Debate Deja vu

Tweets from the Sarah Palin rally

If you're not on Twitter, check it out.  It's pretty useful for a lot of things (woot offs anyone? Cubs beat writers posting the lineups as soon as Lou releases them.  Reporters following candidates, etc.) as well as just kind of fun to follow friends in their daily life as they update.  The following are my twitter updates from Leah and I attending the Sarah Palin rally in Des Moines earlier today.

An Obama supporter just called me a communist. Seriously? Can we define that word? about 8 hours ago from txt 

I might actually hate secret service more than the TSA. Which is saying quite a bit. about 7 hours ago from txt

 Listening to aaron tippin sing at the rally. about 7 hours ago from txt  

 Some dude at the rally near me keeps dropping ass. Not cool in close quarters dude. about 7 hours ago from txt 

Sen. Brownback just took the stage. about 7 hours ago from txt

 Chuck Grassley just took the stage. And the miserable dbag close to me is still making life unpleasant. about 6 hours ago from txt

 Governor Palin will be on stage in a minute. about 6 hours ago from txt

 Some poor kid just walked through the crowd at belt level just as my least favorite person dropped another one. about 6 hours ago from txt

 Sarah takes the stage. about 6 hours ago from txt

The protestors leave before the rally is over? Weak.about 5 hours ago from txt

This brings back fond childhood memories

I think I know what I'm doing this weekend

Holden in the leaves

The Obama Anthem

Ronald Reagan Quote

“Freedom is something that cannot be passed on in the blood stream, or genetically. And it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. Every generation has to learn how to protect and defend it, or it’s gone and gone for a long, long time. Already, many of us, particularly those in business and industry, there are too many who have switched rather than fight. And it’s time that particularly, some of our corporations learned, that when you get in bed with government, you’re going to get more than a good night’s sleep.” - Ronald Reagan

Choke

I wanted eleven wins in the post season.  Thanks to a choke for the ages, I didn't even see one.  Perhaps as the days pass I'll be able to put this in to perspective a little bit more but for now I'm trying to wrap my head around how the team that played six months of outstanding baseball - by far the best ball I've ever seen a Cubs team play - could absolutely SUCK this badly when the calendar hits October.  Even during the six game slide in late Aug/early September they didn't look like this.  This was awful.  No pitching, no hitting, no defense.  Completely inexcusable.

I typically rotate the quote from Rogers Hornsby about looking out the window waiting for spring during the offseason with one from Bart Giamatti's book "The Green Fields of the Mind" between October and March on the index page of this website.  Although what I'm really thinking and feeling is nowhere near this eloquent (or proper for mixed company), I'll put the Giamatti quote here.  It's one of my favorite quotes of all time but hits even closer to home than normal right now.

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.

Playoff time

Game 1 of the NLDS begins in 7 hours. Eleven wins are needed. Frankly, eleven wins may be all that keeps me sane at this point. I need this to keep myself distracted from watching the United States turn in to a country I never thought it would. I need to keep myself distracted from looking at my 401k statement. I really need to keep myself distracted from Obama supporters who don't know their collective ass from a hole in the ground. I've tried - honestly, I've made a real effort - to get a few of them to tell me why they support him. Good God, has anyone really taken a close look at this guy's policies and history? All I get for a response to why he's getting support is one or more of the following:

• Campaign slogans parroted back at me. (Yeah. I get it. Hope and Change. They sound great as long as you don't ask for a definition of them)
  
• Anti-Bush venom. (Bush screwed the pooch on a lot of things. I agree. You don't like him. I get that. He's done in January. Focus.)
• Anti-Republican venom. (Yeah, the minority party in the House and Senate is completely responsible for the mess this country is in.)
• Letting YouTube do their talking. (If you want to sway me to your position, can you do a little better than sending me something "funny" that some jackass on TV said?)
  
• And my favorite because I've gotten this from three different people over the last couple of weeks - "evidence" of Obama being right about things has been presented by sending me a link to an Obama website.

That last one is fantastic. Based on this, I can throw up a text file on my webpage that says "Lowell is a ninja" and direct people to it as the only facts needed to back my claim that I'm a ninja. The Obama site that the Barak disciples seem to like to point me towards most often (www.fightthesmears.com) actually has a section where you can copy and paste a full e-mail to send to your unenlightened friends to give them the "truth". I think it's great that the Obama camp is thoughtful enough to help their supporters not have to put any original thought in to things. Research is hard. Writing things on your own is even harder. I <3 sheep.

So, like I was saying, I need eleven wins to keep my mind of things. It's been an amazing season. It would go from amazing to unforgetable with these eleven wins. Make it happen Lou and 25 suiting up tonight.