Lynce Mob

Attendance numbers at rallies or marches or protests have always been contentious. I remember participating in huge antiwar marches in the sixties. Later, there would be conflicting reports of how many people were there. Police estimates were always -- at most -- about a third of what march organizers claimed.

I figured then that both sides were fiddling the figures.

Figuring crowds is apparently so fraught that officials in Washington, DC, have given up estimating protests in the city, which allows everybody to just make up any old number they like.

Of course you remember the stupendous stupidity over the 9/12 Teabagger Bun Fest.

But yesterday, someone told a real whopper. ABC News, citing the DC fire department, reported that between 60,000 and 70,000 people had attended the tea party rally at the Capitol. By the time this figure reached Michelle Malkin, however, it had been blown up to 2,000,000. There is a big difference, obviously, between 70,000 and 2,000,000. That's not a twofold or threefold exaggeration -- it's roughly a thirtyfold exaggeration.

Well, somebody got bloody tired of hearing such wild claims and set out to find a way to accurately estimate crowds.

Spain is trying to modernize its abortion laws. On October 17, there was a MASSIVE fetus fetishist march in Madrid.

The numbers were variously reported by FF organs: millions here and two million here.

Media and the police in Madrid estimated there were about 250,000 marchers, which is still a heckuva big turnout.

But wait.

A guy in Spain, Juan Manuel Gutiérrez, was so irritated at the bullshit that he ran 300 aerial photos through some sophisticated software and came up with a new number.

It was billed as the biggest outpouring of emotion against the abortion law yet.

Organisers claimed that millions poured through the streets of Madrid in an anti-abortion protest last week, while the media and police estimated numbers of around 250,000.

In fact, just 55,316 brave souls made it onto the streets to oppose the government’s plan to increase the legal period from 14 to 22 weeks, according to an independent company Lynce that has found a scientific answer to estimating crowd numbers.

So good are Lynce’s methods that the national press agency Efe, has now issued a statement insisting that even the police and media exaggerated numbers by five times.

There is still a margin of error, but it is just 15 per cent, not orders of magnitude.

If I were a major news operation, I'd have this company, Lynce, on speed-dial.

Fetus fetishists are no doubt SHRIIIEEEKING: 'We've been Lynced'.

Clueless in Kansas

Remember when the Ottawa Senators organization cluelessly got itself involved with the fetus fetishists and it didn't go too well for them? (Summary and linkies here.)

They now have company. The Kansas -- oooo, Kansas again -- City Royals have stepped in the pro-lie doo-doo.

And it's not going too well for them either.

“Come cheer on the Royals as they play the St. Louis Cardinals and support the Missouri Right to Life,” read a blurb that was up on the team’s Web site promoting this Friday’s game at Kauffman Stadium.

Some people said to selves: WTF? Then they asked the Royals organization. The blurb was removed and the story emerged.

Like any number of other groups, Missouri Right to Life arranged with the ticket office to reserve a block of seats for their members to sit together.
. . .
But here’s the kicker. About 10,000 of the stadium’s 38,000 seats were sold to groups for Friday’s game. Missouri Right to Life’s share: 50.

So how did that one group out of hundreds rate mention on the Royals Web site?

“I think someone at the Royals organization was just clueless and miscalculated the potential impact it could have,” Brownlie [Planned Parenthood spokesperson] said.

Yup, clueless. Especially timing-wise. Especially location-wise.

But typical of the pro-liars and their supporters. Clueless.

'Culture of Life': Ur Doin It Rong

The Dallas Morning News tips us to a 'Catholic author and "pro-life American"' Sean Michael Winters, writing at a blog of a Jesuit magazine who has seemingly come to a sensible conclusion about the March for Life, the annual anti-abortion bunfest.

It has failed utterly to make a difference in this nation’s abortion policy. So, on the one hand, is it really newsworthy that the pro-life movement is still banging its head against the wall?. . .

That said, there is a different reason why I do not participate in the annual March. I think it probably alienates the very people we should be trying to reach: women facing crisis pregnancies. The rhetoric on the signs tend to equate abortion with murder which may be objectively true but also lacks the empathy with the desperate circumstance of many women that is the necessary precursor to an effective evangelization of the Gospel of Life. And, finally, the March perpetuates the false belief that if Roe were overturned the abortion rate would plummet. In fact, most states would codify Roe. A legal strategy must be replaced by a cultural strategy if we are to make a real dent in the abortion rate in this country.

Oh, and what's that 'cultural strategy'?

*sigh* More Crisis Pregnancy Centres. Thousands more.

There are tens of thousands of parishes in America. Each one of them must become a sympathetic crisis pregnancy center, a place of sanctuary and solidarity for women who find themselves with an unplanned pregnancy and few practical options for raising the child as they would want. The vast array of social services and hospitals that the Church dispenses must be put at the disposal of women in this situation.

A vast array of services, eh? Well, that's something practical at least.

Unlike BLOB BLOGGING WHINER moaning about the lack of fetus fetishist pro-life 'culture'.

[The Democrats in the US] talked amongst themselves. They were creative. They produce art and other cultural products.

We have pro-lifers have no culture.

Bingo, SUZY!

On the other hand, as everyone knows, we on the left have a culture of death and a lot more fun it is too.