An impressive showing. Isn't that more than came to the 2009 Inauguration? Yes:
The National Park Service says it will rely on a media report that says 1.8 million people attended President Obama's inauguration.So then, today's event was the biggest ever in Washington?
David Barna, a Park Service spokesman, said the agency did not conduct its own count. Instead, it will use a Washington Post account that said 1.8 million people gathered on the US Capitol grounds, National Mall, and parade route.
"It is a record," Barna said. "We believe it is the largest event held in Washington, D.C., ever."
UPDATE: Questions about the actual size of the admittedly huge crowd.
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216 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 216 of 216"American history makes me feel bad, therefore conservatives are racist."
I don't feel bad about American history, "Paco Wove". But if you have to lie about American history in order to feel good about it, that sounds like you might have a much bigger problem than the one you project on to me.
There's a formula for figuring out the actual size of the crowd: simply double the size of the mainstream media consensus, and you'll have your answer. Of course, that only works when the media actually *covers* the event.
MUL -- I've double posted myself. I think it has to do with the "Conflicting Edits" page.
I've documented pretty clearly how Freeman Hunt is homophobic on this thread. She has said quite vociferously that all gay people are "intrinsically evil".
Okay, so that's a total lie. Just want that noted.
I think Freeman Hunt should apologize to Montana Urine Legend for calling him a liar.
Wow. That's deep, Jason. Cuts like a knife, too. Does the word "urban" pose some difficulties for you?
The combination of thousands of concerned citizens protesting against The Chicago Messiah and his nonsense and Althouse's post has driven the local lefties into apoplexy.
Pompous Montanus and dtl, in particular, are weighing in as more petty than usual.
What fun. Well done, Professor.
Your inability to discern apoplexy from unconcerned, detached humor might be characteristic for your political tribe, elShmombre. But it's a defective attribute - one bred of an inability to understand people on a human level.
John said..."I read Althouse pretty much ever day. And have for years. Never have I seen anyone named "Bailey Quarters" post here. Odd he shows up in this thread to claim no more than a few thousand showed up."
I checked for you. Bailey Quarters commented on 2 different posts last spring. That was all the posting before Sept 12.
Why count how many times anyone has posted? Are new posters not welcome? Is this a club, the cool girls' junior high lunch table? If so, who is this "John" anyway? He could be anyone, any old John.
Perhaps Bailey Quarters (unlike me) comments only when she has something worthwhile to contribute.
Pompous Montanus wrote: Your inability to discern apoplexy from unconcerned, detached humor [is] a defective attribute - one bred of an inability to understand people on a human level.
That's quite a leap, Pompous, even for the likes of you.
"If you don't understand the significance of blacks being defined as 3/5ths of a person in the American Constitution, and want to equate that harm with every other grievance every one else (often with a political axe to grind) wants to lay claim to, well, I don't think there's much hope for you in understanding how societies come to terms with correcting their errors and transgressions."
No matter the purpose of refusing to let states simultaneously own slaves who had no rights or representation and count those slaves to give the slave owners even greater representation at the federal level... it's a soul destroying thing.
Do I understand that? Yes. I do.
But do you understand this, MUL? That "understanding how societies come to terms with correcting their errors and transgressions" is not something anyone has done and neither you nor anyone else has presented a method of accomplishing anything remotely like corrections? There is no understanding how this happens. No examples. Because anything done is not enough and has never been enough. Not anywhere.
We fought a war in which the butcher bill was beyond obscene, we changed the laws, we ended slavery, we paid reparations. We established a program to return former slaves to Africa. We felt Really Bad. We looked and saw that segregation was evil, too, and we ended it. We saw that previously oppressed groups were starting at a disadvantage so we tried to correct this through affirmative action.
At this point, MUL, we are far and over into the area of ever diminishing or even outright negative returns.
The ERRORS have been corrected. The TRANSGRESSIONS are in the past.
What we need to learn to do as a society is to ALLOW ourselves to be over it and to let it go. Because until then the corrections are not complete.
Everything I see today related to race relations or racism is designed to make sure that we don't ever get done with corrections, that transgressions are never in the past, even if it takes changing definitions in order to prove that we're not over yet, not done yet. We elect a black president and a mixed race couple will not so much as raise eyebrows in 90% of the country... but we can't be done yet.
It's not allowed.
It's turned upside down so that *now* you're a racist if you *don't* obsess about race.
How screwed up is that?
"Bailey" ...
Just curious if you are a member of Congress. LOL!
Unless the entire traffic cam system of DC was taken over by a conservative conspiracy, we could see how crowded the streets were despite not being there.
I brought up being a member of Congress because you seemed to be assuming that people beyond Washington DC have no expertise or experience - whether it be in counting crowds or in economics.
Synova - Would Romney have attempted a Massachusetts type health care reform? As I understand it, that's not really going so well for them. I think he'd have avoided it altogether.
We never had that chance because the Republicans determined that "it was His time" for a treacherous, incoherent professional POW-hero.
Had Romney been the nominee when Reaganomics theory collapsed, the financial system was on the edge of the abyss, and Americans lost 40% of their life savings, he may well have been elected against an untested Chicago Pol.
But independents, white women found McCain-Palin so bad they chose "hope" over semi-senility and a woman who memorized 20 "good 'ol" attack slogans.
I suspect Romney would have said "the economy 1st, 2nd, 3rd" on his priorities.
And his Stimulus Plan would not have gone down anything like Obama's "Once on a Lifetime Oppurtunity in a Crisis!!" to redistribute borrowed wealth to "Democrat stakeholders".
But Romney would have had to have put healthcare on the table. America is 37 trillion in the hole. Our healthcare system is 40-120% per capita more expensive than any other advanced nation and we rank in the low 40s on life expectency, while being the clear winners in medical condition caused bankruptcies, medical misadventures resulting in death, number of "free riders" who could pay into the system but don't. And of course, lowest percent of people covered in the industrialized world.
Romney would have said we have to change healthcare - because we cannot compete globally with the system we have and the numbers show the system is financially unsustainable. I suspect he would have sought a bipartisan bill after seeing if leaders and experts preferred the French-German-Swiss model, or the Japanese model.
And yes, there would be "angry seniors" and various Cult of Palin people saying working with Dems and Independents to create Romneycare II was heresy- because reagan believed differently 30 years ago..
Of course, Reagan never anticipated that his Bretton Woods II policies would give America 1 trillion dollar trade deficits and make any policy America wants now hedged with the qualifier "If China gives us the money to pay for it."
"It's turned upside down so that *now* you're a racist if you *don't* obsess about race."
It's not about obsessing over race. It's about simply acknowledging that race often continued to play a lingering, subconscious role (but a real one) in the minds of many white people even way after segregation. Less and less so over time. But do you honestly think that in a democracy a law is instituted that overturns the existing order, and that just because that new law reflects a shift in morality, that the whole country immediately accepts that new morality in toto? That's silly. Laws usually pass with simple majorities. There was heavy opposition to civil rights - it wasn't an easy struggle, and once it passed you assume that there were no more racists in America? Not even an ardent core of them? Not enough of them to have any influence anywhere or any voice politically? That's ridiculous.
What happened was that the existing racism was still embraced by many hold-outs, and that over time, as they died out and subsequent generations were exposed to less racists and more blacks and (more importantly) more blacks competing with whites for positions of prestige, attitudes changed in an appreciable way.
You seem to simply wipe away what's obvious about how very strong, "grass-roots" attitudes regarding what's right and wrong are compelled to change over time. I don't know of anyone who thinks that just because a law changes, just because a regime changes, their attitudes regarding the superior morality of the previous law, of the previous regime, must also, therefore, change. Many people may be convinced by whatever moral forces help propel a democratic movement into fruition. And many will not. And those people will still try, often successfully, to pass those attitudes down to their kids. And they will pass that down to their kids' kids. And these people and their kids and their kids' kids will represent a declining, but potent, reservoir of high regard for the previous moral sentiment - whether you like it or not.
And they do not disappear overnight, but over at least a few generations. And even then, they usually don't go completely away for good. They just become so marginalized as to merit, first admonishment, then contempt, then disrepute, and then ridicule - as is happening now. And then there are so few of them left that they don't even warrant attention. But to pretend that there was no timeline for this sequence of events on a social level - just because the timeline for the legal changes proceeded much more quickly - is really a silly assumption.
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