Comments

1. #1 Brian D

   September 21, 2009

   For what it’s worth, Nate Silver weighed in on this as well, citing ABC which itself cited the DC Fire Department (~70,000, same ballpark as your estimate), but highlighting American right-wing commentators exaggerating the numbers by a factor of thirty. It ain’t just Blair being innumerate and disingenuous.

   All that said, there’s an unspoken irony here. The rally was full of teabaggers and dripping with anti-government rhetoric — but here, we see figures from the socialized public transit system used to estimate their size. Reminds me vaguely of the “keep the government out of my Medicare” signs I saw in some of the images.

   (You can even find examples of an anti-transit congressman complaining the transit was poor, if your irony meters have a safety fuse.)

2. #2 G.R.L. Cowan

   September 21, 2009

   Which is is why the comparison was with Saturday September 12, 2008.

   You probably mean, “Which is why the comparison was with Saturday, September 13, 2008″.

   (How fire can be domesticated)

   *[Yes, Thanks. Tim]*

3. #3 ben

   September 21, 2009

   You just cited Charles Johnson of LGF?!? I expect some heads to explode here.

4. #4 cce

   September 21, 2009

   Tip:

   Turn the table into a graph and label the notable events.

5. #5 PaulG

   September 21, 2009

   So, given an expected ridership of 300k to 350k, with an actual ridership of 437k, are we looking at 80k to 140K? Because, when I take the train into the city, I generally take it out again, which would boost the ridership by two. Ie. actual numbers are 40K to 70K, which is what (normal) people have been saying all along.

6. #6 Ben

   September 22, 2009

   Honest question: shouldn’t you divide the transit ridership swell by 2, given that people would be riding it both ways?

   And it’s doubtful that everyone took transit; without a modal split it is impossible to extrapolate the number of people at the event from the transit figure.

7. #7 bigcitylib

   September 22, 2009

   Also for what its worth:

   The photo behind the 1 million plus estimates was from the 1997 Promise Keepers event:

   http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com/2009/09/how-many-teabags_20.html

   The 09/12 organizers estimated, on about Sept. 9th, estimated that their own numbers would come in at about 25-50 thousand:

   http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com/2009/09/how-many-teabags.html

   The notion that they undercounted by a factor of 10 or 20 or more is pretty far-fetched.

8. #8 trollhattan

   September 22, 2009

   Am I to understand the baggers took public transportation to a rally protesting too much government?

9. #9 Bruce Sharp

   September 22, 2009

   Trollhattan, that’s not how it works at all. You see, Teabaggers all drive Hummers, since evil liberals hate giant SUVs. Because DC’s roads were all clogged with Hummers, the liberals who normally would have been driving their tiny eco-cars were forced to take Communist public transit. A Teabag Hummer could easily hold six All-American hero-people, whereas the typical liberal Corolla might have only a couple liberal weenies. Therefore, the number of people displaced by the Hummers was probably only about one-third of the number who were *in* the Hummers; thus, the Commie-transit figure represents only about one-third of the TRUE total. If Tim Lambert were better at math, he would have noticed that 74,851 times three is sort of close to 235,096, which proves that the Heritage Foundation numbers are accurate.

10. #10 bluegrue

    September 22, 2009

    ben:
    >You just cited Charles Johnson of LGF?!? I expect some heads to explode here.

    Charles Johnson looked into the issue of global warming on his own and was disgusted by the amount of lying he found on the side of the skeptics, it seems to have been a big eye-opener for him. For example now he’s regularly linking to and endorsing the videos of Peter Sinclair. He’s also pretty vocal against truthers, creationists and right wing extremists.

11. #11 Brian D

    September 22, 2009

    Bluegrue: Don’t you get it? By speaking out against the fringe, he’s a secret liberal and must be excommunicated!

    Ben: It’s said that the left is more interested in being right than winning. As a result, when we see insightful work from the “other side”, we don’t see citing them or talking to them as betraying the team.

    This may cause your head to explode*, but all of the liberals I deal with on a personal basis – including myself and folk waaaaaaay on the economic left fringe – would much rather spend hours speaking to Andrew Sullivan than to Michael Moore.

    *(intended with all the semi-sarcastic comedy that your use of the same statement implied; sadly my version can’t single your position out without coming across as condescending, though that is not my intent.)

    All that said, notice that Tim isn’t actually citing LGF as a source here – he’s highlighting how Blair takes offense at LGF (despite citing LGF as evidence against the Iraq War protests) and favorably cites the cherry-picking Heritage Foundation (there’s no other way to describe picking clear outliers as if they were baselines). Mentioning that X cited Y is not the same as citing Y.

    Trollhattan: See #1. Note the congressman I mentioned was a tea party supporter as well (I can’t remember if he was speaking at the rally or not).

12. #12 Oakden Wolf

    September 23, 2009

    We need a remote sensing image of the rally to compare to the remote sensing image of the inauguration. Then do a simple area coverage algorithm to determine the approximate number. Even if the numbers aren’t accurate, the ratio of area covered by humanity would be instructive.

    Then divide by 1000 to determine the number of African-Americans in the September 12 crowd compared to the number of African-Americans in the Inauguration Day crowd.

    Inauguration Day image from space

    I recently disparaged the climate science knowledge of the September 12thers, based primarily on the know-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing stances of their leading lights.

13. #13 ben

    September 23, 2009

    Right, CJ at LGF is a good guy, but he’s pro-Israeli, and anti-Islamist, something you guys aren’t really noted for supporting.

    And I expect that Jeff Harvey is gnashing right now, as CJ is not exactly fond of Harvey’s good buddy Hugo Chavez.

14. #14 trollhattan

    September 23, 2009

    Bruce Sharp,

    Thank you for the valuable lessons on teabagger behavio(u)r. I’m clearly not thinking big enough. At least the people’s commie transportation systen was safe for a brief, shining day with all those patriots on board, armed with their cutting-wit signage.

    If nothing else, the lusty ex post facto participant number inflation (“two million strong!”) has given us a new resource: #Michellemalkinmath

    http://twitter.com/search?q=%23michellemalkinmath

    I can’t wait to tell my family about my four-hundred percent pay raise!

15. #15 C.L.

    September 25, 2009

    So Tim is now relying on notorious anti-Palestinian racist (and frogger) Charles Johnson. Sad.

16. #16 bi -- IJI

    September 25, 2009

    Brian D:

    > All that said, notice that Tim isn’t actually citing LGF as a source here – he’s highlighting how Blair takes offense at LGF (despite citing LGF as evidence against the Iraq War protests) and favorably cites the cherry-picking Heritage Foundation (there’s no other way to describe picking clear outliers as if they were baselines). Mentioning that X cited Y is not the same as citing Y.

    ben:

    > Right, CJ at LGF is a good guy, but he’s pro-Israeli, and anti-Islamist, something you guys aren’t really noted for supporting.

    Therefore, ben is not guilty of ad hominem attacks, but Tim Lambert is. Quo errat demonstrator.

17. #17 Mark E. Gillar

    October 13, 2009

    @8
    Yes, every bit as ironic as AGW alarmists creating a huge carbon footprint to fly across the globe to attend one of
    those Al Gore Kool-Aid drinking events.

18. #18 Mark

    October 13, 2009

    Awww, Meg doesn’t like the two-faces of his God to be seen.

    He’s popped up to cry like a little baby at us.

    Diddums.