Welcome - Bush Protest Update

Richmond welcomes Dubya

I left work early in order to attend President Bush's visit to Richmond. He was holding a $500,000 fund raiser for Republican Sen. George "Macacawitz" Allen.
By 3pm a crowd was already gathering, despite the threat of rain.

Meanwhile, up in DC, Bill Clinton was raising money for Allen's opponent, Jim Webb. Webb is a member of the rapidly growing ranks of former Republicans now running as Dems.
Interestingly, the Washington Post chose today to endorse Mr. Webb.

For the first hour or so, traffic proceeded down Broad St. as usual.
I was happy to find that about half of the passing cars honked, flashed thumbs-up and peace signs, even joined in the chanting whilst waiting for the stoplight.
I mean, this is Richmond. We have a sumptuous boulevard dedicated to the 'heroes' of the American Civil War... most of the 'protests' I've attended here have been rather sparse, so I was glad to see real, actual protesters and not just a flier on a phone pole.
I thought dissent here pretty much ended when Grant burned the city towards the end of the U.S. Civil War, but here we were.
(Speaking of Civil War, Iraq was busily sinking even deeper into chaos and despair
while Bush played Sock Puppet for a crowd of $5,000-a-plate supporters)


Dubya must be coming. The police have blocked off the streets and advised us to step back. As far as I saw, the local boys in blue seemed to be quite professional and actually quite restrained, considering that a couple protesters yelled insults and obscenities at the officers.
In the background is the Virginia Science Museum, which is a pretty ironic place for Bush to hold a fund-raiser, considering his opposition to scientific advances that don't include Missile Defense schemes or insane Space Security proclamations.


People keep coming. This is great.
There's a buzz in the crowd, angry but united. I'm amazed by the incredible diversity of persons who have grievances with BuschCo. Contradictorily, it also it seems like there are only two kinds of people here:

- those who are willing to pay $5,000 to listen to Bush chimp his way through a crap dinner and inept speech

-The rest of America

Man, the mood is intense. I'm encouraged by the passion I see in my fellow Americans. Make no mistake- Americans can do great things when working together.
Our radio station is one example.
Here's a really inspiring story of Good Americans doing great things.


I imagine the Secret Service already has me on file, but here's a new pic for them.



History repeats. When the Twin and I were growing up, we would be toted to anti-war rallies- today there's a Babies Against Bush movement...the parallels to the 'Nam years are so obvious that even Dubya has to admit that maybe, just maybe, Iraq resembles Viet Nam.
His claims that Iraqi violence has anything at all to do with our election cycle is pure, recycled bullshit. Those poor Iraqi bastards are so busy killing and not getting killed that I doubt they give a fuck who wins in ourCongress.
But I do.

This is my town. This is my neighborhood. I live a few blocks away.
I am proud of the turn-out. Perhaps there's hope for Nov.7. The crowd is in a mood- I wonder how the rest of America feels?


This trio of flag wavers were the only non-uniformed Bush supporters who attended the visit. Eventually, they were swallowed up by the crowd and there was no GOP support at all.
UPDATE: I watched our local ABC news- they chose to air an interview of one of them, but barely gave two seconds time to the much larger anti-war crowd. The TV gave the impression that the there was a much larger GOP crowd, but in reality this was all they had- even the guy on the bike was just waiting to cross...



A guy in the crowd told me that a soldier raised his rifle when I dashed into the road for this pic, as the street had been shut at this point.
If I had been shot, the political 'Kent State' fall-out would certainly doom all GOP
glimmers of November hope.
I'm glad that didn't happen, but it woulda been worth it.
I love my country enough to take a bullet, that's for damned sure.
But I ain't takin' it for Bush.




This is the soldier. I kept a respectful distance for this pic.
There was a wall of charter buses so that the Preznit wouldn't have to see the Americans who came to say 'hello'.
He's the Decidenator. Why should he care what the majority of the people want?
That would be an unpleasant reminder of that democracy thing that he hates so much.