Monday, December 8, 2014

FACT: You're Not Likely To Be Killed By a Police Officer

Seeing that there’s a burgeoning perception shaped by the left and the neo-libertarian right that cops routinely execute citizens for no reason, I took the liberty of being the best and came up with the following statistical guide that I hope will assuage the collective fear of being killed by a police officer. 

US Population=316.1 million
# cops (state and local law enforcement personnel)=1.1 million
# of cops killed in the line of duty in 2013=76
# of citizens killed by police (justified + unjustified)=1000* (*The numbers are surprisingly hard to get, but this is the high end estimate according to Nate Silver’s 538 blog. FBI puts it at 500. I'll go with the high end estimate.)
Percentage of citizens killed by police (justified and unjustified)=1000/316.1 million=.00032%.
That's .00032%
Percentage of cops killed in the line of duty=76/1.1m=.0069%
That's .0069%
.0069%>.00032%
So in fact, a police officer is 22 times more likely to die in the line of duty than a citizen is at the hands of the police.
Now controlling for race.
US black population=43 million
# of black people killed by police (justified and unjustified) in 2013: according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number is 123. Many critics have pointed to numerous flaws in the CDC’s data, yet are unable to offer a better estimate. So let’s use Nate Silver’s data (i.e. 1000 people killed by police in 2013) and assume that 75% of the victims were black (this is almost certainly higher than the actual number). # of black people killed by police=750 (high end estimate).
Percentage of blacks killed by police=750/43m=.0017%
That’s .0017%
.0069%>.0017% .
So, the odds of a cop dying in the line of duty is still greater than the odds of an African American being killed by the police. And to reiterate, this is based on an unrealistically high estimate of the number of blacks killed by police, and includes both justified and unjustified cases.
None of this is consolation to Eric Garner’s family. But seeing social media inundated with wildly inaccurate assumptions about police brutality compelled me to run these numbers.

Monday, December 1, 2014

The Shamelessly Dishonest Sports Media

Now that a federal judge has reinstated Ray Rice because constitutional republics depend on federal judges to arbitrate private sports leagues' personal conduct matters, I am anxiously counting down the seconds until the sports media, the pseudo sports media (Deadspin) and the anti-NFL lobby blame Roger Goodell and the NFL owners for Ray Rice's indefinite suspension being revoked.

Actually, I don't need to count down seconds per se, because as this ESPN article strongly implies, this is all Roger Goodell's fault.

You see, because Roger Goodell initially caved into the NFL players' union (NFLPA) demand that players accused (convicted or just accused?) of domestic violence only be suspended for two games, he is responsible for Ray Rice punching out his fiancee.

This article is rife with some truly Orwellian stuff (as opposed to neo-Orwellian stuff).

The judge criticizes the NFL's ostensible failure to take cases of domestic violence seriously, and at the same time, criticizes the NFL for suspending Ray Rice indefinitely after acknowledging that it didn't take cases of domestic violence seriously enough!  


Now, a reasonable lady or gentleman could make the case that the NFL acted in an ex post facto manner, and that Ray Rice should never have been suspended indefinitely.

That would be a reasonable, perhaps controversial, stance.

But that is NOT what the sports media is harping on.

They're saying straight up that Roger Goodell beat Ray Rice's wife and should be fired. Wait what? No, ok, they're not going that far, but the narrative advanced by the sports media strongly suggests that Roger Goodell is the main villain in this story. Not the woman beater. The guy who disciplined the woman beater.

The arbitrary punishment piece is a glaring red herring. We know this because after handing down the initial punishment, Roger Goodell did the mea culpa dance and was universally praised by every gasbag on ESPN for having the integrity to admit he was wrong.

None of his detractors gave a shit about ex post facto back then.

The truth is that Ray Rice's retroactive punishment only became an issue once the unhinged anti-Goodell lobby went after the NFL.

Terry O'Neill, the president of the National Organization for Women (NOW)--a hyper political organization which represents at most 40% of women and clearly does not speak for all women--was invited on every ESPN show to belligerently attack the NFL as either endorsing or condoning violence against women. Without ever being challenged for the extremely incendiary and potentially libelous charges. 

Given the fact that the NFLPA was defending the woman beater Ray Rice while the NFL was arguing against him, will Terry O'Neill slam the NFLPA and praise the NFL? Will she slam the judge who reinstated Ray Rice? 

Haha, good one. 

Politics takes precedence over so many things that most people don't want politicized. Including, in this case, reason. 

The bottom line is this. 

The NFL disciplines its employees for conduct unbecoming. Ergo, the NFL disciplined Ray Rice consistent with the rules negotiated and agreed to by the NFL and the NFLPA. 

When the initial punishment didn't appear to fit the crime, the NFL responded to media pressure by quickly changing the rules to more severely punish perpetrators of domestic violence. (Again, it's unclear whether the new rules apply to convictions or simply allegations. Clearly, if it's the latter, then legitimate questions must be raised about presumption of innocence. But that's a separate matter.)

When the graphic nature of the elevator video ignited even more outrage over the lax punishment, Roger Goodell retroactively suspended Ray Rice. 

Then, in a brilliant stroke of Orwellian chutzpah, the sports media, Terry O'Neill et al., pounced on Roger Goodell for not taking domestic violence seriously or worse, even though he was super hawkish on domestic violence, going so far as to retroactively change the rules to punish woman beaters. 

Logic is hard.





Monday, November 24, 2014

The Radical Left is Now Mainstream

Reacting to the first African American Republican woman being elected to Congress, the lynchpin of liberal political and cultural commentary, the Huffington Post, published a column by Darron Smith, Ph.D., creepily titled:

“She Looks Black, but Her Politics Are Red: What Mia Love's Victory Means for the Face of the GOP.”

The implication is that Congresswoman-elect Mia Love is not really black. As Mr. Smith writes, she only “looks black.”

Rational Americans might ask, what could that possibly mean and does anyone take this tripe spewed by a smarmy radical leftist seriously?

Some leftists might respond that being black is not simply a matter of skin color. It’s every bit as much a matter of ideology. If your skin color is black and you embrace the hard left agenda, you’re legitimately black. If your skin color is black, but you support principles of limited government, then you’re not a legitimate African American.

It’s the left-wing equivalent of Todd Aiken’s infamous “legitimate rape” comment, only it’s not universally mocked and derided. Just the opposite: it’s celebrated and inexorably advanced across the liberal media landscape.

The stark reality is that this one Huffington Post column is not an anomaly. It’s the new normal.     
Once confined to niche left-wing publications, fringe political movements, and ultra-liberal university faculty lounges, radical leftist dogma is now embedded in the liberal media establishment.

Terms like "white privilege" and "cultural appropriation" pervade mainstream media outlets. They’re no longer considered fringe or controversial on the left. And anyone—including people  of color—who dares question the merits of these ideas will be bizarrely vilified as a benefactor and purveyor of “white privilege.”  

In short, radical leftist views have been mainstreamed by popular websites like Gawker, The Daily Beast, and the Huffington Post.     

It’s as if in a cruel twist of fate the radical left has won the civil war against the liberal establishment many thought it had lost in the 1960s. This victory over the relatively moderate liberal establishment is evidenced by the fact that The New York Times, The Washington Post and other standard bearers of mainstream liberalism don’t dare counter radical tripe, such as the notion that American institutions are inherently and irreversibly racist. Occasionally, they even publish these diatribes in their op-ed pages.   

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the mainstreaming of the leftist school of thought is that  scores of apolitical and ideologically diverse readers regularly visit the Huffington Post, Gawker, et al. for celebrity news and entertainment, not for politics.

But when those outlets do delve into politics directly or indirectly, they invariably infuse their columns with leftist ideology, such as the notion that all white Americans enjoy genetic privilege. This is a far cry from the time when only ideological readers browsed The Nation.

By targeting audiences seeking entertainment or soft news and then hitting them with leftist propaganda, these outlets cultivate far more influence than their fringe predecessors.  

It is supremely ironic that the counter culture failed so spectacularly to mainstream their ideas  during the glory days of left-wing radicalism in the 1960s, yet today, when left-wing radicalism is no longer a credible political movement, their ideological successors enjoy mainstream status.   

  

Friday, May 2, 2014

Late-Term Abortion: A Winning Issue for Republicans


When I hear that Republicans are waging a war on our daughters, mothers, wives, aunts and sisters, I begin to hate myself. As a registered Republican, how dare I wage a “war on women,” when women mean so much to me? I must be a masochist or a nihilist. Or a masochistic nihilist. 

The absurdity of the charge notwithstanding, the “war on women” calumny has been a potent line of attack for Democrats. And since the Democrat-friendly mainstream media legitimize it by not dismissing it as exceedingly cheap demagoguery, Democrats can play this gambit whenever they need a wedge issue to divide the country and slander the opposition.   

An issue central to the “war on women” is abortion. Pro-life Americans believe that because a fetus has all the biological properties of a human being, it has a right to life. Ergo, conservatives hate women. Logic is hard. 

To date, Republicans have been diffident about going on the offensive on the abortion issue, presumably out of fear that it would further alienate the young, single female demographic that has morphed into a reliable voting bloc for Democrats. 

I can understand the reluctance to speak extensively about abortion in general, but what about late-term abortion specifically? 
Why not force Democrats to defend their stance on late-term abortion?   

The Democratic Party’s national 2012 platform unequivocally supports the right to abortion, including late-term abortion. 
While most Americans still support the right to an abortion in the first trimester, Americans by large margins oppose abortion during the second and third trimesters. According to Gallup:  

"A solid majority of Americans (61%) believe abortion should generally be legal in the first three months of pregnancy, while 31% disagree. However support drops off sharply, to 27%, for second-trimester abortions, and further still, to 14%, for third-trimester abortions." 

In other words, only 14% of Americans  agree with the Democratic Party’s position on late term abortion. From a political standpoint, this is a devastating statistic for Democrats. 

Yet for some reason Republicans aren’t exploiting the hell out of it. I know abortion is not the preeminent issue—it ranks below jobs, the economy, and a number of other issues—so I am not suggesting we make the GOP’s opposition to late-term abortion a central campaign theme. 

But because abortion is a popular wedge issue for Democrats, it is critical for the GOP to fight effectively on that battlefield, rather than retreat.    
  
Democrats have already been put on the defensive and have had to backtrack on late term abortion in two high profile statewide races. 

Democratic Senate candidate, Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is waging an underdog campaign to unseat the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, distanced herself from the national Party’s radical abortion stance when she publicly declared her opposition to late-term abortion.  

Incredibly, and to the glee of every conservative in the galaxy, so has the nascent liberal icon, Wendy Davis, who rose to fame by unsuccessfully filibustering a bill that banned abortions after twenty weeks and subjected Texas’s abortion clinics to new regulations. She also rose to fame because the media were smitten with the running shoes she wore during her filibuster. 

It is true that Kentucky and Texas have more pro-life voters than say, liberal Vermont. Davis and Grimes made the calculation that not opposing the gruesome practice of aborting a viable fetus would be an anathema to many pro-life Democrats and independents who may otherwise be inclined to vote for them—and whose votes they absolutely must have to win. 

However, only 14% of Americans support late-term abortions in the entire country, not just in conservative bastions.

If Democrats insist on attacking Republicans for waging a war on women, being anti-reproductive rights, against women’s health, or whatever the focus group tested libelous meme might be in play in 2014 and 2016, why doesn’t the GOP hit back with the late-term abortion issue?

This would have the effect of putting Democrats on the defensive, forcing them to  double down on their Party’s platform, equivocate, or outright reject late-term abortion a la Davis and Grimes.

From a strategic standpoint, it is imprudent to remain on the defensive. Americans are not divided on second and third trimester abortions; they overwhelmingly oppose them.

So shouldn’t Republicans force national Democratic candidates to take a position on late-term abortion? I am looking at you, Hillary Clinton. 

To this date, Republicans have cautiously avoided a proactive strategy on this issue. Given where the country stands, it would serve the national Party and its leaders well to pose this question: “Mrs. Clinton, do you endorse the Democratic Party’s platform supporting the right to an abortion for any reason at any point in the pregnancy?”

It would be fascinating to hear how a skilled politician like Hillary Clinton would respond. There’s really no wiggle room to equivocate.  If she says yes, Republicans can hold her accountable for a radical view on abortion. This will invariably hurt her with swing pro-life voters and raise questions about her moral compass.

If she takes the Wendy Davis and Allison Grimes route, and voices her opposition to late-term abortion, it would send tsunami shock waves through the pro-choice movement and the Democratic establishment. NARAL, NOW, Planned Parenthood et al. would be in full panic mode. The Left would be on the defensive, scrambling to craft sensible talking points on late term abortion that don’t repulse over 80% of the country. 

It’s time for conservatives and the GOP to go on the offensive: attack the Democrats’ extreme position on late term abortion, and watch them squirm.   


Monday, March 31, 2014

Why Doesn't Ta-Nehisi Coates Flee Oppression?

Ta-Nehisi Coates's latest installment in his ongoing debate with Jonathan Chait uses tortured logic, perverts history, and systematically rejects reality to present a wholly distorted view of the United States as a racist hellhole.  

Mr. Coates opens with an illuminating discussion seeking to clarify the difference between "black culture" and a "culture of poverty." He contends that the unfairly maligned "black values" are indeed critical virtues for black people in certain walks of life, although they are not necessarily transferable to other walks of life, which is why they’re oft derided.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Mr. Coates launches into a vicious tirade against the United States, going so far as to mock Jonathan Chait's irrefutable assertion that the United States has made tangible progress in terms of race relations since its founding.


How can an ostensibly intelligent man deny the strides the United States has made to eliminate institutional racism?

How can anyone seriously argue that white supremacy is at the heart of contemporary U.S. society, as Coates does without any equivocation whatsoever? Is there a cabal of Freemasons and Jews (to mock a Nation of Islam conspiracy theory) systematically persecuting African Americans?

White Supremacy cannot merely be an amorphous entity or some abstract notion. To persecute African Americans as systematically as Coates imagines African Americans are being persecuted, the white supremacist system must be institutionalized and clearly identifiable.

Are black politicians who run inner cities at all levels of government, black police chiefs, and black city managers members of this white supremacist cabal?  Are there meeting minutes?

What is most disconcerting about Coates's world view is its inherent hypocrisy.

My family fled the anti-Semitic Soviet Union because they couldn't justify remaining in a country hostile to their heritage, not to mention a country that squashed individualism and liberty.

If Mr. Coates truly believes that the U.S. is inherently--and as he makes clear, irredeemably--racist, how does he justify remaining in the United States?

It's irrational at best, cowardly at worst.

I suspect I know the answer.

Mr. Coates enjoys getting paid big bucks to write. Though he won't admit it, he cherishes the freedom bestowed on him by natural law and guaranteed to him by the U.S. Constitution to write scathing diatribes against his country.

Mr. Coates MUST know that he would not have the freedom to write the kinds of things he writes were he living in any country in Africa or the Middle East or most parts of South America.

So he cheerfully collects his check without contemplating the implicit absurdity of a black man choosing to live in a country he purports is dominated by white supremacists, while making good money writing about white supremacy.

Is Mr. Coates really so oblivious as to not appreciate that the freedom of expression he enjoys in the United States is a freedom that so many other countries do not afford their citizens?

It is quite extraordinary that in his tirade against the U.S., Coates never deigns to express even a modicum of gratitude for the Bill of Rights and the Constitutional freedom he has to make a living writing half-truths and lies about his country.

Nor does Mr. Coates dare to mention the tyranny and oppression that pervade his ancestral homeland, from which millions of men and women have voluntarily fled over the last 150 years for Europe or the United States.

Does Mr. Coates ever wonder why so many Africans, Arabs, Latinos and Asians choose to come to the United States, where they will be relegated to "minority" status, instead of remaining in their homelands where they would be in the ethnic majority?

Does the answer unnerve Mr. Coates because it so vividly dispels the myths he spreads about the country in which he inexplicably chooses to remain?   


If Mr. Coates was intellectually honest and truly believed that white supremacy in the United States was not only alive and well, but indeed, irreversible, it would behoove him to escape the United States, to flee this oppressive land, as so many millions (including my family) fled their oppressive homelands (for the United States).

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Bill Maher Is an Idiot and Other True Stories

Appearing as an iconic (?) comedian (?) and a noted expert (?) on all things political, Bill Maher dazzled fan Harry Smith of NBC News on Meet the Press with witty (?) banter themed around how Republicans are bad and Republican voters are dumb.

The segment is worth watching, because Bill Maher for all his faults—including the fault of being the caricature of pretension and snobbery—in a vital way epitomizes how the American Left views conservatives and Republicans.

You see, Bill Maher is an idiot.

Although I enjoy calling people idiots because it makes me feel intellectually superior, I assure you that calling Maher an idiot is fair, accurate, and above all, makes me feel intellectually superior.

Bill Maher thinks that Americans who are not in the so-called “1%” are “corporate America's useful idiots” if they vote Republican.

Note the strikingly original (and not-at-all intellectually shallow) reference to the “1%,” a term coined by a leftist fringe “movement,” whose only other worthless contribution to American politics was being chased out of public parks by ultra-liberal mayors who for some reason valued public health over incoherent anti-capitalist drivel and the inalienable right to defecate in public.

“1%.” LOL insert smiley face winking. Bill Maher is so witty!

But beneath the veneer of an idiot who uses uninspired clichés to make anti-intellectual partisan points, is a bigger idiot who believes that a majority of Republican voters vote against their self-interests.

This theme was thoroughly and mindlessly overanalyzed in a 2004 book, “What’s the Matter with Kansas,” which has become the leftists’ gospel for psychoanalyzing conservatives because it portrays Republican voters as misinformed morons. And that makes leftists happy.  

We see this theory advanced whenever elections don’t go the Left’s way.

When Volkswagen employees in Tennessee voted against joining the United Auto Workers union, the crazies at MSNBC blamed racism (duh!), but also lamented that the workers were voting against their economic benefits.

Bill Maher and other idiots echo this crackpot theory every chance they get, in part because it makes them feel better for not having a coherent philosophical foundation for their ideas. There is no Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Thomas Sowell, or Henry Hazlitt on the left. Unless of course we count Karl Marx. There are liberal authors, but there are no leftwing intellectual heavyweights who have ever come close to offering a compelling counter-thesis to Friedman’s epic “Free to Choose.”

What books do you suppose Bill Maher has read that have shaped his world view? I’ll venture to guess he’s read such brilliant authors as Michael Moore and Al Franken. It’s clear from his firm and courageous reliance on platitudes and sophomoric analysis that he has never read anything serious or substantive.   

To fill the intellectual void and to avoid reading Friedman, Hayek, et al., liberals like Bill Maher rely on some variation of “What’s the Matter with Kansas” to explain why lower-class and middle-class Americans vote Republican.

I want to help Bill Maher understand—in so much as he is capable of understanding anything—why people who are not as filthy rich as Bill Maher vote Republican.     

Here’s a very short list.


Public Schools

The United States’ public school monopoly is failing a great number of kids, especially kids in poor neighborhoods. As even some Democrats who support public school reform have recognized, the blame rests squarely with teacher unions and their left-wing enablers in federal, state, and local governments.

Let’s say Mark, a fella of average means, who cannot afford to send his kid to private schools, decides he’s had enough with union abuses and votes for a Republican who pledges to take on the corrosive influence of teacher unions on education. Seems to me, Mark is voting his self-interest.    

The debate over charter schools, which is inextricably linked to the power wielded by teacher unions and their political allies, is playing out in New York City, where far left-wing Mayor Bill De Blasio is waging a war on these quasi-private schools.

This has drawn the ire of predominately Democratic voters in Harlem, who are suing De Blasio for violating their kids’ civil rights.        

Janette makes $30,000 per year. She is a lifelong Democrat, but votes for a Republican who runs against De Blasio and pledges to not violate her son’s civil rights by denying him the right to attend a school of Janette’s choosing.

In short, if members of the “99%” aren’t happy that policies advocated by teacher unions have the effect of trapping kids in failing public schools, they may vote Republican.

Public Unions

Jack is struggling to get by. He works two jobs and resents the fact that employees in his state’s public sector earn higher salaries and receive more generous benefits than their private sector counterparts. The discrepancy is not based on merit, but rather on union bosses having spent millions of dollars to elect liberal Democrats who use Jack’s tax dollars to pay off those who got them in power with disproportionately high wages and benefits.

Jack decides he’s had enough of this unethical and unfair collusion between unions and government, including the havoc it’s reeking on his state’s budget, and decides to vote for a Republican governor who pledges to rein in out-of-control public union contracts.        

Detroit

That’s it. Checkmate. Okay, I’ll needlessly elaborate.

Detroit is the shining example of decades of liberal policies. Try as they may (and Bill Maher’s partner in idiocy, Ed Schultz tried) liberals cannot get around the straightforward, unambiguous fact that liberal Democrats at the local, state, and federal levels destroyed Detroit.

In fact, if you look at virtually every impoverished, crime ridden neighborhood, you will notice that the people who run it at all levels of government are Democrats.

So maybe Martha, who lives in Chicago’s Auburn Gresham neighborhood, is disgusted with the liberal Democrats who have failed to lower crime, reduce poverty, and create jobs in her hometown, studies the experience of New York City under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and decides to give a tough-on-crime, pro school choice, pro tax credit Republican mayor a shot.

You see, Billy, it’s in her self-interest.    

Ok, there you have it. A few reasons why people of all backgrounds may choose to vote Republican. There’s also the debate about the proper role of government, the balance between individual liberty and government control, the practical effects of an ever-expanding welfare state, the morality of income redistribution, and other philosophical issues that Bill Maher could not possibly begin to understand.

Because, you know, he is an idiot.   

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Eugene Robinson’s Inexcusable Historical Revisionism

In an atrociously reasoned essay—comical really in its contempt for logic—liberal Washington Post columnist, Eugene Robinson, managed to condemn the U.S. liberation of Kuwait in the first Gulf War, the U.S. overthrow of the Taliban in the aftermath of 9/11, and the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
The crux of Mr. Robinson’s unfortunate thesis is that all military intervention and occupation is the same. No, really. Context is irrelevant. U.S. has no moral authority to condemn Russia for invading Crimea, because of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also throws in Panama and Grenada in the stew of moral equivalence to make sure that no anti-Western talking point remains unmentioned:

“the United States, frankly, has limited standing to insist on absolute respect for the     territorial integrity of sovereign states. Before Iraq there was Afghanistan, there was the Persian Gulf War, there was Panama, there was Grenada.” 

Robinson’s shockingly flawed argument takes minimum analytical firepower to debunk, which begs the question as to why a shrewd editor didn’t point out to Robinson that his brazen assault on reason was ill advised.

Let’s examine each case separately.  

Russia has invaded and occupied Crimea, a sovereign territory of Ukraine, taking over its government buildings and military installations. The sovereignty of Crimea is not in dispute. It is unequivocally sovereign Ukrainian land, whose sovereignty was reaffirmed in 1994 when Russia signed a treaty guaranteeing that Crimea remains a part of Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons. Russia is unambiguously in violation of that 1994 treaty (among other treaties).

Russia’s justification for the invasion and occupation centers on the claim that ethnic Russians are being threatened and persecuted by Ukrainians (and strangely, neo-Nazis). So far, no independent reports have confirmed Russia’s claim.

In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait under the pretext that Kuwait had refused to forgive Iraq’s debt accumulated during the Iraq-Iran war when Saddam was fighting on behalf of all Arabs against the Persian enemy (or something like that. Saddam offered a litany of reasons for the war of aggression, none of them compelling.)

Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States petitioned the United States to first protect Saudi Arabia and others from Saddam (operation Desert Shield) and then to expel Saddam from Kuwait (operation Desert Storm).

The United States organized and led a coalition of 39 nations to expel Saddam Hussein from Iraq.

JUST LIKE RUSSIA’S INVASION OF CRIMEA.

What’s that you say? The unilateral (literally unilateral, Russia is the only “coalition” member) occupation by Russia of a sovereign country that has not invaded its neighbors is NOT like an international coalition liberating a sovereign country occupied by a maniacal tyrant?

Ok, let’s keep going.

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States issued an ultimatum to the Taliban, Afghanistan’s ruling party: surrender Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, and expel al-Qaeda from Afghanistan,  or face an international coalition to overthrow your government on the grounds that you are harboring terrorists responsible for an act of war against the United States.

The Taliban refused to comply, and the United States organized and led an international coalition, this time of over 40 nations, to overthrow the barbaric Taliban regime.

JUST LIKE RUSSIA’S INVASION OF CRIMEA.

No? Some minor differences there? Ok then, Robinson surely nails the next analogy.

In 2002, the United Nations passed a resolution demanding that Saddam Hussein (yes, the same Saddam Hussein who invaded Kuwait, and the same Saddam Hussein who was in material breach of every single UN resolution passed after a ceasefire agreement ended the first Gulf War) disclose when and where his WMD stockpiles had been destroyed as he had claimed.

After Iraq failed to meet the stringent requirements outlined in the 2002 resolution, the United States led a coalition of over 30 nations to overthrow one of history’s most brutal dictators; a dictator who had used weapons of mass destruction against Iraqi Shiites, Iranians, and Iraqi Kurds, who had been a prolific sponsor of international terrorism, and who continued to defy the international weapons inspectors, according to most objective experts, including none other than the UN’s chief arms inspector Hans Blix.
JUST LIKE RUSSIA’S INVASION OF CRIMEA.

Eugene Robinson, whose smugness is only eclipsed by his hatred of facts, unapologetically draws a parallel between Crimea and Iraq:

“We’re supposed to be shocked — shocked! — that a great military power  would cook up a pretext to invade a smaller, weaker nation? I’m sorry, but has everyone forgotten the unfortunate events in Iraq a few years ago?” [emphasis mine]

No, Eugene, we haven’t forgotten that every intelligence agency in the world had concluded that Saddam Hussein had WMD stock piles, financial and operational ties to international terrorism, and a capacity to reconstitute his WMD programs even if the programs were currently dormant (only the first of these claims proved to be based on faulty intelligence).

On the other hand, there is no international consensus to back up Putin’s claim that ethnic Russians are being targeted. In fact, Putin is the only one making this claim.

Ok then, what about the U.S.’s actions in Central America in the 1980s. Surely, those cases revoke all moral credibility the U.S. has in opposing the Russian occupation of Crimea, because they are totally the same.            
In the 1989 invasion of Panama, the United Stated deposed and arrested the thuggish dictator, Noriega, who was under indictment in Florida for drug smuggling. The rationale for the invasion centered on protecting the integrity of the Torrijos–Carter Treaties governing the Panama Canal, which Noriega was continually threatening, and on defending democracy and human rights, which no person familiar with Noriega’s rule disputes were under attack.

The 1983 invasion of Grenada must be seen through the context of the Cold War. Communist controlled Grenada was one of the few nations that refused to condemn the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan 4 years earlier, and most U.S. national security experts considered Grenada to be a satellite of Cuba.

The Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), Barbados and Domenica supported U.S. action to liberate Grenada from a group of communist thugs who had literally machine gunned their way into power. That these thugs were brutalizing the people of Grenada is not in dispute, unlike the dubious and unsubstantiated claim by Putin that ethnic Russians are in danger.  

And again, Russia was the sole member of the “coalition” to occupy Crimea. No other nation or international body called for Russian intervention in a territory only Russia believes is being overrun by neo-Nazis and terrorists.

If Robinson wanted an apt analogy, he could have drawn one between the Russian occupation of Crimea and the German annexation of Sudetenland in 1939. It would go something like this:

Hitler claimed the right to the sovereign Czech region because of the 3 million ethnic Germans living there, allegedly under persecution by the Czechs. Putin is claiming that occupying Crimea is necessary to protect that sovereign region's ethnic Russian population, which is allegedly being threatened by ethnic Ukrainians, though there is no independent confirmation that this is happening. Hitler used Sudetenland as a pretext for occupying all of Czechoslovakia; Putin is signaling that other territories in Eastern Ukraine with large pockets of ethnic Russians are in his sphere of influence. Hitler assumed Europe would do nothing, Putin assumes Europe, NATO, and the U.S. will do nothing.

But of course, that analogy does not advanced Robinson’s goal of perverting U.S. history in order to question the U.S.’s moral authority in condemning Russia.

Like so many good leftists who preceded him, Robinson is unapologetic in drawing a shameful moral equivalence between U.S. interventions on behalf of freedom, and Soviet (now Russian) wars on behalf of tyranny.  

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

It's Cruel and Unusual Punishment To Not Execute Some Convicts

Denis Prager has a heart-wrenching piece in the National Review on the injustice rendered in the case of two scumbags who violently assailed a father of two, leaving him severely brain damaged. The two "men" got 4 and 8 years in prison, a woefully inadequate and unjust punishment for their heinous crime.   

I am only half kidding when I say that we need to revisit the "no cruel and unusual punishments " clause in the Bill of Rights. Until we do, the people and their state representatives should fight to reinstate the death penalty in all 50 states. It's cruel and unusual punishment inflicted on the victims to allow the worst kinds of criminals to spend the rest of their lives in America's exceedingly humane and gratuitously snug prisons. 

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Racialists Value Lives of Murdered Blacks More if Murderer is White

Is an innocent black life taken by a white murderer worth more than an innocent black life taken by a black murderer?

If you’re not a race-obsessed sociopath, this is a ludicrous question.

But if you’re racialist, the answer is inevitably yes.   
 
Racialists are far-left ideologues of all races who invariably view all public policy and indeed, all human action, through a racial prism. For the racialists, race is a paramount trait (which is why the line between racialists and racists is often blurred).

This race-based, pseudo-intellectual worldview serves to polarize society along racial lines, and is used to smear the United States as an inherently and irredeemably racist country.

Frighteningly, this school of thought, previously endemic to Nation of Islam rallies and faculty lounges of the most left-wing universities, is gaining traction as a mainstream idea.  

Last Saturday, the so-called “loud music” trial ended with a Florida jury convicting Michael Dunn, a white male, on three counts of second-degree attempted murder of three black teens and one count of shooting a deadly missile.  

The jury was hung on one remaining count of first degree murder of 17 year-old Jordan Davis. Dunn faces up to 60 years in prison, and Florida’s state attorney has vowed to retry Mr. Dunn for first degree murder.

While the legal experts who followed the case closely can debate the merits of the charges against Dunn and the jury’s verdict, I want to expound on the perverse racial narrative that dominates this case and cases like it. 

If you followed this trial on Twitter or in the mainstream press, you know that race has been the central theme. Why did a white male murder an ostensibly unarmed (there is controversy as to whether Dunn believed the victim was wielding a weapon) black man?

The consensus among the racialists is that Dunn is a racist who was threatened by innocent black teens playing loud rap music. His fear and inherent racism led him to open fire with tragic consequences.

This is not an impossible scenario, and it may very well be true. Yet the racialists go much farther, and contend that this case is a microcosm of American society: a society plagued by racist, trigger-happy whites, who won’t hesitate to gun down innocent black men for any arbitrary reason.

We heard near-identical arguments during the George Zimmerman trial, involving a Hispanic man (dubbed white-Hispanic by the media) who killed an unarmed black teenager, and who was tried and acquitted on self-defense grounds.

Not insignificantly, unlike Zimmerman, Dunn was found guilty of four out of five counts, and will be retried for the fifth count. Implausibly, the racialists point to two cases with opposite outcomes to prove that whites are not only racists but can actually get away with murdering blacks because of the racist U.S. justice system.

But the most sinister consequence of the racialists’ obsession with misguided racial politics is the devaluing of innocent black lives taken by black murderers.

This devaluing occurs when the left-wing racialists bestow martyrdom on black murder victims if the perpetrator happens to be white, but remain eerily silent when the perpetrator is black.

According to a 2007 Special Report issued by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, 93% of blacks homicide victims and 85% of white homicide victims were murdered by members of their own race.

The Dunn and the Zimmerman cases are anomalies, representing approximately 7% of all cases according to the most recent data available.

Yet the racialists will have you believe that there is a white-on-black crime epidemic.

Why do these cases garner so much national attention and evoke virulent indignation from left-wing activists on Twitter and in liberal newsrooms, while the same people say virtually nothing of 93% of black homicide victims?

One explanation is that white-on-black crime conjures the painful memories of past racial injustices, including lynching. But that would only explain the initial emotional response, not the tireless effort to paint contemporary America as a haven for racists.    
  
The more plausible explanation is that publicizing black-on-black crime does not advance the racialists’ goal of smearing the United States as inherently racist.

The malicious demagoguing of white-on-black homicide cases as windows into American racism underscores the striking indifference to the African Americans who live in communities plagued by black-on-black crime. For the racialists, it’s all about racial politics. They cannot perpetuate the myth of a racist America by focusing on black-on-black crime.

It is tragic that a majority of innocent black people murdered by other black people remain anonymous outside of the occasional local news broadcast, obituaries, and memorial services, while the black people murdered by whites are cynically used as props to advance the racialists’ warped word view.




Monday, February 17, 2014

'Never Again'

Where are the fake human rights activists who righteously denounce NSA "spying" or drone strikes on troglodytes who plot to kill Westerners and non-Islamist Muslims? Where are the fake human rights activists who are obsessed with demonizing the free and democratic state of Israel? There is a Holocaust happening before our eyes in North Korea. Unspeakable, widespread torture. Babies murdered in front of their mothers, mass starvation, and universal terror. Yet NOTHING is being done about it. Sanctions? What a joke. The world’s leaders are silent. The aforementioned humanitarians? Forget about it; bringing down the North Korean regime does not advance their leftist political agenda.  George Bush referred to North Korea as part of an “axis of evil.” The Left vilified him for speaking the truth. The United States under Barack Obama does not lead on human rights issues—that much is obvious. Will another nation fill in the leadership vacuum left by the United States and force this infinitely evil regime to crumble by any means necessary? I hope so, because otherwise, the oft-referenced promise made post-WWII that “never again” would we allow another Holocaust to happen, will be broken yet again.     

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/17/world/asia/north-korea-un-report/index.html?hpt=hp_t1