Not only illiterate... teabaggers can't count, either.

The Washington, D.C. 9.12 rally was held last weekend.  Now, I'm going to briefly drop a little satire down on it.  President Kennedy, when hosting a group of Nobel Prize-winners at the White House, said that his guests were the most distinguished gathering of intellects ever to have dined at the White House - "with the possible exception of when Mr. Jefferson dined here alone."  Well, last weekend was the greatest concentration of stupidity ever to have walked the National Mall, with the possible exception of when Michele Bachmann took a stroll alone.  

Of course, the stupidity wasn't limited to the event alone.  You can't have a large gathering of stupidity without post-stupidity stupidity, and the right-wing babbling heads are chiming in.  It's about numbers.  The Washington, D.C. Fire Department estimated the crowd at somewhere between 60,000 to 75,000.  That number wasn't enough for the Teabaggers.  Their heroes had to start inflating the numbers.  First, there's Glenn Beck:  

BECK:  We had a, we had a, we had a, we had a, u-, university, I think it's the University of - I, I, I, I don't remember which university it is.  Um,  look at the pictures, and you know, they can do body space, calculate, 1.7 million, that crowd was estimated.

HOST: In Washington?

BECK: In Washington, D.C.

HOST:  Wow.  'Cause we were saying tens of thousands.

BECK: Oh, of course everybody was saying tens of thousands, 'cause that's the official report.  If you look at the pictures, university looked at it, did the body count, etc., etc., 1.7 million.

That's right: the Washington, D.C. Fire Department, whose job it is to estimate crowds in case of emergency, said the crowd was 60-75 thousand.  In the meantime, the University of I Can't Remember did some magic video thingee and WOW!  1.7 million!  So which number do you think the teabaggers will buy?  I'm guessing that they will claim 1.7 million, unless they listen to Rush Limbaugh, who rounded the figure up to 2 million.  What's 300,000 people, after all?  And Limbaugh claims they left the place clean as a whistle.  Does this look like it?  

 

And you have to love the respect for the flag shown here (check out the bottom of the picture):

Not to mention what the sign said.  Apparently, now, "Glen" Beck and FoxNews are just as important as our veterans. 

Anyhow, back to the original point of the post:  Teabagger math.  Somehow, they've managed to turn 75,000 into 2 million.  Talk about exaggeration.  You'd think they could limit themselves to just one order of magnitude.  Rush Limbaugh's number was in excess of the DCFD's estimated by 1.925 million. Think about this:

That exaggeration is greater than the population of 14 different states:  West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont, or Wyoming (2008 census data).  The biggest football stadium in the United States is Penn State's, with a capacity of 107,282.  You'd have to fill that stadium just about 18 times to get Rush's exaggeration.  That exaggeration is greater than the metro area populations of Las Vegas, San Jose/Santa Clara, Columbus OH, Indianapolis, Providence, Charlotte, Austin, Nashville, Jacksonville, Memphis, Louisville, Richmond, Hartford, Oklahoma City, Buffalo, Birmingham, Salt Lake City, Rochester, or New Orleans.

I hope that puts it into perspective.  From an initial estimate by trained professionals, you've got Rush Limbaugh's rounding up of Glenn Beck's University of I'm Making Crap Up's video magic estimate and presto!  60-75,000 becomes 2,000,000.  This is the "credibility" that Fox "News" brings to the table.   It's FoxMath.  Brought to you by Beck University:

By the way... the Latin stands for "Pulling facts out of your ---."

P.S.  Now I have photographic evidence!!  For comparison's sake, here's President Obama's inauguration.  1.8 million:

 

See all the people?  Going waaaaay back to the Washington Monument and filling all the available space?  That's 1.8 million.  Now, check out the Teabagger "2 million":

To any teabagger who might be reading this:  let me direct your attention to that green stuff in the center of the picture.  See that?  It's called grass.  You see it when there are open spaces.  And you can actually see the sidewalks past the concrete barrier.  Compare that to the inauguration above. You surround us?  Yeah, right.