I was outside the event for the pre-debate rally. One of the Keyes supporters claimed “There was a special place in Hell for people like me.” (Charming!) So I asked here to clarify. “God’s retribution is swift,” she replied. So I decided to push the process along: I held up my umbrella to the skies and shouted, “Strike me dead, God! Strike me dead!!” That got laughs from BOTH sides, but alas, no lightning.
I guess God supports Obama.
We had a good 30-35 Kohn supporters out facing off with the Obama and Keyes people who didn’t outnumber us by much at all. Those Obama sycophants were a piece of work, though. Between their chants of “Yes we can”, we added the word “discriminate” much to their dismay. That’s all it took for them to get started on their road to tin-foil hatville.
According to the Obama people we were just out to get the white supremacist vote, which we’d rather would stay home than vote for us. Considering Jerry Kohn announced in October 2003, long before anyone knew the primary winners let alone Keyes’ late entry, and you can tell what type intellectual level the Obama supporters were at.
The same tired claim they keep making that Jerry Kohn must have changed his name to get confused John Kerry voters made the Obama crew’s tin-foil hats even tighter. Again, Jerry announced he was running before anyone had an inkling John Kerry would be the Dem. nominee. And since Jerry Kohn has had his name his entire life and ran for state rep. two years ago and library trustee last year, I’d say if our motive was to get confused John Kerry voters, then EVERYONE should be voting for our obviously clairvoyant party.
One of the nervous police officers stuck in the middle of us to keep us peaceful apparently learned a valuable lesson about which supporters had the most integrity. As he left he turned around to Jerry and said, “You’ve got my vote Jerry”. Keyes crew was pretty annoying and the Obama gang was just downright nasty and rude.
After the debate Alan Keyes did come over and shake Jerry’s hand and chatted for a moment with us. That was classy. Obama stuck to his elitist attitude which had obviously rubbed off on his supporters.
Hold on a moment, Jeff.
For all you readers, much of the post above is a total fabrication. I know because I was the guy with the umbrella, and I stood in the middle of the Kohn “crowd” during the pre-debate rally. Whether I or anybody else was obnoxious kind of depends on which candidate you support. But the facts about what happened, as Jeff stated them, are far from accurate.
First off, if there were 30-35 Kohn supporters, I didn’t see them. I’d say there were 10, TOPS. There were about equal numbers of Keyes and Obama supporters, and definitely more Keyes SIGNS than Obama signs, but Kohn’s crew was massively outnumbered. Anyone who attended will confirm this.
Secondly, if he’s trying to say it was Obama followers who were trying to silence Kohn, I would also like to point out that I, along with my partner, were the only Obama supporters who showed up at the Senate Q&A event at the Irish Cultural Center the previous Saturday, and it was my partner (an Obama supporter) who stood up and asked that Kohn be allowed to participate in the event. Keyes agreed, and Kohn shared the stage with Keyes (though Alan was a little grabby with the microphone–big surprise). Jerry Kohn can confirm this, AS HE DID outside the WTTW studios to his supporters–after listening to the Kohn folk bellyache about how he was being silenced, my partner asked Kohn to tell the folks like Jeff how we Obama folk had stuck up for him to debate Keyes last Saturday. And Jeff, since I can narrow you down to one of those 10 middle-aged fat guys who hates taxes, I know you heard what Kohn said.
Now I ask Jeff, like I did (many times) of all you Kohn folks the other night, why did NOT ONE Kohn-backer, except his wife, show up to support their candidate last Saturday? Hmmmm?
Bunch of losers.
Why didn’t we come last Saturday? We weren’t invited and we were warned NOT to come. Jerry decided to go on his own anyway last minute to see what happened if he bucked their warning and passed out his own stuff and never expected to be included. That’s like asking why Obama and his people weren’t at the Anti-Gay “Family Values” Rally where Jerry was the only one to speak in favor of gay marriage (something Obama has never done and DOES NOT support) and against the constitutional amendment. In enemy territory.
That was a stand-up thing to do at the Irish CC “debate” to pressure them on the spot into including Jerry and he did tell me about it. Funny, but the Keyes folks claimed your partner was our plant. If you two were the only Obama people there, then the Libertarians matched Obama’s support at the event, now didn’t we. Where was Obama and all of his supporters since you want to criticize us? Doesn’t make up for Obama’s Fidel Castro stance on democracy and free and equal elections though.
10? Nope. Shows your credibility. Jerry was already inside when I got there at about 6:15 so I didn’t see him until afterwards. If 34 is middle-age, I fit that description and the name-calling, fat and loser comments pretty much shows how the Obama gang treated us that night also. Thanks for adding more evidence in my favor.
We still had 17 people there at 8:30 after the debate ended. I came with 4 in my car alone. Me, Ron, Jim, Dave. Then I saw Ken, Neal and Bill. Jim and Christina and Christina brought 5 with her I don’t know the names of since they were there on principle and are not Libertarians. Val, Jason, Max, and James. David and Dale came together. Bob, Wendy, Andy, Scott, Bob and another guy from Lake County I don’t remember the name but worked the Lake County booth with last year. John had the tickets Jerry used. That’s 28 and I’m missing a handful off the top of my head. Next time I’ll take attendance.
I’d say Obama and Keyes had 60-70 each. Keyes crowd did look bigger because of the signs, but it was pretty even. Even if we only had 10 people (which isn’t close to the truth) we still would have far exceeded any expectation considering the population of Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians within driving distance after work on a weekday.
I’d rather be a “loser” than an egotistical, rude, name-calling, sell-out, power-hungry at the expense of democracy “winner” any day.
Raw nerve?
Politics isn’t for the thin-skinned, my friend.
How do you feel about legalizing drugs, or are you just a Libertarian for tax purposes only?
Who was it that had to minimize the truth (putting it very mildly) because their saviour candidate was exposed to some truth, my firend? Politics isn’t supposed to be for the hypocrits and fabricators, but as you demonstrate, it devolves to just that. Someone has to honestly set records straight since neither major party has been for almost a century.
Actually I left the Democratic Party because of Bill Clinton’s stance on escalating the war on drug users, and found some very enlightening facts about taxes while looking for alternatives.
Tell me, my friend, why is it that you support candidates that want to continue taxing minimum wage and poor workers while turning around and giving benefits to pension millionaires and exempting government fat cats like George Ryan from paying the same taxes that those poor workers pay? George Ryan gets a $200,000/year pension, doesn’t pay taxes on it, still gets social security benefits while the $6/hour single mom waitress still has to pay her “fair share” according to Democrats that love Teresa Heinz Kerry even though she only paid at the 12.4% level.
I am the working poor, my friend, and I know what they are going through while Democrats do nothing to eliminate all taxes on the poor. Common sense tells us the least government should do for the poor is to stop taking their money. But if you want to live in make believe where I am rich and only want to reduce my tax level to what Teresa Heinz Kerry pays, go right ahead.
I drafted our 2002 Senate candidates’ plan to eliminate ALL taxes on the first $25,000 of everyone’s income immediately without cutting any “essential” federal government services. Where are Kerry and Obama’s proposals to stop taxing the poor? How about Gore’s or Clinton’s? Has Blago proposed eliminating the state income tax on the first $25,000? Or would you rather we gave all of our money to the government and let the government dish it out as it sees fit. You don’t have any “tax purposes only” moral high ground to stand on when you support politicians that want to continue robbing from the poor and giving to the rich, and it isn’t just Bush who does it either.
Jeff, I was there too — standing right by you guys! (If I knew what you looked like, I would have said hello.) I don’t doubt that you had the confrontation you described, but I gotta tell you — for the most part the Obama folks were ignoring the Libertarians.
There was one Libertarian who approached me and a guy I was standing next to and asked, “What do you mean by Yes We Can” or something like that, but we didn’t engage him. (The people who show up at these pre-debate rallies are pretty much committed to their candidate already.)
I didn’t hear you guys add “discriminate” to the chants. Again, I’m sure you did it, but from my perspective most Obama people didn’t hear you. Mostly, the motivation for the Obama chants were to drown out the Keyes folks.
As for my crowd estimates: 40-50 Keyes supporters, mostly on the southwest corner, but they sent a few people with signs to mingle with Obama folks. About 60-80 Obama folks were scattered on the other three corners. And I would say 30-40 Kohn folks, hanging out on the northeast corner.
It was harmless political theater, from what I saw. I really thought 6 cop cars were overkill, but the WTTW studios are on a residential street, and I bet the neighbors complained.
I didn’t say we were loud. Do the Yes We Can chant in your head and try to fit in discriminate between it. bubububu is about the best of it. Maybe 7 or 8 joined that one and the rest of them were gabbing probably because it wasn’t an easy counter. But that was what prompted one lady to say we don’t discriminate, you just want in the debate to get all the KKK vote. I said that was blatantly ridiculous and if you didn’t discriminate Jerry would be in the debates and Ralph Nader would be on the ballot. A 20 something guy beside her chimed in that we should’ve kept Kohn off to, he’s a joke you found to play off John Kerry.
There was a couldn’t win for dog catcher comment and you’re lucky it’s Keyes or you’d get no votes. I think those happened when some of us were combining the chicken sound with Barack. bock bock barack. You could say a few bad eggs spoiled the whole flock for me, which I’ll admit is overly broad. It still ticked me off though. And that police officer heard some of it which is why I suspect he said he’s voting for Jerry.
You know, if we had figured out we were both there to introduce ourselves I bet the peanut gallery stuff might not have happened. Some of the Keyes people there we knew since they’re helping on Bludorn’s campaign actually, so we were a bit more cordial with each other probably, except for one of the Nader/Kohn supporters who got into it with a Keyes guy. We took our sign back then.
But yeah, it was harmless political theater with cop overkill. They had a paddy wagon parked down the block also, just in case, I’m sure. You guys all took off when it started but we had nothing to watch and half of us stuck around for Jerry to come back out. The would-be Green Party candidate that the Dems kicked off hung out with us most of the time too. It was a lot of fun. Next time when we’re there supporting our candidate IN the debate, I’ll be sure to yell my name a few times so you can find me. Knowing my luck, I’ll be the candidate though.
Hey you crazy Illinois Leader loopy-loopers! Why don’t you boys take this outside, or at least take your stupid fighting back to the discussion boards where people actually give a s**t.