Positive Obama thread

bar62

Obama4Pres, I wish I knew.   I think Jon Glenn was a part of the Keating 5 as was one of my Senators when I lived in Ca, Alan Cranston.   Last night, Chris Matthews was congratulating McCain for not running Rev Wright ads; I think he spoke too soon.

Anonymous

I just saw a wright ad on msnbc in california, talk about a waste of good american dollars.

two more days, is my californian showing when i see over 300 electoral votes?

possibly, but i have to believe that hate ads have no more traction. minds are made up and the undecided?

you have to wonder how they are going to jump in line to cast a vote.

two more days, and i haven't seen joe the plumber all day...

life IS good, lap!

we are going to do this ladies!

Little-G

Hi Ladies,

 I've been off the board since Fri....alot going on here!!  The Palin Prank was incredible!!  I thought it was a joke, I thought there is no way she can be THIS much of an idiot!!  Then I seen it on more stations and I was blown away!!  Honestly....I have always thought she is hugely dim witted to be the VP of this country..but this was even more than I thought was possible!!  Can anyone honestly, whole heartedly say they believe this woman is capable of running the United States???  What???  She didn't even say anything to they guy when he mentioned the Nalin' Palin video!!!  I rest my case from previous posts that I was criticized on.  Not by our Obama ladies..but others.  She is one of the biggest insults that have been passed off on the American people.  And save the "unfairness" to her.  It was a phone call that went on for awhile.  She had many opportunities to pick up on what was going on.  Apparently how hot and popular she is, is more important than anything else and oh yes, killing moose from a helicopter.  After today...2 more days!!!  Poll fixing is the only way the troll and her would win.

Get ready for a wild ride the next 2 days!!!!

OBAMA '08...it's almost here!!!!     

Little-G

let me clarify my above post..when I said I thought it was a joke..I mean I thought her voice was a joke, and it wasn't really her.   amazing.

Little-G

Ladysuz...i know...that's what makes it all the more bizzare to me!!  i know she thought it was real...so listening to her, and how she responded...it is amazing!!  wow.  imagine if she were VP, and someone called her asking for some confidential information.  the entire thing was insane. 

g

Ivylane

Nicki:  Haha!!  Thanks!

NoH8

suz- I am sure it wouldn't have took any of Obama supporters 7 minutes to figure out the call was a hoax and being on list with Britney Spears is nothing to brag about LOL.

g- You really can't make this stuff up, even if you tried.

mke

I don't have computer speakers so I only heard the first few lines on the radio and I felt a bit sorry for her because the guy was speaking in a think French accent and I couldn't tell who he was saying was the Canadian prime minister - didn't sound like Stephen Harper, but what the heck, those French can murder name. Then I read the transcript of the whole thing. Holy smokes!! Does she actually think that the leader of France is going to be talking to her about how hot his wife is in bed? And that was just the most blatant.



I really don't think she's dumb, just totally out of her depth. She probably was as Alaska's governor too, hence the ethical problems. However she is a rabble rouser.

NoH8

mke- You're right. She's probably of average intelligence and way out of her league. I do not think she is a bright woman, but also probably not as much of a dimwit as she has appeared. I don't blame that for her ethics violations. I think she's a competitive woman who's used to getting what she wants and someone who has extremely poor boundaries. When getting the ex bro-in-law fired was harder than she expected it to be, she saw that as a not just a challenge, but also a personal assault and that made her more determined to get it done not even realizing that what might work as president of the PTA or even mayor of a small town doesn't play well on a big stage.

djd

Only 48 hours to go!!

Mary-Lou

They will hit Virginia again today. Va is leading with Obama.

Hard to believe here in the south...But I'm glad.

I will be at the poles early, sure hope the wait is not to long. My husband works midnights. He will be very tired. But it will be worth it. And I will be so glad to have it come to an end.

TV is not much fun to watch these days.

Mary-Lou

Little-G

amy....no, you can't make this stuff up!!  If I was a movie producer, I would be getting this all down and as soon as this election is over, and Obama is in, I would have a movie out on the rest of it.  It has been one of the most craziest elections!!!  Tues. is almost here!!!!!!  Get those flags ready and don't forget to buy the sweet potatoes!!! :-)

 OBAMA '08...its almost here!!!!!!!!!!    

Anonymous

      ONE MORE DAY                        

       We Have a Lot of Work to Do

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfjQujYrfEk&feature=bz301

        Obama '08 is almost here!

NoH8

The Sun 'll come out-- Obama,

you're only a day away!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so excited.

NoH8

On Morning Joe two republicans who said they're voting for McCain  talked about the historical significance of American electing its first black president. They talked about how wonderful it will be to show the world how far we have come racially and how they think Obama can lead a postpartisan government. To them, it wasn't all doom and gloom if their candidate doesn't win. Those are the kind of repubs I respect.

The kind of repugs I don;'t respect are the ones who put out one of the ugliest ads I've ever seen. A woman is talking about how Obama wishes she were dead, she claimed to be a product of a botched abortion. Disgusting. That's not going to sway anyone- only the most rabid McCain supporters would like such a commercial and swing voters will be more turned off by the commercial than anything.

Ivylane

Good Morning Everyone:  I remarked earlier (as have many of you) that the John McCain today is different than the John McCain of 2000..... here's an excerpt from a columnist who has been following him:

".....John McCain has operated by the worst instincts of the worst elements of the republican party..he has thrown in with fools and cynics......."

I think this IS the general feeling among many who supported him some years back....he sold out to the ROVE machine...

Did any of you see Obama last night in Cleveland with Springsteen???  There had to be thousands of people there....same later on in Cincinnati...I can't believe he even has a voice left....he was just as passionate as he was on day one 20 months ago. He mentioned that McCain STILL hasn't talked specifically about what his plan is to fix  the economy  because "he spends all of his time talking about me"....

....so true....front page of my local newspaper today is a headline that says in his last ditch efforts at turning this thing around...."McCain allies play wild card Wright"...his campaign said it had nothing to do with the flame thrower ad from the State Republican Party replaying incendiary remarks by Obama's former pastor....  campaign strategist Charlie Black stated "we don't referee every ad that's out there"...urging party chiefs to take the add down.....

One more day...one more day.... my mouth is watering for sweet potato pie.... flags are ready....

I am doing a two hour stint at a phone bank tonight to help keep up the momentum..... I think I'm calling people in Ohio..... 

AnneW

A nice read from today's NYTimes:

Even Keel for Obama in Final Turn to Election By JEFF ZELENY

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. - A cellphone was pressed to Senator Barack Obama's ear as he slouched down in a black leather chair in the front cabin of his campaign airplane. He leaned away from the headrest, where his name is spelled out in blue stitching.

A few miles away, thousands of people streamed into JFK Stadium at Parkview High School on Saturday for a late-night rally. But Mr. Obama stayed on his chartered Boeing 757 as he spoke by conference call to thousands of his team leaders around the country, the volunteers who form the ranks of an army that he hopes will give him an edge in the waning hours of the presidential race.

As he pressed his right hand to his forehead, his sober expression seemed at odds with the confident gleam in the eyes of his advisers. While Mr. Obama smiles less than he once did, gauging his mood simply by looking at him is risky: his baseline cool temperament has seldom spiked along the rocky points of his journey.

In a campaign where he has slogged through more competitive election days than any recent nominee, only one more lies ahead. And it is the long path of the Democratic primary, which lurched from the ups of Iowa to the downs of Ohio, that his friends say provided Mr. Obama with a steady equilibrium as he enters this final turn in the race for the White House.

"As painful as the primary season was and how agitating it could be, it turned out to be a blessing for him," said Eric Whitaker, a longtime Chicago friend who joined Mr. Obama aboard the crowded campaign plane for the past three days. "But my role now is to keep him loose. There's a lot going on in his world."

The lines in Mr. Obama's face have grown a bit deeper since he started his campaign, with the notches of gray hair along his temples far more pronounced. He often carries the look of exhaustion, but flying the other night to Nevada, where he arrived after midnight, Mr. Obama passed on the chance to take much of a nap.

Instead, he walked around the cabin of his airplane, which is about the size of a bedroom, and talked about a favorite diversion, the coming basketball season, as he took care not to step on a senior foreign policy adviser, Mark Lippert, who was asleep on the floor.

In the last days on the trail, he is finishing "Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the C.I.A., Afghanistan and Bin Laden," and taking an occasional glance at US Weekly. He reads at least two newspapers a day, vigilantly checks his BlackBerry for updates on early voting tallies and browses briefing books.

"In a marathon, when you are on mile 20 you start getting tired, but when you are on mile 25 you don't," said Mr. Lippert, who has grown familiar with Mr. Obama's travel rhythms while accompanying him on the four foreign trips he has taken since becoming a senator. "That's where he's at."

Whatever emotions or anxiety Mr. Obama feels as his candidacy draws to a close, he displays little of it, either in public appearances or private conversations with his close advisers. The air of confidence he exudes, which some critics take as arrogance, grew in part out of the primary, when he worked to avoid perceptions that he was weak or not ready.

But now, he is described by friends as feeling as though he has been thoroughly tested and is prepared to take on the job he has spent 22 months fighting for. Still, it is hard for even those closest to Mr. Obama to fathom what these days are precisely like, even for the unflappable - often inscrutable - senator from Illinois.

His world is awash in powerful, conflicting emotions: the realization, presumably, that he may be about to become president; the huge optimism that he has unleashed, evident in the crowds he is drawing (and something he has told aides worries him a bit, given the expectations set for him); the weighty thinking he is gradually giving to how he would staff a government and deal with a transition in such a difficult time. All of this is taking place as a woman who played a large role in raising him, his grandmother, is approaching death.

" ‘What if I disappoint people?' " Valerie Jarrett, a close friend and adviser, recalled Mr. Obama asking at several points throughout the campaign. "That's what gives him the energy to keep getting up every day."

It has been months since Mr. Obama has ventured with any regularity to the back of his plane where the journalists sit. (The one time he played the board game "Taboo" on a cross-country flight to Oregon is a distant memory.) A reporter shouted to Mr. Obama on Sunday as he climbed the steps of his airplane here, headed for Ohio, to ask why Mr. Obama had not held a news conference in weeks.

"I will," Mr. Obama said. "On Wednesday."

On a final weekend pass through electoral battlegrounds that spanned three time zones, the electoral climate and his campaign organization provide him the luxury of focusing on states that favored the Republican ticket four years ago. But when his Democratic crowds jeer at the mere mention of Senator John McCain, he offers a gentle scolding, "You don't need to boo, you just need to vote."

It is a true crowd pleaser, and he reprises it in city after city.

His crowds have rarely been larger or more enthusiastic - often, perhaps, more outwardly so than the candidate himself. These days, Mr. Obama is racing through his speeches, whittling down to a disciplined 30 minutes a message that once stretched for more than an hour. He works the rope line at every stop, but taking a closer look you realize that it is as much for a few photographs as for a lot of handshakes. At each event, though, he stays long enough to sign a stack of books for supporters.

At a rally outside Orlando, Fla., the other night, where he was joined onstage for the first time by former President Bill Clinton, Mr. Obama was visibly chilly in the 40-degree air. He had hoped to wear a coat, but Mr. Clinton did not, so Mr. Obama came to the stage without one. Not so the next night in Virginia, where a cool and damp chill also hung in the air.

"I did decide to wear a coat because you want a president who has sense," Mr. Obama told the crowd from behind the lectern, where he was covered in a black wool overcoat.

While he may not be coasting to the finish line, he is not running as hard as he did during the down-or-out moments of his battle with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

On Sunday, he was in the gym of the Doubletree Hotel here shortly after 6 a.m., but he spent some time with his wife and daughters before boarding his plane at 9:30 a.m. He did not arrive for his first public event of the day at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus until 1 p.m.

His campaign schedule, like Mr. Obama himself, can be slow to start in the morning, but runs late into the night. After appearing with Bruce Springsteen at a rain-soaked dinnertime rally in downtown Cleveland, followed by a stop in Cincinnati for a stadium rally at 9:30 p.m., Mr. Obama did not arrive at his hotel in Jacksonville, Fla., until 1:35 a.m. on Monday.

And before bedtime on most nights, Mr. Obama needs to "circle and land," as one of his advisers put it, by finishing a round of e-mail and calls before turning out the lights.

If there is a feeling of nostalgia surrounding the Obama campaign in these final hours before the election, it does not seem to be coming from the candidate himself. He is eager to be finished campaigning, several of his friends said, and for months has been immersing himself in the work of the presidency, well before he knows if it will ever be his.

He spends far less time on the telephone these days making political calls to local Democratic chairmen. His call list now includes officials in Washington, including Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., with whom he spoke several times a day for weeks about the government rescue plan. And he is in frequent conversations with Congressional leaders over how to proceed should he win on Tuesday.

On Saturday morning, Mr. Obama met for about 45 minutes in his hotel suite at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas with Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the majority leader. Mr. Reid said he ticked through a list of items sketched on a note card in his breast pocket.

Mr. Obama also spoke about how his life had changed, a point that was driven home on Friday night when he went to Chicago to see his daughters for Halloween and grew agitated when he felt that a group of reporters and photographers had crowded him.

"He said he likes to go out trick-or-treating, but he can't anymore," Mr. Reid said in an interview, recalling the conversation he had with Mr. Obama. "He said he guessed he could have worn a Barack Obama mask."

One of the greatest frustrations of his candidacy - being away from his wife, Michelle, and his two daughters, Malia and Sasha - will come to an end, win or lose. When his plane touched down on Saturday afternoon in Pueblo, Colo., his step carried an extra lilt. It was not because of the place that he finds himself in the closing moments of his campaign, but because his two daughters were standing on the breezy tarmac waiting to be scooped up by their father.

I'm in a good mood today.

Anne

Ivylane

Anne:  Great Post.... I don't know how ANY of the candidates keep up this grueling schedule....that was a nice insight into what an average day is like.  I think it's pretty evident that all 4 of them look exhausted.  Heck, I'M exhausted just watching this unfold!

Little-G

Laura....thank you for the link!!!  And Anne..thank you for the post!   This is almost it!!!!  Please, Please, Please spread the word to BaRack the Vote!!!!  Get out and VOTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  If you have, then make some phone calls, or door knocking!!!  Get the word out!  WE need all of us in full force for these last 2 days!!!!! 

OBAMA '08...it's almost here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   

sccruiser

Really enjoyed your post, Anne. Nice to have confirmed that he is human after all! LOL

I'm off to do my volunteer job today at the Lymphedema Clinic, so will check in later this afternoon for another uplifting read of postings by the Obama girls on this thread!! Keep it up! Sweet potato pie sounds mighty good right now!

Yes, the RNC ad w/Rev. Wright could have been stopped by McCain. He has chosen throughout this campaign to let others do the "dirty" work! Even Palin, the pit bull w/lipstick.

NoH8

grace- re: McCain and the RNC ads: McCain gets to act as if he's being magnanamous not bringing up Wright.  Some of his supporters buy into McCain not running a sleazy campaign, but he's pretty transparent as far as I'm concerned.

I just can't wait until 30 hours from now when the first returns start coming in. I hope I sleep tonight. 

NoH8

Bob Worcester, the American-born founder of the London-based polling and research firm Mori, has worked in more than 40 countries, and says he has "never ever seen any election in which so many people in so many places have been so interested."

It's very clear who they are interested in: Barack Obama. John McCain and Sarah Palin are by all accounts still in the race, but McCain has become a political cipher in a world that has of late tuned into Obama 24/7. (Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, is an afterthought to the international audience). Obama went into Election Day with a steady lead in U.S. polls, averaging about 50 percent to 44 percent for McCain, but he was headed for a landslide around the world, topping polls in virtually every nation often by strong margins: 70 percent in Germany, 75 percent in China and so on. Somewhere along the road to the White House, Obama became the world's candidate-a reminder that for all the talk of America's decline, for all the visceral hatred of Bush, the rest of the world still looks upon the United States as a land of hope and opportunity. "The Obama adventure is what makes America magical," French State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Human Rights Rama Yade, a Senegalese immigrant who is the only black member of Nicolas Sarkozy's government, recently told Le Parisien.

Here's the whole article:  http://www.newsweek.com/id/166910

djd

only 36 hours until we have our country back on the right track!

Mary-Lou

LAphoenix

Thanks Anne and Laura for your posts.  I don't know how any of the candidates survive the grueling schedule either. 

Obama's speech reminds me again of what is different about him and this election.  I think it goes back to his days as a community organizer when he figured out that helping people isn't just about what you do for them, but how you lead them to do for themselves.  And to do that you need to stir them out of their complacency and disillusionment.  He knows he's created a movement and a desire for change that will resonate beyond his policies, or him as an individual.  That's what really comes across to me as I read about his campaign, how he has inspired and motivated people to become involved in their democracy.  It's awesome and needs no apology. 

Good luck to us all!

       

flyrzfan

My efforts, my thoughts, and my prayers are all geared towards "Obama for president" and making it a reality by the time we go to bed tomorrow night.

THANK GOD it is almost over...I pray he wins!

flyrzfan

Very well said LAphoenix, that's exactly it indeed.

NoH8

More:

Civility

Intelligence

Bipartisanship

Respect

Peace

Equity

Hope

Invention

LifeNo more:

Lipstick on a pig

My friends

Maverick

you betcha

Rev. Wright

Bill Ayers

Mary-Lou

LAphoenix, I agree so much with what you wrote. My feelings also.