DC Trip

Quick trip to DC before Sunday's vote.  Had a few things to say.  And, coincidentally, ran into Mike and Austin at the Skate park.  Which technically doesn't allow skating.  I'm guessing the No Skateboarding rules only apply "as needed".




I have LOTS more pictures. It was a wonderful spring day in the Capital City, with the cherry blossoms anxious to bloom. Had to be 72 degrees, sunny, light breeze. I would have had LOTS more pictures still, but ran out of batteries on my camera (anybody seen my backup battery?)

9/12 March on DC

Conservatives from across the nation converged on DC to demonstrate for fiscal responsibility and limited government, because it's important and nobody seems to be listening.  And nobody listened.  Or did they?

Nobody can give a good official headcount of the demonstrators.  I think conservative estimates are around 75,000.  Some say over a million.  I was there.  I have trouble believing it was a million.  It was hard to see everybody because they were EVERYWHERE, but I find it hard to believe that there were only 75,000 there.  If I had to guess, I would have guessed between 200,000 and 300,000.  If not from an actual count, take my word from what it felt like: wall-to-wall people, more signs than you can read in four hours, impressive turnout.  I saw representation from Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Ohio, Michigan, Mississippi, Kansas, TEXAS, Montana, California, and Alaska. 

I went down on a bus trip from Bel Air, Maryland.  A guy was going to get 3 or 4 buses chartered for the trip, but he tells us that people kept bringing checks to his house saying they wanted a seat on the bus (like me!).  He ended up chartering 12 buses at 52 seats/bus from Bel Air alone.  This was all by word of mouth, there was no advertising.  We kept things on the DL at work, but ultimately eight of us from work were on the bus.

The march down Pennsylvania Ave to the Capitol was cool.  Very densely packed, especially in the beginning.  I am pretty sure DC hadn't expected that many people, and failed to close enough streets.  Once we bounced around the Capitol trying to find a suitable place to claim some turf (concrete, as it turns out), it was a little less exciting.  There were speakers, but we couldn't hear them really.  I don't think they prepped a sound system suitable for a crowd of that size.   So we sat/stood while speakers spoke, then wandered around the crowd a while and worked our way back to the bus.  No biggee that we didn't hear the speakers, we mostly just wanted to be counted.

Were we counted?  Did we make the news?  I don't really think we made the news.  A mention, maybe a little understated/mis-stated by network news.  Fox News covered it of course, but as far as I can tell, didn't blow it up to be any bigger than it was.  It was a nice day for a march.

Bound for DC 9/12

I have my bus ticket to  go to DC on 9/12!  I heard this evening on CBS News (which I don't normally watch) that they were expecting about 3000 people in DC for the rally.  The Bel Air, Maryland contingent alone will number something more than 400, so I estimate that their estimate is off a little.  The guy who arranged the buses that I'll be taking explained that people pestered him to get a couple of buses because they wanted to go to the rally.  He obliged, but people kept showing up giving him money for seat reservations.  Two buses became four, then five, and I believe at the close of the reservation period was up to 8.  We were generally close-lipped about this event at  work, but somebody asked the question and in the blink of an eye 6 people were registering bus reservations.

This will be my third such-themed event, the first being the Annapolis TEA Party April 15 (rained horribly, and the umbrellas made it difficult to see the speakers--or much of anything else for that matter), the other being the Bel Air TEA Party July 4.  There was some participation (and maybe some organization) in Bel Air from Campaign For Liberty (Ron Paul).  I don't necessarily see eye-to-eye with the Libertarians, particularly with regard to foreign policy, but that doesn't detract from these events.  They certainly are not libertarian rallies--so far they are not partisan at all.  I didn't post pics at that time for some reason, so here's a few shots from both events, including a few shots ripped from a Campaign for Liberty Blog Page, cause I was in them.