Tags for this video have been changed from 'health care, tpm, tpmtv, barack obama' to 'health care, tpm, tpmtv, barack obama, healthcaremageddon' - edited by calvados

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Obama, democrats, republicans, you had 10 years, healthcare, reform, costs' to 'Obama, democrats, republicans, you had 10 years, healthcare, reform, costs, TPM' - edited by calvados

Tags for this video have been changed from 'fox, news, shep smith, healthcare, public option, tpm' to 'fox, news, shep smith, healthcare, public option, tpm, health care' - edited by SlipperyPete

>> ^Mashiki:
>> ^xxovercastxx:
The DCFD PIO estimated the crowd at 60k-75k people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/12_March_on_Washington

They're not qualified to give out estimated crowd numbers. National Parks and Rec(search it and they are qualified) gave upwards of 1.2m, personally I'd put it at somewhere between 790k-1.2m, based on the 'presidential ticket estimate map' of 3.5sqft per person.


Took you up on your suggestion and did that search then looked for a site I felt I could trust to report honestly. Wound up with this TPM article:

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/09/freedomworks-cuts-estimate-for-crowd-at-its-912-rally-by-one-half.php

Found echoes of these statements in other articles as well:

The DCFD has not officially given an estimate and the person from the DCFD who made the statement was neither authorized nor qualified to do so. Parks & Rec has not given any estimates despite reports of them claiming 1.5m - 2.0m. The only source I've found anyone giving for those claims was on Michelle Malkin's site who cited this. I still can't believe anyone would cite that as a source.

Conservatives are using pictures from different events to artificially inflate the crowd. They're also using photos of people marching to the Capitol several blocks away and pretending the crowd was packed solid from there to the Capitol.

Liberals are being just as dishonest, unsurprisingly, using photos from cleanup after the event and presenting them as the crowd at its peak.

I doubt we'll get a real estimate at this point. Even if we do, it'll be filtered through the exaggeration machine before it gets to us.

TPM is a great site,and while i abhor FOXnews and its propaganda machinations,i have to admit that i find shepard smith okie dokie.
maybe it was this video that convinced me:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Shepherd-Smith-We-are-America-We-Don-t-Fucking-Torture

>> ^RedSky:


I have to agree on your first point, PEPFAR did a lot of good, and it's probably the most common thing people put forward when asked "what did Bush do right?" Still, the point Olbermann makes about not funding groups who promote condom use goes to show how petty Bush can be, even when he's doing something that's working out well.

The Muslim theocracy in Lebanon is referring to the elections Bush pushed for that resulted in a big, legitimizing win for Hezbollah -- something Bush's own advisers had predicted. You can argue that maybe other courses of action might have had the same outcome or worse, but you can't argue that giving Hezbollah legitimate influence over a country's government is anything but a lost battle in this "war on terror" he's so fond of.

As for the Mumbai bombings, and Benazir Bhutto's assasination, they're outgrowths of a policy towards Pakistan that involved simply trusting Musharraf, and giving him buckets of aid with little to no accountability. Instead, all we ever hear is "Pakistan is on our side, Iraq is the main battlefront on the War on Terror." Looking for bin Laden in Waziristan is off the table.

You have a point about North Korea being a global failing, but they were trending towards dismantling their nuclear program during Clinton's diplomatic efforts. Bush stormed in with his "we don't talk to bad guys" policy, dismantled the talks, and North Korea responded by reverting to their old ways. They were left unchecked (again, Iraq was to be our main/only focus) until they were able to build a nuclear weapon.

As for the one-sided nature of Olbermann, there's not much to argue there other than to say "they started it first." Are Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Bill O'Reilly some sort of multifaceted objective political commentary? I don't want MSNBC to become the left's Fox News, but I think the media environment can tolerate one Olbermann, and many Maddow-like personalities, for there to at least be two sides doing the whole spin-as-news shtick.

If it were me, I'd love for the media to give believably objective reporting of current events, facts, and history, but all of the outlets that try to do so are either a) struggling to "prove" their objectivity by trying to show that both parties have equal responsibility for all failures or b) are flagged by people as being left-leaning because objectively speaking, Republicans haven't gotten anything right in quite a while.

We'll see how long people keep accusing, say, PBS or the NYT of being "liberal" now that Democrats are in power. I suspect even HuffPo and TPM will get credit for doing fact-based reporting, now that Democrats are in the driver's seat. After all, the "liberal" press loves to attack authority, no matter who they are. "Conservative" press will keep doing what it's been doing; smear Democrats at all times, praise conservative Republicans at all times, and frame all failures as a direct outgrowth of failure to adhere to conservative principles, or failure to pursue them drastically enough.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'michelle, bachman, trap, msnbc, chris matthews, obama, tpm, anti american' to 'michelle, bachman, trap, msnbc, chris matthews, obama, tpm, anti american, botox' - edited by sometimes

From TPM:

Here's our daily composite of the five major national tracking polls. Barack Obama still holds a solid lead over John McCain, with the overall margin is unchanged from yesterday:

• Gallup: Obama 51%, McCain 41%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 50%-43% Obama lead yesterday.

• Rasmussen: Obama 50%, McCain 45%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 51%-45% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 48%, McCain 42%, with a ±3.4% margin of error, compared to a 49%-41% Obama lead yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 52%, McCain 40%, with a ±3% margin of error, compared to a 53%-40% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Zogby: Obama 48%, McCain 44%, with a ±2.9% margin of error, compared to a 49%-43% Obama lead yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by the square roots of their sample sizes, Obama is ahead 50.1%-42.5%, a lead of 7.6 points, compared to a 50.4%-42.8% Obama lead yesterday. The undecideds have increased by a total of 0.6%, but it's come equally out of both candidates' scores.

Fivethirtyeight.com gives McCain a 6.2% chance of winning.

Pollster.com shows Obama as having 320 EV's with just lean/solid Democratic states, 270 EV needed to win.

Even the conservative-run realclearpolitics.com shows Obama with 277 EV's, not counting toss-up states -- and their map matches my gut feeling about what states are in play at this point.

Obama people can't afford to be complacent, but McCain has a huge hill to climb if he expects this to even be close.

Right where he wants us, indeed.

More from TPM on this here.

With the overwhelming political support of leftist american politics here on the 'sift, We may as well just take every episode of Countdown, cut'em up into 3 to 7-minute segments and put them all up everyday.

I facetiously propose having an *Olbermann channel, to accompany an *Obama-PSA channel, and a *TPM channel.

>> ^Xax:
Ya know, all this stuff is great, except that the people who need to see it either won't see it or will shrug it off because it portrays their candidate/party in a negative light. It almost seems pointless in a way. Perhaps I'm just becoming too jaded.


I think one can easily divide the voters into 3 groups: those who will vote for Abama no matter what, those who will vote for McCain no matter what, and those who can be influenced one way or the other. Videos like this are targetted for the amusement of those who cannot be influenced and/or to influence those who can be.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'john mccain, golden parachute, flip flop, economy' to 'john mccain, golden parachute, flip flop, economy, tpm, talkingpointsmemo' - edited by kronosposeidon

^ I'm pretty sure TPM was founded with a sarcastic spin off BillO's Talking Points Memo.

It's the original "The Word" from Colbert, too.

Did billo give a shout out to TPM?

I've never heard him call it "talking points memo" before

I wasn't a fan of the laugh at the end, usually TPM doesn't do those kinds of things.

The clips at the beginning and end are actually taken from a new McCain ad (the first positive one from them I've seen since June).

Other than that, it seemed a pretty straight up debunking of taglines from the ad it's a response to.

Put another way, they're lying about Palin's past as an opponent to the bridge to nowhere, and as an opponent of earmarks. Not spinning, not embellishing, not exaggerating, just bald-faced lying.

People should feel insulted and angry, but not by the video.