I'm starting to think the talking heads like the idea of being fringe, unfortunately for the GOP the actual politicians haven't figured out that they are making themselves fringe, and it doesn't help their party.
Ugh. And it is things like this that make everyone look like a complete moron. Note to the idiots of the conservative movement, the media is looking for you to showcase, please refrain from holding any signs you made yourself and please do not open your mouth to reporters.
Pictures from San Antonio? Most places I've seen have had pretty scant turnouts. I don't think this movement is nearly as big or as influential as its boosters are suggesting.
Estimates for the Tea Party Protests: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/04/tea-parties-appear-to-draw-at-least.html At least 250,000 nationwide Comparisons: Immigration Reform protests, 2006: several million Iraq-war protest, 2003, NY City: 300,000
Whoops - slight update: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/04/tea-party-nonpartisan-attendance.html Estimate is 311,000.
So? Not to sound rude, but what's your point? There's more immigrants in the US? There's more people who want to call Bush Hitler?
San Antonio, TX - 4,500 I was there. There were a helluva lot more participants than that. This is why I don't believe media reports -- even "non-biased " ones. I've been to football games that had smaller crowds that were estimated at three or four times that amount. End of story.
If you were watching Faux News, or listening to Rush and his wannabes, you'd think the numbers were in the millions. Pretty farsical, if you ask me.
This has nothing to do with Fox News. Again, I was there at the San Antonio tea party. This is the prima facia reason for why I don't trust Major's "sources" that he cites to refute other posts.
even if you triple the estimate from Major's source it still isn't $1MM nationwide. you'd think from listening to right wing radio, that there is some massive movement in the works.
My point is that the idea that this is some kind of major changing moment in American politics where the silent majority is finally speaking out in anger (what was being claimed earlier in this thread) is completely unsupported by the data. Instead, the reality is that we have had many, many much larger and more substantial protests over the just the past 8 years.
Instead your source is trying to eyeball thousands of people. Much more reliable than the San Antonio police department which actually has experience determining crowd sizes, right? How many people do you estimate were there?
A friend of mine compiled this video from the Houston Tea Party. He says that they got 8500 signatures on their petition, and estimated that a couple of thousand more showed up without signing. <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/t92OCES2DfA&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/t92OCES2DfA&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> I was in Fort Davis, a town much too happy to protest virtually anything.
It's funny - it seems like conservatives are doubling down everything they've done wrong the last decade - in particular here, the whole "anti-intellectual" bent they've had been on the last 8 years, the idea that being using actual data and following logic is a bad thing. It started with Bush and all of his "War-on-Science" stuff and things like that, and then went to another level with Palin. Now it's moved to things like saying scientific data like polling is just wrong. More and more it seems like the goal is to simply argue that anything that doesn't show what they want to believe must be invalid, with no sound contrary evidence of any sort. It just pushes the party more and more into the regional minority party status, which unfortunately gives the Dems more leeway to be silly and still hold power.
You're losing credibility very quickly. How convenient that you ignored these clips I posted earlier in the thread. Wait for the short commercial to end and then notice how NBC estimated the crowd totals with aerial pictures of the crowds. http://www.woai.com/mediacenter/loc...@video.woai.com http://www.woai.com/mediacenter/loc....com&navCatId=5 http://www.woai.com/Photo.aspx?slid...35-b1541ff24083
It was Garry Trudeau I believe that did a series of Doonesbury strips on that very theme a few years ago. It was dead on.
