:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 11.04.2008 ::
:: The end of a long journey for Obama ::
A final rally in the Virginia suburbs is the last stop in an epic campaign.
By Thomas Schaller
Salon.com
MANASSAS, Va. -- Monday night, Barack Obama came full circle.
On a perfect autumn evening in this growing suburb of Washington, on the eve of an election he is favored to win, the Illinois senator and Democratic presidential candidate brought a crowd of 80,000 to cheers with a story of a long-ago rally attended by 20 hardy souls.
In his last campaign stop, Obama concluded his remarks with a story that was a staple of his amazing run-up to his pivotal Iowa victory the first week of January. It was the story prompted by a promise to a female state legislator from Greenwood, S.C., who said she'd consider an endorsement if he would make a trip to her small city. Though Obama and his staff drove out of their way on a rainy morning in late 2007 to attend a small gathering in the remote town, the trip turned out to be a useful diversion.
Obama's efforts to work the small room that day, he says, were no match for a small, boisterous old woman who "stole his thunder" by leading five minutes' chanting of "Fired up!" and "Ready to go!" Obama returned to this story to remind people how "one voice can change a room" and how that change can cascade to change a city, then a state, then a country and, eventually, the world. He closed his final speech by leading the massive crowd of supporters, many of whom had battled hours of traffic to stand outside for five hours to see him, in those same trademark chants.
Yet the overall mood in Manassas was strangely subdued. It's not that the crowd at the Prince William County Fairgrounds was reluctant or bored. You don't battle rush-hour traffic on I-66 to then stand shoulder to shoulder for hours -- and, for most, so far away that you can't see Obama without binoculars -- unless you are committed. It was, rather, the weight of the moment that hung heavy over the proceedings, the culmination of the longest presidential campaign in history.
Read more here.
posted by me
:: 9:59:00 AM [+] ::
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