Michelle Malkin and the anatomy of the 2 million protester lie
Blame it on a tweet.
It turns out that's what kicked off the right-wing blogosphere's comically inept misinformation campaign last weekend to try to swell the size of Saturday's anti-Obama protest in the nation's capital, to jack the crowd size up to the wildly inflated -- and erroneous -- number of 2 million people.
Nice try.
According to estimates provided by the Washington, D.C., fire department, Malkin and friends were only off by 1,930,000 people. In other words, Malkin, citing fictitious press accounts, led the charge to falsely inflate the size of the crowd by 30 times. Malkin and company, desperate to dress up the tea party event as a mass movement, saw a relatively modest crowd of 70,000 GOP protesters and imagined it was 2 million strong. (She's a dreamer, I suppose.)
Worse, Malkin spent most of Saturday in denial, refusing to update her transparently false report, which meant the rest of the right-wing blogosphere also played dumb on a massive scale and kept excitedly repeating the manufactured claim. The scary part is that within the fact-free conservative blogosphere, lots of people still believe the 2 million nonsense, or are at least repeating it. They believe it despite the fact that nobody can point to any evidence to support it.
For most sane observers, what transpired over the weekend resembled a comical bout of telephone tag -- the game schoolchildren play when they whisper something into a friend's ear and then get a big laugh when, six or seven friends later, they hear how distorted the original message has become via garbled repetition. (Two million protesters!) The sad part is that right-wing bloggers are serious. They think they're engaging in some bold new era of citizen journalism. Instead, they just, you know, make stuff up.
It's just the latest example in a string of unforgettable whoppers from online conservatives who rarely let the facts get in the way of a good story. And, yes, irony abounds in that right-wing bloggers hate the press and that they hate the practice of journalism. They lecture reporters about accountability and fairness all the time, yet whenever amateur conservatives try their hand at reporting, they just produce guffaws for the rest of us. (Did I mention they miscalculated the size of the crowd by 1,930,000 people?)
On Saturday, facts didn't matter because right-wing ringleader Malkin was helping to spread a sprawling (and illogical) lie, and her dutiful followers knew just what to do: spread it hard and fast. Perhaps Malkin's only regret was she didn't aim higher; she could have claimed there were news reports of 12 million people protesting in D.C., and I'm sure every one of her willingly gullible devotees would have linked to her.
The amusing part of the weekend's blind-leading-the-blind charade was that Malkin already has a very long and detailed history of manufacturing phony stories that later leave nasty stains all over the blogosphere when they turn out to be turds. (Paging Jamil Hussein.) And that's what I think was so revealing about the 2 million-people-in-D.C. fiasco: Nobody within the right-wing blogosphere seems to be the slightest bit upset, let alone embarrassed or chastened, for having been part of a farcical, inept attempt to inflate the size of Saturday's rally by 1,930,000 people. Nobody seems to think it reflects poorly on them as a community, or that it will damage their collective reputation.
They really are shameless. And they really do inhabit their own parallel political universe where everyone's allergic to facts.
Why the shamelessness? Sadly, members of the GOP Noise Machine are acutely aware there is no downside to just lying 24/7. Malkin knows that no TV producers are going to deny her an on-air spot because she purposefully spread the patently phony claim that 2 million people gathered in Washington, D.C. (i.e. that the city's population quadrupled overnight). The Beltway press rarely holds the Noise Machine accountable, so of course they're going to just keep lying (what's the downside?), since it's obvious they don't really care about facts to begin with.
The conservative comedy of errors began on Saturday when Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, took to the rally stage and unfurled a massive lie. He told the crowd ABC News had reported that between 1 million to 1.5 million people had gathered to protest Obama's policies. (Later, a FreedomWorks flack conceded she had no idea know why Kibbe manufactured the claim about ABC News.)
Immediately, conservative activist Tabitha Hale (aka "pinkelephantpun") tweeted Kibbe's lie but added an additional 500,000 people to the tally: "ABC reporting 2 million people."
Seven minutes later, Malkin re-tweeted Hale's claim. Then, one minute after that, Malkin turned that tweet into part of her ongoing protest coverage. Intrepid "reporter" Malkin took an unsupported tweet and reported it as news:
12:34pm Eastern: Police estimate 1.2 million in attendance. ABC News reporting crowd at 2 million -- tweets Tabitha Hale from D.C.
Teeny, tiny fringe, huh?
Note that in her blog post there were no links for Malkin's utterly fantastic claim, no place on the Web where readers could go and confirm that D.C. police had pegged the crowd at 1.2 million or that ABC had made the staggering claim of 2 million. The lack of live links should have been a massive red flag for readers and fellow bloggers, especially when it was associated with such a controversial and news-breaking claim.
But, of course, Malkin had no links or any real facts to go on. All she had was a couple of tweets from Hale, who, in retrospect, appeared to have spent much of Saturday just making shit up.
But again, none of that mattered, because Malkin had spoken (2 million!) and the right-wing bloggers knew what to do. Let's take a stroll through the far-right blogosphere and see which sites did their best to spread Malkin's patently absurd claim about 2 million protesters. [Emphasis added.]
I can remember telling Glenn Reynolds during CPAC that these Tea Party demonstrations were rinky-dink and going nowhere. Barely more than a half-year later, they're putting two million people on the Washington Mall. Wow!
UPDATE:(Newbie): Crowd estimated by ABC NEWS: 2 MILLION!
ABC News reports that two million Americans flooded D.C. in what people in the crowd were calling "a conservative Woodstock" Like the liberal Woodstock of the '60s, thousands were rumored stranded on freeways.
The two photos above show a tiny fraction of the two million ABC estimates attended.
NewsBusters, the day after the 2 million people story had been debunked:
You'll note no mention of the D.C. rally yesterday that drew an estimated 1-2 million people.
Michelle Malkin reported on her site that ABC News estimated the crowd to be 2 million people.
[...]
Rick at Brutally Honest linked to this awesome time lapse video showing progression of the approximately 2 million people who marched in DC today:
ABC Reports 2 Million At DC Rally
Michelle Malkin is reporting that estimated turnout is now 2 million people.
And then there was the sad, confused work of blogger Stephen Green. Doing his best to spread the word about the supposedly massive crowd size on Saturday, Green first claimed that CNN had reported the crowd was 2 million strong. (CNN never did any such thing.) Then later under a banner that read "correction," Green, following Malkin's phony lead, reported it was ABC News that reported 2 million protesters were on hand. (Green then failed to correct his "correction.")
Of course, the 2 million tally never made sense. Not only couldn't anybody find ABC's alleged reporting, but no other news organization (not even rally co-sponsor Fox News) were going anywhere near the 2 million mark. Instead, most of Saturday's reports used phrases like "tens of thousands" to describe the crowd size.
Just after 4 p.m. Saturday, New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen tweeted the glaring discrepancy:
http://michellemalkin.com/: "ABC News reporting crowd at 2 million." Front page, ABCNews.com: "thousands march on Capitol"
By the end of that 4 o'clock hour, ABC's News' Yunji de Nies also weighed in:
Later that afternoon, ABC News took the unusual step of reporting an article about itself. Headlined "ABC News Was Misquoted on Crowd Size," the dispatch, designed solely to knock down the false rumor that Malkin helped hype, was quite emphatic:
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."
Finally, near day's end, Malkin finally addressed her bogus ABC News claim and pointed the finger of blame at FreedomWorks' Kibbe. (He's the one who first mentioned ABC News.) Malkin then thanked ABC News for "clearing this up," without noting that "this" was launched when Malkin broadcast a completely fictitious claim without the slightest hint of attribution and then waited most of the day to acknowledge her colossal blunder. And note that Malkin blamed Kibbe because Kibbe told the rally that ABC News had estimated the crowd to be between 1 million and 1.5 million. But Malkin told the world ABC News had claimed it was 2 million. So how was that Kibbe's fault?
Post-protest, some conservatives, such as Instapundit, still tried to push the phony 2 million claim by clinging to a typically awful and unsubstantiated article from the British press that originally suggested "up to two million people" marched on Washington. The article, though, lacked any sourcing. It was just another case of the British press regurgitating a right-wing lie. (The article was later changed to include an equally misleading claim: "As many as one million people flooded into Washington for a massive rally.")
By Saturday night, RedState blogger Erick Erickson, conceding the 2 million number was pure fantasy, did his best to clear up the confusion:
I've been talking all night to people who are there and involved. The 2 million number was generated by the media, but truly seems to be a gross inflation of what is there.
And with that we traveled full circle in the unstable world of the right-wing blogosphere. According to press-hating Erickson, it was the media that concocted the wildly inflated 2 million number. (ABC News again?) In the new, sanitized telling, Malkin's dirty hands, of course, had been completely washed and her leading role in the embarrassing charade had been forgotten and forgiven. Because at the end of the day, it was the media's fault all along.
Follow Eric Boehlert on Twitter.
And on another note...the DIVERSITY of that CROWD!
There ya have it. The nutjob rationale.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHVwrCzRUX0
The thing that scares me about it though, is how many people in the crowd seem to think the billionaires are for real.
There's one priceless piece with a woman who wants the gubmint out of her life, including her social security.
The public option is a big deal for them because they have been brainwashed to believe the public option will bankrupt medicare. I have been told most emphatically that Medicare will go away, it will be canceled, if Obamacare is passed.
Here's the best part. Anyone read this quote?
"It is a record," (National Park Spokesman David) Barna said. "We believe it is the largest event held in Washington, D.C., ever."
Conservative web sights were throwing that quote out there as if it was from last week. OOPS!- Apparently David Barna DID say that quote... Only it was at the Obama inauguration.
And what about that picture showing well over a hundred thousand people on the Mall? Seems the pic is missing a building there that's been there since 2004... OOPS, again!
60% of the public are against the public option. 52% cannot describe it. Nearly 28% cannot give a satisfactory definition of the word "option".
Anyway, I'm sure you can find some way to discount all of this so I won't waste any more of my time. And by the way, MSNBC reported by their estimates hundreds of thousands of people even though the park police only estimated tens of thousands. And that from a traditionally liberal station. Also, have you ever heard of the old marketing idea that for every one angry letter a company gets there are another 10 people out there who feel the same way but don't that the time to write?? I think that makes this voice pretty loud... and growing.
Prove it.
Again, prove it.
You see, we do check other sources, and we do fact check, and we do demand that people back up what they say.
And if you and people like you were really upset over the way the govt is being run now (on a Bush-written budget still, by the way, and less than a year into Obama's term), then you would have marched on Washington when Bush was in office. Your timing belies your claim.
That man so needs to be a guest on Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and Big Eddies show!
Hard to say if I would have been brave enough? Maybe, but not all that big a guy...
As for you trolls in here who actually defended these crazies... if a video such as this does not prove the vileness, ignorant anger, and racist nature of that barely a handful of inbred Americans... then there really is no helping you!
Yeah, it takes less courage to screech stupid slogans on a website than right to somebody's face.
You are still lost in a world view that anyone who does not love Obama and all of his policies is a racist and fearmonger or whatever else your catch phrase is for the day. You simply cannot accept anyone who has doubts about Obama care, but is not opposed to health care reform in general. As usual, while you are entertaining, I simply feel sorry for you.
Have you decided yet if you think Blackwater is not as bad as ACORN, or are you still scared to answer that?
Blackwater and acorn.....what??? I dont recall any conversations with you about either topic, and you have never asked a question i was afraid to answer. You simply choose not to read any response that does not fit your pre determined view of the world. I feel genuine sorry for you.
You are the one in a fantasy world. I make a comment SUPPORTING a left wing protester and supporting health care reform, yet you cannot accept either.
I thought I had asked you the same question I was asking Fairliberal, my apologies if I got you two confused, you do all tend to blure together after a while.
. I was only trying to see if any of the conservatives fake outrage about ACORN talking to make-believe prostitutes would be consistently applied to the actual underage prostitution activities of Blackwater.
I may have asked you in a thread where you didn't see it.
What this branch of ACORN did is horrendous, but somewhat less so than murdering innocent Iraqis, doncha think?
I'm just sayin'
Isn't this the item where I said I didn't agree with that man? Or is that another one. All my posts and the responses seemed to have gotten pulled. Strange.
Yes it is. Not only yours, but a good 40 to 50 comments were pulled for some reason. None of them were offensive that I saw, so I am guessing some type of glitch.
Who is that courageous man? The Democrats would be dumb not to exercise him through the media.
Both ideological camps inflate and understate crowd estimates for their own purposes. Pegging the estimate at 70,000 is equally, perhaps even more ridiculous. The fire department estimate is by no means authoritative. The crowd was huge, even though it may not have been 2 million.
I recommend looking at this USA Today article, which shows the national park service estimate of the Obama inauguration. It offers a reasonable way to gauge the size of the crowd using an graphic representation of the crowd size and density assumptions.
Then check out all of the videos and pictures of the 9/12 crowd and it's footprint and density. You'll see the crown was quite dense to the Washington Monument and stretched all the way back to the Lincoln Memorial.
If you're honest, you can use your own brain to estimate the size of the crowd. Based on this article (not my estimate), it's not unreasonable to estimate the 9/12 crowd at 1.2 millon. Forget about what all the ideologs (including this article) are saying. Figure it out yourself.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-01-19-crowd_N.htm
Your conclusion suggests you are looking at the 9/12 picture that is a proven fake. You referenced the USA today article about the inaugural but you haven't told us what picture of 9/12 you are using. It has to be the fake.
Rep. Steve King(R, Iowa) just stated that hundreds of thousands of people showed up in Washington, D.C. on Saturday to protest this Congress. He later stated that Obama threw the first stone in the House of Representatives by saying some politicians were lying in distorting the Health Care debate.
Also, Rep. John Carter (R, Texas) just stated that Bernie being put in jail after stealing billions is a shining example of our rule of law working appropriately.
I'm speechless... and much sleepier.
Knowing that a passionate group exists, is energized and jubilantly celebrated together last Saturday in DC and throughout the country, must be quite a blow to all the socialists, neo-democrats and czars in this administration. This was to be to their time and instead, conservatism reveals its presence in the fabric of America and Americans and stands in stark contrast to their hope to remake this country.
Yikes, what a devastating hit in the political gut for the leftists to be revealed in the open light of day and then to reviled as antithetical to what America stands for. ;<
No, not really. It's making me laugh. Howard Fineman was just on with Shuster. They showed all the signs comparing Obama to Hitler. It was a hate rally. Fineman said he has talked to many Repubs who are not happy, because that type of wacko hate does nothing to attract independents to the party.
>>Yikes, what a devastating hit in the political gut for the leftists to be revealed in the open light of day and then to reviled as antithetical to what America stands for
Yes, someone is delusional.
Now that I look at this more, it seems even more funny. How exactly were leftists revealed in the light of day? I thought it was the wacko fringe (which is getting harder to distinguish from the mainstream Repubs) that got exposed. Also, I'm so glad to know that you know what America stands for. I had thought that question vague and open, but apparently PC has the answer we have all been looking for!
Really, you are as bad as Malkin. You really might want to stop immersing yourself in the right-wing blogs. It is effecting your ability to reason.
Despite all the efforts by the president, tomorrow will be his ba-jillionth? speech on health care, the evils of capitalism and/or dispensation of rights to the terrorists, America has seen his vision for this country in the light of day and only repudiate more strongly. These will continue to be hard times for the left.
Let freedom ring!
Yes, I guess you forgot about the hate signs, huh? You just conveniently forgot about that. And as has been pointed out, the "Obama lied, Granny died," is just plain. Obama's supposed lie hasn't killed anyone (as opposed to Bush's war, which you whole-heartedly supported, I believe). And fact check organizations have pointed out that the death panels claim is a pants-on-fire lie. But don't let lies get in the way of your thinking.
>>Despite all the efforts by the president, tomorrow will be his ba-jillionth? speech on health care, the evils of capitalism and/or dispensation of rights to the terrorists, America has seen his vision for this country in the light of day and only repudiate more strongly. These will continue to be hard times for the left.
Yes, I'm sure you're right. Because first, Obama has never claimed the things you claimed he did, and two, as far as your predictions, go, we all know how accurate the right wing is when it comes to predicting things, like the WMDs in Iraq, or Obama's losing the election (as Rove predicted).
Like I said, you might want to stop reading right-wing blogs.
That's exactly the questions that none of the fringe tea baggers can answer. It sounds good, so they repeat it. When pressed, they haven't the faintest clue. It's really funny.
At least, that's what I THINK these loons mean when they say Obama is "violating the Constitution".
We all know what you guys' problem is, and so do you. Pretend all you want, but what you didn't care about eight years ago, you don't care about today. We know what you care about. "They don't call it the White House for nothing. I want my country back!"
Lol. Even their T-shirts (and not mentioned, but I am sure, bumper stickers) - a perenial mainstay of conservative intellectualism - makes absolutely no sense at all.
If you like that system, you're perfectly within your rights to keep it. But there are no "Obama lies" involved there, just a bureaucrat working for the insurance company whose job it is to maximize profits by denying care, unlike a government "bureaucrat" who doesn't have that profit incentive to deny coverage.
It's the insurance companies who have already-existent "death panels" now, not the imaginary government entities that don't exist except in the fevered imaginations of the gullible.
And by "repudiate more strongly" do you mean repudiate more strongly than the presidential election held on November 4, 2008?
Let's see, as simple as that rhyme is, it was stolen from the "Bush lied.." original. No creativity or work ethic involved, just taking from others.
Granny died? Completely factose-intolerant, a fiction.
In short, the slogan is the product of lack of ideas,laziness and dishonesty, and PC gives it the Blue Ribbon.
GOP in a nutshell. Thanks, proud( I'm less sure than ever of what)conservative.
Was it a passionate group? Yes. Was this representative of a populist movement? No, not even close really.
What socialists? There aren't any. What is a neo-democrat? There isn't such a thing, you just made that up. Czars have been in every administration since Nixon (for example, Mr. Bush had over 30 as well, except nobody cared that he had advisers, actually for Mr. Bush, the more the better).
Conservatism revealed nothing in this protest. They revealed that they don't know what they're protesting about.
Let me ask you these questions, and see if you can actually answer them with real facts, and or with anything resembling an actual opinion not based on a talk show talking point:
1. How is the democratic party anti-American? We've been hearing this about ourselves since Bush took office, and you continue this charade today. What have we done that is anti-American?
2. What rights have you lost under Obama?
3. How has the Obama administration usurped the Constitution?
I'll just start with those 3.
Kinda sounds like a KKK rally to me. Or a football game. As far as politics go, these nutjobs are simply clueless.
You got that right...
And here
And here
or here (this link leads to 82 different pictures taken at the racists rally held in DC... some of them are something to behold!)
here too
proudconservative
I don't intend to question your motivations for defending this vile crap... but you cannot possibly think that the 9/12 Project was not meant as a way for the angry racists among us to gather in one place!! Did you?
Whether Glenn Becks reasons were legitimate or not for purposely exploiting the fear and anger associated with the 9/11 terrorist attacks to get people riled up about taxes... you'd have to be blind or dead not to notice it!
It is more than obvious what was being created from day one of Glenn going this route... Glenn and the rest of the circus clowns at Fox, Rush and all the other right-wing mouth pieces that pushed this crap... THEY KNEW what this was going to become, partial or whole!
And have done nothing to slow it down once it was obvious what it was devolving into and have been feeding this particular fire every day since!
I have to say, it is not the signs that bother me. It is the lawn chairs, fat asses, and corporate-owned and operated buses that brought these people there. Far cry from the sixties when a march actually meant a march. I wonder how many would have still been there had the firehoses opened up on them...? Granted busing is the norm these days, but back when large swaths of people actually were being denied rights and representation, and housing, et al. the protest just seemed more genuine.
I won't even begin to talk about politicizing 9/12 because my blood's begin to curdle again just thinking about it.
THIS DID NOT DRAW 2 MILLION.
This didn't even draw two hundred thousand.
It's a punch, perhaps, but a gut-wrencher? HARDLY.
Being the top show or book proves only that there are plenty of people willing to watch or read whatever is put in front of them!
In other words... do not confuse yourself with being number 1 with being worthy of the facts and truth!
Unless you don't give a damn about reality and purposely bury your head in the sand just because your afraid to accept it?
No, wait, you provided nothing, just like every other wingnut who tries to make that claim. Why is it that the terminally ignorant who can provide no proof always accuse those who use documented facts as being the ignorant ones? Mere projection can't cover the myriad cases we've seen here just in the last month.
Ha! So true. Every time a new nutjob appears it's the same ol' b.s. that's been shot down over and over.
I got another answer to Rep. Weiner's question (by kydem). He actually believes that what the insurance companies bring to the table in regards to health care is...that they provide affordable insurance to many people.
There ya go. You really can't have a debate with someone who believes that.
If its something that the right supports then its exploded to millions and millions of people even though they can never prove it. But if its something that the left supports then its only a couple thousand people with no real organization to it.
-- Mark Twain
300,000 of US showed up in WA DC Sept 25,2005 to protest the Iraq war/occupation. Barely a whisper in the media!
But these miniscule tea baggers get lavished with coverage.
Thanks!
The real number is somewhere in that spread.
(Remember when Donald Rumsfeld claimed the WMD's were in Tikrit and somewhat to the north, south, west and east of there?)
His estimates were always off just a bit.
There a sense of self-hatred present with Malkin, because as you wrote "The people she is in bed with would not be much happier with an Asian American President than they are with an African American President".
I hope MMFA pulls your post. You posted something like *8* photos. What exactly was the purpose? The page takes forever to load now. Could you kindly just post links in the future?
Instead, by perpetuating what was pure fiction and declaring preemptively to their audience that MSM crowd estimates would be by definition a fraction of the "true" numbers, FOX etc will live to fight another day. Otherwise, I think Beck in particular would have been done for.
The best defense against lies in the truth. I hope the rest of the media hammers this as passionately as they did the Dan Rather memo forgery. It's implications for the future of the nation are significant.
The stroll through the right-wing blogosphere might also have featured a copy of this:
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/091209.jpg
. . . which was prominently displayed on many right-wing web sites on Saturday 9/12.
I realize they can't all be Tom Tomorrow, but isn't there a genuinely humorous conservative anywhere?
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/09/912_demonstration_a_record_dc.html
"The truth will out. Despite mainstream media attempts to characterize turnout as in the thousands, a spokesman for the National Park Service, Dan Bana, is quoted as saying "It is a record.... We believe it is the largest event held in Washington, D.C., ever."
People were using this guy's quote from the Inauguration, not from the 9/12 event.
Sorry, try again.
You do realize that that quote is from the inaugaration, don't you?
FAIL. And, it was on sale...BIG FAIL.
This is from a conservative who self-describes himself as a "thinker".
Wingnut Fail.
Fox doesn't bother with this, because it takes too much time. They are more like the news service in the movie, "Network".
They use vague terms like, "people say" or "experts say", without mentioning who these people are.
But the ignorant and stupid lap it up like a dog eating its own vomit.
Continues to prove my point - Republicans pander to the ignorant and stupid.
70000 (estimated) x 100000 = 7,000,000,000. That's 7 BILLION.
So what you're saying is, that every single person in the world is a conservative, and everyone lives in the US?
I think it much more likely that you're just not very good at math. This is why I suppose Remedial Math for Conservatives as a reeducation camp curriculum. It might help you estimate the size of crowds and such. Of course, after Obama takes your guns and your God away, kills your grandmother, enacts sharia law, and finally reveals his Kenyan ancestry, you'll be properly programmed to just shrug and smile anyway.
That last bit was snark, for those who don't know the difference.
Ha! I was laughing so hard at the rest of the idiocy I didn't even notice the impossible math. You wingnuts are priceless, just making stuff up and believing yourselves.
Yes, of course, if you say so. You people are really funny. As canatheist points out, your assumption (that you apparently just made up) leads to an absurdity. And what the heck do you mean, "people who vote for a living?"
Just keep it up. You people are good for the laughs.
I'd be even more scared of a real oligarhy.
Just remember that for each person at the 9/12 turnout, there are about five people laughing at them.
1.93 million. Do you wingnuts need help with everything?
What really puckers the butts of you pinkos is that you know that for every one there, there are 100 thousand just like them that couldn't be there.
No, that was pretty much the stoopidest 1% of the stoopidest 1% of America, mostly retired and unemployable, and very easy to manipulate.I refuse to believe that there are 100,000 times as many idiots in this country as showed up to make animal noises and be led by the nose against the best interests of the country.
Keep in mind that probably 5 - 10% of these teabaggers won't be alive for the next election, through a combination of old age, walking into traffic, and listening to their radios in the bathtub.
On top of that, he continued to show clips at ground level, with the view obstructed by giant signs, where he then went on about how there is a liberal media bias, or whatever his usual sycophantic rants.
They are truly shameless, aren't they?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
(But then... so am I!) LOL
Where did he get this report? I'd LOVE to see it.
Lets see if it'll let it though today.
"Why the shamelessness? Sadly, members of the GOP Noise Machine are acutely aware there is no downside to just lying 24/7. Malkin knows that no TV producers are going to deny her an on-air spot because she purposefully spread the patently phony claim that 2 million people gathered in Washington"
There is no downside to lying for the GOP it will sooner or later be accepted as truth. I already saw 2 letters to the editor in our Cleveland Plain Dealer with the exact same lie. We may laugh about it amongst ourselves but they win. It is easy to win every argument when you can make up any "facts" you want
Or, as the Onion headline might read: "309,930,000 Americans Stay Away from DC Protests."
Anyhow, I tweet as @tavernwench, and Hale tweets as @pinkelephantpun. She came at me first, and then hilarity ensued. If you want to read the exchange, wherein Ms. Hale takes zero responsibility for spreading the initial rumor, and remains entirely unrepentant, you'll have to scroll down a bit to get to late night on 9/12.
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/091209.jpg
. . . was displayed on MANY right wing blogs on Saturday 9/12.
Whatever. He can keep drawing his vision of the Republican party as half-dressed American couples waking up in the morning over and over for all I care.
Even Mallard Fillmore is better than this tripe.
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo says there were 37.8 million there.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/09/crowd_size_controversies_are_as.php?ref=mp
#2 Wasn't there a health care rally on the Mall this year and it didn't have big attendance, so the rightwingnoisemachine said that nobody wanted healthcare?
#3 Not everybody was there for the tea party. There were also people in the area for the 24th Annual Black Family Reunion.
#4 Here is 1.5 million people at an event I personally attended in 1999, for comparison. This dwarfs Obama's inauguration. The teaparty doesn't come close.
It is not just a slight exaggeration, it is pure lunacy.
There once was a time folks lied to hide the truth, today in America, politicians has taken lying to a hold new level. Lying has become a national pastime.
Here is a prime example:
The 2008 presidential election featured a black man with a great chance to win the presidency.
From the moment they feared Obama, the black man, could win the election Republicans shamelessly abandoned all logic and strategy and resorted to what they know best; LYING.
The campaign of lies began by labeling the black front-runner an “Elitist”, “Socialist”, and “Marxist” just to name a few.
As time went on the lies has gotten bigger and bolder.
During the race and after Obama won the presidency Republicans, in particular, broaden the lie that Obama did not have an American birth certificate. They lied knowing a black man would not do something no white man has done before, and that is become president of the United States without proof of citizenship.
They pushed this lie with provable evidence to the contrary, in fact, a copy of Obama’s birth certificate was put up on his website for all to see, not only that, but the hospital in Hawaii where Obama was born made an announcement of his birth in the local Newspaper.
It did not matter to these pathological liars.
When confronted with the truth many Republicans ignored the facts saying “I never saw the ORIGNIAL birth certificate”. In other words they wanted to keep the lie alive.
Republicans and the conservative media prove to be the greatest liars of them all. They oppose everything Obama does with misinformation, which is a creative way of lying.
Most people caught in a lie will be more careful the next time they speak, not these unremorseful liars. They simply put it on the back-burner and start a new lie.
This is what they did throughout the campaign and they have not paid a real price yet, as a result lying in the open has become contagious and out of control.
In their effort to derail the Healthcare Bill Republicans and some in the Health-Insurance industry hired liars to disrupt Democrats’ town hall forums.
We know this because a circulated memo detailing the mission, the list of meetings sites and objectives was revealed to the media.
Even when some of those who put out the memo confessed to mischief Republicans continue to lie and say the mobs were organic.
Republican wants Obama to fail and they are out to defeat his Healthcare Bill believing it will be his ‘waterloo’ In order to achieve this objective Republicans have elevated their lies into the stratosphere. “There is a provision in the Bill for a death panel” former Gov. of Alaska Sarah Palin said.
This outrageous assertion (lie) is echoed by prominent members of the Republican Party even though they know for a fact this is not true. They no longer care how they are perceived nor are they held accountable for the lies they tell.
It is clear; when it comes to a lie no one does it better (a badge of honor perhaps?).
They will lie about anything. They will lie for no reason and they will lie for the sake of lying, thereby earning America dubious distinction of having The GREATEST LIARS IN THE WORLD!!!.
1) I was there and the crowd didn't go much farther than the Capitol reflecting pool.
2) I was also at the Obama inauguration, where it took me 2 hours to get through the crowds to the mall from my house, which is only 4 blocks away. By comparison, Saturday was a leisurely stroll. Oh, and I could stretch my arms out in front of me, which was impossible on Inauguration Day.
3) After the rally, I was actually able to get a seat on Metro. You couldn't even get INTO metro on Inauguration day.
But you know it doesn't matter what we think...the masses buy into the mainstream media's lies because they report it faster and with confidence. ugh.
So from this post you can see that there were 60-70 thousand at the mall at 9:43 AM. First off the main crowd did not march to the mall until late morning through early afternoon. If the estimate is correct that there was only 60-70 at the mall at 9:43 the main protest group had not even got there yet they were still gathering on the streets. I am sure there was not 2 million there either but to prop up a tweet form DCFIREEMS at 9:43 AM as proof there was only 60-70 thousand there is also TOTAL BS.