The punchline: This is supposed to be a site that critiques the media. But what does NewsBusters do instead? It makes stuff up.

The idiocy honors go to Tom Blumer, who states as fact that Saturday's D.C. anti-Obama rally “drew an estimated 1-2 million people.” Where did that (bogus) number come from? Blumer won't say. He never provides a link and never quotes a single law enforcement source to back up that claim. Of course, Blumer can't do that because the “1-2 million people” number is a flat-out lie. It's pure right-wing fantasy.

But that does not stop Blumer from delving into all kinds of (Wikipedia!) research to explain just where Saturday's rally stands in terms of the largest D.C. events while. Blumer does this, of course, while using concocted numbers to size-up the modest crowd.

Behold the NewsBusters wonder:

If even the low end of the D.C. rally estimate holds, it would be the largest-ever gathering in Washington not related to a presidential inauguration -- larger than the misnamed Million Man March (October 16, 1995; while others claimed almost a million were there, the National Park Service estimated 400,000), larger than Moratorium Day (November 15, 1969; Wikipedia says it had 500,000; other sources report lower numbers), and larger than the day of Martin Luther King's “I Have a Dream” speech (August 28, 1963; 250,000).

If the high end of the estimate holds, it would be the largest gathering of any kind in Washington, exceeding the 1.8 million claimed to have attended Barack Obama's presidential inauguration.

Again, keep in mind the “1-2 million people” is pure fiction. It's a nifty-sounding number dreamt up by right-wingers. It has no basis in reality. But that doesn't stop NewsBusters from using bogus numbers to critique the “liberal media.”