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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ig who wrote (324064)	9/13/2009 11:28:44 AM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 793927

I agree I shouldn't have messed with the astutebloggers link. The Taxpayer March on DC was HUGELY successful [updated] How huge? Your guess is as good as mine. But it was more than scores, more than thousands, and more than scores of thousands. (Video from The Rhetorician via Instapundit) Estimates are running between 350,000 and 15,720,000. I'd settle for a million but I guess we'll never know.** It was a monster for sure, and a scary one, I hope, for our elected representatives. Viva the outrage. Mark Hemingway spoke to some of the marchers: I asked one guy, who came up from South Carolina with 160 people on three buses, who put his trip together. He laughed and said, "My neighbor." Can we drive a stake through the astroturf claim now? .... He's got some great pictures, too. I'm going to keep updating. Vodka Pundit reports: •70 outdoor port-a-potties. •90 minute wait to use one. •The People Meter on Penn Ave had read 450,000 by noon, and 1.5 million two hours later. (That last number still looks awfully high to me.) •1 DC police officer, who told her, “I’ve been here 20 years and this is the largest crowd I’ve ever seen.” This Ain't Hell's John Lilyea shot some video from his bike. Lots and lots of people. And noise. The Daily Mail has some great coverage. They put the number at "up to 2 million." Egads! Some wonderful excerpts: Up to two million people marched to the U.S. Capitol today, carrying signs with slogans such as "Obamacare makes me sick" as they protested the president's health care plan and what they say is out-of-control spending. The line of protesters spread across Pennsylvania Avenue for blocks, all the way to the capitol, according to the Washington Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency. People were chanting "enough, enough" and "We the People." Others yelled "You lie, you lie!" and "Pelosi has to go," referring to California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. Demonstrators waved U.S. flags and held signs reading "Go Green Recycle Congress" and "I'm Not Your ATM." Men wore colonial costumes as they listened to speakers who warned of "judgment day" - Election Day 2010. Richard Brigle, 57, a Vietnam War veteran and former Teamster, came from Michigan. He said health care needs to be reformed - but not according to President Barack Obama's plan. "My grandkids are going to be paying for this. It's going to cost too much money that we don't have," he said while marching, bracing himself with a wooden cane as he walked. [. . .] Like countless others at the rally, Joan Wright, 78, of Ocean Pines, Md., sounded angry. "I'm not taking this crap anymore," said Wright, who came by bus to Washington with 150 like-minded residents of Maryland's Eastern Shore. "I don't like the health-care [plan]. I don't like the czars. And I don't like the elitists telling us what we should do or eat." God bless freedom-loving Americans. I'm going to open a bottle of wine with dinner tonight, if I can tear myself away from the coverage long enough to cook something. RedState has lotsa photos. *Matt Welch offers quick impressions, including: The most moving chant might have been when we walked past the Newseum, with its ginormous carving of the First Amendment on the side, and the crowd spontaneously said "Read that wall! Read that wall!" Here on in, just links: Honoring Jonah Numbers game Pic's and video from the Patriot Room Great photos and great title (Don't miss George at the bottom.) I give up. Go to Memeorandum for more. ***Just one more: Here's a report and photojournal from uber-mom and writer Barbara Curtis. As a 60s/70s radical leftist, I organized many of the antiwar marches - even got teargassed a time or two. About the only mark I carry from those days is that I'm still questioning authority. But today that makes me a conservative. I brought my camera to DC to tell the REAL story of the 9/12 March. Madame Pelosi and the state-run media call us "Astroturf" and "Nazis" and "an angry mob." Following Alinsky, they'd like to freeze us in these false images and thereby marginalize us. But we are next-door neighbors. family and friends. Rea the rest. Comments welcome. Most recent posts here. Posted by pundette punditandpundette.com

To: ig who wrote (324064)	9/13/2009 11:31:45 AM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793927

yes, the libs are now just gonna harp on the crowd size lies.

To: ig who wrote (324064)	9/13/2009 11:33:07 AM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 793927

it begins I ONCE SAW A CROWD THIS BIG.... Going into yesterday protest in Washington, there were a few questions about what observers should expect. How nutty would the signs be? Would GOP lawmakers embrace the right-wing activists or stay away? And perhaps most importantly, how many would show up? Some organizers, relying on a non-existent report from ABC News, exaggerated the crowd size by a factor of 15. Conservative activists, who organized a march on the U.S. Capitol today in protest of the Obama administration's health care agenda and government spending, erroneously attributed reports on the size of the crowds to ABC News. Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, the group that organized the event, said on stage at the rally that ABC News was reporting that 1 million to 1.5 million people were in attendance. At no time did ABC News, or its affiliates, report a number anywhere near as large. ABCNews.com reported an approximate figure of 60,000 to 70,000 protesters, attributed to the Washington, D.C., fire department. In its reports, ABC News Radio described the crowd as "tens of thousands." I'm not entirely sure which came first, but Malkin was also pushing the line that ABC News believed there 2 million people on hand for yesterday's event. Whether Malkin's bogus claim came before or after Kibbe's bogus claim isn't clear, but neither were remotely close to reality. Alas, that did not stop a wide variety of far-right sites from running with the absurd claim. Making matters slightly more embarrassing, several conservative sites ran with a purported aerial photo of the protest, which seemed to show a full Washington Mall. The picture seemed odd -- the first clue was that the National Museum of the American Indian did not appear in the photo -- and was later exposed as a shot from the Promise Keepers' rally from 1997. In truth, I don't think the right has to feel embarrassed about an event that drew 70,000 people. That's a modest turnout compared to recent events like President Obama's inauguration or the pro-immigration rallies in 2006, and it's underwhelming given Fox News' role in promoting yesterday's gathering, but getting 70,000 conservatives together for an event with no clear purpose isn't bad. Wild exaggerations only diminish what was actually a decent sized crowd.