Dear Bartcop,

This is a long letter about my protest of pResident Spyplane's appearance
here in Tampa, Florida. It is kind of lengthy, but I am absolutely thrilled
to have been a part of the vocal opposition! I hope that you enjoy reading my
story as much as I enjoyed living it.

I want to encourage everyone to get involved in politcal protests. When a
politicain comes to your town, make sure you get your lazy cans out there to
protest so that he or her knows that you don't agree with him or she (homage
to Smirk.) I always vote, but around here especially, it seems that there is
so much more that one can do. PROTEST. The ditto spanks will be there to kiss
that right-wing fanny, so get out there and try to kick it. With words, of
course. I hope that you can learn from my experience.

Monday started out for me as just another beautiful day here in Tampa,
Florida. I stopped at a convenience store en route to work at about 6:45 a.m.
Everyday I read the headlines but rarely waste my money on actually buying
a paper; after all, I've read the "Limbaugh Letter" a few times, so I don't
really need to read any other commercial publication, since they are all
pretty much alike. I remember last week, when the "liberal" local paper's
front page proclaimed that Bush was coming around to talk about saving the
Everglades, since the environment was "the only Bush policy that most people
disagree with." Remember, this is from the so-called "liberal" paper.

Today I saw the headline about a rally later that day to praise pResident
Drunk for our 80-cents-a-day tax cut. I thought about the republicans that
govern our state, our nation, and our media. I decided that it was time for
me to get involved in political protests.

While at work that day, I found an inch-and-a-half square iron bar, about
three feet long. I thought that this would be a handy "sign holder," just in
case I ran into a mob of republican congressional aides. I left work about an
hour early, and went to KMart to get poster board. Instead of paper though, I
bought foam-core. It's stuff that they use to frame pictures and do other
crafts. Unlike paper, it is about a quarter-inch thick, and the kind that I
got had half-inch grid lines...this made it much easier to print legibly.

Note: this is very important...you want the public to actually be able to READ your signs.
USE BIG LETTERS. Also, please make sure that your signs do not have any grammatical errors.
(Attention, Green Party: "Arctic" has two C's.) And can anybody tell the Sierra Club not to make
all their signs the same picture with the same slogan? (It's called "redundancy." Check into it.)

Later, when it rained, I saw a lot of cheap posters go flaccid and turn to ruin, but my foam-core signs
stood proud and erect the whole time (homage to Dole.) Also, the ink that I used was permanent magic marker,
and I was amazed to see that even after the rain, the ink did not run.
Well, it wasn't exactly a flood, but it did rain for about 15 minutes.

I parked at the rally site and right away saw a Nader/LaDuke tee-shirt.
I thanked the occupant for the opportunity to protest against a republican president.
I think it went over his head.

I was almost immediately accosted by a security guard who informed me that I
could not enter the stadium with the signs. I asked him if Scalia had made it
against the law to protest Bush. He didn't know who I was talking about. So I
took up my position under the footbridge that crosses the highway. It
connects the football stadium parking lot with the baseball field, owned by
the NY Yankees and their owner, whom Smirk later refered to as George
"SteinBURNer." His name is actually Steinbrenner, you know? But poor Cokeboy,
with his Ivy League college degrees, still has problems with any word
containing more than one syllable.

Another goon ran over and said that all protesters had to leave the stadium
property and go down to "our area." When I refused, he said that he would
find a cop. I found a cop before he could, and he told me the same thing as
the goon. I asked him where did the stadium public-owned land stop and the
public-owned highway right-of-way start. I was informed that since my last
name was not Bush, I could be arrested, and the "official area" for protesters was
A HALF-MILE DOWN THE HIGHWAY. I am not rounding up a
couple-hundred yards, it was a complete half mile.

Another piece of advise for you novice protestants: bring sun block.

I took up my post in the corral. It was about 3:30, and I was alone. I got a
few honks, and a few angry looks. I really thought that I was going to be all
alone for the entire protest. I was amazed that nobody else was there. I
guess that I didn't realize how early it was since I left my watch in my car.
I didn't know if I was going to be arrested or whatever, and I didn't want my
watch to get messed up.

This is one of the busiest intersections in Tampa, so I knew that most of the
'spanks would see me on their way to see Lush, and I knew that a lot of
passersby would see me as well. So I decided to stay put. After some time, a
few more liberals trickled in. Then a Sierra Club truck pulled up with a big
trailer with a state of Florida and an oil platform, imploring the pResident
to live up to his promise not to allow oil drilling of the shore of Florida.

I drink a lot of water. It's almost all I ever drink. But I didn't want to
today because I knew that I would have to urinate, and sure enough, there
were no bathrooms in sight, not even a portable outhouse. But I sure was
getting thirsty. I decided that I would chance it, figuring that a little
water would never make to my bladder since I was parched by then. I begged an
oldster to take my five bucks to the 7-11 and get us each a jug. Later I
reminded him that Big Cancer used the proceeds from his tobacco fix to help
appoint pResident Sorry. He disagreed. I told him that every dollar he spends
on coffin nails is a dime for Jesse Helms. But the geezer proudly asserted
that the tobacco for HIS cigarettes was grown in Kentucky.

I met a guy who noticed my sign and said that he was a barthead too. He held
one of my signs. Then the Sierra Club set up a balloon of a power plant that
said we should use renewable energy sources like solar power, wind power, etc.

Then I saw the hippies coming. I told the other bartmonkey, "Oh no. Naderites!"

There was probably about a hundred of them. They were a vocal bunch. There was a lot
of enthusiasm after this point. They like to move their signs up and down, so other people
can't read them. They were chanting, "What do we want? Clean power! When do we want it? Now!"

Over and over. I told some of them that the people in the cars could not hear them, and the all of us there
to protest were pretty much in agreement. But I guess that chanting is supposed to keep your spirits up.
When the singing was finally over, I yelled out that the only thing I wanted was for Strom Thurmond to
pay the piper. A few people got it.

We were a motley assortment of democrats, homosexuals, feminists, druids,
environmentalists, new-agers, and other riff-raff.

I saw a few people I knew, and made a few new friends. I held my sign high
and firm throughout, occassionally switching arms. We got a lot a supportive
whoops and hollers from the lemmings passing by in their shiny metal boxes. A
few idiots shot the bird, shouted obscenities, etc. But all in all, a
splendid time was had by all. The little rainstorm we experienced was really
quite refreshing, especially for the wiccans. I was sure that the republican
harpies and sheep in the stadium were absolutely miserable. I talked to a
bunch of people about being vegetarian, and preached to everybody about not
wasting votes on Nader the next time. I even had a sign on the back of my
sign, the front was about Bush, that was for the general public. The back was
for the protesters....I simply said, "Thank you, Ralph Nader." Alas, I think
that most of my newfound friends thought that I wasn't being sarcastic.

Most of the Naderites wanted to argue the point, but I think I got through to
a couple of them. A good approach that I have been using lately is to pretend
that I also voted for Nader. I tell them, "WE got fooled. WE were used. WE
wanted Nader, but we ELECTED Bush." This is especially true here in Florida,
where Nader got something like 90,000 votes. I tell them that "I don't think that Gore
would have reversed Clinton's environmental policies. I will never vote for Nader again."
(The truth.) I say that Nader was definitely the best man for the job, but if he wants to make
a difference, he should run for congress....he could easily win any of at least twenty or thirty
representative seats in the Pacific states. He could make a big difference in congress...
hey, Sonny Bono did it, right? Why can't Ralph? After all, he was a highly-respected consumer
advocate for almost forty years, before he became the most important election decider since Willie Horton Bush.

It was time to go. We put all our water bottles into a recycled plastic
container, and trudged back to the stadium, way off in the distance. We could
hear country music, so we knew that pResident Einstein had already finished
his 15 minute speech. The sheep were leaving their pen as I got back to the
footbridge, and I posted myself at the foot of the bridge, where the whole
crowd would have to walk past me and my sign which said that more Floridians
prefered Gore, and asked why was Bush's family above the law.

If looks could kill, I would be in front of Strom right now. I got a lot of
angry looks, and lot of angry comments. I kept my cudgel within arm's reach
at all times now. A lot of people got into shouting matches with me. I beat a
lot of them to the punch with sayings like "This is not Afghanistan. Scalia
has not yet made dissent illegal." And "How are you going to spend your big
tax cut? Oh yeah, you'll have to give to Exxon or Mobile, huh?" People were
sending their children over to call me a evil freak, a sore loser, an ugly
hippy, and telling me to get over it, get a job, get a life, etc. etc. One
guy said "Hiel Hitler," you know, all those white supremecists and nazis are
so liberal. I heard all the same old sound bites from the election, about
Bush winning all those thousands of counties ("Where nobody lives," I
replied,) how I wanted to keep counting and recounting, etc., about being too
stupid to use the ballot correctly, wanting to pull votes out of the thin
air, the usually litany of bull-dole.

As with so many times before, my stoic appearance and height kept the
cowardly republican males from getting me put in jail by sending them to the
front of Strom Thurmond's line. It's true, they travel in packs, but they
still won't attack unless they are sure that they will win. I had my
steel-toed boots and my iron shank and I was ready to morph into a 6'-2"
Braveheart at a moment's notice. I'm no Billy Badass, but I served four years
in the Marines (like most liberal pansies, I enlisted when I was 17. And it
was a risk! Reagan was in office then!) and I know how to not appear weak,
unlike so many Tejanos of late.

Amazingly, I ran into a friend who was there to support pResident Goodparent.
He laughed at me, but was nonetheless glad to see me again. We were in the
Marines together. I tried to talk some sense into him, but to no avail. We
did do a lot of catching up, and he watched my back. He thought it was
hilarious to hear all those right-wingers hollering at me.

The last dittomonkey out of the stadium was none other than Glenn Beck,
Tampa's own little clone of Rush Limbaugh, with his very own special lil'
hate radio show that spews forth every day right after Rush. And - this is
perfect! - his name was on my sign.....you can see it for yourself at his
homepage by going to

http://www.glennbeck.com/

then clicking  on "PICS" (I'm not sure how long it will be there.)

The picture that you will see is an hairy, weak, vegetarian walking down the
footbridge with 2,000 wet dittomonkeys hot on his trail. (I will try to send
another picture that a lady took of my with one of my other signs.) Why were
they all wet? Because umbrellas were not allowed in the stadium. Even though
they knew that it would probably rain. You see, an umbrella could easily be
used as a weapon, or to hide one. And while Bush wants more guns hidden in
more pockets by more people in churches, hospitals, and other Tejas locales,
he doesn't want them around him. Isn't that strange?

Little Rush Wannabe had a few words for me, but he did say that he respected
me for standing up with my sign and my opinion in front of so many that
disagreed. He guaranteed me that I would get front of the line preference on
his show, but said that he would not let me debate him in person at his
studio. I told him that he was just like Rush: he lied, made inflamatory
accusations to which he was not held accountable, and would just turn my
volume down when I called and he would sound like he had stunned me into
silence. I was going to call him tonight at the last minute, but he signed
off at 6:30 instead of 7:00, like I thought usually did. But he and his
callers spent his first twenty or so minutes ridiculing me, saying that I was
homeless (I guess that some people think that masculine facial hair only
grows on the poor,) that I was a potsmoker, I looked like I was going to hit
him over the head, I looked like I push trash around and pee on myself (more
cheap shots at the homeless. I wonder where he learned that? Hmmmmm?) Later
in the show he took more cheap shots at the impoverished citizens of China
and India, complained about Chelsea (since the Bush twins are in the news,)
and joked about the mass murder of the monarchs of Nepal. Then he said that
he wouldn't care if every person in Canada was murdered, along with their
health care system. A real compassionate conservative, huh?
I guess that I'll try tomorrow night.

In closing, I would like to say to those of you who think that voting is enough, IT ISN'T.
Especially with the Rehnquist Supreme Court making so many decisions!
Please get out and protest before Scalia makes it illegal!
It's fun! It's free! It's exciting! I hope to see you there!