I'm exhausted, I'm sore all over, I have chills and a fever of 102, and I shivered so much
I'm still seeing three of everything.  Even so, I feel better than I have in months.

Why do I feel so good?  Because I just flipped off George W. Bush.

It's true that this is a terribly disrespectful thing to do to the President of the United States.
But as so many of the protesters' signs along Pennsylvania Avenue said, George W. Bush is not the President.

The day broke cold and rainy, about 35 degrees, and by the time we got off the Metro at Federal Plaza,
the temperature had dropped to 21.  On top of that, the rain was now mixed with snow, sleet and hail.
If I was George W. Bush and I believed in bad omens, I would be worried.

I would also be worried that at the Secret Service checkpoint we passed through at Federal Plaza
to get to the parade route, they looked us up and down and said, "You can go ahead, ma'am.  You too, sir."
The hand-held metal detectors that have been passed up and down my body every other time in my life
when I entered an area that the President was going to be in sat unused on the tables.
They didn't even examine my cell phone.

Maybe that's why W. never got out of the car except on the last block where the VIP ticket holders were.

But it's more likely he didn't get out of the car because of the thousands upon thousands of chanting
protesters lining the parade route.  And I'm not talking Save the Whales protesters, who sit in a circle
holding hands and singing Cumbaya.  I'm not talking Jesse Jackson protesters (bless their hearts),
who stand shoulder to shoulder swaying in time and singing "We shall overcome."
I'm talking angry-as-hell, fist-waving, invective-spitting protesters.
Shit, I wouldn't have gotten out of the car, either.
On the other hand, I wouldn't have stolen an election in the first place.

Ladies and gentlemen, America is pissed off.

I'm told that CNN and the other news networks were reporting "some protesters," estimating the
number at a few thousand.  Well, I was there, and I'm here to tell you the networks are full of shit.
As we made our way down Pennsylvania Avenue looking for the best spot to dig in, we saw that
the entire opposite side of the street as far as we could see in either direction had been completely
surrendered to protesters.  And there were so many of them, they had started to form in force
on our side of the street as well.

They held signs that said, "His Fraudulency," "Shame," "You are not the President," and "Illegitimate."
They chanted things like, "George Bush, go away.  Racist, sexist, anti-gay," and "Hail to the Thief."

We finally settled in at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 14th Street, catty corner across from
the Willard Hotel, two blocks from the White House.  The Crawford, Texas High School Band was there,
playing Yellow Rose of Texas and other songs, but you could make out only a few notes over the din of the protesters.

At first, the Bush supporters in the crowd tried to shout the protesters down, but as the day wore on and the
protesters thickened, the Bush supporters began to realize how drastically outnumbered they were, outnumbered,
in fact, by about 7 or 8 to 1.  (I know, I couldn't believe it either.  You didn't hear that on the news either, did you?)

Gradually the Republicans in the crowd grew quieter in their opposition, and eventually they shut up altogether,
contenting themselves with waving whenever they saw another Bush supporter go by.  You could spot the
Bush supporters, by the way, the same way you could spot them at the GOP convention in Philadelphia.
Men in cashmere overcoats and cowboy boots and flashing gold watches, and women in fur and diamonds?
Republicans.

The Bush organizers were wrong about one other thing, by the way:  You can't wear a tuxedo and cowboy boots
without it looking podunk.  These guys looked like Woody from Toy Story.  (Hey, if they can call my
boy Bill a cracker, I can call them podunk.)

The parade was supposed to get underway at 2:00, but it actually got started closer to 3:15.
The wait for the motorcade was a long one, and the weather only got worse.  It's one thing
to stand out in the street for an hour in 20-degree weather, and it's another thing to stand out in
the rain and sleet and snow and hail.  But to stand out in 20-degree weather, in the rain and sleet
and snow and hail, for four hours, well that's something else again.

But that didnÕt deter anybody.  We didn't see any of the protesters leave in the four-plus hours we waited
for King George to pass.  All we saw was the crowd of protesters getting thicker and thicker.  So thick, in fact,
that in front of the crowd directly across from us, the police got a little worried and added SWAT guys three-deep
to the already three-deep line of D.C. police standing between the protesters and the Avenue.

But there were no clashes.  And that is a credit to the protesters.  There were so many on that side
of the street, they could easily have stormed the cops and the SWAT guys and rushed out into the street,
but they stood peacefully where they were.

The one thing the protesters were guilty of was booing a platoon of Marines that filed out to line the Avenue.
Don't boo our fighting boys, guys.  They put their lives on the line to keep our asses safe.

Finally at around 3:30 or 4:00 (I'm not sure of the exact time; my friend was shivering so hard
I couldn't read his watch) the Presidential motorcade approached.

Boy, the protesters were loud before, but you should have heard them now.
Like an animal about to attack, the low growl turned quickly to a roar.
If anybody was cheering the new Commander in Chief, I couldn't hear them.
All I heard was boos.

As if by some mutual agreement (which of course could not have been because the protesters on
opposite sides of the street could not communicate), everybody fell in to chanting "Hail to the Thief."
Most were shaking their fists in rhythm with the chant, but one or two hands (I admit it, one of the hands was mine)
extended a middle finger.  Like a wave at a baseball game, the middle finger came up on one fist,
then another and another, until every protester in sight was flipping the motorcade the bird.

When King GeorgeÕs limo finally came by, he was faced with thousands
and thousands of pissed-off Americans, flipping him off.  God Bless America, huh?

I can't say for sure how he felt about this, because the little wussy
(substitute the letter "p" for "w" as you see fit) wouldn't even roll down the window.
He just sailed by like the King in his carriage.  I'm told that he walked the last block to the White House,
once he was inside the Secret Service bubble, where the street was lined only with paying VIP supporters.

But like the hated King at court, ambitious office-seekers and maids-in-waiting fawning over him,
it looks real rosy inside the bubble, but just beyond the gates, the real people are waiting,
and he's going to have to face us sometime.

If he wanted to know how America feels about him, he should have rolled down his window.