Greetings from the Eugene Oregon Obama For America office! I'm using the very excellent Matt Keating's laptop since mine's on the fritz (again...grumble-growl...).
We're here painting signs for the sign waving rally we're gonna have on Tuesday at E. 6th and Willamette. Let me tell you a bit about that.
The past couple weeks, we've been wanting to get going with another sign-waving like we did back in the primary. And I'm ashamed to say, the McCain/Palin crowd beat us to it...right on MY STREET! It was only one person with a lawn sign but...I don't know. It's a wolf thing. I feel responsible for my territory and the hackles went up. I threw a little primary karma back and thumbs-downed her. Thumbs-downing sign wavers is fine, it's freedom of speech. It's when they flip us off is when the line is crossed. That ain't kosher. Freedom of speech is okay, but it's not license to be nasty. That's not what this campaign's about — not this year.
Anyway, to get back on track, we're going to have what's called an Obama Crawl. The plan is to convene at the marquee at the Hult Center at 6th and Willamette at 4PM Tuesday. We'll bounce around there for an hour and then proceed down Willamette to Jogger's (right across the street), then up to Cozmic Pizza on 8th & Charnelton, then over to World Flavors Pizza where we'll watch the debate. So if you're within the sound of my 0's and 1's, come on down and join us, bring your signs, wear your schwag, and have a blast.
Back to Freedom of Speech.
Past few weeks have been intense. During the week I've been cruising Digg, fielding shouts from my friends about articles to Digg or bury, and a few days ago I came up with an idea to R - I - D on Digg. Vis-a-vis, donate to the Obama campaign whenever I spot a troll. Naturally, I'm anything but lucratively rich, so I limited myself to donating $1 for every negative article posted to Digg. Hey, if the rumour about Karl Rove paying people to troll internet fora is true, something's got to balance that schieße out.
Anyway, I believe that as far as thinking and writing go, anything goes, have at. Writings can be scanned and ignored. Flames can be reported and deleted. But one shouldn't take Freedom of Speech as cause and/or license to be an asshole. There's a saying that holds that you should be nice to people, because you don't know what kind of day they've had and you don't want to be the one to push them over the edge. If someone screams obscenities at you or says something smart-ass to you, you can't shut them up, and not everyone has the trick of blocking things out. A woman in Italy can smack a guy who hisses something rude to her but we can't do that here. Smack someone and you're looking at a lawsuit.
The upshot of that is, write whatever you want, think whatever you want, but be an adult. Govern your tongue. Have an ounce of empathy.
And.....Matt wants his computer back, so I'm out of here. Hope to see you this Tuesday! :)
I went down to the office at 11:30AM. It was quiet; they only needed phone bankers and canvassers. My arthritis and sciatica won't let me pound the pavement and I'm awkward on the phone to strangers, so I opted out. I handed over the roast chicken, and headed home to make the stromboli.
I got sidetracked in the clubhouse's TV room and sat watching the Kentucky primary for an hour or so; I was joined by the office girl and her husband, and a little later by our mail carrier; we were all pro-Obama. When one of the journalists said that Oregonians were more affluent than the people of Kentucky, we yelled and laughed our heads off. In Beaverton and Florence...yeah, possibly, but in Eugene we're replacing lawns with vegetable gardens and chicken coops because it's cheaper to grow your own food than to make a trip to the grocers, and there's usually too much week at the end of the paycheck.
The office girl's husband hadn't voted yet so I offered to take it down for him. He went back to his unit, got his virtually-untouched ballot, and I started to leave the room so he could vote in privacy.
"No, I was gonna ask you for advice!"
I firmly refused. There was no way in hell I was gonna get tangled in a web like that. So I said, "Ask your wife for advice! I ain't even going there!" So he voted, gave me the sealed and signed envelope, and I took it down for him.
The office was a good deal livelier. I walked in and B.J. said, "Welcome to the Madhouse!" And it was. I said proudly, "I have a ballot and a STROMBOLI!" The honey lamb-pepper jack one I'd brought the day before was a certifiable hit and this one, mandarin orange-cinnamon-chocolate, looked to be just as popular. They had a wonderful German Chocolate cake with a sickeningly decadent layer of straight buttercream, which I had a small slice of to fortify myself.
They needed ballot box monitors, and I jumped in on that task. There were two left: Sheldon Branch Library, and Bethel Park. I took the former because I knew where it was. And so the office staff gave me a cheesy "Drop Your Ballot Here" sign to wear around my neck, loaded me with a case of water bottles to offer to people waiting in line, and a manila envelope to collect ballots in; a quick rundown from Arusha on how to do the job, and off ye go.
Another office staffer came blasting in the back door, announcing loudly that Barack was a scant 1 delegate short of a majority. "Everyone that can walk, GO OUT!" Courtney yelled, and teams scrambled. "Get that delegate!" I wasn't due to go to the ballot box until around 6:50, but here it was 6:15 and we had our marching orders.
I'll be honest, my gig at the Sheldon Branch Library box was a cream puff job. The hardest thing I had to do was lug that palette of water bottles around, and it was more like a one-person rally. Since I was pushing a particular candidate, I had to stay at least 100 feet away from the ballot box, and that was the second-hardest thing.
We had a nice, loose, steady stream of people coming up to the box with their ballots. Obama supporters saw my sign and cheered and waved and showed me their ballots, but a huge line didn't form and the ballot collection envelope remained empty, tucked in my belt.
A number of vehicles were trucks and SUVs, and a few of the latter were brand-spanking-new Lexuses. To balance, a lot of votes rode up to the box on bicycles, or on foot. A small, 3-to-5-car line would form in this direction or that, but by the time I humped the water bottles over there they'd have voted and scattered. The busiest it got was at 7:45, when a flurry of cars, bikes, pedestrians, skateboards and wheelie sneakers descended on the locus. And the library had stationed its own non-partisan monitor/assistants; the box had a slot in the back as well as the front so two people could vote at the same time.
Let me tell you something, our vote-by-mail system straight-up rocks. Sure, there's a chance that the vote could be skewed, influenced, et al, by housemates and family members, but we've only had one instance of voter fraud in ten years — statewide — and my usual response to the "election corruption" charge is, "What's Diebold, then?"
The problem with U.S. elections is that Election Day and the various state primaries aren't no-work holidays. The former is always on a Tuesday, which means people work for most of the day. Then at 5:30PM, they race down to the polls in a panic and rush hour turns from insanity to pitched bedlam. You get people who haven't studied the voter's pamphlet, people who've forgotten what/who they were going to vote for, and they arrive at the polls frazzled, and probably within eyeshot of the Morlock who tailgated or cut them off in traffic. They're hungry. The polling stations are slightly less private than a public bathroom stall.
This is a sad state of affairs. We take Independence Day off, whatever day of the week it falls on; and while Independence Day is great, this nation really boils down to Election Day, and I consider that more important. Why isn't Election Day a national holiday?
More on that later.
While I was on station, monitoring the ballot box from a distance of 107 feet, three kids from the adjacent high school stopped by and looked at my sign. One of the two boys nodded his head, the girl took out a video camera and said, "Do you mind if we take a picture of you?"
I didn't think and said generously, "Sure," but then I thought again. Too late, the camera's going. Call me gunshy, but I was thinking, "These kids might be pro-Hillary, or worse — Paulbots! I might be getting set up for a public humiliation via You Tube!" so I have to admit that I looked somewhat edgy and suspicious while the girl and her friend staged the boy walking up to me, looking at the sign and nodding. Then he looked up at me, I gave him a classic Oregonian Cold Stare back, and she turned the camera off.
I breathed. He smiled and thanked me. I said, "I thought you guys might be setting me up for a prank," and he said, "No worries, we're all Obama supporters here!" So I grinned and nodded and wished them a good day as they headed off towards Safeway. Whew! I got lucky. I won't be tempting the Teenage Prank Gods like that again, though.
I was supposed to ensure that the ballot box stayed open and accessible all the way up to 8 o'clock, and I started keeping tabs on the time around 7:10. I know, a little over-zealous, especially given the looseness of the crowd. I'm not sure how many people voted in the hour and forty minutes I was on duty; at a guess, 100 people, about one a minute. Hardly a madhouse. I called the office at 7:30 to report on the conditions: "It's pretty easy, the library has its own monitors on the box and there's no line right now." A lady in a van, with her two kids, and an Obama sticker on the rear spoiler pulled into the driveway, saw me, waved happily and tootled up to the box. On the way out, she opened the window and said, "We're gonna win this one for Barack! All the way to the White House!" I grinned back and said, "Yes We Can!"
At 7:45, as I said, things got a little crazy. A dozen cars circled and orbited as bicycles flashed in and out, taking mere seconds to let their voting voice be heard. Peds took a little longer, and people were jumping out of cars and dashing up to the box. It was all pretty happy and civil, though; no fighting at all.
I started counting down the minutes.
"Fourteen..."
Here come three cars and two bicycles in from Norkenzie.
A big silver Suburban comes in off Coburg Road.
A line of cars, of various vintages and conditions, cruise past Safeway from Cal Young Road.
"Ten minutes! Plenty of time."
A bicycle zips in. "Eight minutes!" "Thank you!"
One of the voters comes back my way. "You wouldn't like my vote."
"Of course I do. You voted! That's all that counts!" She smiled and pulled away.
The evening's numbers resounded what I observed for myself: most of the people gave me thumbs-up, waves and honks. No harassment, no hazing, only mild rudeness (the Oregonian Cold Stare).
"Three minutes!" I told a little coupe that zipped by. He nodded and waved.
At 7:59, a car and a pedestrian raced in from Coburg Road and Safeway, respectively. The pedestrian sprinted for all he was worth and the library monitors cheered him. "Hurry! Hurry!!" The elections official in his red vest (who I rather thought looked like Santa Claus) was taking the collection box out, and the pedestrian and the young blonde driver of the car got their ballots in right on the 8 o'clock button. Sigh. Time to go back downtown.
I wound up behind the elections official, in his green F-150, in traffic on Coburg. I turned off KWAX-FM and turned on NPR's election coverage. Kentucky was 100% in and Hillary swept it by 35 points. Ack. Ack. Ack. But my mood was good, and my shift had gone well; I was solidly in the confidence that Obama would take Lane County handily...
...And he did :)
The downtown office was closed, so I parked and walked two blocks up the street with a few other Obamans, heading for the after-party at the McDonald Theatre. On a whim, I grabbed my trusty Obama Broom out of the back, and strutted up Willamette Street with it. I was greeted with a rousing chorus of cheers when I walked into the theatre with it, and found a seat to watch the CNN coverage.
The Kentucky numbers were sickening. Barack won only two counties, Jefferson and Frankfurt (where Lexington is). I saw the exit poll stating that 21% of Hillary's vote citing race as the motivation; I seriously thought about boycotting the World Equestrian Games for that, until I saw Lexington voted for Obama. And practically nowhere else. Then I remembered that the state song, "Old Kentucky Home," has references to slavery in its lyrics.
But this was Eugene, we were in the McDonald Theatre, and only a block from the most Eugenian part of Eugene, Broadway & Willamette. Samba Ja would end out the evening with a performance after Barack gave his victory speech in Iowa, and the crowd was happy. We knew we'd won, and not a few of those in attendance had gone to the historic Portland rally. CNN flashed the state map on the screen, and O, Gods! The whole of Lane County, from Florence to Junction City to Sisters to Cottage Grove is a beautiful dark blue!! So are Benton, Deschutes (!), Marion, Polk and Lincoln Counties! The crowd goes wild with a screaming, thunderous, on their feet applause, and it only gets wilder when we hear the numbers: 71 - 40 Obama!!! That margin would shrink, but never double back. We won Lane County by 17,000 votes and change.
I sat next to a couple who'd been campaign-hopping, following the primary season. They were from Wisconsin — I thanked them — and today, May 20, was their wedding anniversary. They decided to spend it in Oregon. I told them that Oregon led the nation in voter turnout; Lane County led the state in voter turnout; and Eugene led the county in voter turnout. "So we lead the nation in voter turnout. You couldn't have picked a better place to celebrate!"
We got rather irritated by CNN's Clinton-fawning, and demanded that Guido change the channel to MS-NBC...until we got the overnight show there, which was even worse. CNN had a surfeit of Clinton images and references, but MS-NBC was completely stiffing Barack, and then we demanded that they switch back to CNN. In the middle of the "CNN! — CNN! —" chant, I muttered, "Never thought I'd be cheering for CNN over MS-NBC..."
They changed the channel back, and we settled in for the expected Clinton-fawning. It came, and we responded by finding conversation amongst ourselves. That went for awhile, but even I have my "that tears it" point. They turned the sound off and Samba Ja came out to play.
Again, the place went nuts! They shot confetti out of confetti cannons at the announcement that Barack had won Lane County, the balloons dropped, and everyone got up to dance. Even me, with my sciatica making my right leg sizzle from hip to heel.
They played over Barack's speech, but we'd heard it before and in truth, it was a perfectly Eugenian, exuberantly-fitting, whacky, crazy, insane, fun scene that I'm sure has no parallel in the whole of the campaign. People and children bouncing around in everything from rainbow tie-dye to black velvet, kicking and sweeping and bouncing and waving red, white and blue balloons.
That, my friends, is how we do things in the Voter Turnout Capitol of the Nation :)
Wow! What a night. And a day.
And we're back to the day.
I put my life on hold for two weeks to devote myself to the PUSH. It paid off; Lane County landslided for Barack and Oregon put him...not over the top, but to the penultimate peak. And we are two decimal places from the nomination. Contrast that with Hillary's mid-10 decimal places in debt.
And as of now, that's the last mention I'm going to make of her. The primary season ended back in February when we took the lead, and it's effectively all over but the shouting.
And in the cold light of morning, Life™ hit me with two rude phone calls that reminded me...that I'm dirt poor, and I live in Oregon.
I haven't contributed to my fundraiser because, quite simply, I can't. I'm living on $100 a week and that goes to groceries and gas. Oregon is the brake shoes of the nation: whenever the economy slows down, we're the first to feel the heat. I could give up the car and take the bus, but the buses don't go everywhere I need to go in a Quixotic attempt to find gainful employment. And bus trips aren't direct: they take an hour to get where a car can hop to in fifteen minutes.
I'm thrilled that Barack won Oregon handily, but I have to get back to my life. My horse probably won't recognize me, and the Regionals are coming up. I'm in nothing like shape for that so I won't be riding him in them, it'll be his trainer and the stable girls. The first Regional is at the Idaho Horse Park in Nampa, about four weeks from now. I'll go out with the contingent and hopefully do some gold panning on the way back. That's the only good thing about this recession: gold is up and even a day's work in the stream could take care of me for a week when I sell it. Why not? I'd have to work my ass off anyway, and this way I don't have to deal with co-employees and a boss; all I have to do is find an assay office to turn those glimmering little yellow flakes into cash.
I just talked with Mom on the phone. She's scraping together pennies for the basic necessities, too. This isn't Beef Burgundy and pheasant-under-glass, and we're not talking marble tiles either. This is things like milk, orange juice, toilet paper. Here's the irony, she voted for Bush TWICE, because she thought he was a good man. This election, she has no hope. She doesn't care anymore, and she's never missed an election. What scared me is what she said: "Barack will get us out of Iraq but that doesn't help my situation here."
Part of me understands and wants to believe her. Another part reminds me that she voted for Bush twice and to keep the faith in Barack. "Help is on the way," that part tells me. "Don't give up now!"
I won't, I'll keep plugging away. The nomination will go to my candidate and the McCain camp can't come up with anything stronger than race-baiting. Shallow, spurious, without substance. Last night, I had a dream, where I mulled over the concept of racism: I summed it up in an axiom, "Racism helps none and harms many. It should be dispensed with. Cut it away, it serves no worthwhile purpose and we do not need it."
I've developed a zero-tolerance for online haters. They can squawk about freedom of speech but as they have the right to speak, I have the right to call it out as bullshit. Please pardon the verbiage but I can think of no better term, particularly after that hectacomb in the comments for the WaPo blog covering the latest PDX rally. The only good thing about that is that we know what we're up against and where they are.
The general election will be harsh. West Virginia (25% race-motivated) and Kentucky (21% race-motivated) taught us that yes, there are some people in this country who think the KKK are just fine 'n dandy and are doing great work. Just remember: Racism helps none and harms many. Don't stand for it.
Okay...I'm off to squeeze some more juice out and try to pay bills. Life, it doth continue...
You remember the Bill 'n Ted Scream? They go into it and hold it for almost a minute screentime, punctuating the scream with a couple looks at each other in the very midst? I just did that with my cat.
And while Bill 'n Ted did it out of sheer terror, I'm doing it out of a mixture of elation, stress and a little bit of terror. For tomorrow, my friends, the Circus Is Coming To Town.
I should have taken warning when Courtney Hight, Regional Manager from the national campaign, landed in Eugene last week. Now, don't misunderstand me, she's lovely and her presence has given our local grassroots group a shot in both arms and the croup, and frankly I'm thrilled that things are finally HAPPENING. But ya gotta understand my position here:
Saturday Market is coming up the first weekend in April, and I have inventory to produce. Unlike most of Saturday Market's vendors, I don't have a family to lend hands to it so furnishing and stocking an 8x8' booth entirely with handcrafted goods from scratch, is entirely on my shoulders.
Furthermore, the HORSE SHOW SEASON is starting next weekend with the NW Horse Fair & Expo and I'm embroiled in a breed presentation. My job is to create the stall and hospitality decorations, plus I have to practice on my horse Meritage and get our riding pattern and my cues down. He's a wonderful, patient, loving boy, but he's a horse. Have you ever tried balancing on top of a 1300-pound beast while it attempts to dance with four feet? Anyway, I have to schedule my practice time between training sessions, because my trainer is getting two girls ready to ride him in the Regional circuit and the Nationals this summer/fall. (Yep, the Nationals are two big weeks before the election...fuuuuuuunnnnn...)
All this, and the bloody Circus is coming to town...tomorrow!
Bye-bye, Oestara.
No more writing. I have my work cut out for me. Volunteers meeting in an hour and a half and I have a MILLION things to do...
I'll report back on the other side of the river, assuming I survive...
Ladies 'n Gentles, today Mississippi votes, Heaven bless 'em.
Everyone likes to say we're whippin' the stuffing out of Hillary in the popular vote. We're ahead, but I'm here to tell you...not by much. According to ABCNews.com, we lead by a scant 2,555 votes. That's about the populace of the average community college or a comfortably-sized backwater village. And that's nationwide, an average of 59 votes per state that's voted thus far.
Keep the heat on! Don't let up and whatever you do, DON'T rest on your laurels! Keep phonebanking and donating so we can pull out a decisive victory!
A friend of mine used to be in the movement to reclaim the Swastika from its current and stolen use in the White Supremacy movement, and restore it to its rightful, historical position as a symbol of Heaven.
It stands for "The Winds of Change" and is connected with Shiva, a generally beneficent deity (on a whole, a lot more pleasant than anything the Greeks and Romans gave us). I think everyone in this campaign would testify that Change is indeed, a good thing. Hitler and his buddies subsumed the Swastika for ten years but it has thousands of years of positive connotations. I see the Swastika Reclamation movement to be the ultimate rejection of Nazism and White Supremacy. Guys — your central symbol is a sham. It wasn't creatively generated, it was stolen.
Currently there is a movement within our campaign to adopt "Hussein" as a middle name. I won't because I'm a woman and I don't want to append a man's name to mine, but anyone who wants to — go for it! "Hussein" means "masculine beauty," and so our candidate's name means "Blessed (Barack) Beauty (Hussein)." I can definitely get behind that and I think it's a very auspicious name to have. Handsome and Blessed. Yes!
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This weekend's activities went well. I couldn't make it to the Eugene4Obama meeting on Friday because I was at the Opera, but when I went to park I noticed another car with one of our stickers and home-made signs in the window, so I guess I wasn't the only one of our group that gave the Fishbowl a miss in favour of Madama Butterfly.
The rally on Coburg and Harlow went fairly. I estimate that we got one thumbs-down for every two thumbs-up, but that's a slightly older, monied, more conservative neighbourhood. Older people who were well-established householders around the time of the civil rights movement. We also got cruised by some Hillary hardcores who yelled out the window at us and did the "Shame On You!" finger-shake at us. I just brushed it off; it's getting a little easier to "take the high road" and not get dragged down by their negativity, but there's a little goblin crouched down in my heart that wants to twirl another finger back at them...
About midway through, a cop car pulled up with lights blazing and we thought one of the neighbours had called in to complain. But he was concerned about some of our people who were standing on the admittedly narrow median islands and was asking them to get onto more secure terrain. He smiled and waved at us as he drove off and I waved and thanked him. Good man...just doing his job.
But, we gave out a lot of stickers, thumbs-downs are fair play (flip-offs aren't and I have no qualms about throwing hexes at anyone who does that to us) and I noticed some creativity is coming to the fore.
I made one finally. In answer to "A Rose By Any Other Name," I got red and white silk roses (couldn't find blue) and adorned a corn-straw broom with them. I admit to nicking the "broom" idea from our friends in Los Angeles, who brought brooms to their debate rally last month. It just makes sense: Barack Obama is sweeping the nation, and he will clean house once he gets into the Oval Office. I'm going to add silk sunflowers (for Kansas) and a Hawai'ian flower next. I was thinking hibiscus but decided against that: hibiscus blooms only last one day and we don't want our movement to be that short-lived. Maybe ginger...I have a fake ginger plant somewhere around here...
A couple Obama stickers, stick back-to-back on the broom's handle, and I had a rally sign that was the envy of everyone who saw it. The Obama Sensation That's Sweepin' the Nation!
A young man named Matt (?), his girlfriend and their dog Noobs attended and they'd made a nice sign with various photos and quotes from Barack.
We're talking about doing a sign-waving rally every week now. Next one's going to be in Salem for the teachers' union nominating convention.
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My next Obama project will be to get the Obama "sunrise" logo embroidered on a saddle pad. The show season is coming up, it'll be a good way to spread the word. My trainer Cyndy hasn't really told me who she's supporting but she has tons on her plate right now.
Speaking of plates, I'm getting yanked in three directions right now. Ronald, one of our people, just got elected Secretary of our group and asked me to assist, but I had to decline with thanks. I have the Andalusian horse breed circuit to get ready for, a horse Expo in three and a half weeks (on a shoestring budget), and produce inventory for my Saturday Market booth, which starts next month. We're in high excitement because the Olympic track trials are being held here and we're making a big push.
Eugene Saturday Market has had a decline in sales over the past couple years. Basically we've glutted whatever art and craft market exists here, and people are circling the wagons against the recession. The Market goes on but it's turned from a market to an open-air arts and crafts gallery, without the wine and intellectual discourses. The Olympic Trials will bring the world to our doorstep and we're getting ready to ride that like a carousel. I'll be offering the usual — wands, walking sticks and ceiling fan blades — plus a couple other items that will be of interest to athletes and other physical types. More on that after I've produced some...
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We were expecting 25 people to show up for the Statewide House Party: Eugene Edition yesterday, but about nine turned out. We raised a hundred-ten for the campaign and unfortunately missed Forrest Whitaker on the conference call owing to some technical issues with Skype. I made two kinds of chocolate chip cookies — regular and double-chocolate mint chip — which were varying degrees of success. I ran out of white sugar so I subbed in honey instead. Not a bad idea, but they came out...spready. And when baked, they shoggothed into a big, dimpled mass on the cookie sheet. Here's a tip: if you're going to do that, use a 1-ounce scoop to shape the cookies, and use a cookie sheet with sides, lined with baking parchment. They were a crumbly mess but they tasted terrific, it goes without saying. Honey, almond extract, cocoa and mint chips: where's the bad news?
Here's the recipe:
Standard tollhouse cookie recipe, with the following ingredient substitutions:
- Replace 1/2 cup of the flour with cocoa powder,
- Mint chips instead of chocolate chips,
- Replace 3/4 cup granulated sugar with 1/2 cup honey,
- Replace .5 teaspoon vanilla extract with .5 teaspoon almond extract.
Tips:
Measure up your ingredients first, and portion them off into containers (like yoghurt cups, Mardi Gras or other plastic cups, butter/margarine tubs, etc.), then mix them.
If your butter comes straight out of the fridge, put it in the mixing bowl first and beat it soft with the mixer paddle on medium speed (2-3 on a Kitchen-Aid stand mixer). Then add your sugars, cream them, eggs, flour mixture, the flavouring, nuts and chips last.
Use a small (1-ounce) ice cream scoop to shape the cookies.
Baking parchment is available on store shelves now! Use it, even if you have nonstick pans! It makes cleanup and cookie handling so much easier, just lift the whole sheet straight onto the cooling rack.
If cooking with honey, keep a closer watch on the cookies because it caramelizes faster and makes the batter "spready." Better yet, forget the scoop and roll it into a log and freeze it, then cut the cookies. They'll keep their shape better.
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Tomorrow's our big day...hopefully there's a decisive victory for our side. Keep a good thought, see you in the Field of Hope, and stay Fired Up!
I know there are a lot of creative people in our movement here, so I thought I'd plant a seed...
There's a hilarious thread on the David Lynch's Dune board on IMDb, spoofing the 2008 election through a Dune filter. They've cast Bush as the perverted and corrupt Baron Harkonnen (though personally, I think Cheney would be a better fit) and Bill Clinton as Duke Atreides. More! Read on...
Tonight — I stopped looking at Hillary's numbers.
While it's true that we hold a slim and possibly tenuous margin, I'm not thinking about her as competition. Her campaign is imploding: they've gone through two senior staff in as many days, they're tapped out for legal campaign contributions, and even CNN is finally starting to cast a clear eye over Senator Obama.
No longer watching Hillary, but I am watching McCain's numbers. And tonight, I was glad to see that we alpha'ed him, too. Those people who voted for us in the primaries so far won't suddenly, mysteriously switch their votes in the general election; they'll vote for us again. And we have, dare I say it? Triumphant margins on either side. America is speaking.
There is plenty of discussion on the various grassroots e-mail lists about the superdelegates. One camp says "Call, e-mail, write them!" Another says, "No, HQ says don't!" A wise few say, "Forget the superdelegates, we have a full plate as it is." I'm in the third camp. This race is too close to go maverick and it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg to listen to HQ. And we do have a lot of work ahead of us, and I believe in Occam's Razor.
My feeling is this:
We are about 725 delegates short of the nomination. Should Hillary concede, endorse Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination and give us her delegates, that would put us up and over the top like Superman, without superdelegates. At this point, Hillary is a pledged-delegates spoiler; what we need to do, in my view, is to work like crazy and gain a decisive margin victory in Texas, Ohio, and/or Pennsylvania. Vermont tends to vote heavily independent, God bless 'em, so who knows who they'll tip for!
We're likely to take Hawai'i because he's a native son, and I know for a fact that at least Eugene and Portland like Obama (Salem less so). We have 65 delegates and I'm looking for Barack to take 40 of them.
But that's pure speculation. The bottom line is that we need decisive victories in Texas and Ohio; get Hillary to concede the nomination race, and get her delegates.
Let's hit the phones, folks. I got lots of friends and family in Ohio and Texas, and you bet I'm-a gonna make them bloody sick of me before the month's out! :)
Personally I feel this is one of cinema's finest three and a half minutes, if not history. And Charles Chaplin's words have weight, even today.
I would read the text of his speech at the end of "The Great Dictator" almost like sacred Scripture. It kept my hope alive through the Bush II Regime. And now, I go back to it and find that it's almost prophetic to our movement.
I copy them here. If you're familiar with the speech I speak of, read again, through this filter. If you aren't — read. Memorize. Keep it in your heart.
[begin text]
Speak - it is our only hope. The Jewish BarberHope... I'm sorry but I don't want to be an Emperor - that's not my business - I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. Weall want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and canprovide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls - has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think toomuch and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Evennow my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. Tothose who can hear me I say "Do not despair". The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from thepeople, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish... Soldiers - don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you - who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you ascattle, as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity inyour hearts. You don't hate - only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers - don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty. In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written "the kingdom of God is within man" - not one man, nor a group of men - but in all men - in you, the people. You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.Then in the name of democracy let's use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age andsecurity. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let usfight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where scienceand progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers - in the name of democracy, let us all unite! ---Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting - the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will riseabove their hate and brutality. The soul of man has been given wings - and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow - into the light of hope - into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me andto all of us. Look up. Look up."
[end quote]
So Mote It Be.
Link to the speech on YouTube. Words are good but it should be seen the way he delivered it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3Eg8F3rap4
My friends —
I know Super Tuesday is on our minds right now. It is indeed on mine.
But let us think about AFTER. Yes, even after the Washington State Caucus that many of us are volunteering for.
Let us endeavour to getting Senator Barack Obama to Oregon, before May.
We will need a LARGE space for the event — one that will fit 20,000-plus people, because I know he'll draw that many. He pulled in 14,000 PEOPLE in firetruck-red Idaho, in the midst of a winter storm. They were expecting 8800.
He pulled in 20,000 in Delaware, and that is how I know we'll get at least that many to turn out here.
What sayest ye? Let us do this thing.
...but that ain't stopping Obama's following in Eugene.
The weekly Obama meeting in the UofO's Fishbowl grew again since last week, nearly doubled attendance. Circulating throughout the group were pledge forms, a plethora of bumper stickers from National, and a number of homebrewed Obama schwag.
The good people of Eugene are a bootstrap bunch. If they can't get something, by golly, they <i>make</i> it themselves. Ron downloaded an image of the campaign logo from the site and printed up a sheaf of sheets, with the plan to make 1.5" and 3" buttons to give out at our February 5th primary watch party.
Several in our group are going up to Vancouver WA next weekend for the Washington caucuses, the rest are staying here and getting together a sign-waving rally on the 5th Street Bridge over the Willamette. I'm tucking in to make a polyglot "Yes, We Can!" sign. This is America: we don't begin and end with English and Spanish. Ja, Können Wir!
BTW, can anyone reading this translate "Yes, We Can!" into Gaelic, Basque, Esperanto, Cherokee, Yiddish, Farsi, Ameslan, Hawai'ian and Thai?
Onwards...
Excellent news today, with the MoveOn and L.A. Times endorsements. I thought for sure we'd get at least a nod from Governor Schwarzenegger, but he tipped along party lines. The pages at Digg.com are full-to-bursting with Obama momentum and Obamans on the site are putting stock market floor traders to shame, Shouting back and forth to each other.
Speaking of Digg...the Paulbots have rallied and are putting the ol' Laser Triangle on us. They're angry that they got spanked for spamming the site but with Obama excitement at a fever pitch, they're back for revenge and calling us hypocrites. If you're on Digg, keep the faith, don't let Paulian soccer hooliganism bring you down. Most egregious is their bringing up Barack's family ties to militant Islamist Raila Odinga.
Folks, this is a bald-faced slander and a nasty attack from one of the most extreme voices in this campaign. It's true that Barack Obama and Raila Odinga are related, but the United States isn't Kenya. Barack Obama is not a Muslim, and he believes in diplomacy, not force, and certainly not ethnic cleansing. We all know that one member of the family who goes bug-nuts and it's not always a guarantee that that's the way the whole family is. If nothing else, Barack can use his family loyalty ties to get Odinga to call a halt to the slaughter of Christians in his country.
Unfortunately, the Paulbots have us on their radar, they have a well-stocked war chest, they have a proven track record for nasty and dishonourable politicking, and should Barack win the nomination I think this is the kind of political bullying we can expect to see. Don't lose heart!
If you're in the Eugene area on Tuesday the 5th or Saturday the 9th, come out for the primary watch party at the Delta Oaks Pizza Schmizza, and the rally on the 5th Street Bridge. The watch party starts at 5 on Tuesday and we meet at noon Saturday for the sign-waving rally. Sign up, snag some more points (what are those for anyway? Do I get a free popcorn?), and fire UP!
With John Edwards out of the race, we'll have a face-to-face confrontation with no mediating factors in tomorrow's Democratic debate. It's taking place in Hollywood and we all know how much that town gets into drama.
Some of my City of Eugene for Obama cohorts and I are getting together a debate watch party at our apartment's clubhouse tomorrow evening. I'm spending the afternoon making King Cake dough, it being Mardi Gras season. And by the Gods, we'll need some mitigating factors if the debate proves to be as incendiary as I think it's going to be. Let's hear it for carbohydrate therapy!
Anyway, this blog post will be short 'n sweet because I need to print off posters for tomorrow. Obama Shop is back-ordered on everything, my credit card's maxxed, and we got going on this endeavour a little too late to order anything anyway. My apartment clubhouse doesn't have WiFi and neither do I...yet...so I won't be able to post from our debate watch party itself. But I will directly after.
Type atcha tomorrow! Stay warm out there with your Fired-Up selves!
