NY Times Reports 500 attend DC Tea Party

Hey, that was the joke anyway by one of the speakers after an announcement was made that ABC Snooze was projecting 2 million attendees at the Rally today.

Park Police estimated the crowd at 1.2 mil.

I think not.

There were 170 million people there...in spirit anyway.

My guess is that the angry mob numbered somewhere between 200 - 300 thousand gun-nuts, racists, religious fanatics, homophobes and wife-beater-wearing rednecks.

And I loved every minute of it.*

I sort of slept late, so had to scramble to get out of here with waning hopes of catching the tail end of the march which was scheduled to begin at 11:30 at Freedom Plaza across the street from the Reagan Building.

I was tooling down West Ox in the S2000 when I realized I'd forgotten my pitchfork, so that was another delay in getting to the Metro.

Speaking of which, Metro had NO clue what was coming today. They were one-tracking between East Falls Church and Ballston...ALL DAY. Coming and going, they were doing repairs.

The train was packed with locals and patriots from all over. I stood in line with some New Yorkers who'd been on a bus since 4 a.m.

I didn't get to join the back end of the march because, as it turns out, that mob had to start moving forward at 10:10 instead of 11:30; there were too many people and the crush of it all was like a human-powered glacier on Pennsylvania Avenue.

I walked the several blocks from Federal Triangle to the Reflecting Pool and West Lawn of the Capitol. I was in good company and spoke to many like-minded folks along the way.

The Protester's signs were very clever:
Obama is Jimmy Carter on Steroids
Communism Has Only Killed 100 million People...Let's Give it Another Try
Abortion Is Not Health Care
Joe Wilson 2012
Bend Over...Here Comes the Change
Read My Teleprompter...Stop the Spending
Don't Barney Frank Me (Use your imagination for that graphic)

I was wearing my Welcome Back Carter (likeness of Dear One on the front) tee shirt and was stopped several times for a photo op.

This was a friendly and enthusiastic crowd of angry mobsters. I met people from all over...Kansas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania...and some of them told me they had met Tea Partiers from Alaska and Hawaii.

I covered a lot of ground, snapping candid photos and stopping along the way to listen to the speakers or chat with a new friend.

Two highlights of the day:

There was literally no litter. I recall being at Big O's Innaguration and the ground was blanketed with trash (I notice these things, sorry). I also remember the aftermath of last year's DNC convention when thousands of American flags were found stuffed in trash bags in the back alley. Not so with the Tea Partiers. These people naturally don't have the ability to throw crap on the ground...amazing.

Secondly, there was a huge contingency of young people. I mean enthusiastic, energetic, clean, bright and articulate young people. I started to feel a glimmer of hope that there might be some change coming.

I don't have anything clever to close with other than to say what an amazing day this was. I was very proud to be among tens of thousands of friends I never knew I had. I hope we can do this again sometime soon.


*Metro sucked, coming and going, but I will resist the opportunity to bash them here.