‘One Nation’ Rally: Liberal Media Concludes Size Doesn’t Matter
The widely publicized, heavily subsidized “One Nation” rally was Saturday in Washington, D.C. As has been openly admitted by the organizers, which included the AFL-CIO, the SEIU and Obama’s perpetual campaign organization Organizing for America, this rally was held in the same place and at basically the same time of the day as Glenn Beck’s 8/28 “Restoring Honor” rally, specifically to demonstrate the depth of support for the president’s program. The convention organizers had a number of advantages, perhaps the greatest being that the buses bringing in demonstrators were apparently subsidized by the rally organizers.
Some of the initial reports were very positive: the organizers estimated 175,000 to 200,000 attendees, according to Crooks and Liars‘ report of ”preliminary satellite estimates … at about noon EST [sic].”
(Where do they get these satellite estimates? PJM has been completely unsuccessful finding satellite companies that can give us these sorts of pictures on demand; there isn’t a satellite passing over Washington, D.C., any time you want one.)
Comments from Left Field notes this “more than doubles the 87,000 attendees of Glenn Beck’s Restoring the Honor Rally,” using the CBS News estimate I discussed at length here in August (“You Can See November from the Washington Monument”).
Naturally, we were interested in the topic. Following various crowd estimates has become a running topic of interest at PJ Media, starting with my original crowd estimates that began with a “back of the envelope” calculation in a comment at Vodkapundit, followed by a more formal calculation here in PJM (“March on Washington: How Big Was the Crowd?“).
Since then, I’ve built up a fairly well described methodology: we use Google Earth to estimate the area of the crowd from whatever photographs are available, then multiple by several different constants depending on the crowd density. These estimates are taken from published Park Service standards going back at least to the Obama inaugural.
Since the “One Nation” rally was consciously positioned at exactly the same place as the “Restoring Honor” rally, we can compare with my original baseline very easily.
Here’s the crowd perimeter as I drew it with Google Earth:
That area was about 2.4 million square feet. Using the crowd density estimates, we finally arrived at these estimates for the Beck crowd:
| Estimate | 10 square feet per person | 5 square feet per person | 2.5 square feet per person |
| Maximum: | 215,000 people | 430,000 | 860,000 |
| 90 percent | 200,000 | 400,000 | 800,000 |
| 75 percent | 163,000 | 326,000 | 652,000 |
| 50 percent | 108,000 | 216,000 | 432,000 |
| CBS News Estimate | 87,000 | 87,000 | 87,000 |
| 40 percent | 86,000 | 172,000 | 344,000 |
The assumptions there correspond to the Park Service’s standard for a “dense crowd” of about 5 square feet per person, my estimate of the crowd densities observed in the photos (10 square feet per person), and estimates from people in the most densely packed parts of the crowd (2.5 square feet per person).
All things considered, I think the best estimate, finally, is that Beck attracted somewhere between 250,000 and 400,000 people.
The Associated Press summed it up this way:
Organizers claimed they had as many participants as Beck’s rally. But Saturday’s crowds were less dense and didn’t reach as far to the edges as they did during Beck’s rally.
This is illustrated in these comparative photographs:
Click here for a photo from Saturday’s left-wing rally.
Click here for a photo from the Glenn Beck rally.
Compare and contrast as necessary — as the lawyers say: “the thing speaks for itself.”
(Update: Or just click on the blinking gif created by blogger Doug Ross to compare the crowds at two events.)
It’s difficult to place the edges of the crowd from these photographs, simply because the crowd in that one overhead photo is so far down the picture. However, the grassy area around the Lincoln Memorial is roughly one tenth the area in the full map above. That means the “One Nation” crowd would have been roughly 22,000 to 85,000 people at most.
The low turn out amazes me! If I had free transport to the Restoring Honor rally, I would have gone.
I would have gone to this one if I had free transport. I would have gone, walked off, and spent the day at the Smithsonian.
How many of the union transportees did precisely that?
Apparently quite a few, according to most reports. I guess the union workers hit the 8 hour mark about halfway through the rally (their timecard started the moment they boarded the bus after all) and you KNOW they aren’t going to work OT without at least double-time-and-a-half.
None of the photos I’ve seen of the crowds support drawing as wide a perimeter, at least as far as crowd densities are concerned. For example, how many people were “packed” along the edges of the pond near the War Memorial? Or how many people stood behind trees? Based on various photos, the southwest corner (to the left and front of the War Memorial) had 50-75% less density than the southeast corner (near the Lincoln Memorial) or around the Reflecting Pool.
The methodology proposed here assumes far too much to be of any use. In measuring square footage and applying density calculations, all you’ve done is determine the capacity of the area, not the actual turnout.
Ed Shultz, what’s your hot button now. Maybe reality will finally set in.
Just blame it on the weather. It was a nice beach day!!
I blame the turnout on global warming. see it was hot,due to Glenns hummer which caused ice caps to melt. this drove the polarbears to washington blocking all the roads which kept the MILLIONS of atendees from comming. it was quite sad. oh and racism too! ;0)
You left out the Jooooooooz!
Global warming? Glenn Beck? The Jews? Nice try you guys, but after an extensive investigation the media will put the blame for the low turn out where it rightfully belongs. It’s (ta da)……Bush’s fault!
No, it’s because of all the white racists who refused to show up.
Great comparison. Thanks for sharing.
It doesn’t matter — the real numbers that count will come in November.
God help these delusional twits.
Depends how much fraud there will be. The conservatives’ main push should be against voter fraud.
Why should God help these twits?
What a farce.
Regardless of the size of the crowd I bet however many there were that they left a great big mess when they left!
Well, Steve, there you have it. The crowd comparisons don’t work, comparing apples and oranges, decent people and pigs. No validity there.
16. Dave M. (now in S. Korea)
Since 1998, I have been skeptical about just about everything. Thus, I would appreciate it if there was a time stamp on the picture of the leftist rally. The more facts provided the less wiggle room for the left to lie.
Dave, I’m with you. I’d like to know the time also.
If you go to the flickr link http://www.flickr.com/photos/njpitney/5045134373/in/set-72157625081892992/ from the article and go to actions, view all sizes and download the largest image then look at the file advanced summary tags in windows explorer, they’ll give you a time of 10/02/10 12:04pm along with the camera name and other exposure info. Any of the smaller pictures have that stripped out. Of course those can be faked. I wish the photographer would also post the time it was taken just for verification. If the tags are right, it was taken 4 minutes after the main event started.
If I remember correctly, The Restoring Honor picture was taken at 10am, right when it started.
I watched both rallies in their entirety (Hubs and three teens were at 8/28).
The crowd yesterday was down to half by 3pm, and stampeding out of there by 4. The poor gal who spoke last had about 100 people in front of her, and the band was tuning up over her.
At 8/28, people were still arriving at the end.
Yeah one we will all be cleaning up one way or another for sure.
I Googled “One Nation Rally, the Mall” and saw a video of quite a lot of debris: mainly, it seemed, machine made union posters and empty, plastic water bottles. These moral pygmies are SUCH parasites and hypocrites.
So interesting that the MUCH BIGGER, nasty, anti-green Glenn Beck crew left the place spotless.
America Rising: alleluia!
“A picture’s worth a thousand words.” There is no comparison.
I wonder how many of the folks there were drawing a paycheck for being there? AstroTurf on the Mall!
ohohoh…good question!!!!
AND.. were any government officials told to go? like to what’s his name…uuuhhhhh oh Sharpton!!!
At the Beck rally, almost every square foot of space on the Mall not occupied by a monument, a tree, or a bush had someone standing on it.
At this “event”, the lawn to the left of the picture is nearly devoid of people, as is the far right side of the mall next to the pool. The only place there was a density anything like that at the Beck rally was under the trees in the left center of the picture, in the shade.
At a rough guess, I’d say calculate how many people showed up at the Beck rally, and then take 15% of that figure. The result would be pretty close to the actual number of people at yesterday’s progressive rantfest. Or in other words, the crowd was about one-sixth the size of the Beck rally crowd.
They’ll probably blame it on global warming (excuse me, I mean “global climate change”). “It was just so hot everywhere except under the trees…”
The real question is, how many arrived on their own, as opposed to being bused in by ACORN, AFL-CIO, SEIU, etc.? My estimate is, practically none.
What we see here is a very typical, choreographed “event” of the type that the “progressives” have created over and over again to justify their claims to represent “real Americans”. Unfortunately for them, they were following an actual gathering of… real Americans. Who outnumbered them about six to one.
clear ether
eon
Kind of like the rallies for Saddam? Or maybe Stalin? Castro? Mao?
Beck’s rally didn’t draw support from the likes of unions and
commies– oops socialist organizations. Groups that probably had to coerce many of the attendees with bribes – from union coffers (illegal) and other money – Soros maybe?Too bad lefties – your contrived ‘events’ smack of the same contrivances as the campaign events being staged for Dear Leader of late. He can’t even draw a paying crowd in a medium sized auditorium and fill it up.
Can you say astroturfing? Nancy Pelosi sure can.
Charlie,
nice analysis but just one thing. You list area in square METERS
“That area was about 2.4 million square meters.”
but list the densities in square FEET per person.
Looking at the table, I’m guessing that area should have been listed in square FEET as well.
Dammit, I’d call that an editing error, except I’m no longer an editor. My mistake, I decided at the last minute to change from metric to English system and missed one. The correct unit is feet, our about 223,000 square meters.
there is to liberal media sparky there owned by corperations
The Human Torch is one total “hot button” all by himself!?! He’s ready to self-combust just like Rickie Sanchez, but first he’s gonna “torch” his set!!
Well done.
Dollars to donuts the Mall was left with far more garbage at this Sharpton number of attendees-like rally than Beck’s.
For some odd reason liberals are ‘liberal’ with their refuse as well.
What’s funny is a vast majority of those attended were bussed in, i.e. ‘astroturf’ – though you won’t hear our Madame Speaker provide such honesty.
People who don’t have to clean up their own messes make bigger messes. When did a “progressive” ever clean up a mess.
I thought the Glenn Beck rally was NOT a political rally. It did NOT promote a political party or the president or a presidential candidate. It was more of a religious-based rally. Yesterday’s rally WAS a political rally in support of the president and all of his policies. So why are they constantly trying to compare themselves to the Beck rally? It’s really comparing apples to oranges. Regardless of how many people showed up (and it doesn’t seem to be that many, given all of the funding yesterday’s rally had), why do they feel compelled to tear down the Beck rally when both rallies were discussing two very different topics?
Just shows you how much far-left liberals and socialists hate conservatives. This should also show you that there is no reasoning with these people and that you cannot govern with the support of these people. They will always hate you no matter how you much you want to “reach out” to them. I hope all the RINO Republicans got a good look at yesterday’s rally to see how crazy these people are. So much for “bipartisanship.” The only solution is to beat them soundly at the polls. You’ll never get any help from these people.
Excellent points, sir …, er …, or m’am.
What was bizarre, a real stretch and an indication of their desperation, too, was their attempt to equate the civil rights movement of the ’60′s to winning in November; a perverse twist on, get out and do it for the gipper, except in their minds the gipper is Obama; i.e., that whole silly charade was all about Obama, Obama and Obama.
To which I want to add that that rally affirmed what I have believed for a long time now, which is that street hustler, Al Sharpton, is the new face of the Democratic Party. Which is GREAT for Republicans and Independents, alike. Democrats, not so much.
If anyone can tell me when and where the left ever told the truth about anything, please let me know!
Since 1998, I have been skeptical about just about everything. Thus, I would appreciate it if there was a time stamp on the picture of the leftist rally. The more facts provided the less wiggle room for the left to lie.
Dave, I agree completely; it’s just there was a limited choice of photos, ie, this one. At the time I wrote this yesterday, the Flickr time stamp indicated it was taken about 3PM. NOw Flickr just says “yesterday”.
My sentiments exactly!!! Unless the pics were documented at the same time, at least within 10 to 15 minutes apart, they are totally misleading. I would think the Beck rally drew a larger crowd but unfortunately the info provided in this article represents what the leftys would try.
Dave (comment #16), I’m with you. I like facts. If you go to the flickr link as noted on page 2, http://www.flickr.com/photos/njpitney/5045134373/in/set-72157625081892992/ then click on actions and select exif info, you will see the camera data that says the picture was taken on 10/2/10 at 12:04:51pm.
Of course, the camera could have been set wrong or the image edited to give the wrong impression.
However, if you zoom in on the left hand arch of the WW2 memorial, you will see that sun is coming through it leaving a bright spot on the ground. Also look at the shadows of the people on the ground. If you use those two things as a ‘sundial’ and look up on Google Earth the location, the shadows are pointing almost due north.
I then went to skyandtel.com and pulled up their interactive sky chart, plugged in the latitude, longitude, date and time and the sun was almost due south at an angle of 46 degrees. I’ve not done exacting calculations, but the picture passes my sniff test of actually being taken at noon. If anybody does do detailed calculations, please post them.
the left touted this thing as a way to show how cool they are. they counldnt comment of anything bad at 8/28. nothing. so they have to make fun and try to get more people. What they fail to understand is this was NEVER a competition. Glenn didnt have this to compete with anyone. he did it to restore honor, exactly as he stated. no tea parties, no signs, no politics. just people comming together to celebrate America and her soldiers. The left was nothign but politics. nothing but dems are good and repubs bad as well as capitialism is evil notied by the large turnout of socialist and communist groups and donators. forget the size. Their ralley was proof positive whay their system does not work. We tolerate other viewpoints, they constantly feel the need to silence them. we should thank them for showing what the first was meant for
Mr. Martin:
“— as the lawyers say: “the thing speaks for itself.””
Indeed
The Left just doesn’t WANT to recognize the manifestly obvious. They haven’t got nearly the support that they think that they have.
They could not match Beck’s numbers, despite “free” bus trips and lunch for the stooges and goons who agreed to waste a Saturday.
They couldn’t keep an audience for Air America…(remember THAT?).
Fox News is still going great guns, while CNN and MSLSD may, on a good day, have an audience only slightly larger than that of a drive-in theatre.
Nope…none of it matters, and they just ignore the evidence and act like they have this vast base of support conferring upon them a mandate for lunacy.
It’s really getting pathetic watching these ever more bizarre attempts to keep themselves convinced. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, at their next sad moonbat confabulation, they will have organized battalions of stooges to run to and fro in order to “fill up the frame” of whatever “news” organization happens to be photographing any given area.
So, it is true…..we do surround them….
we always have. In terms of numbers, even in the hayday of Democrat ascendancy—roughly immediately after Obama’s inauguration, there were twice as many self-described ‘conservatives’ as were ‘liberals’ in the country. The breakup was 46% ‘conservatives;, 22% ‘liberals’, 22% ‘independents’, and some 10 % ‘don’t give a hoot’ … or some such (last two numbers not too sure i recall exactly). The Left has always been an ALIEN cancer in america—very little in numbers, and yet very destructive. Of course these days, the so-called ‘independents’ are almost en bloc aligned with the conservatives. So you can say we have roughly 2/3 majority or 66% people with us. IF there was a presidential and full Senate election today, we would win super-majorities in both the branches of the government. All the more reasons for the Left to NOT hold an election at all.
Let the MSM spin away. Let the Left smugly maintain their delusions. Just let’s make sure that voter turnout numbers match the Restoring Honor rally vs Pussies on Parade.
The One-Nation sponsoring Marxists included the Communist Party USA, the Committee of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, the International Socialist Organization (publishers of SocialistWorker.org), and the Democratic Socialists of America (as well as its Chicago, Detroit, and New York chapters), why were these fascists rebranded as a “liberal” group?
Liberalism is a potpouri of beliefs about larger government, tolerance of whatever, etc. They are distinctly different, and more palatable, from the above-listed groups who wish to seize private property under antiquated theories of the movement of history. Why would the MSM give them a pass by soft-shoeing their goals and beliefs?
Glenn Beck didn’t bus people in and the crowd that attended were not political, but rather prayful. What a difference between real Americans and the socialist/communist/marxist group led by the freak in the white house. Amazing!
Typical rightist twist on reality! You simply refuse to allow for those who are hugging the trees, or those lying in the doorways. And, besides, your cameras simply can not get an accurate count because the evil corporations spent all night the night before spewing extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which, as any college professor or journolist person knows, kills off a crowd.
And, a lot more would have been there, but the government buses didn’t run on time. I heard of one couple who could not make it because their $250 Obama-check bounced.
I dont know…. The way the left does math this might even triple the Beck Rally………. All the free bus rides and still couldnt get an attendance? There must not have been any free givaways…..
TYPICAL Union:
Get the free benefits (somebody ELSE paid for that ride to D.C. – woo hoo!),
and then cut out of “work” (pro-o-test!).
*L*O*S*E*R*S*
It’s Bush’s fault. More commies would have come out but they were afraid W was gonna round them up.
Parade of “Useful Idiots”*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkw7n9Qagu8
(* V.I. Lenin)
Charlie,
You are correct. I was there; took photos; walked the perimeter of the rally; and made my own crowd size estimate (using roughly the same methodology): 50,000.
My blog post is here – http://a-shadow-world.blogspot.com/2010/10/watch-this-space-for-my-report-on.html
This was not exactly a major rally — I didn’t even hear about it before it happened. Me thinks that the 800 pound gorilla rally will be the one at the end of this month. Do I need to mention which one is that?
You talking about the one where the
Commiesdemocrats get handed theirasseswalking papers?I’m looking forward to that too. I suppose the outcome will be more in my favor than yours however.
You mean that one being run by a couple of comedians?
Support that is, at best, a mile wide and an inch deep … OTOH, win or lose, we aren’t going away.
And if you and your fellow-travelers are interested in anything more than discrediting conservatives (a common end among Progressives, in the hopes that someone will take from us to give to them and/or insuring that their mellow is never harshed), you had better hope that our candidates carry the day.
Otherwise, the rather miserable status quo (as opposed to New York’s Status Quomo) will continue, because Progressive policies do not produce sustainable progress.
Animated picture of crowd comparison 9/12 and 10/2
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2010/10/animated-gif-compare-and-contrast-crowd.html
Judge yourself!
The one nation peeps were slobs . . . they left A LOT of Trash/Garbage for of course someone else to clean up.
I’m afraid you don’t understand. There are probably SEIU groundskeepers, all of whom need to keep their jobs. If everyone cleans up their own messes, then we’ll just get more unemployment.
Progressives are only providing jobs for the proletariat. Selfish conservatives who clean up their own messes are doing the jobs the SEIU should be doing.
You are mistaken, the organizers of this rally had access to satellite imagery from the former Soviet Union
Ah, a topic I have some connection to.
Charlie, what you need to do is contact any competent university Geography department, where you want to speak to their Remote Sensing/GIS experts. They’ll have access to the appropriate satellite data; using various forms of classification routines, they can estimate the crowd size quite accurately. (Note these images are very expensive)
I was a student at BU, when the “Million Man March” boondoggle occurred. I clearly recollect Doctor Farouk El-Baz (Director of the Center for Remote Sensing) performing the analysis. And the outcry when he estimated that the crowd was in no way a million people.
Of course, no matter what they estimate, many will claim “foul.” You know that, of course. Even El-Baz was accused of “Racism” when making his determination, to which I remember him replying, “what the hell are they talking about? I’m Egyptian?!”
I hope that, in some small way, helped.
Could you reasonably term that “a few people milling around”?
Ah but even though they tried to mill around smartly they ended up milling around stupidly!
That would be “a few people
millingmildewing around” JEM.I have to agree, size doesn’t matter. But because this entire ‘story’ is based in the size of the crowd and there fore the claimed popularity of one form of government, socialism over freedom and smaller government, the numbers in the crowd have a comparative function.
Clearly, and without the slightest doubt, the Restoring Honor event had many, many more people on hand for the event.
One more comment, as if you couldn’t have bet your life on it, the socialist in the MSM and from the event STILL lied about the numbers when comparing the events. Making honor (and honesty) STILL the biggest reason why NOT to trust the socialists.
The crowd that matters is the one that shows up at the polls in November.
From all the photos I’ve seen, the most striking thing besides the crowd size was the lack of ANY American flags. Maybe they were on the ground being spat upon or burned.
I am amazed at how many people are still (after 200 years) harping about slavery and yet are backing Socialism and Communism as well as Marxism. Do they not understand that dictatorship is slavery? Do the Blacks really think because Obama claims to be black, the if he ever got to be the dictator of this nation( not ever will that happen) that he would show them favoritism? They ought to think of Idi Amin, Pappa Doc etc and then tell me how they showed favoritism to the Blacks. Where are the really brilliant Black leaders and why aren’t they speaking up to save those that have no education or are looking merely at the hand outs. Tell them to use their heads and look at the whole picture not just the “What’s in it for me” attitude they seem to have at this time.
ha, they will claim that the picture of their turnout was no during a peak time, and other tiresome idiotic excuses, then probably try to play some victimized minority card, even though it is they who wished to show that they are a larger force than Beck Catalyzed Americans in the first place.
It is a major theme in lefty land that the Tea party and the Beck crowds are a minority of extremists and that “real americans” love the democrats and support Obama. This rally was meant to give credence to that claim, which apparently, it fell a bit short of the mark.
But the reality based community never let a few facts get in the way of a good argument.
I’d like to know how many of those busloads of people the unions brought in were on the clock.
What concerned me is that whenever the cameras panned the crowd, I saw that many parents had their small children with them, some of whom were even infants. In view of the circumstances, that was [extremely] irresponsible of those parents.
Another point, too, was that the rally struck me as nothing more than a get together of several different Communist organizations; e.g., labor unions, etc. – not exactly an accurately portrayed cross-section of America. (Never mind that their messages were bizarre, phony and hypocritical …, as usual. Nothing new there.)
Well if they estimated crowd sizes based on the amount of trash left behind, they would conclude nobody showed up for Beck, but this one had about 8 million.
did they clean up like the Beck crowd did or leave the Mall a mess like after the Inaguration?
Please. I was hoping for something a little more serious. In the photo allegedly from “Restoring Honor”, I can really see a crowd. A real crownd. From the “One Nation” rally the photo looks as if there are some people around the Lincoln Memorial, and some more in the shade, but I really don’t see much of a crowd. Where is the Real crowd picture? ‘Cuz there sure ain’t no crowd there.
Besides the vapid rhetoric, there is another thing predictable about gatherings of Leftoids in the nation’s capital…
TRASH (reminiscent of the Mall following Obama’s inauguration)
“TRASH”. And that’s not to mention all the papers, plastic bottles, disposable diapers etc left scattered on the ground?
/someone had to…
Charlie Martin is correct with his estimate. I was at the rally, walked the perimeter from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument, took photos, and made my own estimate of crowd size: roughly 50,000 on the high end.
And yes, there was considerable trash left behind — much more than from any of the Tea Party protests.
Sigh, that’s because Tea Party participants are too selfish to consider that the SEIU groundskeepers need jobs to do. The considerate progressives are only protecting the SEIU groundskeepers’ jobs.
Apparently the Tea Party doesn’t mind contributing to the nation’s unemployment by doing the job(s) SEIU groundskeepers are hired to do.
You’re not accounting for the diversity of the crowd. Beck had a crowd filled with just plain old vanilla Americans, (and they dont count for much these days), whereas Sharptons’s crowd was an overflowing cornucopia of diversity. Virtually every type of hyphenated victim group and grievance-monger was represented, including (I have heard) a trans-gendered pan-sexual small person-of-color. Oddly, the only thing they all had in common, aside from hating America, capitalism, whitey, and people who actually work for a living, was that they all were members of a mysterious union called AstroTurf-R-Us Local AFL-CIO which the NFL says has nothing to do with them or those green plastic lawns. Strange.
The theme of the attendees at that rally yesterday was, ask not what you can do for your country; ask what your country can do for you. It was all about getting free hand-outs, and the chants were, “Gimmee! Gimmee! Gimmee!”
Goodbye Harry!
Now now now, folks, don’t get all in a tizzy. Beck and Fox News touted his 8/28 thing for eight solid months – relentless promotion of “a miracle is going to happen” at this event, an event that would match the end of slavery. And lots of people turned out – for three hours of boring self righteous nostalgia. One university, I forget which one, did an actually study and took pictures and calculated body space and said there were 1.7 million people there. Sure, you’ve heard “tens of thousands” but that’s because that’s the “official” count.
I’d be very careful about claiming victory based on crowd size. October 30 is just around the corner.
The hard right peaked too early. Conservative candidates are starting to look like the lunatics they are. (Or is it mice with fully functioning human brains)? And liberals are going to leverage that uncertainty and disappointment among independents to reduce the imaginary mandate pumped out by the right wing media.
Keep whistling past the graveyard, sweety.
(And what makes you think we’ve peaked yet?)
One definition of insanity, is to repeat what has failed in the past, in the hope of obtaining a different result.
The policies of this Administration and its Congressional Clown Posse are a variation on the theme of top-down command-economy/welfare-state governance that failed miserably in the 1960′s-1970′s. It never was “Change” … it was change BACK to those failures.
The whole reason the Tea Party movement is now the single most powerful political force in the land, is because millions of us are tired of this insanity … an insanity that hides behind high-minded erudition and high-powered educational credentials, but is as insane as continuing to live under the rule of George III was to our founding citizens.
Compared to this genteel insanity, the Tea-Party-movement-supported candidates, even with their quirks, ARE the sane ones … especially when you get past the fearful Re-, er, Progressive spin.
You trumpet someone’s dabbling
As a naive teenage witch …
As if today she’s still using
Samantha’s nasal twitch …
But when it comes to magic
You’re much stronger it is clear …
For you’ve shown you possess the power
To make trillions disappear!
Strain strain strain … strain those gnats!
Then fling ‘em out, see if they’ll stick
From wherever you’re at …
As you swallow camels of dysfunction
‘Till your belly’s fat …
Strain strain strain … strain those gnats!
Wow Really,
Promise that you’ll be back after the election to “gloat.” Promise.
We’ll be waiting.
Looking at the table, I’m guessing that area should have been listed in square FEET as well.
Converting units is simple enough that any junior high school graduate can do it. One simple multiplication turns Charlie Martin’s 2.4 million square meters to square feet, and any reader can then check his table. Go on, try it, it’s empowering. And you can bust him if he’s wrong.
Great credit is due to Charlie and to PJM for producing these calculated crowd figures and disclosing the method. The MSM is too invested in bulldozing public opinion, by he-says she-says crowd figures from their carefully-selected sources, to hire one more junior-high grad to spend half a day doing what Charlie did.
Our MSM source, the Seattle Times, runs something this morning on that gathering. The union-financed bus fleet is excluded from their story.
Here’s their expression of crowd size: Organizers said the rally drew about 175,000 people, about what they expected. Beck has estimated that 500,000 came to his gathering; but according to one count commissioned by CBS News, 87,000 people attended the event.
And that’s it. Public opinion has been bulldozed successfully, insinuating that yesterday’s rally had merely half of Beck’s crowd – with no supporting data at all.
My money’s on Charlie Martin.
It’s kind of you to defend me, but the fact is I f… I made the mistake.
The thing that surprises me is, not how few people showed up, but how many. Even if you pay them and bus them in, are there that many people in our country who are so ignorant and out of touch with reality? Chances are, 90% of the “communists” and “socialists” in that crowd have never read Marx, and don’t even know what communism and socialism actually are.
They “know” that socialist and outright communist states are Utopias because they are run by Really Smart People Like Them, with no backtalk from the hoi polloi allowed.
And that’s all they need to “know”.
clear ether
eon
The irony, of course, is that those Really Smart People Like Them, once they’ve achieved their goal of absolute power, usually round them up, deliver their ‘nine grams’ to them in some dank basement and then send the surviving family the bill. It would be funny if it hadn’t actually happened that way in more than one place and time.
Wishful Thinkers and Coercive Utopians are always eliminated by the will-to-power driven Lord of the Flies types they vote and applaud into office.
That said, getting this nation off the road to the gulag and the mass grave will require terrible deeds. Those of us who survive will wrestle with our consciences to our dying days.Future generations will come to understand us and eventually forgive us for what we had to do.
Using the new Chavez form of mathematics, this is a clear majority in favor of Obama and his policies. Therefore it mandates a continuation of established policies.
Here is how it works. Sparsely populated areas such as the peripheral areas in this photograph are under represented. Because of this they carry more weight. Densely populated areas, such as those in the Glenn Beck rally photo, are over represented and must have their “influence” reduced. Using this new math it shows us that the Support Obama rally was clear success. America has decided again! The voice of America can not be wrong.
Thank you Mr. Chavez for making it easy, by using your counting methods, to show America the truth.
Lying is what leftists do.
I looked at this person’s flickr set of the rally. There were photos of bored people standing around, waiting for instructions. They looked like they’d rather be somewhere else.
Many thanks are due to Charlie Martin and PJM for the major advance in crowd estimation over MSM figures. Imagine – informing readers of facts, with actual measurements! It’s like the age of reason has returned.
But then, the MSM ‘news’ has always had a primary mission of bulldozing public opinion while making money. But that means it has chosen winners of any debate in advance, which isn’t exactly a service to a public consisting of all the people.
In today’s case, our local MSM organ, the Seattle Times, gives us this, under a headline of ‘One Nation’ rally seeks to energize Democrats.:
Organizers said the rally drew about 175,000 people, about what they expected. Beck has estimated that 500,000 people came to his gathering; but according to one count commissioned by CBS News, 87,000 people attended the event.
It looks more like the Times itself aims to energize Democrats, in this case by its inference that Beck’s rally drew only half of yesterday’s crowd.
The Times also excludes yesterday’s union-financed, crowd-bulking bus fleet from its ‘news’. It also feebly hints at, but doesn’t name the galaxy of Communist and Socialist organizations that appear so clearly in the photographs taken yesterday and posted on line. The rest of its 1,000-word article is mostly quotes from Democrat-energizing speakers, and other forms of gossip.
Well, my money is on Charlie Martin.
I’d be very careful about claiming victory based on crowd size. October 30 is just around the corner.
Nobody’s claiming victory, but those who ignore yesterday’s deflated crowd size – evidence of Democratic apathy or disillusionment – are in hiding from the real world.
And the Times (their claim – not mine) is to the right of the nearly defunct PI (Post Intelligencer).
Only in Seattle!
@16. Dave M. (now in S. Korea) Since 1998, I have been skeptical about just about everything. Thus, I would appreciate it if there was a time stamp on the picture of the leftist rally. The more facts provided the less wiggle room for the left to lie.
Dave, I’m with you. I like facts. If you go to the flickr link as noted on page 2, http://www.flickr.com/photos/njpitney/5045134373/in/set-72157625081892992/ then click on actions and select exif info, you will see the camera data that says the picture was taken on 10/2/10 at 12:04:51pm.
Of course, the camera could have been set wrong or the image edited to give the wrong impression.
However, if you zoom in on the left hand arch of the WW2 memorial, you will see that sun is coming through it leaving a bright spot on the ground. Also look at the shadows of the people on the ground. If you use those two things as a ‘sundial’ and look up on Google Earth the location, the shadows are pointing almost due north.
I then went to skyandtel.com and pulled up their interactive sky chart, plugged in the latitude, longitude, date and time and the sun was almost due south at an angle of 46 degrees. I’ve not done exacting calculations, but the picture passes my sniff test of actually being taken at noon. If anybody does do detailed calculations, please post them.
At about 5 pm on WMAL yesterday,Rita Cosby interviewed a caller who had attended the rally. The caller said that he and many of his fellow attendees had been paid $60 to attend and that that was the only reason he had gone to it.
What a wasted opportunity.
You had a gathering of communists, racists, traitors, Democrats, welfare leeches, America-haters, terrorist-lovers, Green totalitarians, and even some members of the Religion of Peace…and not one person in the area set off a tactical nuclear device.
As Mark Steyn wrote recently (I believe it was he), the MSM has become a combination of Pravda and Izvestia. Welcome to the semi-police states, as it grows around you.
Widely publicized? Seriously? The One Nation rally had no MSM hype. Nor was it pushed by an entire network like Beck’s rally. Be honest.
Lots of links here and a side by side aerial comparison:
http://www.leftcoastrebel.com/2010/10/photos-october-2-onenation-rally-aerial.html
I don’t believe the two events are even remotely comparable. That assemblage yesterday was largely made up of the same class of perennial protesters and committed true believers who have been gathering at the mall since the 1960′s.
These people are heavily invested in “performance art” politics as a pastime.
Contrast that with the 8/28 event and the Tea Party gatherings: The vast majority of those folks normally don’t care any more about politics and government than they have to. The last thing they want to do is spend a perfectly good day standing around listening to speeches. But our government has become so irresponsible and disdainful of its citizens that it’s gone and pissed off that great swath of middle America that would really rather be doing something (almost anything) else.
CNN is trying to compete with Fox for the middle of the road news coverage. They have a story on their website on the ‘One Nation’ rally. No mention of the crowd other than using the words “…crowds were already beginning to thicken at the National Mall near the Lincoln Memorial…” giving the implied idea that there was a ‘large’ crowd.
While CNN thinks they are trying hard to be ‘fair and balanced’ like Fox they just don’t get it – give us the facts – ALL the facts – convenient or not to your ’cause’ – and let us decide what it means. Until they quit editing in this manner they will continue to lose viewers.
As a side note – I’m betting that Beck will not gloat about this on Monday. He’s not the kind to revel in someone else’s failures(yes this ‘rally’ was an abject failure). I do look for him to show the images of these kooks carrying signs – you know the ones – Socialist Democrats for Amerika and their ‘redistribute’ ilk. After all thats about all that was there – commies.
‘Wow Really’ – You really believe Independents are for a party, let alone an administration for furthering Government, Unionization in our daily lives, blindly believe in the ‘Spending our way out of this recession’ mantra Obama’d quoted the Fall of ’09, ‘admiration’ of the Democrats insofar facing ethics charges, support a Speaker and the hundreds of politicians on the Hill voting for legislation they’d never read – in essence undermining the will, free enterprise of the overwhelming majority of their constituents they supposedly serve? On and on.
Most recently, John Kerry of all people called YOU stupid. John freakin’ Kerry calling anyone stupid is beyond reproach.
Sell your B S to those who are suckling on the Government teet and are iffy come November.
It is a serious case of rally envy. And this is more serious than most cases of rally envy because there was a huge infusion of the drug, government sponsorship, and after awhile the drug has no effect in increasing the size or stamina.
size will matter on nov.2
Jeepers, maybe with a little “walking around money” and some fried chicken attendance would have been higher. But, this is DC, not Bawlimer, and there’s only so much room on “the people’s mall.” Those Demos must be gettin’ serious about financial reform!
It reminds me of Rahm Emanuel on his wedding night. After he and his bride are undressed, he pulls from his drawer a magnifying glass.
That the “One Nation” rally wasn’t huge; I say no big thing. Sure, you could fit the assemblage into a pair of Shack’s sneakers, but what of it. I think what matters most is the size of the commitment.
They’re all committed to ObamaCare, a time bomb set to destroy the best medical care in the world. Which makes them unfit to be part of polite society.
They’re committed to bailing out the labor unions. You know, those thugs whose rule about people who disagree with them is to, if they detect movement,beat them senseless. There are too many examples to detail here. If you’re not aware of them, you’re six feet under; or deserve to be.
They’re committed to Cap and Trade. Nobody knows how many schemes are woven within it to bilk from business owners and homeowners thousands of dollars. No one knows how many private sector jobs C and T will kill. But Cap and Trade has more booby traps for taxpayers than the Japanese left for the troops that freed Manila.
They’re committed to denying free speech. If what you say might anger a terrorist overseas to the point he blows someone up, you can’t say it. It changes the legal principle of not being able legally to yell fire in a crowded theatre. If the brown shirted progressives have their way, the new federal laws will prevent you from yelling theatre in a crowded Islamic terror group.
They’re committed to casting all TV shows.
If this sounds odd, it’s because it’s something you haven’t heard about, but something I have specific knowledge about. If there’s a court judge in the script, he’s gotta be black, unless it’s a corrupt judge, then he has to be white. There was a movie called Gran Torino that almost broke the new Obama casing laws when it showed three black thugs about to assault a teenage girl whereupon Clint Eastwood, an old Clint Eastwood, drives up to shew the bad black gang type boys away.
At first, the bad black teens acted very threatening, but when Clint reasons with them, they nod their heads, seemingly realizing they should let the white people go. Next time you see the picture, notice how the black gangbanger types weren’t that bad after all.
Look, Obama and the leftists tried to destroy the moral fabric of this country and tear the rest of it to shreds. Their plot’s becoming an abject failure. This country isn’t made up of lambs willingly going to the political slaughter. This nation is made up of Americans who’ve decided to spit in leftists’eyes. The more of you who pack, the better.
On November 2, assuming the elections aren’t stolen, Obama is going to get the equivalent of tasered by the vote.
Let’s face it, the Democrats deserve a real beating. It doesn’t matter how many lies they make up in the meantime or how inflated they want to make crowd figures. Today’s Democrats have the potency of a white 60 year old man on blood pressure medication with an empty bottle of viagra.
The fat lady’s sung. If Ed Schultz can’t hear it, it’s because Harry Belafonte’s tongue is embedded in his ear.
I have a lefty friend who insists that George Bush undermined this rally by pointing at the Potomac and saying “the Unicorn Rally is that way”. This caused untold millions of would-be “Unity” rally-goers to jump into the river. Now, millions of leftys are all wet.
Thanks…from here in deepest Central Maryland…
That’s an original “George Bush Is Responsible” quip. We should start a collection of all of the “Bush Is Responsible” snarks, in context, and put out a CD with the production costs billed to the left wingers…..then be prepared for the shrieks of “Prejudice!”.
There is no end to their hypocrisy.
Charlie, I’m glad you liked the quip. My lefty friend is, of course, an imaginary friend.
as Al Sharpton once said something like, “We know exactly how many people we had, count the buses”
Hitler and Marx would have been proud of the anti-semitism, hatred and totalitarian style of this event.
“Liberal Media Concludes Size Doesn’t Matter”
That’s not how it looks to me:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/10/03/130302692/
Beck’s rally was bigger. No doubt about it. I suspect that colbert and stewart will show them all how it’s done.
“Liberal Media Concludes Size Doesn’t Matter”
Most liberal males say that.
For obvious reasons.
In order to trump up the attendance rate, CNN used photos of the 8/28 rally and attributed them to the 10/2 rally:
photo:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2ejdP2MCuUs/TKfg8WcQdwI/AAAAAAAADh4/75NiWOGWXK8/s1600/cspan-crowd.jpg
You can clearly see the Gadsten flags adorning the background.
———-
Here is an aerial photo comparing the 2 events, both taken at noon:
http://plixi.com/p/48550558
(the Beck 8/28 rally may appear to be overcast, but you can clearly see shadows cast by trees in the upper left corner of the photo due to a breach in the clouds)
Glenn Beck’s rally with the american citizens joined together in a massive rally in american history. not for any political party or for anyone in government but that for the ‘Restoration of America under the America flag in the presence of God for Freedom, liberty and justice for all.
When governments demonizes the presence of God for the sake of a false god in government; they are doomed to failure.
I don’t think many innocent americans have any idea what ‘Socialism, Communism Marxism means or does to a person’s soul mind and country.
Therefore to my next neighbour in USA -pray daily, ask God for His guidance and He will help but, will take tons of sacrifices on your part to restore your country.