You all see the pictures below. But what will the NYTimes be reporting in print tomorrow? ahem
Thousands Rally in Capital to Protest Big Government [...]On a cloudy and cool day, the demonstrators came from all corners of the country, waving American flags and handwritten signs explaining the root of their frustrations. Their anger stretched well beyond the health care legislation moving through Congress, with shouts of support for gun rights, lower taxes and a smaller government.
But as they sang verse after verse of patriotic hymns like “God Bless America,” sharp words of profane* and political criticism were aimed at Mr. Obama and Congress.
and they’ll be doing it on
*Interesting choice of word — “profane” — since when is Obama and Congress sacred or unworthy of mocking?
Comment by SBP on 9/12 @ 3:07 pm #
It’s been scrubbed from the front page of Google News too, Darleen.
Comment by Matt on 9/12 @ 3:19 pm #
Thousands ? They are really going to run “thousands”? Will there be an asterix ? ie “there were thousands at 9 AM before I decided these people smelled and were dreadfully boring so I went back to New York, where I spent the afternoon preparing myself for Pinch’s delightful 9-12 party…”
Comment by SBP on 9/12 @ 3:24 pm #
SOP. Go with something that’s technically true, but completely misleading.
Quite a few “thousands” in that shot, I’d say.
Comment by McGehee on 9/12 @ 3:27 pm #
Well, there were “thousands.” Depending on the estimate there were anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 “thousands.”
Comment by serr8d on 9/12 @ 3:44 pm #
Hmmmph. ‘Profane‘. I’m thinking they just learned a new word.
Comment by Darleen on 9/12 @ 3:46 pm #
SBP
um…different rally (today was very cloudy all day). Check the comments.
Comment by SBP on 9/12 @ 3:50 pm #
Thanks, Darleen.
Comment by Darleen on 9/12 @ 3:54 pm #
Not to worry, SBP. I dipped into Twitter and saw a bunch of usual leftist twatwaffling that Tea Partiers are a bunch of lying frauds because of “faking crowd pictures” with only that link.
Comment by JeffS on 9/12 @ 4:16 pm #
And thus the Past Tense Media begins their pathetic spin to support all things Obama.
Thank God for the INTERNET.
Comment by Scott Crawford on 9/12 @ 4:17 pm #
Theo Emery and Ashley Southall contributed reporting.
Not to mention, Walter Duranty.
Comment by JD on 9/12 @ 4:21 pm #
It is amazing how the Left tries to rewrite history as it is happening.
Comment by sdferr on 9/12 @ 4:24 pm #
Insty posted this link to the Daily News. “Up to two million march…” says the headline.
Comment by David on 9/12 @ 4:27 pm #
Thanks for spreading my Vodkapundit comment from me, the blogless one:)
Comment by Rusty on 9/12 @ 4:28 pm #
Just going by the crowd density and the dimentions of the mall, there was easily 1.3 million people there.
The dems are ignoring this at their peril. This movement is bigger than they imagine.
Comment by Blitz on 9/12 @ 4:28 pm #
Theh have to JD, it doesn’t fit their world view…small minds think alike and all…Judging by the trolls here? TINY minds…
Comment by Blitz on 9/12 @ 4:33 pm #
Rusty. In the last tea party post? Ric had the right of it I believe. 1.3 million of us there will represent approx. 8 million if my math is correct. However? I was told there’d BE no math, so YMMV.
Comment by sdferr on 9/12 @ 4:37 pm #
Get a load of this bizarre inclusion in the DailyMail article:
So, though the article is ostensibly about today’s march and protest, the writer has an express need to bring Obama into the picture in a posture of victim, threatened by some goof with a gun, even though the event in question happened three days ago. Sheesh.
Comment by sdferr on 9/12 @ 5:04 pm #
Insty also linked a time lapse taken from a roof in the vicinity of 15th & E st. looking east up Pennsylvania avenue. It’s an interesting capture of a great crowd forming and moving toward the Capitol Building. I’d guess this crowd at around 300 thousand plus people. There is no knowing how many people are elsewhere in the city on the move to the mall.
Comment by SBP on 9/12 @ 5:09 pm #
#18 Yeah, I was watching that cam live, sdferr. Some of the lefties are claiming only 30,000 so, which is clearly utter bullshit.
2 million total? I don’t know, but as you say there are clearly hundreds of thousands approaching from that direction alone.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 9/12 @ 5:12 pm #
Think how many they had rally on a college football Saturday.
Right there, that is a major ‘whoa, dude’.
Comment by Darleen on 9/12 @ 5:20 pm #
Some of the lefties are claiming only 30,000 so
That’s particularly stupid because the news has reported prior to the rally that was the count of people officially RSVPing to attend. The organizers planned for 30-50,000 and this crowd was much much bigger because reports state that the sound system wasn’t adequate for the crowd.
Comment by 912forever on 9/12 @ 5:28 pm #
Keep the Tea Party alive and growing. Show your preference for Liberty over socialism with a shirt at http://tinyurl.com/superfreedom
Comment by Joe on 9/12 @ 5:34 pm #
Wow Sdferr, that time laspe is amazing, it must be 1,000*
,000at least!* I am channeling the NYT’s crowd estimating skills.
Comment by sdferr on 9/12 @ 5:47 pm #
heh
Comment by Snowcone on 9/12 @ 5:57 pm #
Did Malkin come up with a link to back up her claim of 2 million, yet?
Comment by SBP on 9/12 @ 5:59 pm #
So, Snotcone: how many were there? Give us your number.
Comment by Joe on 9/12 @ 6:00 pm #
Bill Maher goes all crazy.
Dude, catch up with Sullivan at the beach and smoke a little herbal love.
Comment by Joe on 9/12 @ 6:02 pm #
Is Snowcone someone we know? I do not think it is thor, but the writing reminds me of some past guests.
And I have to say that time lapse video must show a number of people far more than 500,000 but less than 2,000,000. But hey, give it your best shot Snowcone, put a number on it.
Comment by Joe on 9/12 @ 6:13 pm #
Stacy McCain on how many showed up…
He says more than a million.
Comment by Mary on 9/12 @ 6:42 pm #
Bill Maher? Please, guys, he’s just so irrelevant now. NO ONE pays attention to him but the Bots.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 9/12 @ 6:51 pm #
“Is Snowcone someone we know? I do not think it is thor”
Naw, whore is insane.
snotcone is just Teh Stooopid™.
Comment by geoffb on 9/12 @ 8:18 pm #
The word is chosen for two reasons. To show their true feelings for Obama, their “messiah”, that is a message for the Left.
For the Right it is used to imply for all those godbothering, puritanical, evangelicals, that the people showing up at this event are not of a moral character they should associate themselves with. It is a refined version of the “Faggot” epithet used so often.
Comment by Joe on 9/12 @ 8:39 pm #
Charles Johnson on why Robert Stacy McCain is in leaque with the Devil!
Jesus, CJ seems to hate RSM as much as CJ hates Pam Geller. I am guessing RSM put some hot sauce on CJ’s bike seat.
Comment by Spiny Norman on 9/12 @ 10:01 pm #
Going “Andy Sullivan” in slow motion is a terrible thing to witness.
Comment by Spam Heap on 9/12 @ 10:28 pm #
The UK’s Daily Mail is reporting two million people at the Tea Party protest.
The NYT, et al., may not report it, or minimize their reporting, but you can be sure congresscritters are getting decent intel.
So, I wait with bated breath and whispering humbleness for the interview where a raging socialist – I mean, “progressive” – looks with doe-eved horror into an NPR camera and says “I don’t know how Obamacare can have failed, everyone I know voted for it.”
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Right now, my nipples could cut glass.
Comment by dicentra on 9/12 @ 11:11 pm #
On the other hand, if you go to Charles’s links (except the Southern Poverty Law Center ones, which I do not trust), you do see writings by someone named Robert Stacy McCain of Georgia who is actually a white supremacist.
The Confederate Cause in the Twentieth Century
The title implies racism, but the essay makes no racist assertions unless you solidly equate Southern Pride for “Slavery Was OK.”
Here, McCain is quoted as asserting the following:
Then here (SPLC, so…), we have this:
Again, I don’t trust SPLC for a second, and their other articles that mention McCain seem awfully eager to find racists where they may or may not exist.
However, R.S. McCain does seem to write often on race matters. And the Confederacy. So, I can see why Charles would target him.
Comment by peter jackson on 9/12 @ 11:37 pm #
ThinkProgress is trying to paint the whole protest as a Glen Beck Production by intentionally conflating Beck’s 9/12 project, some weird populist 9/11 thing of his, and the 9/12 March on Washington. They’ve got videos even.
Comment by dicentra on 9/12 @ 11:52 pm #
Glenn wasn’t even at the march. Sure, many of his 9/12ers were there, but they were coalescing with Freedom Works et al.
Comment by SBP on 9/12 @ 11:58 pm #
#37: Ah…that explains HappyHorseshit, above.
Comment by SDN on 9/13 @ 5:39 am #
dicentra, even a cursory look at background would show that these are two different individuals. The political blogger lives in the DC area vs the other living in GA. Ironically, Charles has fallen into the same “too good to check” trap that brought down Dan Rather.
Comment by LTC John on 9/13 @ 6:27 am #
SDN – good point. Having established himself as an internet presence to be reckoned with by helping wax Dan Rather, you think he would be more, um, aware of that particular error.
Comment by geoffb on 9/13 @ 6:48 am #
R.S. McCain’s reply to Charles Johnson, point one, point two, and point three.
Comment by Joe on 9/13 @ 8:21 am #
Wow. That R.S. McCain comeback is like he channelled Jeff Goldstein. Powerful stuff.
Comment by Carin on 9/13 @ 8:46 am #
Story on page 21 in Detroit’s paper. Small picture, not showing the crowd. Right-wing organizers credited for the event.
Canceling paper tomorrow. Fuck them. They can all join everyone else in the unemployment line.
Comment by Joe on 9/13 @ 9:14 am #
Charles Johnson reports 70,000. Says that it is estimated by DCFD, but the link is blind. I think he hates being shown up by Glenn Beck. It bugs him.
Comment by Silver Whistle on 9/13 @ 10:14 am #
The Beeb’s eventual report on the rally is just shameful. Three quarters of their lame video is taken up by Dear Leader giving his Ceauşescu-to-the-Romanian-parliament schtick. There was nothing on the main radio news this morning on Radio 4 or on Radio 5Live either. I’m sure it never happened; you guys must have imagined it.
Comment by Darleen on 9/13 @ 10:33 am #
Silver Whistle
Several of the on-air Legacy Media reports use the Washington Tea Party as a mere segue into Obama-healthcare cheerleading. Even if we accept the ridiculously low number of 70,000 for the Tea Party (damn it, I’ve been to football games at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and that DC crowd was definitely north of 100,000), Obama’s set piece had 15,000…a number NOT in the on-air reports.
i.e. http://tinyurl.com/oxwwzd
Comment by JeffS on 9/13 @ 10:53 am #
Darleen, Michelle Malkin’s post on the 9/12 turnout has more, and includes a link to the tool used by the Park Service for the inauguration crowd for The Once™. The “seating” arrangements between the two events were somewhat different, but the comparison is most interesting.
Comment by SBP on 9/13 @ 11:34 am #
Here’s a street-level view from near the location of the traffic cam used to produce the time-lapse footage that we’ve all seen by now (and that I watched live). The actual traffic cam position is about a block behind the point of view (on 14th, this is 13th). I chose this point because the both the building with the distinctive tower and the Capitol itself are visible (the Capitol is WAAAAAY down at the end of the street).
Comment by sdferr on 9/13 @ 12:19 pm #
“building with the distinctive tower”
That’s the Old Post Office building (now converted to a Mall and offices).
If we measure the centerline of Pa.Ave. from the western crosswalk at 13th st. (the elbow in Pa. Ave.) to the eastern tangent point of the traffic circle at the base of the Capitol (using googleearth’s measuring tool) we get 5,368′. Pa Ave’s width, curb to curb is 100′ (measured at the long block between 9th and 7th). The sidewalks on Pa. Ave vary a bit, but take them at approx 35′ each, so 70′ total. 5,368′ x 170′ yields 912,560 sq ft. One human being, standing still can comfortably be assigned to take up approx 2.5 sq ft (sectioned at the ground). Call it 3 sq ft to allow for biggish people. 912,560/3 = 304,186 people, if we were to fill Pa Ave and its sidewalks, from 13th to the Capitol, with people standing still though not packed like sardines.
Comment by SBP on 9/13 @ 1:12 pm #
If we look at the time-lapse footage again, we see that the crowd starts to move at about 0:15 into the clip, and the vanguard appears to reach the Capitol at about 0:18 (this may be easier to see if you put the player in full-screen mode). So, using sdferr’s number, we have a crowd flow rate of about 100,000 people per “second” (time-lapsed). The tail-end of the crowd comes at about 0:35, or 20 “seconds” in.
Yeah, I can believe 2 million. Definitely more than a million.
Comment by Silver Whistle on 9/13 @ 2:59 pm #
Darleen,
The Daily Telegraph is downplaying the number too:
That was filed by Toby Harnden, who was in DC. He doesn’t hazard a guess as to the real size of the crowd.
Comment by Silver Whistle on 9/13 @ 3:05 pm #
Good grief, even the London Times has got its knee pads on. This is disgusting.
Comment by dicentra on 9/13 @ 6:38 pm #
SDN: If there were two Robert Stacy McCain’s, Stace would have mentioned that in his defenses. But he didn’t. What appears to be true is that he used to live in Rome, then moved to DC.
Further, he does not address any of the quotes attributed to him that look damning, such as the ones I posted in my #36. I wish he would, because (a) they are second-hand quotes; (b) are not sourced; (c) are from hostile sites.
If they’re taken out of context, I would like to know. If they are inventions, I would like to know. If they’re the result of old feelings or over-exuberance or whatnot, I would like to know.
That’s not to say that Charles’s accusation is anywhere near correct — he truly has gone ’round the twist — but I also don’t want to defend an unrepentant racist who hides among us. McCain’s three rants did nothing to allay that fear.
Comment by dicentra on 9/13 @ 6:57 pm #
I just did a little digging into those two quotes, and discovered no original source for them. In the instance of the first one, this entry at AllExperts quotes RSM as roundly denying having said that thing.
The other one I cannot find except as quoted from the SPLC. All of them allege that RSM’s racist stuff was posted on a now non-existent web site.
So, yeah.
Comment by SDN on 9/13 @ 7:03 pm #
Ah, dicentra, that explains the GA vs VA portion. Thanks.
He does address some of it in the posts linked in #42.
Personally, as a third-generation Southerner, I find the accusation of “neo-Confederate” to be almost as overused as “racist”…. and don’t really care about either.