Palin Live

OK, so I'm probably one of a handful of Missourians who attended both the Obama Rally and Palin Rally in the span of five days.

This rally was similar to last Thursday, though smaller and more sunny. It sill included typical opponent-bashing by the underlings, with a special "I can't believe he said that but I guess it's OK because he's so old" speech by Kit Bond. I've always been a general fan of Sen. Bond, but I could envision a number of Republican higher-ups cringing a few times during today's ramblings.

Then Palin showed up to the usual fanfare, and she announced the next special guest (I guess she wasn't the headliner, after all): Hank Williams, Jr. It was my first Jr. experience, and it was kinda fun.

Hank sang the national anthem (pretty good) and a rewritten McCain/Palin version of Family Tradition (absolutely awful).

Then M.C. Palin got back to the podium and gave her typical speech. Not bad, but similar to everything we've heard so far. I wasn't close enough to know if there was a wink at the end.

The basic message of the day was Palin's governance of Alaska is the trump card for Executive Experience and McCain is the only man in the U.S. who has ever really faught for our country.

Again, it wasn't bad, but it did come off as a "let's rally the base, and do it quickly, as we're about to lose" kind of rally.

It was fun to experience both this close to the election, and I did get a warm fuzzy feeling (start the band here) that we live in a country where people can get very excited about how they feel government should work, and that we all get to cast our vote to see who gets to try it their way for a few years. Overall, I think it's a pretty good system.