Here are my photos:
My DC Rally Journal

My pal and I took off late Friday night from Detroit and drove to DC for the rally on Saturday. The entire day was simply unreal; the crowd was NO LESS than 250,000 -- do NOT believe any estimate that say less than that. How can I know?

I feel the rage that all of us feel; there are no excuses for the lack of action - or for that matter, the negative actions - our Federal Government undertook last week. I spend most of my daily breaks reading and researching and figuring out what went wrong, who was responsible (we know), and ways to help the victims. In the last few days, I've noticed a bad trend in our own rhetoric...

More below the fold.

It's hard enough to believe that the right-wing media has the gall to smear grieving war mothers. You'd think they'd smear the Pope if he went to Crawford with Cindy Sheehan. They've taken it on themselves to label her as "nutty", "insane", and my favorite: Rush, the three-hour hate monger, calls her "completely made up". The smear tactics from the right never stop. Ever. This is what they do when they have an indefensible situation that makes them look the charlatans they are (Bill Maher mocked it very well). They even somehow got ahold of the woman's divorce papers and put them on the internet (as if the Right doesn't have their own marital issues). Ann Coulter (authentic nut-job herself) said this: "It's the strangest method of grieving I've seen since Paul Wellstone's funeral. Someone needs to teach these liberals how to mourn." Klassy.

Cue local sportscaster-turned-windbag Frank Beckmann. You're on, buddy!

"The United States has intelligence that Iran is working to adapt missiles to deliver a nuclear weapon, further evidence that the Islamic republic is determined to acquire a nuclear bomb, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Wednesday."

WaPo article

Sometimes, we have to look at the silver lining in things.

I was raised is a very Republican household in Grosse Pointe, Michigan (caveat: I now live, with my wife and daughter, in downtown Detroit, where I'm much more comfortable with the demographics, politics, etc.) For those of you unfamiliar with GP,  it's where the Automotive barons had their summer mansions on the lake.

Looking at the political landscape -- and the geopolitical landscape as well -- we Dems are faced with several problems not easily solved. The GOP has mastered lies and distortion, and we have mastered ineffectively countering them. We've picked candidates -- no offense at all -- that feed right into the plans of those on the other side that make their living slamming Democrats. As good as Kerry was, they knew his shortcomings and that his enemies were frothing at the mouth for this. On top of all of it, they have turned their persona into one of **gulp** moral righteousness and virtue.

The dream was that, when all the votes were counted, it turned out that Kerry actually did win. Then, I was instantly transported back to Florida in 2000, and all the votes were counted there, too. Now Gore was the president, but Kerry won anyway (weird about dreams that way).

Kerry was talking about how Gore lifted more people out of poverty than anyone else, that the urban agenda was in full force, and how he would continue to lift America's surplus even higher than the $7 trillion it was currently at.