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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (121154)	9/15/2009 4:05:35 PM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 544240

Another competitor for the clown crown.... WHEN ODD MOVEMENTS PICK ODD LEADERS.... Many conservative activists want "Tea Party" activists to be considered normal, well-adjusted, mainstream Americans, who just happen to be concerned about taxes and government spending. Or deficits. Or maybe health care reform. Or quite possibly birth certificates. It's hard to keep track. In any case, the drive is to be taken seriously as a legitimate political movement is complicated by the fact that Tea Baggers so frequently come across as nutjobs. Take Tea Party Express organizer Mark Williams, for example. Last night, Williams appeared on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" for a group discussion featuring Cooper, David Gergen, and James Carville. It was Williams' chance to present his group's efforts as credible and sensible. He failed spectacularly. This clip is only a portion of the discussion, but Cooper noted from the outset that Williams has called the president a Nazi. When he denied it, Cooper noted Williams' own website. The right-wing activist responded, laughing, "We have got the philosophy of fascism and national socialism at work here. Of course we do." He then argued he doesn't call "Barack Obama" a Nazi, he calls "Mubarak Hussein Obama" a Nazi, which Williams considers completely different. Asked if he was offended by some of the vile placards carried by Tea Baggers at their most recent protest, Williams refused to say, instead attacking liberals attending "so-called antiwar peace demonstrations," for carrying signs "where George Bush was portrayed as a monkey, where he was first portrayed as the Joker." He added that these protestors may be "representative of the Democrats and the American liberals." Cooper noted that Williams has called the president "an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief." Williams conceded that he does describe the president that way. "That's the way he's behaving," he said. Cooper asked if he "really believes" this. "He's certainly acting like it," Williams added. When Gergen described this madness as "unbelievable," Williams added, "Until [Obama] embraces the whole country, what else can I conclude? He and guys like James [Carville] are totally, totally isolating the rest of this country." Far be it for me to offer advice to right-wing protestors, but the Tea Party gang really ought to find a less ridiculous spokesperson to represent them on CNN. —Steve Benen 2:55 PM

To: Dale Baker who wrote (121154)	9/15/2009 5:57:52 PM
From: Rambi	Respond to of 544240

I spent some time this morning reading some of the blogs and comments on the numbers and some of them were hilarious in an embarrassing sort of way. Many consisted of "I was there! I saw them!" There was an article in the LA times which included quotes from Farouk El-Baz, a research professor at Boston U. who estimated the crowds at about 75K. Farouk El-Baz, a Boston University research professor and expert on crowd estimation, (my bold) said his informal research from press coverage indicated 75,000 as the peak number. Pete Piringer, a spokesman for the District of Columbia Fire Department, said he made an unofficial estimate of 60,000 to 70,000 at the beginning of the event. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority spokesman Steven Taubenkibel said Saturday that ridership figures indicated an extra 87,000 people took the subway all day, a significant increase over the 350,000 average. Confusion and anger over crowd estimates are as much a part of Washington as its marble monuments. Organizers of the Million Man March in 1995 threatened to sue the National Park Service over its crowd estimate of 400,000, when their own number was 1.5 million to 2 million. Boston University's Center for Remote Sensing estimated the Million Man March crowd at 837,214, with a 20% margin of error. The center, headed by El-Baz, used aerial photographs provided by the Park Service to do a computer analysis of the turnout. Afterward, Congress directed the agency not to produce estimates. "We do not give crowd estimates for any event, any time, whatsoever, period," said National Park Service spokesman Bill Line. The controversy this weekend was fanned by the Internet. Bloggers circulated a photo showing a mass of people on the National Mall as evidence of a larger crowd. But it turned out the photo was taken at least five years ago: The National Museum of the American Indian, which opened in 2004, is not on the Mall in the picture. El-Baz said the only accurate way to measure attendance is by counting heads in a photograph taken from an airplane or satellite, an expensive undertaking. No such photo was taken Saturday, to El-Baz's knowledge. Airspace over the National Mall is restricted. "There is just no way for anybody [on the ground] to estimate the crowds," El-Baz said of people trying to do rough counts. "Most of these [other] numbers are not even in the ballpark." Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

To: Dale Baker who wrote (121154)	9/15/2009 7:45:25 PM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 544240

Its own caricature.

To: Dale Baker who wrote (121154)	9/17/2009 10:11:22 AM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 544240

>>9/12 CROWD ESTIMATES JUMP THE SHARK.... The "debate" over the size of the crowd for the right-wing protests in D.C. on Saturday have been painful to watch the last few days. Absurd claims and bogus photographs abound. This morning, Glenn Beck said a "university" put the number at 1.7 million, but he couldn't remember which one.<< Dale - I'm a little late getting in on this, but I have to say that is absolutely hilarious. The irony of Glenn Beck's using a quote about the Obama Inauguration crowd to defend hyper-inflated estimates of his own event is just too rich. By the way, I'm typing this from my bed at Cedars-Sinai. My surgery was successful, and the prognosis is good. It looks like I'll be up and about, and able to get down to the business of declaring bankruptcy sooner than I had expected. ;-) Thanks for all the good wishes, everyone. - Allen