s skippy the bush kangaroo: numb3rs...of 6sshol3s

skippy the bush kangaroo



Saturday, September 12, 2009

numb3rs...of 6sshol3s

Example

greg sargent, yesterday:

house dems bracing for huge turnout at glenn beck/tea party gathering

looks like there’s serious concern among dems about the big 9/12 rally that’s being heavily promoted by glenn beck, fox, and the tea partiers for tomorrow.

a top house dem leadership aide has emailed a memo to dem aides on the hill and outside liberal groups warning they should brace for a turnout of up to two million people, suggesting dems worry that if enough conservatives descend on the mall it will amount to a major pr victory for the right.

the aide, doug thornell, warned in the memo that the dust-up over joe “you lie” wilson has been invigorating conservatives. “it looks like saturday’s event is going to be a huge gathering, estimates ranging from hundreds of thousands to 2 million people,” thornell wrote in the memo, which was forwarded by a source.

in another sign of concern, the memo painstakingly detailed a range of turnout predictions from the event’s organizers, such as this one from tea party leaders promising a crowd of up to 1,000,000.

nytimes, today:

thousands rally in capital to protest big government

tens of thousands of protesters from around the country marched to the capitol on saturday to demonstrate against the white house and congress for what they say is an ever-expanding intrusion of government.

reality, and math, is a bitch.

addendum: as capt. fogg points out over @ the reaction:

thousands rally in capitol reads the headline although the picture shows at most a couple of hundred white, middle aged people carrying all sorts of signs ranging from the inexplicable to the ridiculous.
posted by skippy at 9:40 AM |

10 Comments:

Congressman Joe “You Lie” Wilson voted in 2003 for a bill that gave health care to illegal immigrants.

http://www.alan.com/2009/09/11/joe-you-lie-wilson-voted-to-give-tax-dollars-to-illegals-for-health-care/

Joe “You Lie” Wilson Voted To Give Tax Dollars To Illegals For Health Care
September 11th, 2009, 10:50 PM EDT

The vote came on the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, which contained Sec. 1011 authorizing $250,000 annually between 2003 and 2008 for government reimbursements to hospitals who provide treatment for uninsured illegal immigrants. The program has been extended through 2009 and there is currently a bipartisan bill in Congress to make it permanent.


And whether the anti-reform anti-immigrant crowd likes it or not, hospital emergency rooms will continue to be where they go for help. Are we going to deny medical care suffering people, many of whom work here and pay taxes?


Hospitals have a legal obligation to treat everyone who comes in seeking care, regardless of citizenship status, insurance or other characteristics. This means that hospitals treat millions of people every year who don’t have the means to pay. Obviously, this drives up the nation’s healthcare costs overall. Section 1011 helps cushion the costs for hospitals, but it’s not nearly enough to cover the actual costs in most areas.


Of course, Wilson was wrong, as are those who continue to claim that the health care bill allows taxpayer dollars to pay of illegal immigrants’ health care.
commented by Anonymous Anonymous, 12:58 PM PDT  
I'd say you're watch a tad too much of Keith 'Strap-On' Olbermann.

This picture demonstrates just how wrong your estimates are.
commented by Blogger directorblue, 3:47 PM PDT  
i'd actually give you "tens of thousands."
commented by Blogger skippy, 4:57 PM PDT  
Going by the WAPO photos, thousands would be more accurate than "tens of. . ." Not surprisingly, the crowd overall looked uniformly white and on the downhill side of 40. The photos reminded me of folks you see queuing up for the early bird specials at Denny's or pushing and shoving for a good seat at the bingo hall.
commented by Blogger Nan, 5:08 PM PDT  
The Delusional Leftists say "thousands" ...

Hilarous!
commented by Anonymous Anonymous, 6:51 PM PDT  
Time to march in support of health care reform.
commented by Anonymous Anonymous, 3:14 AM PDT  
It astounds me how the right wing has been trying desperately hard to get the main stream media to follow their numbers, when clearly at most fifty thousand people (and that's a liberal estimate) showed up, based on the lack of trash and, more important, the lack of traffic tie ups in the entire DC area.

Think about the police logistics involved in moving a million people thru the Mall. Think about Obama's inauguration, when people were warned to stay home and DC was shut down to accomodate it. Almost two million people there and the city was in gridlock anyway.

Now look at yesterday's barely-publicized event and note that traffic still moved cleanly around town.

Fifty thousand. Tops. And my guess based on photos I've seen? Ten thousand would be generous.
commented by Blogger Carl, 4:27 AM PDT  
Obama should just do what Bush did.... leave town.
Remember when throngs of people came to protest the Iraq war?
Bush was just not home that day.....

What floors me is how the anti health care reform people are SO delusional as to not have a clue that maybe someday....

• they lose their job & healthcare
• they get diagnosed w a disease that becomes a pre existing condition
• they have a major medical bill that would exceed the value of their policy coverage
• they have to file for medical bankruptcy
• the current "system" is all about making for profit CEO's more wealthy by denying policyholders coverage.

Even if none of those things has ever happened, any one of them is likely amongst them & their family & friends.

How can anyone not see that???
commented by Blogger Fran, 8:28 AM PDT  
Fran:

People go bankrupt all the time, and usually for reasons much less serious than life-threatening conditions.

In the UK, you can get free health care, but cancer survival rates are 20 points lower.

Knowing there is no perfect solution possible, why wouldn't we employ every tool available to address health care reform for the 15 million who really are uninsured?

That would include tort reform, interstate portability, tax credits, pricing transparency, health savings accounts, etc.

But Democrat health care isn't about health at all. It's about control and power.

The power to reward. The power to punish. To threaten, cajole and withhold.

Furthermore, our country's founders clearly understood the dangers of an all-powerful central government. That is why they restricted what the federal government could do -- to explicitly enumerated powers.

Federal health care -- a simplistic form of wealth redistribution -- is clearly unconstitutional.

In whom do you place your trust?
commented by Blogger directorblue, 1:37 PM PDT  
Yet the photo showed the crowd sprawling far beyond that to the Washington Monument, which is bordered by 15th and and 17th Streets.

There's another big problem with the photograph: it doesn't include the National Museum of the American Indian, a building located at the corner of Fourth St. and Independence Ave. that opened on Sept. 14, 2004. (Looking at the photograph, the building should be in the upper right hand corner of the National Mall, next to the Air and Space Museum.) That means the picture was taken before the museum opened exactly five years ago. So clearly the photo doesn't show the "tea party" crowd from the Sept. 12 protest.
commented by Anonymous sean, 6:12 PM PDT  

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