Sights and Sounds

Scenes from the underground: the ANSWER, etc. Anti-War, Anti-Bush Protests were conducted all across the country today to coincide with same in the DC area, so I went to observe some leftists in their natural habitat.

Keeping in mind that I’m no great judge of numbers of people, I’d say that there were roughly two and a half to three thousand folks congregated at Olympic and Broadway in beautiful downtown LA. All manner of signs and a few interesting outfits could be seen--including very many boys in blue; for contingency purposes of course.

So, without further ado, here are my images.

Seen

This charming sign caught my eye from the first. Yep. Sixty billion dollars worth of hate. That Bush sure is unclear on that hate concept.

These signs were even more charming. BTW, unless the sign on the right is referencing some joke I'm not getting, there are only forty chapter in the book of Exodus.

Pssst! Dude, there's no draft and even if there were, women don't get drafted. There's been an all-volunteer Armed Forces in the United States since....eh, forget it.

Here's a guy who was proud of his t-shirt and his tummy. It's a picture of a Mirror (UK) headline asking: "How can 59 million [and change] be so dumb?" That's what I would like to know. (In 2004 GWB got 62 million+ votes; JFK, 59 million+. Hmm. I wonder if that guy was a Protest Warrior.)

Here are a couple of creative sorts.

They get an 'A' for effort, but I'm wondering if they were aware of that Bush-as-Jesus vibe they gave off.

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes a few times; every instance of someone wearing some piece of an actual American military uniform would bring up a visceral reaction in me.

Grrrrr. Believe and say what you want but don’t disgrace the uniform, especially by wearing it in a slipshod manner or using it in an attempt to bolster your moral authority.

The specter of another man wearing Marine DCU's infuriated me so much I just shook my head and walked off with out taking his picture. He, at least, had sense enough to remove the name tape and the U.S. Marines tape.

Had to take a picture of this plaintive declaration.

It's like dumping a lover that was never good for you in the first place. You're better off in the long run.

LA's finest weren't shy about making their presence known.

These guys wanted to know what I was going to do with their picture. I told them that I was going to post it on my blog. "Your what?" Somebody call the cops! It's a crime for them to not read blogs.

Heard

Spoken (over the loudspeaker): “To understand Iraq, you must understand Palestine. Palestine has been occupied for 57 years.” Yep. It’s all about the Jews, as usual.

Chanted: “Hell, no! We won’t go! We won’t fight for Texaco!” Zero points for originality. Zero points for not realizing that today’s military wouldn’t take most of them. Zero points for the tired meme that the Iraq War is about oil. Can you say 70 dollars a barrel? Three dollars a gallon?

Overheard: “I’m an atheist, but if there is God, we deserved the hurricanes.” Yes, I really did hear that.

*****

Well, that sure gave me something to chew on.

One of my minions operatives living in Maryland will send me some photos of the big dance so that I can share them with you. Being around so many moonbats was probably difficult for him; I hope he didn't get arrested.

Assuming that he didn’t, look for more photos tomorrow.

UPDATE: Welcome Lizards!

UPDATE: Protest reporting: Jeff G. cuts on the (MSM) bias. With a sword.

UPDATE: No DC photos; I need to get new minions. Actually I just should have directed the old one: don't be nice. Be like me and elbow your way through to get what you want! He knows what to do next time. And there will be a next time.

No worries, howver. Folks like Michelle have all manner of photos and links of the weekend fun in DC.

Comments

[Emery / KB9iBw]

I enjoyed visiting this site. You have done a very good job of putting it together.
Thank you for being here.

Visit www.armad.net

[Miguel]

You are awsome as always. God bless you!

[Iron Dave]

Not to make you mad again, but Fatigue Boy doesn't have the sense you give him credit for: that's an Army BDU jacket with the tapes still over the pockets. And a shoulder patch, which I can't make out. Plus a dog tag (only one, though, did leave the other on the body?) for Extra Authenticity. Grrrrrrrr.

Thanks for the photos, anyway.

[baldilocks]

Iron Dave: I know. That's what I was saying. It's the "marine" that I *didn't* take a picture of who had sense enough to take the taps off.

[Iron Dave]

D'oh! Must read more closely in future. Also, who noticed the ANSWER ballcap behind Private Snuffy? Double Grrrrrrr. Since when do Stalinists have customized ballcaps? That seems odd.

[baldilocks]

I fixed it so that it's a bit clearer. :-)

Night.

Nice job,BL's, good point on the nonexistent draft!

[Synova]

Does anyone other than me think that the Bush twins would make fine soldiers?

I know that the "point" is supposedly that those in power don't have children in the line of fire (duh... just typing that brought to mind the real security issues that those two undoubtably live with) but it always seemed to me to have an undertone of "and can't you think of any two people less suitable."

Oh, balony. They'd do fine.

As for the BDU's... my teenage daughter is wearing holes in my last set (issued while I was pregnant with her and never worn) and has laid permanent claim to my very nice pair of Lady Magnum (from memory on that brand name) combat boots.

Everything but the name tape removed, of course.

And she isn't showing up at anti-war protests either. :-)

[Rocky J. And Bulwinkle]

Id' love to go "hang with you "
LOCKS at one of these Major comedy events " But Im " telling
You " The moose is getting TOO HEAVY !!! If I leave him He'll just follow me walking " DUNT DE DUNT" and then Ill have to worry
Im TELLING YOU "Its not that much fun being Moose and Squirrel
anymore I got to say good job though!!! " Hey maybe you could come up north We got alot of LOONIES UP HERE TOO " you BETCHYA !!!!

[Attila Girl]

We need to remember that anyone can get military garb from an Army/Navy surplus store. If these are used, they will often still have name tapes on them (at least, that was the case in the 80s, when I got a used Army jacket once worn by a narrow-shouldered soldier named "Smith").

I really wouldn't put it past some of these guys to buy this stuff so they can masquerade as disillusioned Army/Navy/Marine/Air Force vets.

[Farmer Joe]

Nice job, Juliette. I was thinking about this last night, and the thing tht really frosts me about these people is that you know that you wouldn't be hearing peep one out of them if the president in office had had a "D" next to his name.

[Justin]

Damn, I wish these people would stop embarassing my side (i.e, the anti-Bush side). They should realize that these protests only make them look bad.

Also, Baldilocks, the MSM bias is a bit of a stretch to say the least. The anti-war side has gotten NO coverage at all. Jeff G.'s analysis is pretty strained to say the least on this point--saying that the MSM reporting that 2,000 is "thousands" is bias, that's pretty ridiculous.

[x_dhimmi]

Attila Girl, Thanks for making the point about the Army/Navy surplus stores. That's where I got my jackets in 1971, and I was thinking of that as I read through the comments. Additionally, I didn't realize until reading B.G. Burkett's book "Stolen Valor" how much the easy availability of military dress could be used to advance, shall we say, less-than-honorable agendas.

Baldilocks, I always am pleased to see your link on 'Memeorandum" and click to your blog knowing it will be thought-provoking and well worth the time. Thanks for the photo essay and commentary.

[Mad Mikey]

We had our own *cough* anti-war lemming mass-cliff-jump down here in San Diego.

SDPW will be posting photos and operational results soon....

[Toby Petzold]

What?! I didn't know Baldilocks was a cute black chick! Cool.

[Jeff]

I went to the Support the Troops Rally today. A few pictures are here.

[PatC]

Juliette, I wish I'd found your blog earlier. Well, I've bookmarked it now and will be regular visitor. Thanks.

[wordsmith]

Nice commentary with your photos.

I happened upon the protest rally going on in downtown Los Angeles. Los Angeles and Temple Street. I think I caught the tail end of it, because there's no way there were 15,000 there, as the LA Times said yesterday.

Anyway, I grabbed my camera from the car and took some pictures of the moonbats, along with a handful of Protest Warriors out there.

[MaxedOutMama]

Iron Dave wrote:
Not to make you mad again, but Fatigue Boy doesn't have the sense you give him credit for: that's an Army BDU jacket with the tapes still over the pockets. And a shoulder patch, which I can't make out. Plus a dog tag (only one, though, did leave the other on the body?) for Extra Authenticity.

Awww, it's not that bad. I think his addition of that little pearl necklace really dressed the whole outfit up! Note also the restrained ring on the index finger....

Combine that with the dull, wrinkle-browed look of confusion, and it's a classic Eurotwit flown-in-for-the-occasion fashion statement if I've ever seen one.

[A.M. Mora y Leon]

I was at that thing myself - the leftists among themselves were saying it was 5000 protestors, max. I gagged when they cheered Fidel Castro. It was too much. Did you get a load of the Code Pink freaks? They have to be on drugs, nobody acts that stupid.

[torchy]

The sign in the second photo should reference Exodus 20:13, Thou shalt not kill. Nothing about George in the passage. The Hebrew word translated as 'kill' is ratsach whose connotation is to murder, to kill with malicious intent, out of unreasoning hatred. There are 3 other places in the Ot where this specific word is used, and refer to the commandment or instances of malicious killing. The more generic term for killing, slaughtering of animals,etc, shacha, is more widely used. The sign holder would have been more accurate to reference Saddam, Osama, Abu Musab, Ayman or a host of other true murderers.

BTW Justin, CBS and NBC ran pieces about the DC rally in their weekend coverage. None of these pieces referenced the counter-demonstrations or the wounded and dead soldiers the rally professed to represent.

[Merry Whitney]

Great job, Baldilocks. Thanks.

Did anyone happen to tune into C-Span coverage of the Support our Troops rally in DC? I caught the tail end, a Marine vet named Kevin Martin did a great job on the podium.

Merry Whitney

[Justin]

Torchy--but you almost NEVER see/saw coverage of anti-war activities, especially during the build-up to the war. The press kept beating the war drum for the administration without asking questions (with some noteable exceptions), and now we have what we have. I certainly don't think out troops should pull out, but I really am afraid that the country will soon sour on the effort and demand our troops come home.

[Synova]

It's human nature not to notice, so much, expressions of ideas we agree with. What we notice are the things that we disagree with, or that bother us or upset us.

It's getting to be a while ago now but it doesn't seem to me that the buildup to Afghanistan was without dissenting views. Between those talking about bombing them into the stone age or else coverage of hostility toward moslems or else, stupidly enough, Sikhs, the media certainly didn't avoid passing on criticisms of the military action and dire warnings about the impossibility of fighting the war hardened Afghans in those mountains. Warnings about winter cold that would bog our guys down. Warnings that no fighter on Earth was a match for those born and raised in those mountains. And then, after we moved in so swiftly, so much so that we moved ahead of our own planning, those plans were criticized and disected and blame was laid because we missed Bin Laden.

During the buildup to Iraq there was always public dissent. It wasn't hidden from us. There was always a strong element that wanted nothing more than to continue sanctions for longer, who believed that sanctions would work.

And Justin, if you are worried that the country will soon sour on the effort, ask yourself what you can do about that. If you see the moral and political reasons that we must persevere, no matter how you feel about the initial decision to wage war in Iraq, you can express those when the subject comes up. When someone you know talks about how we're losing or going to lose or can never win and we should just get our guys home *now*, you can be a soft voice of reason that may even convince them to consider other possibilities.

Individuals are smart, to shamelessly steal from MiB. People are dumb but individuals are smart. So deal with individuals and don't worry about the rest of it.

[Steve]

I don't mean to chase you all over this blog Justin. I've left you alone in some responses. But could I have a poll among other people contributing to this site as to whether Justin's two assertions about MSM news coverage of the anti-war voices and the claims of MSM news' drum beating ever took place.

As for what we have now? What we have now is not all that bad. You prove Osama bin Laden right in his statements about Somalia and our pusillanimous inability to stand and fight and see things through. With less than 2,000 casualties we are wringing our hands like we did at 500 casualties. The people behind Zarqawi and Muqtada Al-Sadr have sustained many times more casualties and they look to still win this. They can't militarily but they'll need the support of Western media to do so and they have got precedent, and they know it, to think they can pull that aspect of this off.

If they get a chance they will extract that oil as much as any Western oil baron ever did, and they will use its revenue to fund and create WMD, and worldwide terror cells as enforcers by way of terror events and threat, and a Salafis Taliban state, and leverage this world's political scene. The oil Iraq has is the second largest reserves but of a better quality and cheaper to extract than anywhere else in the world.

Even if the United States buys no Middle Eastern oil the coming decades are going to see 30 trillion dollars going to Middle Eastern oil countries. It is better that we (as best we can) make sure that the oil revenue is not converted to terrorism and/or Wahhabism and/or whatever else you call what is being taught in the Madrassas of Karachi, Pakistan and along the Eastern to Southern edges of Africa (that list could also include many more places including Great Britain and the U.S.).

It appears now that our universtiies are already under the influence of this Middle Eastern oil in that many of these countries have funded Middle East Studies departments and chairs at our universities and is beginning to have a noticable effect. That would include a simultaneous surge of anti-Israel campus radicalism coinciding with the Second Intifada.

You might also look for the PDF file put out by Freedom House last December 2004, or January 2005, concerning Saudi Wahabbism being taught in American Mosques.

It is very important, if at all possible, to see to it that the Middle Eastern countries move toward some parliamentary government, with the rule of law, and a free press. There has really been some changes spreading in the mind of many in the Middle East in the last year. I am not all that hopeful but I've got to be.

About that poll question?

[Paul]

Typical Left-Liberal poppycock and distortion of the facts. As an old leftist who saw the light years ago (thank the Lord!) , I can tell you that these protests are scripted and have one goal-to denigrate, defame and hurt the USA. They changed the script of supprt from Communists in the 1960s to Islamofascists today.

[Justin]

Synova said:
And Justin, if you are worried that the country will soon sour on the effort, ask yourself what you can do about that. If you see the moral and political reasons that we must persevere, no matter how you feel about the initial decision to wage war in Iraq, you can express those when the subject comes up. When someone you know talks about how we're losing or going to lose or can never win and we should just get our guys home *now*, you can be a soft voice of reason that may even convince them to consider other possibilities.

I agree--I think our misson in Iraq is critical to our national security. Pulling out now would be a disaster--even liberals should realize that the Iraqis are much better off with a strong US presence. I have tried to convince my anti-war friends that this is the case (with some success).

Steve, I actually agree with almost everything you said (probably a first), but I do think that the pre-war media coverage was horrible--HOWEVER--I am easily willing to concede that I could be wrong. I think there is a tendency of both the left and the right to think the media is not telling their side of the story, and I could be guilty of that. I do remember that before the war there was very little, if any, criticism from the MSM concerning Bush's WMD/Iraq and Al Quada/Iraq clams (Knight Ridder being the exception) and very little attention was paid to those challenging the claims. Again, if anyone happens to think otherwise and has examples, I will admit I was wrong. For an example of my point, see generally the New York Times coverage leading up to the war, especially Judith Miller's reporting.

Regarding the DC protest--while I don't agree with the protesters aims, they had much better music than the freedom march (or whatever it was called) to commemorate 9/11 (no offense intended for Clint Black fans) :-).

[Doug]

Hello-came here through Michele Malkin's blog-it is chilling to read that the anti-war efforts are morphing into anti-Israel rants, pro-Palistinian "movements". When peoples prejudices and emotions get worked up, as is happening at these rallys, they are open to accept what their rational minds would reject. When did inciting hate every help anybody?

[Tantor]

The anti-war protests here in Washington, DC looked pretty much the same as on your side of the country. Even many of the signs were the same. And the protestors were interchangeable. Somehow I take comfort in knowing that Stupid is spread evenly across the country. I wouldn't want it all piled up in the capital.

Thanks!

Tantor