Tax Day Tea Party open thread: turnout numbers, pictures, sanity... (UPDATE: "They wanted to be like Code Pink")

The Tax Day Tea Parties are finally here! All across the U.S., a sub-miniscule fraction of the U.S. population will be standing on street corners holding signs that will make them look bad and ultimately help Barack Obama by giving the false impression that his opposition is "mean-spirited" and weak in numbers.

Pictures and turn-out numbers will follow as this momentous (for them) day progresses...

NOON UPDATE: From the looks of it, the parties will be incredibly lucky to get 100,000 at all events combined, and it will probably be far under that figure.

And, Glenn Reynolds shows exactly where the movement is coming from (pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/76692), highlighting this picture from the Cincinnati protest:

4pm UPDATE: Have they realized how dumb this idea was yet? For an example, here's video of one from Eureka in Humboldt County, CA: link. The fact that 1200 to 1500 supposedly turned out in a city with 28,000 people might mean something until you realize that there are around 126,000 people in that county, there are more in surrounding counties, and some people might have come from southern Oregon. And, then you look at the election results for CA's 1st district (link). Out of about 265,000 votes, the American Independent candidate got over 22,000 and the Dem incumbent won with over 181,000 votes or 68%. The GOP contender got almost 62,000 votes, and there really isn't much need for the Dem to worry all that much about 2% of that number.

THE CIRCUS HAS LEFT TOWN UPDATE: Nate Silver estimates that all the parties combined got a little over 250,000 people (link); he says there are some other, probably smaller parties he's not counting. His long list of cities includes links to local estimates, which may or may not be off but he's probably within a good percentage of the total. In comments, someone points out that Obama got 200,000 people to turn out in Berlin, 100,000 in St. Louis (vs. 1000 for the "party"), 80,000 in Denver (vs. 5000 for the "party"), and 75,000 in Portland.

And, taking a break from swearing, ranting, and making illogical statements, Kos tweets (via Politico):

Cons finding out why I generally don't like protests on my side — they bring out the wackos. But they wanted to be like Code Pink.

AT LEAST THEY'RE EFFECTIVE FOR SOMEONE UPDATE: Per Drudge, Fox News' ratings surged due to the "parties", getting 3,390,000 views between 8 and 11pm vs. 1,210,000 for MSNBC. No word on how many t-shirts were sold by various vendors or how the career tracks of those GOP consultants pushing the protests were impacted.

THE BLIMP IS GROWING UPDATE: Silver has revised his estimate to 300,000 (link).

Wed, 04/15/2009 - 06:55 · · Importance: 4