Rally to restore sanity and/or fear

[Lord O' Bones]

Sorry. I'm just getting fed up with all of the rallies and counter rallies and the finger pointing and blaming. There's all of this going on and no-one seems to be able to produce a viable candidate that boils down to anything better than "Well, at least he's not THAT guy!" I'm tired of having to choose between the lesser of two evils. I'd like to have someone to vote for that I can vote for because I think that they are the best person for the job (as opposed to the 2nd worst person for it).

Dude. I'm 99.9999999999999% sure that this is exactly the point of this one.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

As far as I know, it's the first of these rally's to call a spade a spade.

From what I saw, that may be tough given the monochromatic nature of that crowd.

Also kind of funny to see those open-minded "moderates" at the rally to restore civility holding up pictures of jewish House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, and others, as Hitler. Perfect examples of the left's idea of moderation and civility.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39925382/ns/politics-more_politics/

[Datepalm]

Dude. I'm 99.9999999999999% sure that this is exactly the point of this one.

I'm wary of media fuelled psuedo political gimmicks, but this is interesting in the sense of possibly being a push for re-legitmization of taking to the street as a basic, ordinary, bourgeouisly middle class necessity, rather than as some rare fringey thing only radicals and minorities ever do.

[Lord O' Bones]

From what I saw, that may be tough given the monochromatic nature of that crowd.

Were they at least infrared, ultraviolet?

Or do you mean there were colors involved?

Really, wtf do mean by this?

[Lord O' Bones]

I'm wary of media fuelled psuedo political gimmicks, but this is interesting in the sense of possibly being a push for re-legitmization of taking to the street as a basic, ordinary, bourgeouisly middle class necessity, rather than as some rare fringey thing only radicals and minorities ever do.

Well, if this sucks too, it's no worse than anything else we've been subjected to.

Honestly, I participate in these US political conversations hoping for, uh, hope.

Damnit.

[Trebla]

Were they at least infrared, ultraviolet?

Or do you mean there were colors involved?

Really, wtf do mean by this?

my first thought was a "joke" about blacks. black=spade.

i hope that wasnt it because WTF?!?!?!

[Shryke]

From what I saw, that may be tough given the monochromatic nature of that crowd.

Also kind of funny to see those open-minded "moderates" at the rally to restore civility holding up pictures of jewish House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, and others, as Hitler. Perfect examples of the left's idea of moderation and civility.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39925382/ns/politics-more_politics/

Poe's Law crits FLOW for 1 Sanity (120394 overkill)

[Andriy Czarchenko]

Also kind of funny to see those open-minded "moderates" at the rally to restore civility holding up pictures of jewish House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, and others, as Hitler. Perfect examples of the left's idea of moderation and civility.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39925382/ns/politics-more_politics/

So you´re blaming Stewart/Colbert because msnbc did exactly what the rally was against and focused on stuff like that?

[Lord O' Bones]

my first thought was a "joke" about blacks. black=spade.

i hope that wasnt it because WTF?!?!?!

Dude. Have we met? Even on the interwebs?

This is so surprising I'm going to sleep now. I'm sure edits

to follow.

[awesome possum]

Also kind of funny to see those open-minded "moderates" at the rally to restore civility holding up pictures of jewish House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, and others, as Hitler. Perfect examples of the left's idea of moderation and civility.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39925382/ns/politics-more_politics/

But FLOW, I thought one or two people holding up signs weren't supposed to represent the views of an entire group of people?

Or does that philosophy only work when it's people on the right holding up idiotic signs?

[drawkcabi]

I think the primary goal of the rally to organize a gathering for non-extremist people to just let off some steam in response to the extremist rallies and other bullshit that's piled up to beyond excess this election cycle.

Also it was an attempt to show the country/world that not all of us are crazies that think Obama wasn't born in the U.S. and want to abolish socialized medicine but keep your damn hands of our medicare!

I don't think anyone had expectations more than that, hopes maybe, but not expectations.

Yeah extremists still showed up you can't keep all the douches out of a gathering that size.

I watched it on TV and thought it was nicely and tastfully done. Loved the part was Aasif Mandvi and Jason Jones one being a reporter portraying the rally in a positive light, the other in a negative one. Pretty much getting there first to what everyone is going to do anyway.

[Jaime L]

Enjoying looking at the signs and stuff (my favorite so far--"I don't know what we're yelling about!" with a picture of Steve Corell).

LOUD NOISES!

[Maithanet]

I went to the rally and it was fun. They were obviously not prepared for this many people. The metro wasn't, and the facilities weren't. The speakers only broadcast for about half the crowd, and so unless you were willing to push through, you couldn't hear anything. I'm tall enough that I could hear pretty well and sort of see the monitors, but my girlfriend, six inches closer to the ground, couldn't hear or see much. Shame.

As for what it was about? It was basically that political divisions and cable news are hurting the country. That every day in all contexts, Americans can and do work together with people they disagree with. So why should politics be different?

FLOW, Blauer, I think the sentiment you are expressing was TOTALLY different from the mood on the ground. I saw hundreds of posters and virtually all were either an appeal to reason "Bush = Not Hitler. Obama = Not Hitler. Hitler = Hitler", or absolute nonsense "Everybody Poops!" A few were obviously political (for drug legalization and gay marriage typically). I didn't see a single sign that was vilifying Republicans. Not one. I'm sure there were some there, since there were hundreds of thousands of people. But that wasn't what this rally was about, and frankly it was pretty obvious.

[Liadin]

From what I saw, that may be tough given the monochromatic nature of that crowd.

Also kind of funny to see those open-minded "moderates" at the rally to restore civility holding up pictures of jewish House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, and others, as Hitler. Perfect examples of the left's idea of moderation and civility.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39925382/ns/politics-more_politics/

Actually, the sign looks like a parody of that. It has a picture of a bunch of Republicans, and a picture of Hitler in front of an American flag. There's no connection drawn between them and I think that's the point. It's a "stop calling everyone Hitler" sign, not an "Eric Cantor, Sarah Palin, etc. are Hitler" sign.

Wish I'd been there, it sounds like fun.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

So after viewing the whole thing, it seemed like it would just be fluffy and silly. But Stewarts speech at the end was very good, and seemed to capture the point.

The only thing I think that should have been said, and wasn't was - "Look, a quarter million people just showed up to say this: WE are the undecided voters. WE are the swing states. WE are the ones you absolutely can not count on to support one party or the other in elections. So how about you start pandering to US instead of the nutjobs in your own parties? Thanks and good night."

[jurble]

I went to the rally and it was fun. They were obviously not prepared for this many people. The metro wasn't, and the facilities weren't. The speakers only broadcast for about half the crowd, and so unless you were willing to push through, you couldn't hear anything. I'm tall enough that I could hear pretty well and sort of see the monitors, but my girlfriend, six inches closer to the ground, couldn't hear or see much. Shame.

Yeah, the few shots I saw of the crowd made me think "Whoa, how the hell can those people possibly know what's going on?"

[Trebla]

LOUD NOISES!

I love Freedom.

I love the Constitution.

I love...LAMP.

[Tempra]

I went to the rally and it was fun. They were obviously not prepared for this many people. The metro wasn't, and the facilities weren't. The speakers only broadcast for about half the crowd, and so unless you were willing to push through, you couldn't hear anything. I'm tall enough that I could hear pretty well and sort of see the monitors, but my girlfriend, six inches closer to the ground, couldn't hear or see much. Shame.

As for what it was about? It was basically that political divisions and cable news are hurting the country. That every day in all contexts, Americans can and do work together with people they disagree with. So why should politics be different?

FLOW, Blauer, I think the sentiment you are expressing was TOTALLY different from the mood on the ground. I saw hundreds of posters and virtually all were either an appeal to reason "Bush = Not Hitler. Obama = Not Hitler. Hitler = Hitler", or absolute nonsense "Everybody Poops!" A few were obviously political (for drug legalization and gay marriage typically). I didn't see a single sign that was vilifying Republicans. Not one. I'm sure there were some there, since there were hundreds of thousands of people. But that wasn't what this rally was about, and frankly it was pretty obvious.

I saw that sign as well. There were 3-4 other "No one is hitler but hitler" type signs. As far as I could tell, a lot of the partisan hacks were on side streets. There were quite a few anti fox news protestors, I saw some anti-cheney protestors. I didn't see any anti-bush protestors. Lots of pro-choice protestors.

I got dragged to the rally and was pleasantly surprised by the composition of the people who turned up and the tone of the event. I mostly agree with Jon Stewart's final speech.

[Atreides]

Maithanet, I thought it went without saying that the Metro would be unprepared? They're probably still riding high after finishing the six month repair project on the two small escalators at Bethesda to think about other things...

[Shryke]

So after viewing the whole thing, it seemed like it would just be fluffy and silly. But Stewarts speech at the end was very good, and seemed to capture the point.

The only thing I think that should have been said, and wasn't was - "Look, a quarter million people just showed up to say this: WE are the undecided voters. WE are the swing states. WE are the ones you absolutely can not count on to support one party or the other in elections. So how about you start pandering to US instead of the nutjobs in your own parties? Thanks and good night."

It probably wasn't included because that wasn't what he was talking about.