Obama/Biden and McSame/Palin - Reversal

If things were reversed.  Tell me, oh, tell me...Have we really outgrown racism>

 

! Obama/Biden vs McCain/Palin,
what if things were switched around? .....think about it.

 Would the country's collective point of view be different? 
 
Ponder the following:
 
What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage, including 
a three month old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?
 
What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
 
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
 
What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was a divorcee?
 
What if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife after a severe 
disfiguring car accident, when she no longer measured up to his standards?
 
What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair 
while he was still married?
 
What if Michelle Obama was the ! wife who not only became addicted to 
pain killers but also acquired them illegally through her charitable 
organization?
 
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
 
What if Obama had beena member of the Keating Five? (The Keating Five 
were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting 
a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis 
of the late 1980s and early 1990s.)
 
What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?
 
What if Obama couldn't read from a teleprompter?
 
What if Obama was the one who had military experience that included 
discipline problems and a record of crashing seven planes?
 
What if Obama was the one who was known to display publicly, on many 
occasions, a serious anger management problem?
 
What if Michelle Obama's family had made their money from beer distribution?
 
What if the Obamas had adopted a white child?
 
You could easily add to! this list. If these questions reflected 
reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as 
they are?
  This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes 
positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in 
another when there is a color difference.
 
Educational Background:
 
Barack Obama:
 Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in
 International Relations.
 Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude
 
Joseph Biden:
 University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
 Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)
 
vs.
 
John McCain:
 United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899
 
Sarah Palin:
 Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
 North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
 University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
 Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
 University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in JournalismBR> 
Education isn't everything, but this is about the two highest offices in 
the land as well as our standing in the world. You make the call.

The World Looks At Barack Obama

This particular article is from the Times of India. Americans tend to be very provincial and forget that there's a whole, big world out there. Here is at least one view from the world's second most populous nation. (I won't say the World's Largest Democracy; my indictment of Indian government must be in another post!)

Obama and the world

Vir Sanghvi, Hindustan Times

October 25, 2008

First Published: 21:37 IST(25/10/2008)

Last Updated: 01:08 IST(26/10/2008)

All of us, or so the saying goes, should have a vote in the American Presidential election because the results affect the rest of the world almost as much as they affect America itself. If we did, in fact, have such a vote, it's quite clear who we would vote for. Poll after poll tells us that the world prefers Barack Obama to John McCain.

And now, it looks as though America may agree. There are the skeptics: people say that Americans are too shy of admitting that they would never vote for a black man to opinion poll agencies, but that when it comes to the crunch, they will chose the white guy. And there's my theory, advanced on this page, some months ago, that Americans are uneasy with an ethnic President.

But there are too many polls for us to deny the obvious. Unless something goes drastically wrong in the next couple of weeks, Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States.

Obviously, this will be an epochal moment for America. As late as the mid-sixties, black people were forced to use segregated toilets in the American South and refused seats on buses. Now, only 40 years later, an African-American will sit in the Oval office.

But if Obama does win, this could also be the moment when the world stops hating America. Surveys tell us that global anti-Americanism has now grown to an all-time high. At a time when their country's global authority has been eroded by eight years of capricious governance by George W Bush, easily the stupidest man to occupy the White House in many decades (even Gerald Ford was brighter), and their economy has gone to the toilet, Americans need the goodwill of the world more than
ever.

By electing Obama they have the chance to earn that goodwill, to transform their country's image, and to finally stem the rising tide of global anti-Americanism.

In the long run, that might do them more good than anything Obama can achieve in the domestic policy sphere.

Some positive global consequences of an Obama victory are:

The Black factor: For centuries, America has fed the world a lie about its essential character. It has told us it is the land of free where it is 'self-evident' that "that all men are created equal" etc. etc. For much of this time, it has restricted these freedoms to white males. The framers of the Constitution kept slaves. Blacks had to fight to be regarded as fully human. And the country itself was founded on land-grab and genocide: the early settlers massacred the Indians and stole their lands before condemning the surviving native Americans to second-class citizenship.

Unfortunately for America, its huge propaganda machine has never succeeded in fully obscuring this lie. And that's one reason why even though much of the world loves American popular culture, an air of suspicion has always haunted the global view of America. When things go wrong — as they have over the last few years — this suspicion turns into downright hostility.

By electing a black man, Americans finally have a chance to the tell the world that their country has changed: it is now truly, an equal society.

International outlook: When Bill Clinton was President, we had a sense that he was a global citizen, engaged with the world. George Bush, on the other hand, strikes most non-Americans as being parochial, small-minded and unmindful of the concerns of the rest of the world.

John McCain, to his credit, is more international but his campaign is hamstrung by the appalling Sarah Palin, a woman who only got her first passport a few years ago so she could go on an official trip and whose idea of a global perspective is looking at Russia 'on a clear day' from Alaska.

Obama comes across as truly international. He is an African-American in the full sense of the term: his father was African (Kenyan) and his mother was American (white.) He grew up in Indonesia, has travelled the world, cares about global affairs (he was quick to issue a statement about India's moon mission a few days ago) and conveys the impression that his concerns extend beyond the American heartland.

All that is certain to work to America's benefit. The world will feel engaged by an Obama Presidency.

Muslims and Iraq: Sending himself up at a roast two weeks ago, Obama joked that whoever gave him his middle name clearly had no idea that he would run for President one day. It's a good joke but it also reminds us that the next President of the United States could well be a man called Hussein.

What's more encouraging is that even though some of his opponents have tried to cash in on his Muslim middle name, referring to him as 'Barack Hussein Obama' (rather as Narendra Modi used to refer to 'James Michael Lyngdoh"), America seems largely unmoved.

This is certain to have an effect on the psyche of the world's Muslims many of whom now loathe America with intensity. It's easy to demonize Bush's America if you are a Muslim; less easy if America is led by a black man with Muslim middle name who grew up in the world's largest Muslim country.

On Iraq, Obama's record has been better than nearly everybody else's. Unlike say, Hillary Clinton, he voted against the war arguing, sensibly, that America should devote its energy to rooting out Al Qaeda and the Taliban from Afghanistan (and Pakistan), not in a pointless engagement in Iraq which has destroyed that hapless country, encouraged fanatics to turn to terrorism and now, devastated the US economy as well.

His views are pretty much the views of the rest of the world as well and so, are bound to find resonance.

The economic crisis: It hasn't happened yet but I think it's only a matter of time. As the global economic crisis begins to bite, as factories close, as people are rendered unemployed and as the world's middle classes see their savings wiped out, there will be a tendency to blame America for the world's financial misfortunes. After all, who can deny that this crisis was caused by Wall Street's greed and the failure of the US government to regulate its mammoth private financial institutions?

The best hope for America's image in this situation is the election of a President who slams Wall Street and the big multi-nationals; who promises regulation and who disowns the excesses of the last decade.
Bush can't do that: his administration allowed the crisis to happen, even helped make it possible. Nor can McCain, whose traditional Republican ties to big business restrict his room for maneuver and who clearly doesn't understand what's going on anyway.

Only Obama has the ability and credibility to tell the world that America made mistakes and that, he will fix them.
Education: Even those who support Obama will concede that he has a tendency to come off as too clever and loves to lecture.

In America, this is seen as a disadvantage. In the rest of the world, it is a huge advantage.

Most of us are so fed up of the folksy simplicity of American politicians that we long for an American President who has an IQ higher than Mickey Mouse's or Goofy's.

McCain's probably a bright guy but his slow, soft, ingratiating (every sentence is addressed to "my friends") delivery does not suggest mental agility. Sarah Palin actually makes a virtue out of her ignorance, passing this off as an All-American value. Asked by interviewer Katie Couric which papers she read, she couldn't name one. Asked to name a single Supreme Court decision apart from the famous Roe v. Wade, she had no idea.

The world is terrified by the prospect of having the most powerful country on the planet led by a moron. We've already seen the havoc eight years of Bush have wrought. So, on balance, we don't mind if the next US President is an intellectual show off. Hell, we may even like it!

The big change: If Obama does win, as seems likely, then it will serve notice to the world that America is finally ready to turn its back on the past: on centuries of discrimination; on pointless wars; on parochialism and small-mindedness; on the economics of greed; and on years of refusing to understand the planet.

Is it any surprise that the rest of the world hopes that he will win?

--
WHY TRY TO FIT IN? YOU WERE BORN TO STAND OUT!

Barack's Impossible(?) Dream

This post is totally partisan. I like Barack Obama, both as a politician and as a human being. I have, in the course of this campaign, come to dislike John McCain more and more, both as a politician and a human being.

This article made me laugh. I hope in two weeks and one day, at this time, I am still laughing.

OK, OK, I admit this picture is over-the-top and crudely, inexpertly done, but why not? I'm over-the-top and crudely, inexpertly done (My Bad! Don't blame God!) By the way, "The Impossible Dream" is one of four songs I sing every morning after my morning prayers, to prepare me for how I want to live that day. (I'll tell you the others, if anyone asks.) And I've put the words of "The Impossible Dream," as well as some more of my ramblings at the end of this post.

Obama Belongs to All of Us
By Melvin Durai

I have a message for my African-American friends: Stop claiming Barack Obama as one of yours. He's not one of yours. He's one of OURS. In case you haven't checked, Obama isn't just black. He's half-black, half-white and half-Asian. Okay, perhaps he isn't half-Asian, but his step-father was Indonesian, he was raised partly in Indonesia, and most of his clothes are from Asia. So don't you dare laugh when you're driving through Chinatown and see a bumper sticker that says "I'm Voting For Obama. He's Almost Asian!"

If you're Hispanic, you can take pride in him too. Did you know that Obama loves tortilla chips and salsa, and he once sat through an entire Jennifer Lopez movie? Yes, the man has gone to great pains to discover his Hispanic side.

When they make a movie about Obama, you'll see him flying to the White House in a cape, with people gazing up and gasping, "It's a black man! It's a white man! It's everyman!"

Obama identified himself with the African-American community as a young man, partly because he felt a need to belong, and that suits everyone just fine, because we love to put people into neat categories. But his background is quite different from most African-Americans. After all, there aren't many African- Americans who could organize a family reunion and harbor a slight fear that Dick Cheney might show up.

And there aren't many African-Americans who could fly to Africa, host a dinner party for their extended family and have hundreds of people showing up, most of whom are actually related to them.

Obama's late father was Kenyan and his late mother was Kansan. If he's elected to the White House, it will be a momentous, historic occasion, because, as everyone knows, America has never had a Kenyan-Kansan president. Yes, he'll be America's very first K-K president, much to the dismay of the KKK.

Obama has given credit to his white mother for raising him after his father left, writing in his memoir that "what is best in me I owe to her." But despite all that, it's his father's race that seems to define him. "If you have one drop of black blood, you're black," society seems to say. But what if every drop of your blood is red?

Shouldn't we celebrate Obama's mixed heritage, instead of glossing over it, instead of cutting off his mother's side?

The same can be asked about Tiger Woods. Journalists often refer to Tiger as an African-American golfer, except in Thailand, where journalists describe him as "the golfer whose mother is Thai."

According to Wikipedia, Tiger's late father, Earl, was half African-American, one-quarter Chinese and one-quarter Native American, while his mother, Kultida, is half Thai, one-quarter Chinese and one-quarter Dutch. That makes Tiger one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Thai, one-quarter African-American, one-eighth Native American and one-eighth Dutch. And that makes me glad I studied fractions in high school.

Thanks to those lessons, I've figured out that Tiger is -- drum roll please! -- twice as much Asian as African-American. But not many people know that. If they made a movie about him, it would be called "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Asian."

Tiger, quite smartly, considers himself "Cablinasian" (a combination of Caucasian, Black, American-Indian and Asian.) He's not just a great golfer, but also a great role model, making so many people proud, especially those in the Cablinasian community. You may not know this, but for 10 consecutive years, they've selected him as "Cablinasian of the Year."

Tiger has a unique genetic makeup -- and so does each of us, no matter our racial background. Obama owes his not just to his father, but also his mother. That's why it puzzles me that 92 percent of blacks supported him in the Mississippi primary, but only 26 percent of whites did.

Why such a racial divide over a candidate who's half-this and half-that?



March 24, 2008

Melvin Durai is a Toronto-based writer and humorist. Born in India, he grew up in Zambia and has lived in North America since the early 1980s.His humor has appeared in dozens of newspapers and magazines in several countries, including America, India and Zambia. Read more of Melvin Durai's humor at http://melvindurai.com

The Impossible Dream
from MAN OF LA MANCHA (1972)
music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man fat, little gramma, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star

I admit, Don Quixote de la Mancha (Please do check out this site. The webmaster and I have religious differences, but share a common spirit).

is one of my heroes. I flat refuse to give in or give up. Am I a romantic dreamer? Sure. Why not? "And I'm not the only one." A few more of us and who knows what wonderful things could happen? I ask myself, "What will it take to break me?" Honestly, I don't know. I don't think I want to find out. Loss couldn't do it. Death couldn't do it.

Although Nietzsche isn't one of my favourite people, he did say something true. "What does not destroy me makes me stronger." It is dangerous to almost destroy a human being, because that person is likely to "come back even stronger, not a novice any longer."

Now my next step is to deflate this gigantic ego-thing. I read somewhere that the biggest ego trip is believing that you have no ego; the second biggest is believing you have your ego under control.

SAY SOMETHING NICE ABOUT THE PALE ONE.

I promised myself that after the debate, I would say something nice and positive about Sarah Palin.  Here goes.

 

She has really pretty hair, complete with a fancy do and professional highlights!

 

My hair?  Ah, no!  Mine is 100% natural, no cutting, no coloring, no curling, no chemicals and, as yet, no grey!  Just wash and condition and comb and tie.  Repeat as needed.

 

Look!  A nice picture of her hairstyle.  And an even nicer one of her lovely children a few years ago.
 

BEASTING BARACK BEHIND HIS BACK

[This has nothing to do with this post, except that I'm putting it here. Just heard on Jay Leno, but some woman named Chelsea Something, not Clinton, an actor, I think: "I don't understand people who are still undecided about who to vote for. It's like going into Starbucks. Do you want your coffee black or with expired milk."]

(Note: This post is satiric in nature. Please don't turn me into the Neocon Thought Police.)

The Dow Jones Industrial Average today plummeted 777.86 points. BAD. Very bad. But perhaps worse than BAD.

Perhaps downright EVIL. Pronounced EEEEVIIIIILLLLL! Not evul.


This came to me as I was talking to my brother. "What a shame it was 777 instead of 666, the NUMBER OF THE BEAST.

For those of you unfamiliar with Christian theology, The Beast is the Antichrist, sort of the ultimate bad guy. Not quite The Devil, Satan, etc. No, the devil, you must understand is a fallen angel,



not human, while the Antichrist is a veddy, veddy evil human being in league with the devil.




I probably have the theology wrong; I have a way of getting these things mixed up. Anyway, in the Bible, in the book of Revelation, also called the Apocalypse, somewhere in there it says that the NUMBER OF THE BEAST is 666. Making names, etc., into 666 to prove them evil is called 'Beasting." (I learned this from Leo Tolstoy while reading War and Peace.


Yes, dear reader(s), I have read War and Peace, every word of it, well, maybe not every word, but most of them, in translation, though; I don't read Russian.)



I saw that 777.86 and thought, "Too bad it's not 666.86. Pat Robertson could make much of that!"


Mayana, however has a streak of cleverness in her worthy of a Fundamentalist Christian Evangelist out to 'prove a point.' So consider this - please read slowly and carefully; it's just a little convoluted.


The number three represents Earth.



The number four represents Heaven.




Together the represent perfection. That is the number seven. The number three also represents the Trinity, the three Gods of Fundamentalist Christianity (who are really One, but, see, we humans aren't supposed to be able to comprehend that. It's a mystery. We're just supposed to believe it. On blind faith.) So, here we have three sevens. Let us proceed to 86. Eighty-six is a phrase meaning to throw out, as to 86 the unruly drunk from the club.



So if we 86 the Father from the first seven, the Son from the second seven and the Holy Ghost from the third seven, we are left with 666.






Voila!!

Which proves that Barack Obama








is the Antichrist.

[

[OK, OK. It was actually 68, not 86. But it's making the point that is important, not getting the facts correct.]

OXFORD TOWN

Something astonishing is happening right now, Sen. John McSame and Sen. Barack Obama, the two major candidate for President of the United States (POTUS), are engaged in a debate. That's normal before an election; in fact, it has become a tradition. What is astounding, at least to me, is the location.

University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi. Hardly anyone seems to remember what happened there in 1962, 46 years ago. Along time? I suppose that depends on your perspective. I was ten years old at the time, just at the dawn of my political awareness.

Does anyone remember James Meredith?


He was the first Negro/Coloured/Black/African American to try to become a student at Ole Miss, as the University was - and still is - known. Bob Dylan wrote a song about this, Oxford Town. The paragraph under the song is from a website about the integration of Ol' Miss. It's worth looking at.

Oxford Town

Oxford Town, Oxford Town
Ev'rybody's got their heads bowed down
The sun don't shine above the ground
Ain't a-goin' down to Oxford Town

He went down to Oxford Town
Guns and clubs followed him down
All because his face was brown
Better get away from Oxford Town

Oxford Town around the bend
He come in to the door, he couldn't get in
All because of the color of his skin
What do you think about that, my frien'?

Me and my gal, my gal's son
We got met with a tear gas bomb
I don't even know why we come
Goin' back where we come from

Oxford Town in the afternoon
Ev'rybody singin' a sorrowful tune
Two men died 'neath the Mississippi moon
Somebody better investigate soon

Oxford Town, Oxford Town
Ev'rybody's got their heads bowed down
The sun don't shine above the ground
Ain't a-goin' down to Oxford Town

Copyright ©1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

In the fall of 1962 the college town of Oxford, Mississippi, erupted in violence. At the center of the controversy stood James Meredith, an African American who was attempting to register at the all-white University of Mississippi, known as "Ole Miss." Meredith had the support of the federal government, which insisted that Mississippi honor the rights of all its citizens, regardless of race. Mississippi's refusal led to a showdown between state and federal authorities and the storming of the campus by a segregationist mob. Two people died and dozens were injured. In the end, Ole Miss, the state of Mississippi, and the nation were forever changed.

Indeed, 'the nation was changed forever.' Tonight, at this same Ol' Miss, two men, two Senators vying for the highest elected office in the land are debating and one of them is an African American. Who wudda thought?

I am not overlooking the problems still existing with regards to race in this country. They are here and they are big. As I am married to an African American, I know they exist and are real. However, this is indicative of some real improvement, some real progress. I never hesitate to point out what's wrong in this country. I just feel like pointing out this one instance of some progress.

How much has Mississppi actually changed? I remember another song from this era, one that is very instructive. (If you're tired of my old songs, you have my permission to skip this one, but it really is a good song.) Here's To The State Of Mississippi by the great Phil Ochs.

Here's to the state of Mississippi,
For Underheath her borders, the devil draws no lines,
If you drag her muddy river, nameless bodies you will find.
Whoa the fat trees of the forest have hid a thousand crimes,
The calender is lyin' when it reads the present time.
Whoa here's to the land you've torn out the heart of,
Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of!

Here's to the people of Mississippi
Who say the folks up north, they just don't understand
And they tremble in their shadows at the thunder of the Klan
The sweating of their souls can't wash the blood from off their hands
They smile and shrug their shoulders at the murder of a man
Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of

Here's to the schools of Mississippi
Where they're teaching all the children that they don't have to care
All of rudiments of hatred are present everywhere
And every single classroom is a factory of despair
There's nobody learning such a foreign word as fair
Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of

Here's to the cops of Mississippi
They're chewing their tobacco as they lock the prison door
Their bellies bounce inside them as they knock you to the floor
No they don't like taking prisoners in their private little war
Behind their broken badges there are murderers and more
Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of

And, here's to the judges of Mississippi
Who wear the robe of honor as they crawl into the court
They're guarding all the bastions with their phony legal fort
Oh, justice is a stranger when the prisoners report
When the black man stands accused the trial is always short
Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of

And here's to the government of Mississippi
In the swamp of their bureaucracy they're always bogging down
And criminals are posing as the mayors of the towns
They're hoping that no one sees the sights and hears the sounds
And the speeches of the governor are the ravings of a clown
Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of

And here's to the laws of Mississippi
Congressmen will gather in a circus of delay
While the Constitution is drowning in an ocean of decay
Unwed mothers should be sterilized, I've even heard them say
Yes, corruption can be classic in the Mississippi way
Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of

And here's to the churches of Mississippi
Where the cross, once made of silver, now is caked with rust
And the Sunday morning sermons pander to their lust
The fallen face of Jesus is choking in the dust
Heaven only knows in which God they can trust
Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of

God knows we still have a long way to go, but at least a step or two has been taken. "We ain't what we could be; we ain't what we should be; we ain't what we would be; but, Praise God! We ain't what we were!"

--
WHY TRY TO FIT IN? YOU WERE BORN TO STAND OUT!

Fun With Politics - Rally Against Sarah Palin

Speaking of Alaska...

I spent some of the most difficult years of my life in Alaska, from 1993-1997. I was in very bad shape. In fact I was certifiably insane for much of that time. Hardly a high point of my life. Most of my memories of Alaska are not happy. One good thing, though, I did reunite with my brother after many years of separation.

We lived in Anchorage, a strange city, full of strange people. I fit right in. I was freaked out by the barely visible sun in winter and loved the nearly endless summer days, although I missed seeing the stars.

Alaska is incredibly beautiful and needs to be preserved.

Alaska deserves much better than Sarah Palin.

A friend sent me this article, along with the pictures.

Psssst...pass it on!

[The] Alaska Women Reject Palin rally was to be held outside on the lawn in front of the Loussac Library in midtown Anchorage . Home made signs were encouraged, and the idea was to make a statement that Sarah Palin does not speak for all Alaska women, or men. I had no idea what to expect.

The rally was organized by a small group of women, talking over coffee. It made me wonder what other things have started with small groups of women talking over coffee. It's probably an impressive list. These women hatched the plan, printed up flyers, posted them around town, and sent notices to local media outlets. One of those media outlets was KBYR radio, home of Eddie Burke, a long-time uber-conservative Anchorage talk show host. Turns out that Eddie Burke not only announced the rally, but called the people who planned to attend the rally "a bunch of socialist baby-killing maggots," and read the home phone numbers of the organizers aloud over the air, urging listeners to call and tell them what they thought. The women, of course, received some nasty, harassing and threatening messages.

I felt a bit apprehensive. I'd been disappointed before by the turnout at other rallies. Basically, in Anchorage , if you can get 25 people to show up at an event, it's a success. So, I thought to myself, if we can actually get 100 people there that aren't sent by Eddie Burke, we'll be doing good. A real statement will have been made. I confess, I still had a mental image of 15 demonstrators surrounded by hundreds of menacing "socialist baby-killing maggot" haters.

It's a good thing I wasn't tailgating when I saw the crowd in front of the library or I would have ended up in somebody's trunk. When I got there, about 20 minutes early, the line of sign wavers stretched the full length of the library grounds, along the edge of the road, 6 or 7 people deep! I could hardly find a place to park. I nabbed one of the last spots in the library lot, and as I got out of the car and started walking, people seemed to join in from every direction, carrying signs.

Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by. And even those that didn't honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute. This just doesn't happen here.

Then, the infamous Eddie Burke showed up. He tried to talk to the media, and was instantly surrounded by a group of 20 people who started shouting O-BA-MA so loud he couldn't be heard. Then passing cars started honking in a rhythmic pattern of 3, like the Obama chant, while the crowd cheered, hooted and waved their signs high.

So, if you've been doing the math… Yes. The Alaska Women Reject Palin rally was significantly bigger than Palin's rally that got all the national media coverage! So take heart, sit back, and enjoy the photo gallery. Feel free to spread the pictures around to anyone who needs to know that Sarah Palin most definitely does not speak for all Alaskans. The citizens of Alaska , who know her best, have things to say.

A bunch of pictures of that rally:

COURAGE, HOPE - AND A SORT OF FREEDOM - IN YEMEN

What to say about this? One very strong, brave little girl who - with the help of an aunty - stood up and said, "ENOUGH!"

I am sort of lobbying for the rights of very young girls. I am outraged by the systematic murder of preborn girls among Asian Indian communities. This has been going on long enough that there now exists a gender imbalance resulting in a shortage of marriageable women in some communities. That is a subject for another post, however.

This story has a much happier ending than a dead child.

I read this today in the Los Angeles Times. A bride who is very young woman, has already been married - and, thankfully, divorced - at age 10. I am struck that her father seems to have been trying to protect her by giving her to a brutal pedophile. Is he really that stupid, naive, uncultured? Who knows. As for the this young lady, surely she can serve as an inspiration to all of us who sometimes feel that we have too much to overcome in life! Maybe even make our complaints and lack of action seem a little bit silly.

from The Los Angeles Times:

Yemeni 10-year-old divorcee Nujood Ali goes back to school

SANA, YEMEN -- Still groggy, the schoolgirl brushed her hair, struggled to pull on her socks and snuggled into her school uniform: a green gown and a white head scarf.

By the time she gathered up her books and strapped on her backpack she was smiling and enthusiastic, her nervousness eclipsed by anticipation of the first day of class.




Like children across the world, 10-year-old Nujood Ali went back to school this month after a lengthy break. But Nujood hadn't been lazing about or playing hide-and-seek with her friends during the summer.

Instead, after she was pulled out of the second grade by her father earlier this year, she was married off to a man three times her age, who beat her and sexually abused her.

For many girls in this traditional society, where tribal custom and conservative interpretations of Islam dominate, that would have been the end of the story. But Nujood was outraged. She gathered up her courage and on the advice of an aunt went to court in April. She got the help of a lawyer and filed for divorce.

A judge quickly granted it.

And on Tuesday morning, the divorcee, possibly the world's youngest, once again became a schoolgirl.

"I'm very happy to be going back to school," she said, waiting in her ramshackle home for her younger sister Haifa to get ready. "I'm going to study Arabic, the Koran, mathematics and drawing. I will do that with my classmates and I will definitely make friends there."

Nujood's unusual story of rebellion made her an international celebrity. Since The Times wrote of her in June, CNN, Elle magazine and other international media have come to this mountaintop capital to chronicle her tale.

Hordes of nonprofit organizations offered to help her get back to school, some even willing to foot the bill to send her abroad or to a fancy private academy, though they ignored Haifa, Nujood's little sister and best friend.

In the end, Nujood opted for a small, government-run public school relatively close to her home. She would begin where she left off, starting the second grade again.

Even then, it wasn't easy. One teacher said she worried that Nujood might disturb other students by talking about her sexual experiences.

The night before she went to school, Nujood said she dreamed of notebooks, drawings and new friends.

"When I left school, I learned how to count from one to 100," she said. "Now, I am going to learn how to count until a million."

Nujood said she wanted to study hard, to be able to attend university and become a lawyer like Shada Nasser, the well-known Yemeni human rights advocate who helped her get her divorce.

The girl's experience, and her ambition, have even served as an inspiration to her parents, uneducated rural people who moved to the capital's outskirts a few years ago and say they married her off to protect her from the dangers of the city.

"We were never asked if we wanted to go to school when we were children," said her father, Ali Mohammed Ahdal, who has two wives and 16 children.

"If we had a choice, we would have loved to study like Nujood."

On Tuesday morning, Nujood and Haifa climbed into a yellow taxi paid for by an Italian aid group and drove through the capital's smog-choked streets, passing vendors of the mildly narcotic khat leaves and the occasional shepherd.

Outside the schoolhouse, Nasser stood waiting, eager to share a day she had anticipated. "I can't believe we finally made it," said the attorney, who agreed to drop the rest of her caseload to take up Nujood's cause after the girl showed up alone in a Sana courthouse in April.

Nujood and Nasser were welcomed by Njala Matri, the principal of the school in Rawdha, a lower-middle-class neighborhood along the road to the city's international airport.

"You are welcome here. You can feel at home," she said, smiling at Nujood.

Only about half of Yemeni girls attend primary school. Last year, one of the school's 1,200 girls, a 13-year-old, dropped out to marry, though the legal age of consent is 15. "Now, she's a mother," Matri said in dismay.

Women's rights activists say child marriage is part of a vicious circle. Girls drop out of school and bear too many children, contributing to Yemen's high female illiteracy and exploding birth rate.

But on Tuesday, Nujood stepped through the school's gates into a vast courtyard, disappearing into a swarm of noisy classmates. Some paid her no mind, while others approached the girl who had become a local and international media star.

"I am so excited," she said, playing nervously with her hands.

A bell sounded and the students quieted down, forming lines for roll call before shuffling into classrooms of about 50 students each.

Nujood took a seat in the third row, neither at the front nor the back of the classroom.

The teacher, dressed in an all-covering black abaya, hushed the students and began the day's lesson by asking them to recite the national anthem as well as passages from the Koran.

Small hands shot into the air.

"Who can recite the Surat al-Hamd?" the teacher asked, referring to the first chapter of the Koran.

She saw Nujood's hand, and called her name.

"Nujood?" she said.

Nujood stood up and began, ending with: "Show us the straight path. The path of those whom You have favored. Not the path of those who earn Your anger nor of those who go astray."

"May God bless you," said the teacher.

"Let's give her a round of applause."

The others clapped as Nujood sat down, a little girl once again.

daragahi@latimes.com

Special correspondent Minoui reported from Sana and staff writer Daragahi from Beirut

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Pictures by Delphine Munoui:

Nujood Ali, 10, stands near her home on the outskirts of Sana, Yemen. Her father gave Nujood's hand in marriage to a man three times her age.




Nujood Ali sits with her father, Ali Mohammed Ahdal, who is unemployed and has two wives and 16 children. Yemeni law sets the age of consent at 15. But tribal customs and interpretations of Islam often trump the law in this country of 23 million.




ONE THOUSAND CHEERS FOR THIS LADY!!Human rights lawyer Shada Nasser is representing Nujood Ali. Publicity surrounding the case prompted calls for tightened legislation, which conservative Yemeni lawmakers refused to take up.




Nujood Ali, left, sits in the living room of her modest home with her mother, Shuaieh. “All I want now is to finish my education,” Nujood said. “I want to be a lawyer.”






Ten-year-old Nujood Ali, left, waits for her sister to get ready for their first day of school. She was pulled out of classes earlier this year by her parents who married her off to a man three times her age.

Nujood, left, enjoys a day at an amusement park with her younger sister Haifa. After being married to a man aged 30 and suffering physical and sexual abuse, Nujood went to court to get a divorce, becoming a sensation in Yemen and abroad.

Nujood Ali, left, enjoys a break at a playground with her older sister Mona as she got ready to go back to school this week. Child marriage is common in Yemen, which suffers a vicious cycle of poverty, high female illiteracy, early marriage and booming population.

Nujood Ali, second row, right , sits with classmates during her first day back to school Tuesday. Many schools had refused her admission, fearing that she might share her experience of sexual abuse with fellow students. But the principal of a small government-run school in Sana welcomed her.