Saturday, October 18, 2008

Palin's Indiana Rally Tops Obama's

The Chicago Sun-Times political reporter Abdon Pallasch declares Gov. Sarah Palin's speech "to 24,000 cheering fans" at the Verizon Music Center in Noblesville yesterday a smashing success:


"The crowd was larger than showed up here for Jimmy Buffet or Dave Matthews this summer and 3,000 more than came out to hear Obama last week," he writes.

I must correct Pallasch on one glaring error in his story though. "Playing to the crowd, Palin praised the Indi 500 and movies like “Hoosiers” and “Rudy,” Pallasch wrote. That's "Indy" not "Indi", Abdon. At least he didn't deliberately under-estimate the crowd numbers as some local reporters and one local blogger did. And the worst thing Pallasch could report on the crowd: "The fans screamed “Booo!” at least 10 times when Palin mentioned Obama’s name."

On that note, one local blogger asked the Star's Matt Tully about the misreporting by some in the news media, as well as the false claim in this week's debate by Sen. Obama, that supporters of Palin and McCain at rallies had screamed, "Kill him" in reference to Obama. The Secret Service, of course, says no such thing happened. By some accounts, the supporters yelled, "Tell him." Tully's response to the blogger's question was something to the effect that he would believe the reporting of a fellow colleague at the Washington Post over the claims of the Secret Service. Local race baiter, talk show host Amos Brown ratched it up a little more in his weekly column in the Indianapolis Recorder: "At their rallies speakers used Obama’s middle name “Hussein” as a spoken obscenity. "Others screamed “terrorist,” “Arab,” “kill him,” “off with his head” at the mention of Obama’s name." Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity and Greg Garrison all earned the label of "talk radio bigots" by Brown this week as well, as he continued his annual election tradition of doing all he can to polarize blacks against whites and the Republican Party.

10 comments:

Downtown Indy said...

Well, you induced me to read an Amos column. I found this interesting:

"If ACORN filled out registration forms for “Mickey Mouse,” “Bart Simpson,” “L. E. Fant” and other bogus names, those “people” can’t vote unless they procude an Indiana state photo ID, driver’s license or an American passport, which requires an orginal birth certificate."

So you have to produce one to vote, but not to be the one (pardon the phrase) for which they are voting. What a curious double-standard.

Chris Worden said...

How can the Secret Service say it did not happen that anyone said "kill him?" All they can do is interview people they knew who were there and report whether THEY heard it. But I would submit the following for your consideration. We generally DON'T like terrorists in this country, McCain and conservative commentators are basically calling Obama a terrorist outright by association( William Ayers and having the name "Hussein") and there's already been one plot (as ridiculously flawed as it was) to kill Obama. I noticed the Secret Service didn't debunk all the people at McCain rallies calling Obama an "Arab." If you think they're saying it as a compliment, you've just lost ALL of your credibility. This is hateful speech uttered by people who want to divide and conquer this country. This is the kind of tactic Lee Atwater apologized for on his death bed. I wonder how many others will regret themselves when they're about to meet their makers.

Gary R. Welsh said...

Well, first of all Chris, sitting where I sat with the media at yesterday's rally, it was difficult most of the time to hear what any given person in the audience was yelling. You choose to give Obama a pass for spending over 20 years as a member of a church which essentially teaches its members that white people are bad, that America is the problem and which symphathized with the 9/11 atackers. In his own book, Obama uses the term "greedy white people" to make a point. Frankly, we've had it with the double standards. Every word uttered by a Republican is twisted and turned to mean "racist" or "bigot". You also conveniently ignore the violent attacks of Obama supporters against McCain supporters like the woman who had a McCain sign snatched from her hand in New York and was beaten in the face with it by an Obama supporter. Your candidate told his supporters to get in our faces. Take a look in the mirror, Chris, before speaking the next time on this subject.

Downtown Indy said...

I wouldn't be surprised if DID happen, and would be equally unsurprised if it was an Obama sympathizer trying to create a controversy. I've seen the Palin T-shirts. Nothing would surprise me at this point.

Jeff said...

Well gang I can tell you this. I was there and it was a great crowd but bigger then Buffet? Was this guy at Buffett? Was he drinking yesterday and had triple vision? Great crowd yesterday but well under a Buffet Crowd I can assure you.

Concerned Taxpayer said...

What about the people who vote absentee? They don't have to produce anything.

I DARE anyone to cross-match the absentee ballot addresses with the list of voters who have moved, died, etc.

bobisimo said...

--- "So you have to produce one to vote, but not to be the one (pardon the phrase) for which they are voting. What a curious double-standard." ---

thumbs up!

bobisimo said...

---"What about the people who vote absentee? They don't have to produce anything."---

Their votes don't count. I know this because I voted that way twice and both times I was told my vote wasn't allowed.

:)

truthblogger said...

OMG, 24,000? I went to it. Because I knew there would be over reporting again.

Not all the seats were filled up, as evidenced by pictures. The lawn was'nt fiulled up like either Buffet or DMB, and I have seen them both alot at Verizon.

The capacity at Verizon is 24k, and it was not full bu any means.

Even the Fire Marshall said it was about 15k. Good try though.

Gary R. Welsh said...

15,000 Truthblogger? The only person I read using that number was Abdul and I don't even recall seeing him at the event. I've been to concerts there and there were as least as many people there as a sold out concert. Sorry to crush the Obama people with the news that Palin drew more people than Obama.