|Zach|
01-30-2008, 12:14 AM
Went to see Barack Obama at Municipal Auditorium. There were waaaay to many people. Capacity crowd. I got there an hour and fifteen mins early and didn't get to see any of it because there were so many people. I wanted to hear the guy speak but what a great problem to have. I would say 500 people ended up getting turned away at least...that's a conservative estimate.
http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/467051.html
No “wild Muslim” here.
Two-thirds of the way through his speech at Municipal Auditorium Tuesday night, Democrat Barack Obama took on the vicious, underground campaign being waged against him on the Internet through bogus e-mails.
“There are e-mails going out that I’m a wild Muslim and I don’t pledge allegiance to the flag,” Obama told the crowd.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag,” he said with a broad smile, just to show he knew the words.
Laughs and cheers erupted from the wildly enthusiastic crowd of some 6,000 that braved biting winds to see the man who’s battling Hillary Clinton for supremacy among the Democrats.
Then he said he’d been “praying to Jesus” — with humorous down-home inflection — all his life. This was to emphasize his Christian roots.
Black ministers standing behind laughed and egged him on. He turned to them.
“I’m not a preacher,” he quipped.
One week from Missouri’s Feb. 5 presidential primary and Kansas’ Democratic caucus, Obama spent much of his time promising a massive expansion in health-care coverage, an end to the war in Iraq and transformation of schools and universities into world-class institutions.
Throughout his 50-minute talk, he made liberal use of the political word of the year.
“All these things are possible if you are ready for change.” It was he, insisted the senator of Illinois, who started the much-copied “change” craze.
Noting his huge win in South Carolina — where record numbers of Democrats and independents turned out again — he said, “there is an energy and an excitement and electricity to this election.”
Obama reached back to his maternal roots in the morning, visiting El Dorado, Kan. There he scooped up a much-anticipated endorsement from Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to go along with the backing he received Monday from Caroline Kennedy and her uncle, Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.
Sebelius and Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri accompanied Obama to Kansas and then to Kansas City. Obama, asserted Sebelius, inherited those “Midwestern values” so important to Kansas voters.
Never mind that his grandparents moved West with his young mother and she married a Kenyan, his father, or that Obama spent his youth in Hawaii and Indonesia.
“He got them from his grandparents and his mother,” Sebelius said in her brief speech before an overflow crowd of 2,500 people at Butler Community College. “He will lead with those values.”
Obama told that audience that his success sprang from the hopes of his forebears.
“My grandparents held on to a simple dream, that they would raise my mother in a land of boundless dreams,” the freshman senator said. “I am standing here today because that dream was realized.”
The El Dorado event underscored the personal narrative of Obama’s campaign — a young multiracial candidate promising the politics of unification — and his try for Kansas’ 41 delegates to the Democratic National Convention.
Unlike Sen. Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards, Obama dispatched nearly two dozen staffers to organize in Kansas.
He’s opened offices in Missouri, too, as has Clinton. Two recent polls show her with double-digit leads in Missouri.
In El Dorado, he dwelled on the economy, which he called “out of balance,” delivering millions in bonuses to CEOs but little affordable health insurance to working families.
He endorsed the stimulus package pounded out by President Bush and House leaders last week, saying it will pump up the economy and give relief to the working class. Yet he said it should do more to help retirees and boost long-term unemployment benefits.
He pledged to eliminate income taxes on retirees making less than $50,000 a year.
“We’ll save them money, save them time, look after them the way we’re supposed to,” Obama said.
He called for an end to the Bush tax cuts that he said give disproportionate breaks to the wealthy “who don’t need them and weren’t asking for them.”
Specifically, he called for tax credits to offset ballooning mortgage payments and to stem the tide of defaulting home loans.
He praised the GI Bill benefits that his grandfather received and the food stamps his working mother needed for a while to make it possible for him and his sister to prosper.
“My mother was still able to send my sister and me to the best schools in this country," he said. “My story could only happen in the United States of America.”
http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/467051.html
No “wild Muslim” here.
Two-thirds of the way through his speech at Municipal Auditorium Tuesday night, Democrat Barack Obama took on the vicious, underground campaign being waged against him on the Internet through bogus e-mails.
“There are e-mails going out that I’m a wild Muslim and I don’t pledge allegiance to the flag,” Obama told the crowd.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag,” he said with a broad smile, just to show he knew the words.
Laughs and cheers erupted from the wildly enthusiastic crowd of some 6,000 that braved biting winds to see the man who’s battling Hillary Clinton for supremacy among the Democrats.
Then he said he’d been “praying to Jesus” — with humorous down-home inflection — all his life. This was to emphasize his Christian roots.
Black ministers standing behind laughed and egged him on. He turned to them.
“I’m not a preacher,” he quipped.
One week from Missouri’s Feb. 5 presidential primary and Kansas’ Democratic caucus, Obama spent much of his time promising a massive expansion in health-care coverage, an end to the war in Iraq and transformation of schools and universities into world-class institutions.
Throughout his 50-minute talk, he made liberal use of the political word of the year.
“All these things are possible if you are ready for change.” It was he, insisted the senator of Illinois, who started the much-copied “change” craze.
Noting his huge win in South Carolina — where record numbers of Democrats and independents turned out again — he said, “there is an energy and an excitement and electricity to this election.”
Obama reached back to his maternal roots in the morning, visiting El Dorado, Kan. There he scooped up a much-anticipated endorsement from Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to go along with the backing he received Monday from Caroline Kennedy and her uncle, Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.
Sebelius and Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri accompanied Obama to Kansas and then to Kansas City. Obama, asserted Sebelius, inherited those “Midwestern values” so important to Kansas voters.
Never mind that his grandparents moved West with his young mother and she married a Kenyan, his father, or that Obama spent his youth in Hawaii and Indonesia.
“He got them from his grandparents and his mother,” Sebelius said in her brief speech before an overflow crowd of 2,500 people at Butler Community College. “He will lead with those values.”
Obama told that audience that his success sprang from the hopes of his forebears.
“My grandparents held on to a simple dream, that they would raise my mother in a land of boundless dreams,” the freshman senator said. “I am standing here today because that dream was realized.”
The El Dorado event underscored the personal narrative of Obama’s campaign — a young multiracial candidate promising the politics of unification — and his try for Kansas’ 41 delegates to the Democratic National Convention.
Unlike Sen. Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards, Obama dispatched nearly two dozen staffers to organize in Kansas.
He’s opened offices in Missouri, too, as has Clinton. Two recent polls show her with double-digit leads in Missouri.
In El Dorado, he dwelled on the economy, which he called “out of balance,” delivering millions in bonuses to CEOs but little affordable health insurance to working families.
He endorsed the stimulus package pounded out by President Bush and House leaders last week, saying it will pump up the economy and give relief to the working class. Yet he said it should do more to help retirees and boost long-term unemployment benefits.
He pledged to eliminate income taxes on retirees making less than $50,000 a year.
“We’ll save them money, save them time, look after them the way we’re supposed to,” Obama said.
He called for an end to the Bush tax cuts that he said give disproportionate breaks to the wealthy “who don’t need them and weren’t asking for them.”
Specifically, he called for tax credits to offset ballooning mortgage payments and to stem the tide of defaulting home loans.
He praised the GI Bill benefits that his grandfather received and the food stamps his working mother needed for a while to make it possible for him and his sister to prosper.
“My mother was still able to send my sister and me to the best schools in this country," he said. “My story could only happen in the United States of America.”