A Day In The Rain

I wasn’t going to double post my day in Mequon to see the President here and over at Right Voices – - but then, I decided to post it here, too.

You can see the photos here in the photo gallery!

You can also see Bush’s speech here, at the Concordia University website.

I worked this morning until noon. I had to really micro-manage myself this morning because I had three patients I had to see before noon – and that’s no small task when they all live about 30 minutes away from each other. However, I started the day out early and keep my nose to the grindstone, so to speak – and pulled up into my parents driveway at about 11:50am this morning.

It is a rainy and cold day – so I traded my white lab coat for a dark blue hooded sweatshirt that Dad offered me. We packed up our cameras, rain gear, GW support signs and flags and headed over to Mequon with high hopes of seeing our President. I had a special passenger in the back seat on our way over to Mequon:

Uncle Sam usually sits on a bench in the front of my folks house – along with their Bush/Cheney yard sign and American flag. Today – he made the trip with us, and actually proved to be the highlight of the group.

We were scheduled to meet the area Republican Assoc. at 1pm. We got there and our group wasn’t there – but we did meet up with the Marquette University Republican student group. Pretty much, we were all of 4 Bush supporters standing with our signs in the midst of VERY vocal protesters.

My folks are as enthusiastic as me:

Needless to say, we stayed pretty quiet. We were standing on the corner when a car pulled over by us…rolled down their window and the lady said, “The deaths of thousands of Iraqis are on YOUR shoulders!!” Mom, Dad and I were trying to decide who she was talking to. We wanted to know exactly whose shoulders because that’s a lot of guilt to carry around. I think it was my mom who yelled back, “And the thousands upon thousands of Iraqis in the mass graves – - are they on YOUR shoulders?” I’m pretty sure the lady flipped us off as she drove away. Drive-by dissent.

My dad was walking around the protesters with Uncle Sam:

Then a nice man from the Ozaukee County Republican Assoc. dropped by to shuttle all of us about 2 miles north to a different area. There was more action at that spot – it was just down the street from Concordia College, where George Bush made his commencement speech to the graduates. The protesters were already there in droves — they bused union workers up from Illinois, as well as our own home-grown Milwaukee protesters:

They kept yelling at us…

“We will not be moved” (as far as we were concerned, they could stay right where they were)
“We love the flag – We hate Bush” (Funny, out of about 75 or so of them – not ONE carried the flag they love so much)

They heckled us – pointing out that we were all whites. They’d they’d say “It’s not about race” – - well, if it’s not about race…..?

No worries, though – the GW supporters were present and accounted for:

Unfortunately, after all the fun of yelling back and forth with the liberals across the street — when the big moment came, we found out that George Bush’s motorcade had been diverted to a different entrance for the college. We were able to catch a quick glimpse of his motorcade as it headed north on I-43 – but if a person blinked, they missed it.

Oh well. It was a fun day, overall. I had a great time with my folks – it was a lot of fun spending the day with them, supporting our President and heckling liberals. We listened to Bush’s speech on the radio on the way home. I was somewhat disappointed that the ‘greet’ didn’t go as planned – but I’d do in a heartbeat if I had it to do over again:

Yea – those are protesters standing behind me there.