About That Crowd Estimate

John Miska wrote me an email to tell me his estimate of the crowd in DC on 9/12. According to him the crowd was about 1.2 million. Here is what he said:

Bigdog, with reference to the crowd estimates. Nobody seems to want to make a credible estimate or put their name or reputation to one. Well here I am and I think I have the background and experience to do so.
I worked in Broadcast TV in all positions from Production assistant to Tech manager and Unit manager. I have worked events from the Olympics to Nascar Race NFL Playoffs to PGA Golf Tournaments. I have seen crowds.
For a rule of thumb take Richmond International Raceway 112 seats plus infield and Hospitality Suites and tents. Say we have 120k conservatively there at that event.
At the Capitol I saw easily 10 times that crowd. I would estimate it at 1.2 million plus.
I could also use perhaps the opening ceremonies at the 1996 Olympics …easily 5 times that crowd or more and still get the same figures.

So bigdog I Bigjohn Miska say in my experience the crowd was in excess of 1.2 million should. Go ahead quote me. I can take the heat!!!!
I put my name and rep behind those numbers!!!
Bigjohn

There were certainly more people in DC than the LSM is reporting. No one (except Big John) wants to hazard a guess though they spent weeks telling us 4-5 million would attend Obama’s coronation.

Your official crowd estimate from Big John Miska is 1.2 million.

No matter how many there were, there were more than the so called million man march.

Big Dog

[tip]If you enjoy what you read consider signing up to receive email notification of new posts. There are several options in the sidebar and I am sure you can find one that suits you. If you prefer, consider adding this site to your favorite feed reader. If you receive emails and wish to stop them follow the instructions included in the email.[/tip]

If you enjoy what you read consider signing up to receive email notification of new posts. There are several options in the sidebar and I am sure you can find one that suits you. If you prefer, consider adding this site to your favorite feed reader. If you receive emails and wish to stop them follow the instructions included in the email.

23 Responses to “About That Crowd Estimate”

  1. victoria says:

    http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=109844

    This is a good article on WND with comparison pictures of other events that numbered in the millions also. Adam you are going to have to face it–I am sorry and your attempt to discredit me because of a name in another article really was pathetic.

    • Adam says:

      First of all I didn’t attempt to discredit you, I simply proved that you were citing false information. It has nothing to do with who the name is. The entire quote is wrong. Here is what you said, for the record:

      victoria says:
      Sunday Sep 13th, 2009 at 23:34

      http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/09/912_demonstration_a_record_dc.html
      September 13, 2009
      9/12 demonstration a record DC turnout: National Park Service
      Thomas Lifson
      The truth will out. Despite mainstream media attempts to characterize turnout as in the thousands, a spokesman for the National Park Service, Dan Bana, is quoted as saying “It is a record…. We believe it is the largest event held in Washington, D.C., ever.”—-

      Dan Bana does not exist. The quote is from David Barna, the real spokesman for NPS, and he was speaking about the turnout at the Obama inauguration. American Thinker said they would correct this mistake but last time I looked they had not and Little Green Footballs recently pointed out that 100’s if not 1000’s of sites are falsely citing it the same way you were.

      You are wrong, Victoria. You face that first.

  2. Darrel says:

    Really? You are going to try and defend your 1.2 million number? What a load.

    Even “Freedom Works” is down to the 600-800k range, and that’s way out of line with standard sources. See four references showing 60-75k here.

    Glenn Beck, the fellow shamelessly using 9/11 to promote himself, and the person most invested in making this thing into something larger than it was, was there and he said:

    “I’ve lived in Washington. It looks more than 60,000.”

    You don’t mistake 60,000 for 1.2 million, no way, no how, unless you’re a moron.

    Oops.

    Shot myself in the foot with that one.

    D.
    —————
    “There really isn’t more shameless a huckster working the snake-oil circuits of cable punditry these days than Glenn Beck. He embodies the worst of right-wing talking-head traits: obsessively wrong, compulsively stupid, reflexively mendacious, and always, always, shamelessly opportunistic.

    He never misses a trick. Especially the 9/11 tragedy. He’s managed to turn it into a big annual right-wing nutfest, particularly with this year’s debut of the 9/12 teabaggers protest, a project Beck launched some six months ago.”

    • Blake says:

      Who are you quoting, D? At the bottom, trashing Beck? Maher, perhaps? Another truther?
      Personally, after having looked at aerial shots of the Mall, and the crowd size, and comparing them with the inaugural, I would say that the crowd size was around 900,000 or so- but that is flexible, because people kept coming.
      Your worst nightmare, huh D?

    • Blake says:

      It is hilarious to watch you try to lessen the number, D- do we scare you?
      The most consistent estimate I can find now is about 600,000- 900,000 people, based on the comparison to Nobamma’s coronation- face it, D- we will win in the end- as they used to say in Texas, ” You cannot stop a man who is in the right and keeps on coming.”
      We are coming.

      • Darrel says:

        As always, I am interested in finding the truth of the matter. If the number is 1.2m, I want to believe that. If the best data supports that, I will believe that. The answer should be able to be known, objectively measurable within a reasonable range. The 1.2m number, as is well known, came from a falsehood passed along by Malkin, which was quickly shot down and found to be inflated by 30x.

        I am glad you are “coming” and glad you are there. You are a thorn in the side of reasonable conservatives and work daily to make your party more fringe and less electable. Your behavior is consistently an embarrassment to fair minded, honest, intelligent conservatives.

        • Blake says:

          You have stated your opinion of me before- it matters not to me. I feel that I AM a fair minded, honest intelligent conservative. The fact that you do not admire me as much as you admire yourself is, I fear, one of your many failings.
          I am, sad to say, becoming rather an expert at your failings.

  3. Barbara says:

    Gee Darrel, I think you just described yourself very well.

  4. Greg Robie says:

    This Huffington Post article (see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/14/912-tea-party-photo-false_n_286082.html ) includes a picture that apparently has been claimed to be of the 9/12 March but is, ironically, one of the 1997 Promise Keepers, “Stand In The Gap: A Solemn Assembly” event in DC. Besides the building thing referenced in the Huffington Post, the dark things in the picture that are spaced evenly on the Mall are the big tron screens that were set up for that event. I know, because I was there. I’ve a poster of this picture from another angle. I immediately recognized the pattern of the crowd size and dispersal. I dug it out for comparison; to refresh my memory. BTW, that event did not make it to its goal of a million men.

    That aside, such gatherings, regardless of their size, can feel comforting; vindicating of a sense of injustice. Enjoy the feeling. Feelings and fact are not necessarily the same thing. . . . But they can inflate numbers in one’s perception of things.

    BTW, from my experience of the non-coverage liberal protests have seemed to get from the MSM, the coverage the 9/12 event got was far better than anything I’ve observed in the past decade. It is interesting to see the focus on numbers and coverage be talked about the same way I’m familiar with, but from the “other” perspective.

    Given the “We ” in “We the People” there is no “other,” just a morally divided society failing to effect the purpose for which it became an independent nation. Together we are now all voluntary slaves to a fascist financial regime enabled by governmentally guaranteed financiers and their, thereby, elite form of socialism called, again ironically, global capitalism. Such is the systemic consequence of allowing the Constitution to be trashed relative to Article 1, Section 8 and Congress’ power to coin money and establish the value there of,…and of foreign coin; to have created the Federal Reserve and allowed and, more to the point relative to the tea party movement, bought into (pun intended) a fiat currency system that, since it is denominated in consumer debt, systemically is no more than a modern iteration of an old social institution: slavery. That it masquerades as freedom is both truly ironic AND an oxymoron. This has occurred, in large part, because the aforementioned “We” now includes, and when it comes to Washington politics, is, the corporate “citizens” ((thanks NOT to the corrupt 1886 Supreme Court decision to afford them legal personhood) and the right to protected speech. The net effect of both these abdications of the civic duty to “protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” is that if you are part of the economic system, you are, functionally, a traitor—which, of course, means we all are.

    Consequently this “us” and “them” bickering is us/US allowing ourselves to be divided and conquered so the financial elite can use government to its own purposes. This being a traitor thing is quite black and white. To think otherwise is to think it is possible to be “a little bit pregnant.” Financial fascism may not be the best term for the dynamic, but whatever it is, it is the elephant in the room. Fighting over which one of us blinded social memes knows best about the whole elephant from our part of that elephant is something only a privileged people have the luxury to do. And that privilege has been squandered. It is time to hang together . . . or hang separately.

  5. FairestWitness says:

    Someone with a computer program will get to the bottom of just how many people attended Saturday’s protest.

    Why are we arguing about how many anyway? The crowd was enormous and should be acknowledged by the powers that be in Washington DC.

  6. Adam says:

    Yes, the crowd was big. No, the crowd was not even close to 1 million or more. No, it does not scare liberals in the least.

    We already know there are a ton of nut job conservatives in this country who keep getting duped by the liars in right wing media and driven to paranoia, unjustified outrage and fear. We saw you when you were the 25% of people who always supported Bush. We know who you are. We don’t need a mass gathering to figure find out.

    Instead of scaring us it’s actually more comforting to have you all in the same place so we can point and laugh and document every detail of your nuttiness for the public record.

    • Blake says:

      I believe the crowd was fairly close, but as Nobamma had the Mall cameras deliberately turned off, the estimate of crowd size will be somewhat in dispute.
      I am guessing his ego couldn’t take the knowledge that so many people dislike his policies, or his czars, or his teleprompters- take your pick or, D)- all the above.

      • Blake says:

        That is, close to a million people- just for clarification.

      • Adam says:

        Or F) He doesn’t care what you fringe lunatics think at all

        • victoria says:

          Your right–they really have the nerve to not care and it is not just a fringe.

        • Adam says:

          Victoria’s trying to ignore the fact that she was not only spreading false information a few days ago that she hasn’t noticed yet it was false and she’s still telling me I’m wrong about it. Funny stuff.

        • Blake says:

          “Fringe” haha- you’re a funny, if deluded man.

        • Adam says:

          Well, it’s hard to see that you’re a fringe when you’re in the fringe. But luckily there are those of us still living in regular America that take time out of our busy work days to make sure the Blake’s and the Victoria’s and the Barbara’s of the US know they are sick and as crazy as hell.

          I’m sure there are hotlines you can call for help with this problem you have with ignoring reality and facing each day gripped by paranoia and fear of the black, commie, fascist, marxist, socialist, statist man in the White House.

      • Darrel says:

        BLK: “[Obama] had the Mall cameras deliberately turned off”>>

        DAR
        But of course. It’s even Obama fault that you can’t confirm your million. It’s a plot. He conspired to do it.

        D.
        —————–
        “After the break, Rush said that Joe Wilson didn’t call the president a liar, he just said “you lie” to the president.”

        MM.

  7. Big Dog says:

    I’m sure there are hotlines you can call for help with this problem you have with ignoring reality and facing each day gripped by paranoia and fear of the black, commie, fascist, marxist, socialist, statist man in the White House.

    What does his being black have to do with it? The other items are those over which he has control, his color is not. You keep bringing it up so who is the real racist here?

    His color is not the issue but those other things are…

  8. deathbymedia says:

    I have done my own study base on a devised stationary methodology and calculation which you can find here:

    http://deathbymedia.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/912-washington-dc-tea-party-rally-crowd-estimation/

    It’s backed by visual evidence (pictures and clips) all available in the same entry, plus determining the boundaries of the rally and calculation of the final tally derived from the density of the crowd at each given block. My calculus puts the figures around 130k up to 160k.