At rally yesterday in Jacksonville, FL., Rachel Madow reports that without his trusty sidekick Sarah Barracuda at his side, John McSame was able to fill less than 25% of the arena.
She also comments on a rally in Nevada, where a local pol asked the crowd: Is this what 10,000 people look like? Er, probably not. The venue only holds 3,500.
Bloomberg News reported that the McCSame campaign is inflating the size of crowds that do show up. Last week, for instance, at a rally in Fairfax, VA, the McCain campaign claimed 23,000 people attended, citing the local fire marshal as the source of the estimate. Problem is, the marshal denies it, saying the department don’t do crowd counts. A WaPo reporter who was there said it looked more like 8,000 to him.
Bloomberg mentions a similar unsubstantiated claim from a rally last month:
Aug. 30, at Palin’s first big public appearance after her nomination. the McCain campaign said 10,000 people showed up at the Consol Energy Arena in Washington, Pennsylvania, home of the Washington Wild Things baseball team.
The campaign attributed that estimate, and several that followed, to U.S. Secret Service figures, based on the number of people who passed through magnetometers.
“We didn’t provide any numbers to the campaign,” said Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service.
While exaggerating crowd sizes at rallies is commonplace, pulling numbers out of thin air and then attributing them to authorities like fire marshals and secret service agents represents a new low in political campaigning.
McCain became McSame when he adopted the Bush/neocon ethic– the end justifies the means. Selling his soul for the presidency is tragic enough. But putting a totally unqualified religious fundie like Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the world borders on lunacy.
May God have mercy on us all.
The political or administrative form of a government is of little consequence provided it affords the essentials of civil progress — liberty, security, education, and social co-ordination. It is not what a state is but what it does that determines the course of social evolution. And after all, no state can transcend the moral values of its citizenry as exemplified in their chosen leaders. Ignorance and selfishness will insure the downfall of even the highest type of government.
-The Urantia Book
BlueNose:
If u read Greg Palast, certainly not!
“no state can transcend the moral values of its citizenry as exemplified in their chosen leaders”
Okay; but did we realllllly choose those MoFos??
Wooh; great quote, Prop, only I would have bolded the last line too:
Ignorance and selfishness will insure the downfall of even the highest type of government.