Obama Rally

Yesterday Lisa and I attended a rally for Obama in Highland, Indiana. The area around Highland, Lake County, is blue collar steel mill country just off Lake Michigan and across the state border from Chicago, Illinois. Not a bad drive, but we were surprised by how few Chicagoans were there. It was around 20,000 Hoosiers, as Indiana residents call themselves. Lisa and I both grew up in Indiana.

I was a little taller, had a better angle, and a better camera than a lot of folks behind me. Some of them asked me to send them copies of the photos I took. I promised to post copies to my website.

Click here for my Flickr photo set of all the photos that came out OK. Once you're there, click on the "All Sizes" link to see a larger copy of any image. And here are a few highlights:

The rally was held at a public golf course. In the bar of the clubhouse was a folksy Barack Obama statue. There we were, elitist country club Democrats!

Fellow (non-comics) illustrator and ILA poster artist Patrick Girouard. He's a NW Indiana native. He was signing up volunteers to do more volunteering. Whether you're supporting Bob Barr (Libertarian Party) or Elaine Brown (Green Party), or of course Barack Obama, I hope you'll all do your best to get out the vote.

And if you're a Republican, I guess you'll be filing lawsuits to keep WWII veterans from voting .... I'll be happy if you stop doing that ! ;)

Everyone was amused by Candy Crowley's CNN cameraman, who'd dressed up for Halloween. He's got a plunger on his noggin and a "JOE" name tag on his vest. Look everyone, it's Joe the Media Elite!

The crowd had a good number of kids. Hoping they grow up not to be the cynical mob my generation turned into.

Barack speaks. He speaks good! I'm amused with Republicans who once lauded Reagan as the "Great Communicator" but now act as if knowing how to pronounce "nuclear" is a crime. To quote Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, "What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?"

Obama leaves the podium. He asked for unity and tolerance, and never attacked anyone's character, just their ideas. When someone in the crowd mocked Candy Crowley he had to stop because everyone let him know he was being rude. Actually, everyone seemed to like Candy, and there were some jokey yells of "We love you, Candy!"

Love to all, especially our GOP friends and relatives, Gene and Lisa