Posted on 12/22/2008 6:07:48 AM PST by jessduntno
By Mary Beth Sheridan Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, December 22, 2008
Officials are casting doubt on an early projection that 4 million to 5 million people could jam downtown Washington on Inauguration Day, saying it is more likely that the crowd will be about half that size.
D.C. authorities said the earlier estimates, provided by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), were based on speculation surrounding the historic nature of the swearing-in of Barack Obama as the nation's first African American president. After weeks of checking with charter bus companies, airlines and other sources, they're reassessing.
"It's more of an art than a science," City Administrator Dan Tangherlini said. "The fact is, earlier it was speculation. Now we're beginning to flesh it out and what the physical capacities of the system are."
The Secret Service has dismissed the high-end estimates of 4 million to 5 million people. But there is universal agreement among security officials and planners that massive numbers of people will flock to the swearing-in of Obama (D), who had drawn huge campaign crowds.
Turnout could easily reach 2 million, officials said, far outstripping the 400,000 who attended the 2005 inauguration of President Bush. Although it is possible that 5 million people will descend on the area in the days leading up to the inauguration, it appears unlikely that trains and local roads could get them all to the Mall and parade route Jan. 20, officials said.
Jawauna Greene, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Transit Administration, said that inaugural planning committees had initially considered up to 6 million attendees.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said the most recent estimates she has gotten from the Presidential Inaugural Committee and federal and local officials project between 1.5 million and 3 million people.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Probably, what they meant to say is that after buyers remorse has set in, America is reassessing...
Estimates gotten from the Presidential Inaugural Committee? What does one expect? Puhleeze.
I’m hoping that it will either be 33 degrees and a freezing rain all day or 3 degrees and bitter cold-we’ll then see how dedicated all of dear leader’s followers are.
Come on...do jawauna ask us to believe this?
More media hysteria.
If the Inaugaration was in May, there would not be 4 million people attending.
The media threw a WAG number out there, knowing the media echo chamber would just repeat it ad nauseum. After all, the first rule of propaganda is, if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.
The four million number was a joke the moment it hit the press, and it was funny to see the other side hyperventilate about how much this means the Messiah is so loved and so popular that he will be adored by four million raging subjects.
The media should just restructure as the new Ministry of Propaganda.
The truth will be in short supply for the forseeable future.
It’s gonna rain leeches or something...
Get ready for some Million Man Math.
However many people actually show up for this thing, we will be told, for the rest of our lives, that it was whatever the top estimate was, two days prior to the event.
fire and brimstone?
The hype of the 10,000 man march.
Jawauna Greene, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Transit Administration, said that inaugural planning committees had initially considered up to 6 million attendees.
“Come on...do jawauna ask us to believe this?”
Coffee spray...thanks...
Yep, America has been turned into a bunch of little squabling nations within, and now their fighting each other. It's all about groups and not a common cause.
That's "diversity" for ya
their=they’re, ugh!
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism... a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.
The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.
For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an Irish-American, or an English-American, is to be a traitor to American institutions; and those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic.[1]
The hyperventilating media, after the 4 million plus projection, even went so far as to locate various government-teat-sucking organizations which expressed deep concerns that grocery stores would not have stocked enough food to deal with the millions which would be staying in private residences.
None of them thought to check the population of DC proper to consider how absurd that notion was.
Hype and Change.
}:-)4
Is it wrong for me to hope for freezing rain and sleet?
# Attendees = (H * .5) + (W * .75) + S + P
Where...
I'm blanking though, was that FDR or Teddy?
“Is it wrong for me to hope for freezing rain and sleet?”
Yes. The new (alien) pResident should be given the same respect the last one was given by the left...
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