"If a democracy has to function, I think that there should be a higher level of conversation. And I think this is an attempt to say that not everybody in this conversation needs to be so hateful, so opinionated, with total disrespect to the facts."

Millionaire blogger Arianna Huffington is picking up the bus fare for more than 10,000 New Yorkers headed Saturday to Comedy Central's "Rally to Restore Sanity."

"It was a moment of irrational exuberance," Huffington joked in an interview with the Daily News, admitting she never expected so many people to take her up on the offer. Now, about 250 buses later, Huffington, founder of the popular Huffington Post - the left-leaning news and opinion website - is believed to be forking over hundreds of thousands of dollars to drive New Yorkers to Washington and back home again. She declined to say how much she's ponying up for the trip. Dubbed by Huffington "the Sanity Bus," Citi Field in Flushing, Queens, is the staging ground for today's 6 a.m. departure. Huffington also handed out free "flipcams" to 200 riders who wrote one-line sentences saying what they would do "to restore sanity" in America. "Taking a stand for sanity is not a partisan position. It's neither right nor left. It's reasonable. We have to stop demonizing anyone we disagree with," Huffington said.

Jessica Urine and her bridal party were surprised to find things so crowded when they drove up in a limo from Lorton,Va., to take some wedding pix in near the mall.

Her bridesmaid, Kaitlyn Rorer, said they had never heard of the rally … or John Stewart.

Mr. Colbert has now changed into an aviator's jacket and polka-dot pants, and introduces a poem he says he wrote, performed by Sam Waterston, "the most reasonable-seeming man in America." Donk donk!

"Are You Sure?" Mr. Waterston intones. "Did you hear that ? No? You're probably going deaf. It's your kids back home, cooking some crystal meth "Look around at these people, how safe do you feel? Your car when you parked, did you lock it? That guy who just coughed on your neck, did he have an infection? That restaurant where you went for brunch, did it fail its health inspection?" And so on. Mr. Waterson ends with a limerick about a man from Eau Claire who was killed by a bear. And yes, a "Law and Order" donk donk.

Surprise! Mr. Colbert was here all along. He rises from the ground in a vessel that looks like it could transport one Chilean miner at a tme, wearing an Evel Knievel costume. "Kneel before Zod," declares Mr. Colbert, an apparent fan of "Superman II."

Everyone calls it "The Rally." No further explanation needed. All my friends and neighbors are going, and I may just have to go too as a trustworthy crowd estimator and Sheryl Crow reviewer. I just got off the phone with a friend who is on one of 200 buses from New York City rented by HuffPo to carry people to the Stewart-Colbert rally. Extrapolating from that figure I can estimate the crowd size at 2 billion people, plus or minus 200 million. But this is a tentative number not yet subjected to peer review. Also I am sitting on my porch at this precise second.