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Same-Sex Marriage Foes Have Few Options on Hill
So this is interesting: Bloomberg did a story on how no one can agree on the size of the crowd for the McCain/Palin rally in Fairfax last week. We were following the story after some controversy broke out over the initial location for the event, and went with the New York Times's number of 15,000, which the paper said it got from "The Fairfax City fire marshal." But the McCain/Palin camp is claiming that 23,000 people were there, while Marc Fisher from the WaPo is saying he counted 8,000, and now Bloomberg reports this:
Fairfax City Fire Marshal Andrew Wilson said his office did not supply that number to the campaign and could not confirm it. Wilson, in an interview, said the fire department does not monitor attendance at outdoor events.So if that's true, where did The New York Times get its estimate? The Obama campaign has come out swinging on the issue, accusing the McCain camp of flat-out lying about it (and other things). For a good read on how crowd estimates are supposed to work and why they are so tricky, head over to Salon.
Photo by Daniella Zalcman
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Isn't it a given that the organizers of rallies always way overestimate the number of people in attendance? The only thing different about this is that the McCain people were saying the estimates came from the county fire marshal and he's saying he gave no such estimate.
I wonder if the NY Times simply relied on the McCain camp's crowd estimates and their attribution of those estimates to the fire marshal. In other words, they didn't check with the fire marshal on their own since the McCain camp wouldn't be so stupid as to simply make up that kind of a fact. Whoopsies.
in the end, does it really really really matter? this is just another in the series of "pig/lipstick" stories.
how about both of the campaigns give us some real information about how they're going to deal with trying to prop up the economy, which goes deeper into the shitter with every passing moment?
The numbers provided by the McCain campaign are spot on if you consider the potential, yet to be conceived Palin babies. And given the Palin family tradition of naming children after the location they were conceived, I can't wait for September 2015 when a fresh faced Tehran Palin starts his first day of kindergarten.
this article better not break loose - seems like every time the mccain/palin team lies, their polls go up!
... 8000 is a pretty darn god number! They should have just stuck with that!
I wonder what she's hiding in that big-ass beehive hairdo: A big bundle of Right-Wing hatred, ignorance, bigotry, and general mean-spiritedness?
how about both of the campaigns give us some real information about how they're going to deal with trying to prop up the economy...
Sure, I'll take that one: the reason both campaigns won't "give us some real information about how they're going to deal with trying to prop up the economy" is that doing so is a losing electoral strategy.
The sad fact is that the target demographic of low-information "undecided voters" like to *think* they just want more information, but if they had any curiosity about "the issues", they would have already satisfied that curiosity. All of this information is out there on the candidates various websites, and in countless articles in periodicals across the ideological spectrum.
What folks usually mean when they say "talk about the issues" is "put together a compelling 30-second spot that will completely inform me, without my having to do anything, or work in any way." Since such a thing is an impossibility, the cud-chewers out there fall back on "Who would I rather have a beer with?"
American political culture is brutish, clowning, and infantile--much like it is everywhere else in the world. It's just that here, the idiocy of the electorate has much greater repercussions than in, say, Belgium.
Although the GOP is usually much more effective at running campaigns fueled by evil-scumbaggery (and so are more wholehearted about it ) both parties tend in that direction. Don't blame the candidates --blame the voters...
Typical. Blame the victim.
All these problems related to the Clinton recession will totally be fixed in a second Mccain administration.
And besides, they're not "problems" they're "opportunities." Opportunities to turn every agency outside the Interior Department into a rockin', coke-fueled brothel.
Hey, wait a minute! I thought I was the victim!
(Well, and you, and the other 95% of the population that aren't "post-primary undecideds"..)
Ugh. Just another silly tiff to get the Dems off message.
Can we all agree that there was more than a buttload but less than a boatload in attendance?
"how about both of the campaigns give us some real information about how they're going to deal with trying to prop up the economy, which goes deeper into the shitter with every passing moment?"
Isn't that what the housing bail out was about? Hell, the housing market is about the only damn thing that's been driving consumer spending for the past 6 years.
The numbers provided by the McCain campaign are spot on if you consider the potential, yet to be conceived Palin babies.
though it's getting cliched, 'round these parts we prefer the folksy colloquialism "you didn't count the kids still inside the clown car".
Forget the big-ass beehive hairdo. WTF is growing on the side of Mccain's face in that picture? It better not be another parasitic alien that they have to send Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. after. Because he's getting too old for this s**t.
Actually, they both are.
And let's not forget
PALIN's FROM A PENTACOSTAL CHURCH & SPEAKS IN TONGUES !
blahgobablahblehblobleh!!!