bush comes to town, i go protest

full set of pictures here

Bush came to Irvine this morning to speak about immigration. I headed down to the event to give The Decider a warm welcome. I was hoping to give him the one fingered victory salute but he was well secluded in his bubble and never showed his face outside. Several key Orange County Republicans, including Huntington Beach Congressman Dana Rohrbacher, decided not to attend the event because they don’t support Bush’s guest worker program.

I hung out in the anti-war camp with AC Patriot and KillJuliet. The interesting thing about this protest was that everyone (protesters and counter-protesters) had some type of beef with Bush. Hell, his approval ratings are in the shitter.

The anti-immigrant xenophobes were out in full force to protest Bush's "amnesty" program. They shouted “Go back to Mexico” and “We didn’t leave the party, the party left us”. AC Patriot and I shouted back "Go back to Europe".

The flag waving zombies were relatively amusing until one asshole came next to us and started showering us with fallacious arguments for his cause. First he claimed that 1/3 of all illegal immigrants enter the U.S. carrying leprosy or other infectious diseases. He said that the media doesn't want to report this, which is why we've never heard it before. He then invoked September 11 as the main reason to close the border. I then asked him how many of the 19 hijackers in the Spetember 11 attacks entered the U.S. via the Mexican border. He scoffed at my question so I asked him again. Then he left to go bother someone else.

About 1/3 of the protesters were Armenian-Americans who demanded that Bush recognize the Armenian genocide of 1915. It seemed odd to me that Armenians would chose this opportunity to protest, but then I learned that today is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. Bush has yet to recognize Turkey's genocide of Armenians during WWI.

The most bizarre person I spoke with was a Christian man on the anti-war side. He believes that Bush is the anti-Christ who is fulfilling the prophecies foretold in the Book of Revelation. He said that the third horseman of the apocalypse will be the avian flu and the fourth horseman will be global economic collapse. He said that God would swallow the Republicans in the Rapture. I'm down with that as long as I get their mansions in Newport Beach.

Here was the best sign:

The entire shindig was over at 9 am. I watched Bush's motorcade drive off about 500 feet from the protest site. Ah, there's nothing like a good old protest to start your Monday morning.