Federal Talapia Pond
 

Through all the speeches and the music I couldn't help but think that this would make a great tilapia pond.

Maybe those fish could help feed those folks out on the mall that always seem to be hungry?

Wiki lists the depth as 18" on the sides and 30" at the center. Perfect for tilapia.

Do tilapia like goose shit? Cause there's literally tons of that in and around the pool most times.

I just read in the paper this morning that Metro reports 510,000 trips were taken on Metro that day, which works out to 255,000 round trips. The previous year's same Saturday had 300,000 trips, or 150,000 round trips. So there were 105,000 more people than usual riding Metro that day.

There was another rally going on that day.

FORRRESSSSSSTTTTTTTTTTTT!

*snort*

Everybody else must have come by bus.

thats funny - all the estimates I saw were 87,000

Surely you're not taking the word of CBS over Beck or Bachmann?

Good Lord no - that'd be blasphemous!

Jennay?

FORRRRESSSSSSTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!

The goose poops should not be a problem but the cool water temps in the winter would surely kill the tilapia.

If fingerlings could be introduced in the spring after the water has risen in temperature above 50 degrees or so the fish would clear out most of that algae/manure funk before the winter brought the water temps down below 50 again.

The fish would die slowly enough to supply food for the birds but would likely not grow over 4 or 5 inches long.

This rally was surely the biggest event that I've ever attended.

We arrived about 40 minutes before the metro station opened but were stuck in the huge crowd.

My two friends had gone into DC the day before and had a ticket to ride but I did not, so we had to wait in the long line to buy the ticket before we could wait in the long line to ride the metro.

After we boarded the metro it was a short ride. We were transfered to another line and the turnstyles were left open for the entire crowd to speed up the flow.

I'm sure that was costly but I sure do appreciate that. I made it a point to spend more money downtown than anticipated so that maybe in a small way everyone would benefit.

Of course all of us attending knew this would be a big event but the 3 of us didn't have a real idea what a crowd of several hundred thousand people actually looked like. It was overwhelming.

The space close to the jumbotrons and the memorial/stage were taken long before we arrived and we were guided to keep walking toward the Washington Monument. Just keep walking and walking and walking.

Once we walked to the WWII memorial there was some space to at least stand out of the way of the flow of people. The trouble was that standing out around the pool was hot and tiresome, for 3 hours anyway.

I looked around and found a spot that there was no one sitting or standing around because it was directly in the sun and headed directly for that spot. At least I could sit down.

So for the next 4 hours or so my view of the event was seeing people walk back and forth through the WWII monument.

Many were taking photos, some took a few minutes to sit on the hot stone bench that was available next to me.

Glenn's voice could be heard introducing the speakers and you could hear the cheer of hundreds of thousands of people. Most of the time I could not hear the actual speaker but just the introduction so I'd just listen carefully and get as much as I could.

There were so many people that spoke there that I'd most likely not have any interest in if not for Glenn promoting them. Many of these people were from the Black Robe Regiment. Others were from the military or even the civil rights movement of the 60s.

It was a big event for certain.

You might have imagined what it was like all those years ago hearing MLK give that famous speech for the first time... I have a dream.

It was not always comfortable or enjoyable at the time of the rally but it was surely worth attending and I'll never forget being there and what it represents for all of us.

Like Woodstock, only cool if you didn't have to suffer through it.

.

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Special Operations Warrior Foundation is a good organization doing good work.
But making sure Beck gets paid should not be a priority.:(

A comment from HM's link

relay2steve
1 day ago

Bah! There were leventyteen gazillion jillion loyal patriots there.

The idea that there were only 87,000 is just based on liberal math with its biased insistance upon commonly agreed upon and understood nomenclature and correspondence between numerals and numbers.

That's a great point and I had heard something about that. It's great that the donations were $5 million more than the cost.

I'd be curious to know what the costs were.

That's good for the SOWF and the good work that they do. I've yet to see anything about the costs for this rally.
However, for some of the teaparty rallies in the past where they had Beck, Rush or Hannity, showed numbers were shocking. The speakers, and their entourages, cost the organization a fortune in fees and expenses. I hope that didn't happen to SOWF.

A quick google produces a few comments on the costs. These are not anything official though. The estimate is around $2 million.

The SOWF statement from above reads:

"With your support and help we were able to raise more than $5 million dollars for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. "

Is that gross or net? That doesn't seem clear.

As for the expenses, how much does security cost for the crowd? What about the porta johns? Who paid the travel and lodging costs for the Black Robe Regiment ( I believe there are a total about 240 plus spouses ). How much was Sarah Palin paid? Marcus Luttrell?

The issue of costs of fundraising is a good one and something that I've often had problems with myself.

Now that this awareness has been raised maybe people could make a separate donation to the SOWF. Maybe in doing so those people deserving will benefit while those not deserving will not.

.

An organization I give to as well if anyone is interested:

http://www.specialops.org/

Didn't Beck and Fox claim 500k? Or 2 million? Or something like that. Something along the lines of "eat your heart out, MLK?"

I don't have access to Glenn's internal accounting records but he told his radio audience as well as the audience at the Kennedy Center that there was an unplanned fee, 500k or so, that was unpaid until about 2 weeks prior to the 8/28 Restoring Honor event.

The unplanned fee was reported to be for security for the crowd IIRC.

The largest cost of the event was said to be security for the guests and the crowd.

There was a link on the Beck site asking anyone that was taking a bus to DC to please register. The number of people attending adds to the cost of porta johns and security and the like.

At the start of the planning it may have only been 500k and then grown to 2 million.

I've not heard anything about Glenn disrespecting MLK and in fact he had positive message about MLK and his famous "I have a dream" speech. The message that I heard was that this specific speech ( as with many other speeches I'm sure ) was something that all of us should take to heart. That all men are created equal and that we are all entitled to have an equal chance at achieving our dream. We are not all entitled to equal outcomes ( that's the common interpretation that many people disagree with ) but we should all have an equal chance.

Going a step further, two of the books that I bought about MLK and the "I have a dream" speech that day of the rally reinforce to me personally that his message is not exactly the same as maybe some of those today are trying to teach us. Specifically that MLK was wanting to claim what was naturally his and everyone's right here in the US, equality, not to overthrow the government in favor of some different form of socialism or outright communism.

So overall, honestly, being there was uncomfortable. It was HOT and there were few places to sit down to be somewhat comfortable but I'll never forget attending even though the only way for me to hear most of what the speakers said was to see the video afterwards.

We did well. Raised a few bucks for a great cause, got us out of our routines to visit DC and learned or relearned a few things about some great people.

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Most I heard claimed was 180 - 200k.

I guess after the non-million man march they stopped counting. Who cares, there were a shit load of people at both events.

Maybe it matters because Beck/Bachmann/Palin and ilk don't give a fuck about facts and just make up their own all the time? Then people like the teapartiers treat their word as gospel truth and continue to believe everything they say no matter how outrageous it is? Yeah, it fucking matters. Especially when there are over 300million Americans. 87,000 is only what? Less than 0.03% of the population I believe.

Who cares. It's a non-issue. Unless you are Beck or obsessed with him. The guy is pretty much a bombast.

No, but my parents are obsessed with him/limbaugh/ect, which is annoying enough as it is, but then they pass these beliefs to my nanny. Which then scares her into believing shit like the death panels. She's getting older and even my mom admits that she doesn't have the same reasoning ability that she used to. It pisses me off that instead of trying to be moderate and factual, they just want to rant and rave about what they hear on these obviously biased programs. They don't have any balancing to it at all. All they're doing is scaring people, people like my nanny who should be spending her remaining years relaxing.
For fucks sake! My nanny's best friend just died in July from breast cancer. She was too young for medicare, too rich for medicaid, and too poor for insurance, therefor she had not had a breast cancer exam ever until something major happened and she had to go to the hospital. It was too late to save her life. Despite this, the lack of health care basically killing her best friend, my nanny is scared of universal health care because she thinks it would equal death panels.

Yes the assholes matter to me.

Well said mtp.

Sorry about your Nanny's best friend. But I don't think it has anything to do with bombastic mouth pieces. People are going to believe what they are going to believe. Hell the Dems have been selling snake oil for 18 months and people have believed it. Whatever...