and we moved quickly through the process (this is Saint Paul, after all). By 7:15, I was back outside and once again amazed that there were already about 250 people waiting, some of them standing in the drizzle, which wasn't getting any warmer.

After a nice breakfast and more coffee, I managed to get down to the MoveOn headquarters in Minneapolis, only a little behind schedule. The scene was one of barely controlled chaos. Bloodshot eyes, stacks of xeroxed pages, folding tables with rows of cheap rented laptops, wall to wall kids, and a few old-timers like me. Mostly, it was the youngsters who were in charge, shouting instructions to be heard over the din, as we, the dazed newbies tried to figure out what we had to do.

Eventually, we were sent out with some fat stacks of paper, printed out from some sort of database that had lists of people who seemed to be likely to vote for our side. Our job was to knock on doors and make sure everyone was getting out to vote. At least the drizzle had let up.

The results were about what you might expect. Almost nobody was home. Those that answered were generally somewhere between enthusiastic and annoyed that people kept knocking on the damn door. We kept running into the DFL contingents crisscrossing the same area, doing the same thing.

If you're not from around here, the DFL is our own version of the Democratic Party. It's the result of merging, in 1943, with the much more radical Farmer-Labor Party. These days, it seems like a bit of a joke, when you see how watered down the whole platform has gotten.

By a little after noon, we'd gotten though our lists, and headed back to the mother ship. More controlled chaos, just a little more animated now. Despite all the activity, they weren't quite ready to assign me somewhere yet, so I headed next door for some falafel.

Finally, I was sent off to the Seward neighborhood, to do some door-knocking in apartment buildings. Through a silly series of missed connections, I ended up hanging out with a couple of nice people manning a station outside a polling place. We held signs in a cold wind and tried to direct people to the right place to vote. It was a little more confused because the polling place a couple of blocks away had the exact same number on the street. So people would see the "vote here" sign, note the address on the building, and stand in line only to be told they were in the wrong place.

The best moment was when a school bus pulled up to drop off some kids. The three windows in the back of the bus slid open and two little black faces in each window chanted "Kaaa-reee Kaaa-reee Kaaa-reee Kaaa-reee" and then "Buuuuuuush booooooooo" and then "Kaaa-reee Kaaa-reee Kaaa-reee Kaaa-reee."

The second best moment was the rag-tag "off to VOTE" marching band that came across the 94 pedestrian bridge from Augsburg. They even started to go into the polling station, but were apparently turned promptly around. It was a moment of pure joy to savor now that bitter reality has set in.

Our fingers were getting numb from being clamped onto the sign, but luckily, my lovely and thoughtful sweetie brought us a pot of hot coffee and bag of scones. Oooh, how elitist of us. At least they weren't croissants. But it was, of course, french roast. There are limits to chauvinism, after all. Or at least there should be.

I ended the day slogging through a huge list of phone numbers, trying to see if anyone still needed help getting to the polls (no) and had voted (yes, happily). Finally, I checked in with my fearless leader, gave her the numbers, exchanged thankyous.

Happy, content, buoyed by a glass of wine, I felt like we'd really finally done it. Enthusiasm and confidence slowly slipped away that night to a cold hard knot of despair and fear for our future.

Don't Mourn, Organize

Here's a great piece by Molly Ivins that helped to put things in perspective for me.

And here's a nice little poem from the guy who does get your war on.

Thinking ahead

I'm talking Robert Jr. by the way.
And no, I don't care if he's not interested. Let make him.

Vigil for 1000 dead

Labor Day