My swig is approximately 25% of the crowd was security. Does anybody have numbers on this.

you are comparing crowds from 1965 and 1953 (the previous high counts).

In 1953, 750,000-800,000 attended Ike’s first inauguration. Since the population of the US was approximately half what it is today (157 million vs 303 million), the proportion of turnout compared to total population today would be twice the turnout of 1953.

In other words, to equal Ike’s numbers, Obama would get 1,500,000.

In 1965 the population was under 200 million (197,000,000). So, to equal LBJ’s turnout of 1.2 million, Obama would actually need a turnout of over 2 mllion.

It looks like the crowd was slightly under a million. Therefore, Obama’s turnout is impressive but not exactly record-setting.

In addition, every inaugural has a certain number of people who are required to be there — security, officials, etc. That accounts for about 1/4 of the crowd.

It’s not easy being green

…How many of that million have weapons and are willing to do Obama’s bidding unquestioningly?

We were led to believe, by the MSM, that the inauguration crowds would be as high as 6 million . What happened to that?

Saturday’s crowds at the Lincoln Memorial/Mall looked huge on HBO–that is until they put up an aerial shot that clearly showed the truth. All of the people were crowded into the area closest to the Memorial and at least half of the Mall was empty. Much better to give the impression to the viewing public that the Mall was filled to capacity by those eager to be “a part of this historic ocassion”.

Those that showed up were there and those that did not were not.

The silliness of this question is beyond me. The lefties want to say it was 1.8 million, the MSM says about the same thing and we say maybe it was 1 million. Who cares? Really.

However many people that were there doesn’t change the facts of what needs to be done going forward.

Let’s keep focused on what matters and work on that.

uninformational.

and that is where the point is always missed by many… it is how this minor question/issue extrapolates to how it is Liberals do everything else!

The need to over-inflate to “suggest” and/or project (incorrectly) success!

We’ll see lots more of this as they lie and distort facts and figures to try and convince the Socialist agenda they are about to embark upon is “helpful” to America rather than the “harm” to the Economy (let alone the principles of the founding of this country). They will not be happy until they achieve the normal Socialist success of dragging us down to the lowest common denominator of failure of every other Socialized government….