From a young man's blog (see link below!)
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The single greatest event of my life.
So I went to protest Dubya today, as he was visiting my humble little burg of East Lampeter, PA.

[ ... ]

After waiting around for about 45 minutes, the motorcade passed by us again. A few police cars, followed by a van or two, drove by. Then, a Bush/Cheney bus passed, followed by a second one going slower. At the front of this second bus was The W himself, waving cheerily at his supporters on the other side of the highway. Adam, Brendan, and I rose our banner (the More Trees, Less Bush one) and he turned to wave to our side of the road. His smile faded, and he raised his left arm in our direction. And then, George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States of America, extended his middle finger.

Read that last sentence again.
I got flipped off by George W. Bush.

A ponytailed man standing next to us confirmed the event, saying, "I do believe the President of the U.S. just gave you boys the finger." We laughed probably for the next half hour, and promptly told everyone we knew. Brendan actually snapped a picture of Bushy in action, but the glare and the tint of the bus windows make it difficult to see him at all. Nonetheless, it was the best possible reaction.

We pissed George W. Bush off. We are true patriots.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

So, he may not have Cheney's vocabulary, but he can get his point across.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/jiveturky/185733.html

Edited 1 time for typo
Edited a second time for clarification of who wrote this!

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 3 times, lastly by star on Jul 11, 2004 ---</FONT></center>

Wow, I'm so impressed! What an honor! We've flipped a few in Crawford's direction when we drove through Waco, but to actually be on the receiving end of Bush's bird ...! However bad the photo may be, that's a keeper. And if you or someone you know is adept in Photoshop, perhaps the details could be coaxed from a digital copy. Cool. Something to tell your (or someone's) grandkids.

Star, how did you even find this article? I saved the picture and I'll play around with copies of it. Maybe I can manage to get rid of the glare and actually get a good image out of it.

Terrie, I'd love to see the photoshop results. I read about this article and links about it/to it at the Air America Radio site I'm at. One of the bloggers who picked it up was the daily kos - Kos is very likely going to be one of the 60 bloggers at the Democratic Convention - he's got (probably) the most popular blog in the U.S.

I've heard the term "blog" but have absolutely no idea what it is. Can you explain?

Very cool, star. Terrie, blogs huge and are quoted on nightly news shows with regularity now. They're essentially websites, although sometimes they're only part of a site, run by a publishing script like Movable Type and there are also variations - Blogger.com does the publishing for you. You construct the posts on their site and it FTPs to your space. Others, like livejournal also provide the space. Blogs can be about anything and they started out as personal diaries, mostly, but political blogs are the way that a lot of people are countering the disinformation that's out there. Of course, they all have biases. If they didn't, they wouldn't bother blogging. Howard Dean got his following with his blog. Prominent bloggers are getting press creds at the Democratic Convention. Important Democratic blogs include Talking Points Memo and The Daily Kos among others.

Well, duh-oh! Star, I read your post while on first cup o' coffee this morning, and missed the little "quote" at the top--thought you were the one who received Bush's blessing. Well, you should have been, but anyway, it is a great event in someone's life.

I think a blog is a weblog. it's liek an online journal where you can post your journal online. Some of them I've seen are like message boards where folks can post replies...

Exactly, to both Pat and Cheryl.

Terrie, when I first heard "Blog", they were online journals - like the journal I did when I was in England. I posted, and I think one person said hi in comments on one day.

But they've changed, and they often have an ability to comment or respond back. So, the blogger posts a piece of news or advice, and then people can comment on the post.

For me, blogs became hot with Air America (sorry to drone on about it, but since politics - hate them - have become important to me, so has Air America and therefore blogs.)

Several of AAR shows have blogs. Probably the most popular is the one for Majority Report - I don't post to it, I get TOOOOO lost during the show.

However, the site where I 'hang out' hosts the blogs for 2 of the other shows - including Ring of Fire (Bobby Kennedy Jr. is co-host, be still my heart). It's a little less crazed - the producer posts the show's topic, and listeners post in comment to the original post or the show, or the other people who are posting.

(I'm really pushing them to do a show on the Hudson, with a section about Clearwater & Pete! If that happens, you KNOW I will be spamming for everyone to come and blog during the show! Bobby Jr co-wrote a book called "The Riverkeepers" and his co-author worked with Pete for many years!)

wow.

So you kinda got " A bird by the hand of a bush?" That's priceless! Kinda sounds like 'ole dubya trying to recite a old cliche' and messing it up.....huh? <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/smile.gif" width=15 height=15>

Really, not me! I posted it - it's just a first person post! <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/smile.gif" width=15 height=15>

The thing that makes blogs better for their purpose than regular websites is all the tricks they can do. They usually produce an xml feed that can be syndicated for news reader software or to appear on other sites and they automatically archive for you. As was mentioned, you can have comments on them and/or trackback links, which to tell the truth I'm still trying to figure out. There are also blogrolls where you can link to other blogs and the script will indicate when a new post is made to it. I recently set one up for a client that I do freelance for and then I decided to activate my hardly used blogger account and start one just to get used to the form. Originally they started out as a way for people who didn't want to learn HTML, etc. to publish to the web, but I found creating the templates a lot more difficult than doing a regular site. One reason was because I was trying to be super careful to be XHTML compliant, and even use CSS for positioning as well as for the fonts and colors. I'd guess if you just use a template that they provide it's not hard, though.

The "sign language" story comes as no surprise to me. Read The Bush Dyslexicon by Mark Crispin Miller some time. It includes several stories of hostile reactions by "W" when encountering citizens who were less than pleased with his work, both as Gov. & Pres.

In fact, he's figuratively flipping off the NAACP right now, isn't he?