There has been quite a debate going on about the number of people who showed up in Washington D.C. last weekend for the Tea Party. I have heard everything from "scores of people" to "2 million." For those of you that don't know, a "
score" is a group of 20. "2 million" is 100,000 scores. There's quite a big difference here. Those who are trying to downplay the size of the Tea Party will use the words "score" or "tens of thousands." Their agenda is pretty transparent in their vocabulary. On the flip side there are some who are undoubtedly trying to exaggerate the size of the Tea Party. They are just as guilty as the downplayers. The truth is that the real number is somewhere between "scores" and "2 million." At the very least, folks should be using the phrase "hundreds of thousands." My personal feeling is that there had to have been at least a million people there, but not 2 million. However, you won't hear me describe the crowd as "fifty thousand scores," because a truthful person doesn't manipulate that word in such a manner. I'm not getting this number from any news report. I'm seeing it for myself. You can too.
First take a look at this picture from Obama's inauguration. This event was described as
having "millions" of attendees.
Now take a look at a screenshot of the Tea Party (apologies for the fuzzy picture, but it's the only one from this angle I could find) that I got
from C-SPAN. It's the exact same angle from which the inauguration shot above was taken, and the amount of people in view looks to be about the same.
It's amazing how similar these photos look! Is it possible that everyone could take a look at the solid visual evidence and see that were a lot more than "tens of thousands" or "scores" of people in attendance last weekend? Why is there such a debate over this? The answer is pretty clear.
P.S. - For those of you who are about to email me saying "there weren't millions of people at the Tea Party!! You just said that the amount of people was the same as Obama's inauguration!" please stop now and take note of the fact that I said "amount of people
in view."
It's amazing how similar these photos look! Is it possible that everyone could take a look at the solid visual evidence and see that were a lot more than "tens of thousands" or "scores" of people in attendance last weekend? Why is there such a debate over this? The answer is pretty clear.
Great job, Patrick! You should send this Hannity and/or Rush.
ReplyDeleteIf you look at the so called "fake" photo of the event and compare it to the time-lapsed footage, you can clearly see that the amount of bodies in the shot are roughly the same. Actually in the 912 footage, it actually looks like more people than that "fake" photo.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoPud1TeubM
Two links:
ReplyDeletefirst - "...if there had in fact been 2 million protesters in Washington yesterday, there would have been no need to lie about it -- the magnitude of the protests would have been self-evident. I was in Washington for the inauguration, an event at which there really were almost 2 million people present -- and let me tell you, it was a Holy Mess. Hotels, charging double or treble their usual rates, were booked weeks in advance. Major stations on the Metro system were shut down for hours at a time. The National Guard was brought in. At least 3,000 people got stuck in a tunnel. Essentially the entirely of the National Mall, from the Capitol to the Washington Monument, was dotted with onlookers. Heaps of trash were left behind. The entire city was basically a warzone for a period of about 20 hours, from midnight through mid-evening." from http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/09/size-matters-so-do-lies.html
and second: a visual for you
http://www.mediaite.com/online/how-to-estimate-a-912-protest/
To Sarah: Silly liberal, keep telling yourself that the crowds were smaller than reported, keep making that your talking point so you feel safer and more comfortable. The real point is that we are here, and there are more of us all the time - people who understand what America really is, and we aren't going to let our country fall prey to those who would like to reduce it to the socialist mediocrity they(you) and the rest of the world seems to think is so wonderful. We love the America our founders gave us the opportunity to build... and we want to keep it.
ReplyDeleteOf course FREE travel and lodging would bring many people. But it wasn’t enough so the right wing zealots add another LIE on their campaign to stop Americans from getting better health care.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/sep/14/blog-posting/blogger-claim-photo-shows-millions-tea-party-prote/
Right Cindy. Glad you figured out where I stand on the issues by two links I shared. While I have a deep respect for grassroots organizations and home grown movements, it's hard to be take them seriously when this is what they're bringing to the table http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-10-best-signs-from-the-march-on-washington/ . I wish the conservative (in Patrick's sense of the word) movement could come up with some better, more serious (non-racist) proposals for change because then they could count me among them.
ReplyDelete