It turns out that Fox News’s Neil Cavuto, who has already had a pretty tough week, intentionally inflated the attendance number for the Sacramento, CA rally that the was broadcasting live from. After being told that attendance was 5,000, he went on the air and claimed that it was double or triple this amount.

Here is the video from Countdown:

The 5,000 attendance number was backed up by the California Highway Patrol, who called the demonstration large but peaceful and estimated the crowd at above 5,000. On Countdown Olbermann showed both the off air video of Cavuto getting the crowd estimate, and then his on air estimate of 10,000-15,000. Is it any surprise that FNC felt the need to lie about the attendance numbers, after turnout was not nearly as large as they hoped for?

I know the FNC apologists will find some way to spin this, but what else can you call someone who goes on the air and doesn’t tell the truth when asked a question that he knew the answer to? Neil Cavuto lied. It has been a really bad week for Neil. First he claimed that Fox News covered the Million Man March, which happened the year before the network went on the air, and now this.

I am sure that Dick Armey thought that a tax protest on tax day was a great idea, and it would be if Obama had done something with the tax code that was worth protesting. The fact is that these people were protesting tax rates that haven’t been changed in 16 years. Where were the protests about high spending while George W. Bush was taking billions of dollars out of your pocket and giving them to private defense contractors in Iraq?

I didn’t see any deficit hawks in the street when the very same President Bush managed to turn a budget surplus into a trillion dollar deficit. Who was concerned about the children then? The problem didn’t begin and it won’t end with Obama. The problem is that both parties like to spend too much money, and until they stop playing politics with the issue, nothing will ever change.