Charles the Coolest Old Dude

My brother Kevin has been volunteering for the Obama campaign in Boulder and sent me this video of "the coolest old dude" who's also been volunteering there. I've got tears running down my face having just watched the clip a second time:



Update: it seems that Charles has been choking people up all over the interwebs--Salon's editor just posted the above clip along with this lovely video of Obama getting to know the daily work routine of a home health aide:

Barrack Obama hearts Brian Eno

Barrack Obama's new ad about the losing loser John McCain is his second piece to make use of Brian Eno's ambient masterpiece Music for Airports.  The first ad to make use of Airports hit the air in August, back when there was still an economy and old man McCain couldn't remember how many houses he lives in.  

I don't know what this says about the Obama campaign other than that they are totally freaking awesome and have way better taste in music than their septuagenarian counterparts.  For example, did you hear the "music" in McCain's latest attempt at scaremongering?  It's just a synthesizer drone with a low pass filter wiggling around - that, my friends, is some low-rent, made-for-TV BULLSHIT.  America deserves better sound design.

Thought on Obama and other shit

Pruane2Forever endorses Obama.

In other news: Barack Obama continues to be sane, calm and rational

From Politico [you can read the whole post and hear the audio of Obama's interview at the link]:

In an interview with the sympathetic conservative talk radio host this afternoon, Obama offered the clearest explanation yet of how an extremely careful politician allowed himself anywhere near a former '60s radical who would become a Republican target in this year's presidential campaign.

Obama "had assumed" from Bill Ayers' stature in Chicago, he told the Philadelphia-based Michael Smerconish, that Ayers had been "rehabilitated" since his 1960s crimes.
...
"The gentleman in question, Bill Ayers, is a college professor, teaches education at the University of Illinois," he said. "That's how i met him -- working on a school reform project that was funded by an ambassador and very close friend of Ronald Reagan's" along with "a bunch of conservative businessmen and civic leaders."

"Ultimately, I ended up learning about the fact that he had engaged in this reprehensible act 40 years ago, but I was eight years old at the time and I assumed that he had been rehabilitated," Obama said.

That may not have been an unreasonable assumption for Obama in the 1990s. Though Ayers never repented his part in the Weather Underground bombings, he had not yet become notorious for advertising them. That notoriety returned in 2001, when he published his memoir, "Fugitive Days," and reminisced about the bombings in a New York Times interview that happened to appear September 11 of that year.
...
Obama also lashed McCain for focusing on Ayers on a day of dramatic economic turmoil, calling the issue a "red herring."

"The fact that Senator McCain wants to make this the centerpiece of his campaign is pretty remarkable," he said. "We are going through an enormous challenge right now. "

"Senator McCain surely doesn't believe that I've endorsed any of the actions that [Ayers] has taken," he said. "They're trying to distract from the economy."

"We've got the biggest economic crisis on our hands since the Great Depression and Senator McCain's team has said in the newspapers, they've said it publicly, 'If we talk about the economy, then we lose the election,'" Obama said.

old boys' network

You've heard it before but I found this link to an audience member's video camera in September:

great american heroes

Here's a lovely ad that Ralph Stanley cut for the Obama campaign, currently in play on Virginia radio stations....

"we don't throw the first punch but we'll throw the last"

"Mr. McCain's record, despite him calling himself a maverick, actually shows that he is continually somebody who relies on lobbyists for big oil and big corporations and that he makes decisions often times based on what these lobbyists tell him to do," Obama said. "And that, I think, is going to be a lot more relevant to the American people than what somebody who is tangentially related to me did when I was eight years old."

The Illinois senator also insisted that he will not let attacks go unanswered. "One of the things that we've done through this campaign, we don't throw the first punch but we'll throw the last... If the American people don't get the information that's relevant about these candidates and instead in the last four weeks, all they are hearing about are smears and swiftboat tactics, that can have an impact on the election," Obama said. "We've seen it before."

this nice guy may just finish first

from Clarence Page: John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, have been doing so much to help Barack Obama's presidential campaign lately. I wondered, as I watched Obama's debate performance, why he was doing so little to give them a hand.

His dry, defensive and nearly humorless performance seemed to be quietly urging viewers to tune out and switch to another channel.

Where, I wondered, was the vision, the poetry, the rich metaphors and imagery that flow from Obama when he's on top of his oratorical game?

Then it dawned on me: Maybe Obama was pulling his punches. Maybe he was trying to pull off a debate team version of rope-a-dope, a boxing strategy made famous by Muhammad Ali in which you can win by appearing at first to be losing.

Ali would lay against the ropes in a protected stance, let his opponent exhaust himself by punching away, then start punching back all the way to victory...

bracelet

from the huffington post:
The mother of a Wisconsin soldier who died in Iraq says she was "ecstatic" when Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama mentioned during Friday's debate the bracelet she gave him in honor of her son.

Tracy Jopek of Merrill told The Associated Press on Sunday she was honored that Obama remembered Sgt. Ryan David Jopek, who was killed in 2006 by a roadside bomb.

Jopek criticized Internet reports suggesting Obama, D-Ill., exploited her son for political purposes.

"I don't understand how people can take that and turn it into some garbage on the Internet," she said...

Obama was Right & McCain was wrong

The point of these debates is that "the American people" realize who will be the better president. Last night was "round one" and the first presidential debate. I found this off of the Guanabee blog and it seemed like an excellent post-debate wrap up video. Obama was so kind and gentle to McCain. McCain used his ever breath to over answer each question by plenty of time. Obama was in my opinion, constantly on the defense to all the lies that McCain stated.

Viva Obama

If I didn't know better, I might think Jim Finn actually made this:

IMA VOTE OBAMA WAY

Playing this video repeatedly will result in drastic reductions of existential suck.

oh snap

obamatime usa

Thanks to the daily kos for this link