Oh, how sad. The numbers for Operation American Spring fell a wee bit short of expectations…by about 5 orders of magnitude. But don’t you worry, the Moonie Times has an excuse.
“It’s a very dismal turnout,” said Jackie Milton, 61, a Jacksboro, Texas, resident and the head of Texans for Operation American Spring, to The Washington Times. He said hopes were high when he arrived in Alexandria, Va., a day or so ago and found motels and hotels were sold out for 30 miles around.
But weather’s dampened turnout a bit, he said.
“We were getting over two inches of rain in hour in parts of Virginia this morning,” Mr. Milton said. “Now it’s a nice sunny day. But this is a very poor turnout. It ain’t no millions. And it ain’t looking like there’s going to be millions. Hundreds is more like it.”
Tom Paine has a few words for these wankers.
These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
If the idea that 9,999,900 patriots were dissuaded by the rain (it didn’t scare off the atheists when we had our rally in the rain) doesn’t sound very plausible to you, don’t worry — they have another excuse.
He also said the some of the planned Operation American Spring members who were planning to head to Washington, D.C., instead traveled to Nevada, to give support to cattle rancher Cliven Bundy in his fight against the federal government over grazing fees.
“A lot that were supposed to come here went there instead,” Mr. Milton said.
Imagine. 10 million people are now hanging out at the Bundy ranch in Nevada.
Another explanation, familiar to us teachers: 9,999,900 grandmothers died yesterday. It was a massacre among the elderly!
The revolution is canceled due to rain. :)
Evidently they’re getting the numbers from the same outfits that projected an easy victory for Mittens in the last election….*snicker*
Well now that they know their weakness, Obama and his commienazi atheomuslim cabal can just use HAARP to control the weather so it always rains around him (bonus, dramatic lightning and thunderclaps during speeches, thus befitting a proper evil overlord.)
Like my grandma used to say, “If you can’t stand the rain,then stay out of the revolution”.
I hear The Preakness is just a train-ride away.
OAS organizers claim that there will be motorcyclists next weekend and more people showing up tomorrow. We’ll see. Not holding my breath though.
In other news: Alien invasion cancelled due to the presence of H2O in the Earth’s biosphere.
Couple dozen instead of 30 million?
As Maxwell Smart might say: Missed it by that much.
These kooks actually believe the tea party was set up to fight for the rights of ordinary joe shmoes from the evil guvment. It was set to protect rich people from taxes and regulations and that’s about it, these fools are just nice fodder to propagate a fake movement.
The millions were there but they melted due to the rain. Happens all the time.
We’ve been having fun at #AmericanSpringexcuses
https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%23AmericanSpringexcuses&src=typd
You fools! They were intercepted!! Even now, as many as 10 million American patriots are languishing in FEMA camps. It’s a new Holocaust, I tell ya!!
(This message brought to you by conspiracy nutters and the Tea Party.)
I call bullshit. I checked Expedia yesterday and there were plenty of rooms in the DC area for the weekend, although they tended to run on the pricy side.
I heard of “fair weather friends” but this takes things to a new level.
I’m a bit surprised the cons aren’t saying, “Well they had JOBS to go to unlike those liberal freeloaders.” while forgetting that most jobs offer paid time off.
“most jobs offer paid time off.”
Thanks to the blood paid by the American Labor Movement and all those godless liberals like Teddy Roosevelt.
9,999,900 dogs have dined upon teabagger revolutionaries’ bus tickets. Obama’s done it again!
Even those involved in the American Revolution who took off when things actually got violent and physically unpleasant would consider this bunch hopeless lightweights. In fact it would be interesting to know what percentage of militia types and similar wannabe warriors failed military basic training, or were discharged early due to an inability to adapt to military life.
The numbers would have been greater if it weren’t for the necessity of negotiating public transport. At least nine million gave up and went home when they realised they couldn’t park within three feet of where they planned to spend the day. The other million are still stuck in transport limbo, not comprehending that the doors don’t always open when and where they want and that some modes of transport have to accommodate the travel desires of other human beings.
I have only one thing to say to the teabaggers.
Ha-Ha
I will say this about Mitt Romney’s polling team, Nerd of Redhead. Their prediction was within 4-5 orders of magnitude of the correct result.
It’s the Internets’ fault.
They think that if they get 10,000 ‘thumbs up’, that means 10,000 people will take three days off, buy a plane ticket, book a hotel room, etc….
poor wee mites
“Let a thousand excuses bloom!” The nutcases at Free Republic are in full denial mode:
Apparently no Tea-Party types were involved. Not at all! (Come to think of it … given the turn-out, that’s close to being true!) From another Freeper:
Yeah. There’s a reason for that.
PZ @ original post,
Oh, No! It must have been the “Death Panels”!!!
Funny how I heard about Operation American Spring weeks ago. I guess they should spend some time reading Freethoughtblogs.
“What if they held a war and nobody came?”
–
I know a bunch of grandmothers.
If you think they are easy to kill, you have another think coming.
(Hi, Ray!)
Some people had more important things to do like…like…well…like important stuff!
Lol. “False flag operation”. It’s conspiracies all the way down with these fucks. They’re doing a fine job of distinguishing themselves from the conspiracy theorists who came up with this shit.
I think clearly there has been some trouble differentiating between the various civil disobedience movements, their slogans, goals and symbolism etc. Given the tendency for these things to try and one up each other, after Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Washington naturally people would have thought this one must be ‘Occupy America’ and stayed home.
By and large these people confuse 6000 with 14 billion.
So it isn’t surprising when they confuse 10 million with 100….
chigau@26, ( Hi,chigau! )…You know how sneaky those death panels can be, no one is safe!
Oh shit. The teabaggers were right. We should have read the fine print. This was actually called “Operation American Springtime For Hitler”. It was supposed to end like this after all. Alright, nothing to see here.
I read on Gawker that there was a site posting intense warnings that some other site was posting false advertisements posting a different date. The screencap Gawker posted was barely comprehensible (saying every date posted for the event is false, only this date is the correct one [tacitely: this date listed below is true, cuz we say so])…. So, I can this as their excuse for the poor turnout. That O’Bummer posted fake advertisements and tricked True Patriots to different date. …
We happen to live near National Airport, around a bunch of hotels that are convenient to both the cemetery and the mall (both by car and metro). I can’t say that I’ve seen an influx of teabaggers over the past few days (though earlier in the week there were a bunch of out-of-town cops hanging around). I guess they read the weather forecast ahead of time and canceled their plans.
Next weekend is Memorial Day weekend. Every year on Memorial Day weekend the Rolling Thunder Review descends on DC. So yeah, there’ll be a lot of bikers, and no doubt a large proportion of them are teabaggers.
As an aside, the teabaggers have coopted the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag (and here in VA there’s a license plate with it). Am I the only one who thinks that from a distance the coiled snake looks like a steaming pile of shit?
thanks, Dr. Myers for the Paine quote. How perfect. And these twits are supporting Bundy in the millions? Hmmm, all of those militia idiots who are asking for people’s papers (golly, just like they falsely claim that the guvmint is) and who are insisting that their group is the “one true militia” and complaining how other idjits with guns are getting in the way of their own idjits with guns.
Washington doesn’t have the proper quality and quantity of beer halls for a good putsch.
“9,999,900 grandmothers died yesterday. It was a massacre among the elderly!”
Two words: Death panels!
Let a thousand definitions of “False flag” bloom?
Hot damn now! By OAS math I’m worth between 10 and 30 BILLION $s! Boy howdy! Don’t need to stand in no rain! No sir! Instead, I’m gonna go and buy me one of them there senators! May even two or three! Sweet!
I think this is the result of faith-based organizing. Instead of doing the work of actually arranging for people to show up, they just throw their agenda out there, and trust in God to make it happen. Always a fruitful approach.
The “live feed” is currently playing Patriot Games.
Free movies, courtesy of the people who want to protect private property. Awesome!
Maybe god forgot to clean out his inbox and this is leftover from Rick Perry’s prayer for rain from a few years back. “Oops.”
cm’s changeable moniker
Heh. They probably chose it because it has the word “Patriot” it. Even though the story itself takes place in Ireland, and the name itself is a reference to an IRA song. Wrong country and probably not the best source to show the value of Patriotism to boot.
I really wonder about what these people are seeing when they are watching Patriot Games. Are they seeing themselves as the CIA hero fightin’ turrists in the name of Amurrkka? Or are they seeing themselves as the disaffected Irish citizens attempting to terminate political opponents in order to see rapid political change in a government they don’t approve of?
I’d never seen the film, but now, since I’ve seen the ending, I’m don’t think I need to. Anyway, for reference, here’s the screencap. (SPOILERS!!). :-)
http://i.imgur.com/073uqeK.png
I’m? I! *grrr*
I’ve never seen it either. Googled summaries of it. I ruin so many movies that way!
Heh.
Best twitter joke on #OperationAmericanSpring, re. rain: “LIVE FREE OR DRY”.
I LOLd, but then I’m easily amused …
I checked out some of their YT videos. The comments were amazing, as in I am amazed that these people actually believe the conspiracy theories they use to justify their bigotry.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N6K1ECpdPws
The Patriot Game
How pathertic can it get? One has to wonder what is wrong with the people who embrace such delusions? I think nearly everyone here is well aware of the many answers to that admittedly rhetoical question.
Anyone else here who thinks Forida real estate is going to take a dip?
@gridlore,
There certainly are some gems in that twitter hashtag. One of my favorites:
Okay, I’m a little surprised that fully embedded. I figured it would’ve been stripped down a bit since it didn’t fully render in the preview, so I didn’t bother cleaning up the HTML.
Hilarious. I can’t really add anything of substance, other than that there were probably many T Party Patriots watching the event on their TVs, wondering where everybody was…
During a similar non-event last year, I remember one poor deluded soul commenting that she would have loved to have been there to help start the Second American Revolution, but she couldn’t get the time off work, and anyway, she couldn’t afford the airfare to D.C.
Dedicated bunch, these patriots!
Well, at least one loon’s prayers half-assed worked. This was indeed “safe”.
Yeah. A lot of you guys “weren’t there” also, so you’re not alone in not showing up.\
Wonkers.
https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%23AmericanSpringexcuses&src=typd
I love the excuses they’re coming up with.
They need to work on those excuses
http://youtu.be/JFvujknrBuE
Ray, rude-ass yankee – DEATH PANELS, hell yeah!!! (Thanks Obama).
Dingo
It’s all Obama’s fault. None of the true patriots could afford to gas up their 6.8L F-550 Super Duty duallies for a cross-country drive. If those unconstitutional czars hadn’t been taxing all-American oil and gas to pay for limp-wristed electric cars and Chinese solar panels there would’ve been hell to pay! (/sarcasm, of course.)
You misunderstand. This bloke didn’t use the innertubes, or a phonebook or anything whatsoever. He first arrived in Alexandria and then physically walked into “motels and hotels”, finding them sold out. It’s not surprising he overlooked some by using this way of faith-based booking.
So full of win!
So were they out by an order of an order of magnitude? Probably not quite that much.
As an aside, the teabaggers have coopted the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag (and here in VA there’s a license plate with it). Am I the only one who thinks that from a distance the coiled snake looks like a steaming pile of shit?
And here I thought I was the only Virginian who thought that.
Yeah, I also have mistaken that coiled snake for a big steamer.
These idiots make it easy to ridicule them. These are the same idiots who think carrying semi-automatic weapons is an inalienable right. A rather unfortunate mix of characteristics.
I totally called the Bundy-ranch excuse. Comment #98 from the previous thread on overthrowing the government.
I thought I was making a joke, coming up with an excuse that was so far outside the bounds of reality that it would be funny. Nope. That’s one of their excuses.
Rachel Maddow covered the fact that attendees numbered greater than 10.
This is especially encouraging when contrasted to the attendance at regular Moral Mondays protests in North Carolina.
A method that didn’t even work in the Bible. :)
SC (Salty Current), OM
Okay. That one definitely gets you an internet.
To be fair, some of them might have had the same grandmother (ie. they’re siblings or cousins) so it could be as few as 4,999,950 grandmothers.
Although, it seems a little mean-spirited to make fun (only a little). I think the big lesson here is, contrary to what both sides might think, the vast majority of people are apathetic.
It’s as if the Teabaggers don’t understand that in the ‘Arab Spring’ metaphor, they’d be the Muslim Brotherhood.
Ahem.
Here’s a lesson in deceptive reporting of the Operation American Spring protest:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/operation-american-spring-fails
Can’t you see how important it is to help a rancher skip on his rent? Operation American Spring should have been smart enough to reschedule.
Do you think the protesters who canceled paid for their hotel rooms?
Maybe it *was* dead grandmothers. Each dead grandma could excuse the absence of her husband, her children, her children’s children, her children’s children’s children (knowing what these kooks feel about birth control), and, obviously, herself. Assuming an average of two children per family, each grandma-death could account for the absences of 22 people across 4 generations.
So not even 500,000 grandmas would have to die, and it HAS been hot lately.
It does! *starts baking one*
…They totally would be. *starts baking another Internet*
Sam Seder just covered the epic fail. They’ve got footage of the protest, with Jackie leading his followers in a singing of the national anthem, and he sings the wrong song. This uber-patriot doesn’t even know his homeland’s national anthem.
Ameilijia, Ameilijia…
What really caused the low attendance was the organization’s insistence that participants remain peaceful and not to bring any firearms to Washington DC at all. These people love their guns, and sleep with their automatic firearms. They couldn’t just leave them behind… NO WAY! That’s not even patriotic! In fact, it’s UN-American! The next time they do this, participants will be encouraged to remain peaceful at all times, but to carry their firearms proudly. Attendance will be close to 30 million – regardless of the weather, and there will be thousands of injuries and deaths from accidental shootings. That’s my prediction.
Yeah, give or take a few zeroes. Even the annual flooding of Mallorca by Germans isn’t done by 30 millions of them.
There’s a difference?
That may be a contributing factor, but going from 10 million (their low-end estimate!) to a couple dozen can’t be explained by gun-nuttery alone. I think it’s simply the case that very few people support this degree of craziness, and those who do tend to be disturbed and/or anarchistic, so organizing them into a coherent group is next to impossible. Demanding the mass resignation of the entire government except those they like, for the Orwellian purpose of saving the Constitution, is too far out there even for most teabaggers. The OAS organizers were simply delusional and self-aggrandizing to the point of hugely exaggerating their numbers.
Tom Paine also wrote The Age of reason :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Reason
The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology is a pamphlet, written by a British and American revolutionary Thomas Paine, that challenges institutionalized religion and the legitimacy of the Bible, the central text of Christianity. Published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807, it was a bestseller in the United States, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. British audiences, however, fearing increased political radicalism as a result of the French Revolution, received it with more hostility. The Age of Reason presents common deistic arguments; for example, it highlights what Paine saw as corruption of the Christian Church and criticizes its efforts to acquire political power. Paine advocates reason in the place of revelation, leading him to reject miracles and to view the Bible as an ordinary piece of literature rather than as a divinely inspired text. It promotes natural religion and argues for the existence of a creator-God.
Most of Paine’s arguments had long been available to the educated elite, but by presenting them in an engaging and irreverent style, he made deism appealing and accessible to a mass audience. The book was also inexpensive, putting it within the reach of a large number of buyers. Fearing the spread of what they viewed as potentially revolutionary ideas, the British government prosecuted printers and booksellers who tried to publish and distribute it. Nevertheless, Paine’s work inspired and guided many freethinkers.