Dear Ed,
Of course, there is kernel of truth in what everyone says (with the arguable exception of The Liar, who - oddly - now admits that The Big Lie was, in fact, a Big Lie. https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/-whisker-trump-acknowledges-lost-2020-race-rcna169780 )
Even so, I think Marc Theissen is - in large part - a clever (even specious) ideologue who thinks a bit like the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno whose most famous paradox "proves" that any projectile NEVER reaches its "destination" because first the projectile travels half the distance to its target, and then another half of the remaining distance, and then another half of the remaining distance... And since any distance can be subdivided by half, "No projectile ever reaches its target."
It makes perfect sense... and is entirely untrue.
Anyhow, Theissen impresses me as an upscale Dinesh D'Souza, who in turn reminds me of another cleverly (and consistently) misleading liar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinesh_D%27Souza
The bedrock fact is that murder rates are way higher in red states, even those red states without any large cities.
Here's another corroborative finding by The Journal of the American Medical Association. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2023/04/28/red-states-have-higher-gun-death-rates-than-blue-states-heres-why/
And while on the topic of firearm deaths, note that suicides - a jawdropping number of them juvenile suicides - are attributable to the ready availability of firearms.
Here's a question I've formulated that -- despite my continual invitation - no one has ever answered.
It is my personal observation that there are two kinds of people - "those who think there are two kinds of people, and those who don't."
But seriously, scientific research bears out that conservatives are more easily frightened than liberals.
"Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals"
https://newsfrombarbaria.
And my empirical observation is that conservatives believe that any problem - political, social, personal or interpersonal - can be solved by the application of enough firepower.
The Mistaken Concept That Reducing Cultures To Rubble Results In Peace
Then there's Netanyahu - who not unlike Trump - will do ANYTHING to stay in power, or to regain power, in order not to be held accountable by The Rule of Law for malfeasance that would (with virtual certainty) land them both behind bars. (The remaining indictments against Trump include stronger evidence in the Alvin Bragg/NYC case that resulted in 34 felony convictions, making Trump ineligible for a job as Walmart greeter. And, Netanyahu will not end the ungodly slaughter because he knows that the Israeli public will not abandon him while the nation is at war.)
Given my regard for The Rule of Law, and that NO individual is above it, I say that if Hillary were to be found guilty in a court of law for her many alleged crimes, lock her up.
Throw the book at her!
Same with Hunter!
But same with Trump and Netanyahu.
By my lights it is also true that Christian conservative nationalists who put Trump in the Oval Office once (and are desperate to put him there again) take refuge in their fervent belief that "God's Law" is higher than human law because they, in their misplaced self-certainty, have made God their gopher, when far more likely than not, what's happening in Trump-loving "Christian" America is another episodic manifestation of widespread religious mania.
Religion, Perfectionism, Savonarola and The Pending Apocalypse of The Republican Party (This Post Was Written In 2012)
Conservatives And Liberals: "How We Ended Up In 2 Totally Divided Camps, Both Convinced They're Absolutely Right"
On Sun, Sep 22, 2024 at 11:35 PM Ed G wrote:
Here is an answer I was able to find to the Third Way data. I couldn't link to it because it was behind a paywall, but I was able to capture the text.Further, here is an article that suggests that correlations of murder rates with politics are specious.Richmond Times-Dispatch
E-edition
By MARC A. THIESSEN Oct 20, 2022
By MARC A. THIESSEN WASHINGTON
With Republicans hammering them over rising murder rates, Democrats have come up with a new line of defense: Republicans, they claim, are the ones really responsible for the surge in homicides. The U.S., California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, recently declared, has a “red state murder problem.”
No, it doesn’t. The bogus claim comes from a March study by the Democratic think tank Third Way, which purports to show that, contrary to “the right-wing obsession over homicides in Democratic cities: murder rates are far higher in Trump-voting red states than Biden-voting blue states.” According to Third Way, of the top 10 states with the highest per-capita murder rates in 2020, eight (Missouri, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi and Arkansas) voted for Donald Trump, while just two (New Mexico and Georgia) voted for Joe Biden. “Republicans seem to do a much better job of talking about stopping crime than stopping crime,” Jim Kessler, an author of the report, told Axios.
One problem with that: In most of these red states, the high murder rates are driven by the lethal violence in their blue cities.
Take Missouri. Yes, it voted for Trump. But it is also home to two of the most dangerous U.S. cities — St. Louis and Kansas City — both of which are run by Democrats. Earlier this year, CBS News did an analysis of the “deadliest U.S. cities” using the latest FBI and other crime data. In 2019, it found, St. Louis had the highest murder rate in the nation, with 64.54 murders per 100,000 residents. Kansas City, meanwhile, had the eighth-highest murder rate, with 29.88 murders per 100,000. According to the FBI, the state had about 520 murders in major metropolitan areas that year, 20 in cities outside metropolitan areas, and 28 in nonmetropolitan counties. So, the vast majority of Missouri’s homicides took place in its Democrat-run cities.
The same is true for Louisiana, which has two of the most lethal Democratic-run cities in the country: Baton Rouge, which in 2019 had the sixth-highest murder rate in the nation with 31.72 murders per 100,000 residents, and New Orleans, which had the seventh-highest rate with 30.67 murders per 100,000. Without those cities, the state’s murder rate would significantly drop.
That’s not all. Tennessee’s homicide rate was driven up by Democratic-run Memphis, which ranked ninth in the country with 29.21 homicides per 100,000 residents. Also powering the state’s murder rate: then-Democratic-led Chattanooga (No. 29) with 18.15 murders per 100,000 in 2019 (note: the city elected an independent in 2021); Democratic-run Nashville (No. 59) with 12.08 per 100,000; and Democratic-run Knoxville (No. 62) with 11.66 per 100,000.
The same goes for other red states: In Alabama, Democratic-run Birmingham, which ranked third with 50.62 murders per 100,000 citizens, drove up the state murder rate, as did Democratic-run Tuscaloosa (No. 21) with 20.77 per 100,000. Kentucky’s murder rate was run up by its largest city, Democratic-run Louisville, which had the 46th-highest murder rate in 2019, with 13.92 homicides per 100,000 residents. Arkansas’s rate was driven up by Democratic-run Little Rock, the capital and largest city, which had the 24th-highest murder rate with 19.15 homicides per 100,000 residents. Mississippi’s was driven up by the homicides in its Democratic-run capital Jackson, which had a murder rate of 46.5 per 100,000 in 2019.
See a pattern here?
Third Way also claims that 3 of the 5 states with the largest increase in murder rate between 2019 and 2021 were “decidedly rural” red states — “Trump-voting Wyoming at 91.7%, South Dakota at 69%, and Nebraska at 59.1%.” Sounds terrible. Here’s what they left out: According to FBI data, Wyoming had a grand total of 13 murders in 2019, or 2.2 per 100,000 residents, while South Dakota had 17 and Nebraska had 45. So even if Wyoming’s murder rate nearly doubled, it still saw fewer than 30 murders in 2021. What else are these red states missing besides large murder numbers? Large, crime-ridden, Democratic-run cities.
Third Way does not provide city-by-city data for 2020 in its report, perhaps because this would undermine its red state murder narrative. But the Manhattan Institute’s Rafael Mangual gathered data on the 2020 murder rates in the 50 largest U.S. cities — 34 of which had Democratic mayors, while 14 were led by Republicans (two were led by independents). “The homicide rate in the blue cities was 15.8 per 100,000, compared to 9.4 per 100,000 in the red cities,” he found.
And in a May report, his Manhattan Institute colleagues Robert VerBruggen and Christos Makridis examined the growth in the homicide rate per capita in the largest U.S. counties between 2019 and 2020 — and then compared the rates in GOP-leaning and Democratic-leaning counties. They found that “counties with higher shares of GOP voters have a much lower homicide death rate and a lower number of deaths in 2020” and “also a lower growth in homicide rates.”
To argue, as Third Way does, that “murder rates are actually higher in Republican, Trump-voting states” — without pointing out that those rates are driven by the slaughter taking place in Democratic-voting blue cities — is intentionally misleading.
The fact is, the red state murder problem is really a red state murder myth.
+1
Marc Thiessen
Follow Marc A. Thiessen on Twitter, @marcthiessen.On Sun, Sep 22, 2024 at 11:02 PM Alan Archibald <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:There is something to what you say, but even in small red states with no big blue cities the murderous rates are still through the roof.The statistics are clear.I suspect that — at least in part — high red state murder rates are attributable to second amendment evangelism which has everyone armed to their teeth, coupled with tough guy, Marlborough man, rugged individualism.Stand your ground.Shoot on suspicion.AlanOn Sun, Sep 22, 2024 at 4:42 PM Ed G wrote:I have seen that claim before. The problem with it is that the homicide rate in "red" states is mostly due to the big "blue" cities.So the evidence is mixed, just as is true with most claims by politicians. They claim to know what will happen if certain policies are adopted or not adopted. But they cannot know, for alas, they are not God.-EdOn Sun, Sep 22, 2024 at 3:35 PM Alan Archibald <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:But here's a list of the 15 most dangerous U.S. states. (Only three of them are blue or purple. The rest are blood red.) https://propertyclub.nyc/article/most-dangerous-states- in-the-us Homicide Mortality Rate by State: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/ homicide_mortality/homicide. htm
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