I'm a girlie communist! (allegedly)

This evening the well known rock star and lightning rod of the peace movement Cindy Sheehan was in Charlotte. She was stopping in town while walking from Atlanta, GA to Washington, DC to demand the impeachment of the president.
While I believe there are more than enough reasons to impeach (way more than there ever were for the impeachment of Clinton), I wasn't really planning on joining the protest until I read in the Charlotte observer this morning that there was also a counter protest planned.
Since I'm always up for a good shouting match and argument I decided to take my hybrid to Bryant Park and join the festivities.
When I first arrived I thought I had run into a gathering of the Hell's Angels (you know, the biker type that drives around South Carolina without a helmet wearing a t-shirt that says on the back "if you can read this the bitch fell off") but it turns out these were the counter protesters.
Since I was carrying my big sign that read "Worst president EVER" , they quickly figured out I wasn't with them.
After making my way through a wall of TV News vans I arrived at My gang.

From a hippie type playing the flute to a woman dressed like a giant peach that said "impeach" on it, these were my peeps. Pretty soon after I had arrived some speeches started, but i was more interested in the counter protesters. They were just 10 feet away from us, so I could take in all the lovely remarks they were shouting. From "traitor" to "communist" and "girlie men" to "your son would be ashamed of you", all the classic comments blew over Me. Ironically the guy that yelled out "girlie men" had bigger breasts than My wife (and she's a C cup), so I'll let you decide who the real girlie man is.
I decided to be the grown up here and just ignore these high class people.
But when they started shouting "USA, USA" I started shouting USA with them. This seemed to confuse the narrow minded so then they just started yelling "booooooooring". I swear all these folks were older than 40 and this wasn't some kind of frat party.
What worried me more was them shouting "allah akbar" and "are you going to have a burka fashion show?". The reason it bothers me is that it exposes what this is really about to them, a war between religions.
You can see some of the pictures I took of this gang in their best Sunday outfit here and here.
The counter protesters then started gloating because they thought Cindy wouldn't show up.
What they didn't know was that Sheehan was just 300 ft away, giving interviews to the press while the counter protesters were busy shouting at us.
Apparently Sheehan feared for her safety and decided not to come closer and give a speech at her own rally. Instead we were all invited at Tally's, an organic grocery store in Charlotte, to meet with Cindy personally there.
My day had been pretty exhausting so I decided to just go home. I might have gone to that grocery store if Bono himself had shown up though.
My "guestimate" is that about 150 protesters were at the rally and about 50 counter protesters.
You can see some pictures of the crowd here, here and here.
I'm looking forward to my next meeting with my biker crew. Until then my "worst president ever" sign is back in my closet.

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Will Robin Hayes listen?

Will Robin Hayes listen to these veterans?

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Fixing something you broke by breaking it even harder.

Our beloved President announced his "new way forward in Iraq" this week. Something he started thinking about right after the November election in which he, according to his own words, received a good "thumping". I'm sure it was pure coincidence that he didn't seem to think there needed to be a "new plan" until then.

The new plan can be summarized as follows:
I'm not listening to anyone. I'll do what I want, because I'm the decider. neener neener neener.

The president totally ignores his people, the result of the election and the Iraq Study Group (Baker group) report with this plan:

• According to many political analysts the Iraq war was the #1 reason for the huge loss of republicans in the November election.
• According to an AP poll Seventy percent of Americans oppose sending more troops to Iraq. Just 35 percent of Americans think it was right for the United States to go to war, another record low in AP polling and a reversal from two years ago when two-thirds of Americans thought it was the correct move. Other polls showed a similar result.
  
• The Iraq Study Group Report stated: “The United States should immediately launch a new diplomatic offensive to build an international consensus for stability in Iraq and the region. This diplomatic effort should include every country that has an interest in avoiding a chaotic Iraq, including all of Iraq's neighbors.” Instead the president chose to chide Iran and Syria in his speech again: "These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq." Not a very good start for diplomacy if you ask me.
  

Sending 21,000 additional troops into Iraq will bring the amount of troops to the same level they were 2 years ago. Oh yeah, we were doing sooooo much better back then.
A defense official said that the 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, would move first into Iraq under Bush's plan. The brigade, based at Fort Bragg, NC, is now in Kuwait and poised to head quickly into the country.

Local Bush lapdog Robin Hayes supports the "surge" of course:

"The Iraqis themselves need to step up their commitment to securing their own country," he said, "and (I) want to see a plan that uses our troops to ensure this happens at a faster pace."

How are you going to motivate someone to work harder by doing the work for them?

The real reason for this "plan" to me seems to stretch this clusterf@*# out into 2008 and leave the clean up for Bush's successor.

There was also a very remarkable sentence in Bush's speech:

"Victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship."

No ceremony on the deck of a battleship..hmm..what does that remind me of?? oh, I know, this one maybe? :

The reason we went to Iraq in the first place was to punish the ones responsible for 9/11, take out all the WMD's of Saddam, spread democracy in Iraq. Until we ourselves get democracy by having a president who listens to his people, I don't think we need to try and spread that principle anywhere else.
The American body count stands at 3,018 and there's no end in sight. Happy New Year!

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