Rain Fails to Dampen Spirits at Obama Rally

Senator Barack Obama delivered a rousing speech to thousands of die-hard supporters this past Saturday at the Backyard, touching on just about every hot issue at the core of next year's election debates.

Pledging to shut down Guantanamo, restore habeas corpus, and renew the hunt for Al Qaeda, Obama stressed the need for a stronger international agenda and quoted Kennedy's famous inaugural address—"Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate."

Nationally, he seemed to promise everything under the sun, offering up solutions for our education system (improving early childhood learning, increasing support and wages for teachers, providing universal college affordability and accessibility via a work-trade type program); environment (creating an "EPA that actually cares about the environment"); health care system (establishing universal coverage "by the end of my first term"); and economy (raising the minimum wage every year).

Regardless of the outcome of next year's elections, Obama hinted at an important point that many, especially in Austin, have long looked forward to. "The name George W. Bush will not be on the ballot," he shouted, to deafening applause. Jokingly, he then added, "The name of my cousin, Dick Cheney, will not be on the ballot — we've been trying to hide that for a long time."

Photos by Romain Nayalkar for Austinist.com

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