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Obama in Lebanon

I’m finally getting around to posting this. Last week, Kris & I went to an Obama rally in Lebanon, VA. You may recall that Mark Warner spoke at length about Lebanon and Russell County in his speech at the DNC.

We arrived, in the rain, at about 1PM at Lebanon High School. There were two local news trucks, and one that I assume was for a pool feed for all the networks.

At that point, the line was relatively short, but grew quickly.

We were among the first to get inside, but as you can see that didn’t help us get a great seat…but it wasn’t terrible. The floor seats were reserved, I assume, for campaign workers and local Party folks.

At about 4:30, the first speaker was introduced. Cecil Roberts, President of the UMWA, got the crowd pretty riled up.

Living legend and local celebrity, Grammy Award Winner Dr. Ralph Stanley spoke next. He didn’t speak long, but gave Obama a strong endorsement.

Things got quiet for a while, by about 5PM they were preparing the stage for Obama. The sudden appearance of several Secret Service Agents indicated Obama’s arrival on site. Sadly, Special Agent Jerkface Squints was not among them.

Finally, things got started. From our seats, we could see who was coming next. First up, the Hon. Rick Boucher, Democratic Representative for the VA 9th District. He’s kind of blurry at the bottom in the first picture.

Finally, after Rick Boucher’s introduction, Obama arrived at about 5:30PM. He spoke for about 90 minutes total, giving a stump speech before taking questions from the crowd.

As you can imagine, this was a pretty big news story in our part of the state. We didn’t know it, but while we were waiting in line, Obama visited a soda fountain/drug store in Abingdon and chatted with folks for about an hour. Below is a clip from the local news that night.