This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Protests/Rallies

  • Protest at National Press Club tele-luncheon

    A small group of protesters gathered outside of the National Press Club on 14th and F Streets in Washington DC today, a few blocks from the White House, to protest members of the National Press Club lending a forum to Iranian cheif thug Ahmadinejad.

    There were probably two dozen and they were able to attract some minor media attention (outside of the NPC, though, it seems they’d attract more) while members of the National Press Club were listening to the Iranian President’s 45-minute speech. It was supposed to be followed by 30-minutes of questions from the Press Club, but given Ahmadinejad’s responses the night before on 60-minutes, I suspect that each of his “answers” began with the question “Are you a Zionist?”

    Regardless, here are the pictures.

    They were the politest protesters I’ve ever seen in DC – but they still endured some insults from this guy and the guy whose back you see on the otherside of the door. The comments were something about “why don’t they protest Abbas” or some such goalpost movement. When I got my camera out to photo him, the guy who insulted the protesters turned tail and ran inside the Press Club.

    The security guard had a very boring day.

    Here’s a video of some of the press coverage of the protest. I suppose the members of the press club went in through the parking garage because I didn’t see anyone enter at this door or at the other door where I kept my vigil by the ashtray. It was a small protest by very well-behaved protesters – something the media habitually avoids.

    Kesher Talk and Atlas Shrugs have pictures of the protest in New York at Ground Zero. Little Green Footballs discovers that DailyKos diarist thinks Ahmadinejad sounds “entirely too reasonable”. Michele Malkin has the whole “Mahmoudapalooza“. Hot Air on the “no gays in Iraq” comment. Ace of Spades has Republican candidates’ reactions to the Columbia farce.

    A Columbo-Americana’s Perspective had the NYT Live blog if you missed the whole thing like I did. She also has more pictures of the signs – Kate’s my protest buddy – she keeps me in line and out of jail.

  • Gathering of Eagles vs Moonbats (Updates)

    UPDATES: As I sift through my photos, videos and other blogs, I’ve been updating this post since this morning. Just scroll through and you’ll see. Whew! I think I’m done. Enjoy!

    Editor’s Note: If you don’t see the photos, it’s because your system is behind a WebSense internet filter and it blocks Photobucket.

    Well, not unlike the stupid hippies that they are, they were HOURS late. They were supposed to start at noon, but they didn’t get to the Capitol until 3 pm. While we were among them at Lafayette Park, one of the event organizers complained over the loudspeakers that people were having trouble showing up because, mysteriously, Metro had shut down the Blue and Orange Lines (from Virginia and GW University) so they weren’t going to kick off until one o’clock.

    But my friend had arrived moments before on the Blue Line from Virginia – it hadn’t been shut down – so another moonbat lie.We figured they were making excuses for their pitiful numbers.

    By the time they got to the Capitol, the general consensus was that they had less than 4,000 people, there were rumors of only 2,000 – but I’m pretty sure there were more than that. Most of them were moving towards Union Station before the die-in started, so their numbers shrank by about half within 20 minutes of their arrival at the Capitol. In a city of a 1/2 million where a good 10% are college students with little to do on a Saturday afternoon the first few weeks of the semester, a few thousand is a pretty shabby turnout.

    This first picture is an upside down flag in Lafayette Park. But they still love this country, right? But the remarkable thing about it (and it wasn’t the only upside down flag) is that all of the flags the moonbats carried through the march were right-side up. So that tells me that someone made a conscious effort to tell all of the upside down flag guys to right their flags – and you know it was for their image, not because of their ideology;

    Another of the upside down flags in front of the White House that mysteriously righted itself before the march;

    Robin from Chickenhawk Express asked me to get photos of folks in uniform, so here’s one;

    An Arty officer from the 24th Division – I’m pretty sure the 24th Division was inactivated before President Bush became president – so he’s making a vacuous point.

    This fellow has more money than brains – he’s way too old to have been issued that uniform by the Army;

    And this Veterans For Peace stuff really cheeses me off. It hints that I’m a Veteran For War because I don’t belong to their testoterone-deficient organization. I’m not “for” war – I’m “for” national security and given the current enemy, war is the only answer. If you think war isn’t the answer, you didn’t understand the question.

    And by the looks of his scraggly ass, he was probably a chapter case anyway.

    If you don’t have a uniform to wear to the event, well, just wear your yacht skipper’s hat;

    Too many signs and not enough moonbats;

    This guy stalked me until I took his picture, so it should make him happy that he made the blog;

    I guess he’s madder at Israel than he is at Bush. But, if you wanted to take a whacky picture with the President, they had cutouts;

    This is my personal nemisis, he stalks me at every event, I have a video of him today in which he calls me “an enemy of peace” (Actually, I’m thinking of changing the name of the blog to Enemy of Peace – it has a nice ring to it, ya know). He’s wearing the same pretentious “Peace” shirt he wears at every event, too. What I did to piss off the Travelocity Roaming Gnome, I’ll never know.

    I’d like for this fellow to name one instance where nonviolence worked to solve anything when dealing with babarians;

    The real rockstars of this rally, though, was supposed to be Adam Kokesh and his IVAW crowd. But I didn’t see them – well I saw them, but only as shadows moving around inside their rockstar bus away from the crowds and adoring fans;

    Apparently, they’re not so hot on attacking Iran, either;

    Well, we left the moonbats behind and went to the Gathering of Eagles down on the National Mall.

    A much more lively group. Here’s a video of a Gold Star father’s speech to the crowd. (I’d embed this stuff if I could figure the darn thing out.

    And the highlight of the day for me, was meeting Michelle Malkin;

    You’ll notice the jumpwings on my cap are on a 1/325 AIR flash – I wore it today to honor the son of my good friend, COBDanny, who happens to be in Iraq while assigned to my old Battalion, the Red Falcons – the spearpoint of the surge. Hooah!

    The funny thing is, I took this picture of Michele Malkin just prior and didn’t even recognize her;

    The GOE group had better signs, too;

    When the Moonbats finally started their parade of fools – THREE HOURS LATE – our side was out in front of them;

    And this is the only sign that I saw that really expressed the moonbats true feelings;

    In this photo, the protesters stretched a huge red banner across the road to keep the protesters bunched up so it looked like a bigger crowd. But it took about five minutes for them to pass as this video shows;

    As this video attests, they thinned out pretty quickly. And this video shows how many they ended with at the Capitol – hardly the hundred thousand that’s being bandied about the web. And it hardly looks like the tightly compressed crowds that the media has been showing in their photos.

    This is a video of Leftist fellow recruiting for the Army. And this ugly cow kept mooing the same thing over and over – “Take your ass to Iraq”. That’s the only response they have – “Go to Iraq”. Why? So we won’t be here to hold you accountable for your intellectually vacant yammering?

    This is a video of a Gold Star father confronting a protester.

    Meet Jake. His right forearm and hand are missing from an IED attack. I found him standing with his friend outside where the die-in was going on. I talked with him a while and I asked him how he was holding up, rockhard troop that he is. He answered, “This isn’t what I went to war for, dude. These people suck.”

    They sure do, Jake, they sure do.

    Michele Malkin has more about GOE at Walter Reed and the Live blogging today’s event. More from Gateway Pundit and Robin at Chickenhawk Express with the view from outside – all the stuff I missed because I was alternately surrounded by goofuses and heroes. Redhunter was there with great report from the GOE crowd, too. One thing is certain – everyone got pictures of Michele Malkin. That little girl was all over this thing.

    The San Francisco Sentinel blog touts the ANSWER demonstration as the largest protest since January (which isn’t hard since all of the others were flops and January wasn’t so hot, either). ANSWER’s numbers are just over the top; they claim 100,000 marched with them – that’s just ridiculous. Even the AP story they use as a source only says “several thousand”. Like I said, there were less than four thousand that diminished to two thousand when the march ended. There were probably one or two thousand counter-protesters.

    Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs has the news on the arrests at the DIe-in (Geez, I missed that part).

    More from Kate of A Columbo-Americana’s Perspective – another MM sighting. Age of Hooper catches the corpse of Ramsey Clark on parade. Keep watching the sky – I mean Skye at Midnight Blue. I met her there, too, so I’m sure she’ll have some pics up soon (she also got a picture with Michelle Malkin). Big Dog wandered into the moonbat crowd when they were at their slobbering worst, as Big Dogs usually do and comes out unscathed with a report of biting incidents.

    Powerline has pics of the Die-In and Victory Caucus has tons of photos and links to more blogs. Pam at BlogmeisterUSA and PC Free Zone has more pictures of the GOE side.

    For some reason, veterans getting arrested is more honorable than veterans who continue to serve their brothers and sisters in uniform. Some Leftists wish for the good old days, while others think we’re “scared little babies“.

    The Washington Post calls it “Dueling Demonstrations“, but it’s not really a duel when one side is has no clue what he’s doing. Bloodthirsty Liberal conducts a post-mortem on media coverage.

    The Washington Times provides a more balanced account than the Post or AP.

    Since Kokesh went out of his way to get arrested a week ago Thursday for putting up posters in a National Park with the press on hand to record his arrest, and since he also went out of his way to get arrested yesterday (Saturday, Sept. 15th) I gotta figure that they sense the failing support for their movement and they’re trying to whip up some outrage among the sheep. Like I said last week, we’re witnessing the death throes of the anti-war movement. Just like the American people are tired of hearing about the war, they’re also getting tired of hearing about the primadonnas of the anti-war movement.

    They ride in rock star buses, play to the echo chamber and jet off to another scripted event, and Americans understand that they’re just trying to make a living by not working.

  • The anti-Israel rally in DC

    We went to the rally against Israel this afternoon. We got there at about 2:30 and went by the pro-Israel group first (I had to get my bearings and I knew where the good guys were going to be). All-in-all they were a small, rational group;

    Before we left home, I checked the opposition’s websites and they predicted hundreds of thousands of partcipants. I’m sure they were fairly disappointed because there seemed to be only a few hundred. This was the view of their rally from the Pro-Israel rally;

    Most of the anti-Israeli group were crowded around the entrance. There were “marshalls” there that censored the signs that people brought themselves. I guess they were looking for overtly racist signs. The organizing moonbats brought scores of signs to hand out to participants. Too many it seems. These are the crews bringing the extras in after the rally started;

    This is about the size of the crowd at the mainstage just before it started;

    Not really hundreds of thousands was it? But as always at these events, it’s more important to see who’s on the periphery of the main rally;

    Ask us about socialism – that has to be my favorite line. As if any of the attendees were confused about the tenets of socialism.

    Here’s another little bit of hypocrisy. If the Bible isn’t a deed, then why is the Koran a deed?

    It’s a great day when you can wrap your kids in an Arafat scarf and make them a poster supporting the “next generation” of suicide-bombing haters.

    And you can muddy the debate with an accidental friendly fire incident

    And the fat cow coalition supports impeaching AIPAC, an organization that can’t be impeached. But it sure sounds stern, doesn’t it.

    And I don’t know who this guy is, but I’m fairly sure that there aren’t any Palestinians waving any flags for him or his clerical collar;

    Here’s my favorite guy. Guess what he is. That’s right, he’s a “twoofer”. His type are easily recognizable by the portable beer coaster he sports under his shirt and the aire of an intellectually superior being.

    And the dollar bill he’s holding? Well, my wife snatched it from him (before I could grab his  stubby little paw that he thrust in my face) and here it is;

    And the back;

    Isn’t that cute? That’s a real website, too, if you have the stomach for it. But I’m not driving traffic there.

    Well, we went back had a couple of gallons of ice tea at the Dubliner where we could keep an eye on foot traffic to the rally and as near as I can tell, not more than a few hundred more showed up, in dribbles and drabs (anti-democracy people are easily recognizable among the tourist foot traffic in DC when you’ve lived here as long as I have). So I’m not sure how the media is going to call this one, but I’d put attendance at about a thousand – tops.

    The pro-Israel rally was only about a hundred or so, but the Left had big expectations for their rally, guessing by the internet support. The Left generally pooh-poohed the low attendence at the March on the Pentagon back in March because of cold weather, but today was a gorgeous spring day. It was probably near 80 degrees and overcast – so what’s the excuse this time?

    My guess; the Left is just tired of pointless rallies. There were no puppets on stilts, no wildly dressed malcontents. Even the Socialist recruiting tables were less-attended than usual. I think the Left is losing it’s fire. Too bad really – I wanted some more pictures of puppets – I miss those little buggers.

    Ah, heck here’s one from last years Code Pink Mother’s Day rally for old time’s sake. (I know the date stamp is wrong – I’m no technical wiz)

    Solomonia and djca.org agree that today’s rally was pretty pathetic. More commentary from Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs.

    UPDATE: More pictures and a much better commentary at The Age of Hooper.

    Oh, ya know what? I forgot to mention that the were a couple of thousand people at the Capitol (Gay) Pride festivities (basically a street festival) just a few blocks away that generally just ignored the fact that their allies on the Left were having a rally that day. So I guess the lesson is that you can’t count on the Gay community for your goofy Leftist rallies. I’m sure the anti-Israel forces were counting on the Gays incidental appearances to swell their numbers. But it didn’t work out for ’em.

  • Gathering of Eagles/Rolling Thunder rally for the troops (Updated)

    Every Memorial Day weekend on Sunday, Rolling Thunder, an organization of mostly Viet Nam veterans, comes to DC for their motorcycle ride from the Pentagon to the Vietnam Memorial. It’s an hours-long parade of thousands of participants from across the country to insure that America doesn’t forget the men and women who died for this country in that unpopular war.

    This year it’s a little different – today they partnered with the newly-formed Gathering of Eagles, which has it’s roots in the internet. When Vietnam veterans felt that the Wall was threatened by anti-protesters back in March of this year, they hastily assembled an internet gathering point and made plans to protect that monument from being defaced. On March 17th, they gathered around the three Vietnam memorials and the Korean War Memorial and lined the protest to the Pentagon. Crowd estimates were about 20,000 pro-troops participants to about 4,000 anti-war protesters.

    I reported on that event and brought you pictures and videos, so I felt it my duty to you and the rest of the nation to bring the same to ya’all this time, too. It doesn’t look like the traditional media is going to cover the event – I didn’t see any journalists there for the three-and-a-half hours I roamed the area. No trucks, no shoulder-carried cameras. Nothing on C-SPAN’s schedule. I remember when they used to cover Rolling Thunder’s event, Brian Lamb himself interviewing participants, but none of that anymore.

    Traditionally, Rolling Thunder gathers to remember the Vietnam veterans, but this year, the day before their customary ride, they partnered with Gathering of Eagles to show their support for the next generation of warriors. There probably weren’t 20,000 this time, but the were a few thousand there, as you can see from the following pictures.

    Parking was no problem, apparently;

    The biggest crowds were at the Vietnam Memorial;

    Patriotism was the theme of the day;

    Here’s a tribute for all of you patriotic motorheads;

    That’s a little too much powerplant for my taste, though.

    Click the “View Show” buttons below for two slide shows of other pics.

    Maybe the crowds weren’t the size of the crowds back in March, but I think veterans have made their point – once again. And apparently, the media doesn’t care. I’ve even been watching Fox News Channel for even a mention of the event – and there’s nothing. Anywhere. If there were this many anti-war protesters, or half as many anti-war protesters, the news trucks and journalists would be swarming all over it.

    Shame on the media for neglecting to give America the whole story.

    UPDATE: Jim Holt at Gateway Pundit reports on the anti-US protest at the West Point graduation and Gathering of Eagles’ counter protest entitled “Battle of Bullhorns; Eagles and Moonbats clash” and Rob at Say Anything reports on the court order that kept ANSWER outside of West Point at “Court: West Point Can Deny Access to Smelly Hippies“. Silent_man wrote a detailed After Action Report of the West Point event on the GOE blog. Urban Infidel has more great pictures of the West Point event.

    Skye has more pictures of the DC event at MidnightBlue. Big Dog reported “Great Day in DC; Not a Moonbat in Sight“.

  • Gathering of Eagles

    I gotta tell ya, I haven’t felt so much at home before in DC as I feel today. I’m going to leave the crowd counting to the experts – but not the Washington Post who wrote this crap this morning;

    Thousands of protesters, marking the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq, began gathering this morning for a march to the Pentagon, but many of them were met by a peaceful rally of veterans groups and war supporters near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

    It was a classic example of grass-roots politics in Washington and of the strong emotions that the Vietnam War still exerts more than 30 years after fighting there ended.

    Get that? THOUSANDS of protesters were met by a “rally” of veterans. Sounds like the veterans were outnumbered, doesn’t it?

    The only “grassroots” were on the side of the veterans who had come at their own expense and with very little organization. I met four veterans who had driven up in a car from the Florida Gulf Coast and got into town the night before – that’s grassroots!

    Anyway I got there at about 8:30 this morning (after my regular Saturday morning breakfast of SOS at the Walter Reed messhall) and here’s the video I took of the THOUSANDS of protesters. As opposed to this video I took of the Gathering of Eagles a few minutes before. Quite a difference from what the Post reported, huh?

    Here’s what the protesters saw across the street that separated the two sides;

    There were this many veterans;

    And this many protesters;

    Pretty intimidating huh?

    As the morning went on the crowds on both sides grew and the Park Police began putting up barracades to keep the sides separated;

    Let me just pause here to tell ya’all that the Park Police were real pros. The Wall was well protected – they’d set up metal detectors and hand searched everyone who went to the Wall. This in effect kept the protesters away because they didn’t want to wait in a long line to get to the Wall. The Park Police stayed out of the way, but kept a close eye on the event. Real pros.

    Now, back to the event.

    Apparently age doesn’t always bring wisdom, in the case of these folks;

    And despite the fact that ANSWER and the coalition of weasels have tried to deny that the Truthers are a part of their movement, the Truthers were there;

    And I don’t even want to think about what makes some “Queers” more radical than others;

    The only TV interview I saw being taped was with a supposed “Iraq veteran” who opposed the war. He looked a little old and pudgy to be a recent veteran, though, so I have my doubts. We all remember the Stolen Valor vets of the Vietnam Era, and the media that was more interested in their anti-war comments than their acceditation.

    A few times, the veterans would chant “USA” so loud it could probably be heard at the White House. The protesters tried to shout them down (in those testosterone deficient high pitched squeals that make them the moonbats that they are), but when that failed, they just turned up the music on their speakers – a weak answer to the real passion they faced over the police barriers.

    I’ve been to veterans rallies before. The “Kerry Lied” rally in September 2004 outside the Capitol comes to mind. But this one was so different. There was so much more backslapping, hugging, handshakes, “Welcome home” wishing than I’d ever seen.

    In my opinion, this Gathering of Eagles rally has done more for the healing of the wounds these veterans have been burdened with for forty years than any wall or memorial could ever. It was if they’d finally been given the opportunity to face their oppressors. There were no sorrowful stares, no sympathetic words. It was all smiles and laughter.

    All of those years of anger that had been bottled up was directed against their common enemy – moral and intellectual laziness. The world had to listen to them, the citizens who had sacrificed and paid the price and came home to the disapproval of the citizens who had never spent an uncomfortable moment in their lives.

    One veteran told me, “We’re here because those guys who are fighting in Iraq deserve better than what we got when we came home. No one stood up for us, but by God, we’re standing up for them. And if we don’t, who will?”

    Welcome home, brothers.

    UPDATE: Welcome LGFers and Sweetness and Light folks

    Michele Malkin has photos up on her “blog burst” now. Curt at Flopping Aces has a round up of several blogs.

  • Hippies in DC

    As I promised, I went to DC’s anti-war protest today. Apparently I went at the same time as all of the protesters, because my subway train was full. And they were mostly union thugs from SEIU Local 1199 which, according to their website is from Massachusetts. Here’s a picture of my subway train. I took it with my cellphone so excuse the quality;

    Notice all the purple – it’s the same color as their website. The two guys standing up in the middle of the train were the wranglers who told them when to stand up, sit down, get on and get off the train.

    Another passenger took a flash foto and as soon as they discovered he wasn’t one of them, they surrounded him and wouldn’t let him take any more pictures of them – that’s why I used my cell phone for these pictures.

    Two lovebird hippies;

    What a great date – impress your best girl with your total lack of regard for her security.

    Well, I got off the train and ran into some of these rocket scientists;

    Of course, when your committment to the cause is so great, who can’t forgive you a little football game with the girls;

    Or picking up a hairy-legged cutie who thinks we’ve already started a war on Iran for some reason;

    This guy was telling us all how putting this protest together wasn’t free and that we should fork over some cash for the privilege of standing in the cold with them;

    And I guess it’s still considered a protest if you hold two signs while you’re yapping your cell phone with your pals;

    All-in-all, I was impressed with their numbers. For a fairly cold January day, I guess it was alot. Although I’ve seen more people come to the 2001 and 2005 Inauguration on colder days. I’ll believe any number they claim, but mostly because, apparently the unions bused in membership from out-of-state and the area college students weren’t busy. There was a steady stream of witless drones heading for the Mall as I left.

    AP reports “tens of thousands” – I’d agree, there were two “tens-of-thousands”; probably about 20,000 – but I’m no expert on how many people fit on one block of the Mall. Just giving a rough estimate. But certainly NOT the 300,000 that some moonbats are claiming. the residen tpopulation of DC is only 550,000 – I’m sure we would have noticed the presence of half-again as many in this small city.

    I’ve been to a lot of anti-war protests in DC all the way back to 1999 when Martin Sheen was protesting the sanctions against Hussein, but this is the first time I’ve not seen the usual Communist gangs under a hammer-and-sickle flag, or Communist Party recruitment tables, or even the usual Che Guevara T-shirts.

    In, fact, I even saw some protesters carrying big American flags. I’m not saying that those Communist-types weren’t there, and that this is real patriots protesting real injustice. I’m just saying that it’s reminicient of the sudden disappearance of Mexican flags this past summer at the Latin protests. I think its an attempt to disassociate the anti-war movement from the socialist movement.

    There were ANSWER signs there (whom we all know have communist links), but they were less visible than usual.

    I only stayed about an hour or so, but the Muslim speakers calling for peace got to me after awile. I could feel my anger rising, so I beat a retreat to the nearest subway line, where they were still coming in.

    I guess Free Republic was there somewhere, but I didn’t see them. The Capitol was completely blocked off and they weren’t allowing anyone in (wonder why).

    I’ve got some crude videos of the participants, too, if you’ve a mind. They’re on Photobucket and I put them here, here and here.

    Sweetness and Light has wire photos up and wonders about the press coverage for the Right to Life march earlier in the week as compared to this one.

    UPDATE: Geez, I almost forgot these Webb-heads. I had to search my photos, crop and blow up these boneheads to show you how quickly the Left changes it’s Flavor of the Month – from Barack to Hillary to Webb in just one week;

    Crotchety Old Bastard has more Webb-fawning.