DEBUNKED: Stanford Paper Claims Right-to-Carry Increases Crime

The information below was part of an earlier post, but I consider it important enough to have a post of its own.

Leftists are pushing back hard on the belief that right-to-carry laws deter crime.  Some liberals and liberal institutions (like a professor at Stanford University) are publishing papers that say the opposite is true:  that more guns means more crime and violence.  See conclusions of the Stanford paper here.

Intuitively, the professor's claims do not make sense to me.  If criminals know that a neighborhood has guns, would they be less likely to do home invasions or burglaries?  If criminals know that there are right-to-carry laws in effect, would they be less likely to shoot up schools and theaters?  I would think so.  What makes less sense is that otherwise lawful citizens turn into criminals when they have ready access to guns.  Absolute bunk, but liberals will believe anything.

REBUTTALS:  I found two sites that rebut the Stanford study as sophomoric and biased.  No surprise there.  Read MORE JUNK, LESS SCIENCE: New Stanford “Working Paper” claims right-to-carry increases assaults by 33%

Also read:  Right-to-Carry Gun Laws Linked to Increase in Violent Crime -- a rebuttal.

If liberals throw the Stanford study at you in argument, refer them to the above links.  The Stanford study is superficial and highly biased.

Defending George Zimmerman on Twitter

A Drawing by Dixon Diaz

I learned that George Zimmerman has a Twitter account, so went in search of it so I could follow him.  I read some of the liberal/leftist posts on his site, and before I knew it, was involved in a flame war with a pack of liberals.

Arguing with liberals isn't bad -- their arguments are so misinformed and weak, that there is no stress in it.  Of course, they call you a lot of names and insult you, but that doesn't bother me at all.  One of them, a woman calling herself "Jade Helm Commander" expressed an unusual interest in the size of my genitalia.  Eventually she reverted to the usual form, calling me a racist.  I finally figured out what a "racist" is.  It is anyone who expects all races to be held to the same standards of behavior and accountability.  

I was amazed at how ignorant my liberal contenders were as to the facts of the Zimmerman case.  Listening to them, you would think Trayvon Martin ("a child") had been machine-gunned in his stroller while sucking on a pacifier.  Martin was a hulking brute, recently kicked out of school for fighting, and who loved fist fights.  The liberal twitterites did not seem to know that Martin was sitting on Zimmerman's chest, raining down punches onto Zim's face.  With a broken nose, in pain and in fear of his life or great bodily injury, and with adrenaline pumping, Zim's survival instinct kicked in and he shot Martin.  In such a moment the victim of such an attack isn't going to philosophize about racial equality, ponder the age of his assailant or offer him platitudes.  He is going to act, and let the consequences fall where they may.  An old saying is appropriate here:  "It is better to be judged by twelve than carried by six."

Rush Limbaugh's Comments on the Robin Williams Suicide

A couple of days ago, Rush Limbaugh discussed how politics have affected the media's reporting of Robin Williams's suicide.  Rush stated that the media theme was that Williams killed himself because, in this society of ours, nothing can ever be enough, that all is darkness and despair.

A lot of leftist media outlets, especially Media Matters, deliberately distorted Limbaugh's comments about Robin Williams's suicide. They claimed Rush said Williams killed himself because he was a liberal and had a leftist worldview.   However, Rush was speaking about the worldview of the media, not that of Robin Williams.

Media Matters originated the smear and sent it out to other media, who simply repeated the distortion as if it were fact.  Even the Washington Times got in on the act, with their headline "Rush Limbaugh:  Robin Williams Killed Himself Due to Leftist Worldview."

The usual mouth-foaming outrage immediately poured forth from the left, damning to hell Rush for saying such insensitive, awful things.  Except that he didn't say what they claimed.  I know, I heard the show live.

I listened to the original live broadcast, and I understood what Rush was saying, and I never took it as a criticism of Robin Williams or his politics.  Rush was criticizing the media's reporting of the suicide, not the suicide itself.  Rush was talking about how leftist thought affects their media reporting, he was NOT implying that Williams shared their worldview or that Williams killed himself because of that worldview.  Rush's motivations were clear:  he felt the leftist spin on the suicide might encourage others to emulate the deed and take their own lives.

Some media are reporting Rush's rebuttal today, but the execrable Huffington Post states that Rush is "walking back" his statements about Robin Williams, implying that the original distortion was fact and that Rush is now retreating from his original words.  Despicable.

I will criticize Rush myself, though.  When discussing the recent death of a much-loved public figure, a commenter is walking into a minefield.  Great care must be taken in any comments, as people are bound to react emotionally.  Rush did not voice any empathy for Williams or express any regret at his passing.  Such niceties are the oil that lubricates the machinery of social commentary.  It's called tact. It's called diplomacy.

Further,  he ought to have known the left would distort and misstate his remarks.  He should have emphasized that he was talking about the dark worldview of the leftist media, and not Williams's reasons for suicide.  He should have been clearer in his remarks, and he should have emphasized what he meant and didn't mean.  This was very careless of Rush.  After all of these years on the radio, he should know better than to leave himself open to such a predictable distortion.

Here are the pertinent links:

Transcript of Rush's Original Remarks

Transcript of Rush's Rebuttal to Leftist Charges

If You're White, You're a Racist. White Racism and Oppression: It's Everywhere! (Photoshop)

Yesterday American Power reported on a black, female college teacher, one Shannon Gibney, who was reprimanded by her college administrators.  Gibney began preaching her "racism-is-everywhere" meme to her class on Mass Communications at Minneapolis Community and Technical College.  White oppression, dontcha know.  White privilege.  Blah blah blah.

It seems some of her white students felt uncomfortable being painted as villains and filed a grievance complaint with the college.  Gibney was then found to be creating a "hostile work environment" for white students and was reprimanded for same.  She subsequently filed a lawsuit against the college for...guess what?  Racial discrimination.

 It seems Gibney is obsessed with "structural racism," which is another term for "institutional racism."  She is so obsessed with it that she just can't stop talking about it, even in her college classes that have nothing to do with race.    RAAAAAAACISM!  It is her Raison d'Être.

I googled "structural racism" to find out what it is.  Apparently, it alleges that our cultural and societal norms, standards and attitudes somehow prevent racial minorities equal access to jobs, education, housing, bank loans, health care, justice, etc. Examples given are usually archaic practices and laws long since removed, or to myths, such as IQ tests being culturally biased against blacks (they aren't).  It is because of this pernicious, built-in racism, which suffuses every law, tradition, business transaction and societal institution, that many blacks just can't get a break.  If they are jobless, in jail, drunk or high, or killed by gangstas, it isn't their fault -- if you're white, it's YOUR fault.  You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

With the leftists in Academia constantly ululating "racism," one gets the impression that racism radiates outward from white skin, like a  Martian death ray, or perhaps the infection imparted by lepers.  People of European extraction are unwitting transmitters of these evil emanations, which are to blame for everything wrong in the black community.  Racism is therefore akin to radioactive poisoning, and Shannon Gibney and her ilk are the Geiger counters.

Basically, "structural racism" is a leftist myth used to justify income redistribution, equality of results rather than opportunity, social engineering and racial Balkanization. At the same time it is psy-ops designed to reduce opposition to leftist memes, policies and goals, through imparting to whites an unjustified guilt for imaginary wrongs, and to blacks a feeling of perpetual victimization and race-based paranoia.

Finally, it is a a built-in excuse for the black underclass, relieving them of accountability for their own poor life choices and societal dysfunction.  And if there is one thing the left absolutely abhors, it is personal accountability.

That's the way I see it anyway.

Village Voice Expresses Sarcasm Against the Stogiemeister...Without Rebutting Him of Course

The leftwing rag, the Village Voice, has jumped into the Ron Paul fight, quoting rightwing sources that both attack and defend Ron Paul. Here's what they said about me:

Paul had his defenders. SaberPoint didn't see what was so racist about the racist comments in the Paul newsletters. "Paul stated that young black purse snatchers are unlikely to be caught because of their swiftness of foot," said SaberPoint. "However, Paul is right, black men do run faster than men of other races. This is a biological fact. It is the reason why blacks make up a disproportionate number of men in professional sports like basketball or football." (Now we're beginning to understand why Bell Curve fan Andrew Sullivan endorsed Paul.)

The Village Voice misrepresents my position, of course. First off, I have never endorsed Ron Paul.  Secondly, I argued that if unpleasant facts about race are true, then they cannot be "racist." Racism implies an irrational prejudice, and fear of black crime and violence is hardly irrational -- just as Ron Paul pointed out. Dinesh D'Souza in his 1995 book "The End of Racism" calls this fear "rational discrimination." D'Souza's book is also my source for the reality of other racial differences, like black mens' ability to run faster than those of other races.

Here is my comment and response to Village Voice (will they let my comments stand?):

Ah, the liberal position, so clearly explained herein, is that reality is racist, and therefore to be repudiated. Yes, I wrote that black men (in general) run faster than white people. However, they aren't good swimmers as their bones are too heavy. Remember a few years ago when our all-black Olympics track relay team beat Canada's all-black track relay team for the gold? Probably just a coincidence that the team didn't have any whites...or hispanics...or Asians. Don't blame me, blame God...or nature.

As far as the Bell Curve is concerned, it also told the unpopular truth: that the average IQ among the black race is 85, the lowest of any racial group. If the "Village Voice" wants to disprove this, please do so and publish your results so we can all be enlightened. It shouldn't be difficult; just test for IQ among a statistical sample of blacks vs whites vs Asians vs hispanics and record and summarize the results. Will you do it? No, because outside of using race as a political cudgel, you know damn well that the Bell Curve is correct.

I don't take any joy or satisfaction in these grim facts, but no good will come from lying about them....as you do.

Joe McGinniss Accused of Publishing Literary Hoax Regarding Sarah Palin

Andrew Breitbart has published an email by author Joe McGinniss, expressing concern about the almost total lack of support or evidence for his most salacious accusations against Sarah Palin and her family.

McGinniss's book, just out this week, is called "The Rogue:  Searching for the Real Sarah Palin."  In the book, McGinniss alleged that Todd and Sarah Palin both had extramarital affairs, and that Sarah had a one-night stand with a black basketball player before she married Todd.  The book has been heavily criticized by liberal newspapers and critics as a transparent hit piece on Palin, supported only by rumor and gossip.  However, McGinniss himself expressed doubt as to the accuracy of his own book, in an email to Jesse Griffin, a leftist nutcase blogger prone to spreading nasty rumors about the Palins.  McGinniss wrote, in January 2011:

Neither from you, the Enquirer, AlaskaWTF, palingates.com or anyone else, have I seen a credible, identified source backing any of the salacious stories about the Palin family.

Thus–as Random House lawyers are already pointing out to me–nothing I can cite other than my own reporting rises above the level of tawdry gossip. The proof is always just around the corner, but that’s a corner nobody has been able to turn. Maybe Jeff Dunn has, in which case I’ll be the first to congratulate him. But frankly, at this point, I’m tired of it, and I’ve run out of time.

No one has ever provided factual evidence that:

a) Todd had sex with a hooker, or with anyone else outside his marriage.
b) Sarah had an affair with Brad Hanson, or anyone else. [Continued]

And later McGinniss admits in the email:

So much has bubbled at the salacious rumor stage for more than two years, but no one has been able to take even one story further.

 So here we have Joe McGinniss admitting that his book is bullshit and yet he and Random House went ahead and published a fraudulent exposé anyway.  My earlier Photoshop of McGinniss sitting in a sewer appears to have been quite an accurate depiction of the man.

Read it all here.

Steve Benson of the Arizona Republic Protests Saberpoint Article That Criticized Him

Steve Benson is objecting to the dressing down I gave him after he printed a cartoon showing Sarah Palin with a pistol for a mouth.  This was right after the Jared Loughner mass murder in Tuscon.  Benson was attempting to tie Sarah Palin's "targeted districts" map to Loughner's mass murder.  There was, of course, no connection.  His cartoon was slander in the extreme.

Apparently, he's a bit upset that I disdained the Pulitzer prize, since it is most often awarded to the most extreme political leftists, like him.  Unfair, Steve?  And your cartoon, was that fair?

He has already made two comments at my post located here.

It's nice to know that I got under his skin; that's exactly what I intended to do.

Check out the post and the comments if so inclined.

Update:  I cannot be sure that this commenter is indeed Steve Benson; it may just be another troll who is pulling my leg to waste my time.  However, my statcounter revealed numerous google searches for Steve Benson that originated from Cox Communications in Arizona.

Update 2:  I received another message from this commenter stating that he is indeed the right Steve Benson.

Let's See If I Understand Liberal Arguments for Wealth Redistribution

After using a liberal's butt for a socker ball in the past few posts, I have decided to summarize his arguments for wealth distribution as I understood them.

1.  Sometime in the past, various people were discriminated against, oppressed or impoverished, so now the welfare class has a right to help themselves to my wallet.  It makes a lot of sense if you are on drugs.

2.  Liberals playing in sand piles learned "to share."  Therefore, when someone shoves a gun in your ribs and demands your wallet, don't be angry, it is just a form of sharing.  If you had been raised properly, you wouldn't mind.

3.  Just because corporations comply with tax laws or experience losses, this is no reason why they shouldn't pay millions in taxes that they don't legally owe.  The IRS be damned, left wing college sophomores will decide how much these extra-legal taxes shall be and to whom they are to be paid.

4.  Manual laborers create all real wealth; doctors, scientists, businessmen, bankers, engineers, manufacturers, computer programmers and all other professionals or white collar workers merely steal the wealth these laborers produce.  Therefore, these non-laborers should fork over their wallets post haste.  And the next time you set down to a fine meal, thank a ditch digger.

5.  All people with money today are well off because someone mistreated the Indians a couple of centuries back, and therefore such people should hand over their wallets and shut the hell up.  If that argument fails to convince, a liberal will be happy to invent a new one on the fly.  Just ask.

6.  Poor people are poor because we have denied them the same privileges that we have, "privileges" being a code word for hard work, delayed gratification, ambition, planning, the hours we spent in school, and the years we spent honing our marketable skills.

Based on the strength of these arguments, I am going to dye my hair green, get a nose ring and enroll in the local city college as a major in sociology.  Well, probably not.

Did Left Wing Hate Speech Cause the Giffords Shooting?

Only two days before Rep Gabrielle Giffords was shot in Arizona, a blogger at the left wing site Daily Kos criticized Rep Giffords.  The liberal blogger lives in Giffords district in Arizona and had voted for her and supported her for election, but now was quite upset that Giffords had voted against Nancy Pelosi for Minority Leader.  The blogger declared that Gabrielle Giffords was now "DEAD TO ME."  Interesting choice of words.  Did liberal assassin Jared Loughner read the Daily Kos post and internalize the headline as a suggestion to be taken literally?

The Daily Kos quickly scrubbed the post yesterday, but not before several conservative bloggers made a screenshot of it.  I got a copy of it from the American Thinker at this link and increased the size so it is more readable.  It is directly below.

UPDATE:  Michelle Malkin lists the Left's long legacy of political hatred and advocacy of violence, proving conclusively that liberalism is the author of violence and intolerance, NOT the Right.  See it here.

How Liberals Argue (Video)

Hat tip Atlas Shrugs:

This cartoon video is actually a fairly accurate description of a conversation between a liberal and a conservative.  The liberal is reduced to slogans and personal insults, refusing to be deprogrammed from her thorough brain-washing by media and academia.

Timothy McVeigh's True Motivations

Rachel Maddow of MSNBC is presenting "The McVeigh Tapes."  Today marks 15 years since Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.  McVeigh was an extremist, certainly, who seems to have been been influenced by a neo-Nazi novel, The Turner Diaries, in which the protagonists blow up a federal building and start a revolution against an oppressive government.

Today the Left wants desperately that you believe McVeigh and others like him are motivated by "right wing rhetoric," that Tea Parties are filled with potential McVeighs, preaching hatred and racism.  Rachel Maddow has stated,"Nine years after his execution, we are left worrying that Timothy McVeigh's voice from the grave echoes in a new rising tide of American anti-government extremism."

Maddow is a particularly ruthless propagandist for the far left. What "rising tide of anti-government extremism"? There is none.  Maddow and her ilk want to convince the public that Tea Party peaceful protestors of Obama's radical policies are the moral equivalent of Timothy McVeigh.  Earlier this week former President Bill Clinton tried to draw the same parallel, warning against the effects that rhetoric could have in producing another McVeigh.  But what rhetoric was he referring to?  He gave no examples, probably because he had none to give.

Timothy McVeigh was not motivated by right wing rhetoric but by left wing governmental actions against civilians. He was especially radicalized by the Clinton Administration's handling of the Waco Branch Davidian assault, in which tanks were used against civilians (over 70 people died), and the FBI assault on Ruby Ridge where innocent civilians again died from federal bullets.

McVeigh explained:

At Waco, once the FBI blocked the Davidians' abilities to communicate with the outside world, Bob Ricks [an FBI official at Waco] could then step forward and mold the facts to fit the FBI's purposes. The public never saw the Davidians' home video of their cute babies, adorable children, loving mothers, or protective fathers. Nor did they see pictures of the charred remains of children's bodies. Therefore, they didn't care when these families died a slow, torturous death at the hands of the FBI. They didn't care when boastful FBI agents posed for the cameras as people's lives were consumed in flames.

Waco was a Democrat disaster and many Americans were outraged at the operation.  That, of course, does not justify McVeigh's monstrous crime in the murder of  more innocent civilians.  However, the main point is clear:  McVeigh was inspired by the actions of a reckless liberal government, not by conservative rhetoric.

Image:  the Oklahoma City Bombing. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Update:  Yid With Lid has a related post today:  Dick Morris Says Bill Clinton Personally Directed the Waco Tragedy.  

Associated Press Tries to Discredit Palin's New Book

The Associated Press is decidedly leftwing, as anyone well knows who has followed the news for years.  I don't recall them "fact checking" any of Obama's ghost-written books, or Kerry's, or Gore's; but maybe I just missed them.  In any case, a team of AP journalists are poring over every page of "Going Rogue" by Sarah Palin.  Surprise, surprise, they have found errors, noting that "Palin has gone rogue on some of the facts."

Well that sounds pretty scary all right.  Did Palin lie about important events or facts?  Well no.  The AP has only uncovered "errors" in immaterial facts (some of which aren't errors at all, but merely differences of opinion), none that would change either Palin's argument or undermine her credibility.  However, they're hoping you'll just read the headline and carry away the false impression it was designed to create.  Kathy Shaidle at Frontpage's Newsreal says this:

One man decoded the Rosetta Stone. Two guys with manual typewriters waded through “Watergate”. But today, it apparently takes eleven “reporters” to read a book (“It was hardcover!”), unearth “errors” that aren’t very important and in some cases aren’t even “errors”, then write a 700-word article about their epoch-making discoveries.

It should be noted that virtually every book that is published contains some errors.  Publishing houses have editors and fact-checkers who pore over the book before publication, and they find most of the errors, but not all.  Many if not most of the AP's efforts above were to argue with Palin about "who cares" topics, like the types of hotels she stayed in during the presidential campaign -- really important stuff, to be sure.

Read it all here.

Washington DC Tea-Bagged Big Time

The news reports say that around a million and a half to two million citizens showed up in D.C. today to protest the socialist, wild spending, big government schemes of our perennial college sophomore, Barack Obama.  I was going to go but somehow never received my advance check from the Big Insurance Company Consortium.  So I just watched it on Fox.

Alan Colmes continues to embarrass himself as an inept public commentator.  He claims the huge D.C. Tea Party was somehow a manifestation of "Corporate interests."  A capitalist conspiracy, no less.  Then he published an alleged poster ostensibly handed out to attendees at the Tea Party.  It reads "Bury Obamacare With Kennedy."  Outrageous, to be sure; however, I seriously doubt that this was an actual poster used at the Tea Party.  Note that it appears to be a photograph of a computer screen.  You can't see anything around, above, below or behind the image; it has no context, probably by design.  I suspect it is another Democrat dirty trick, a fraud, at which they are so practiced.  Don't believe it.

Holmes claims that the Tea Party movement is a corporate conspiracy, whereas MoveOn.org is a true "grass roots" organization.  He has a point.  Technically, George Soros is not a corporation.  However, neither are the two million anti-Obama demonstrators who showed up in D.C. today.

Update:  Later I did see the above poster used by a couple of people in attendance, so apparently the poster was printed and disseminated.   However, it may still very well have been a liberal dirty trick; handing out the posters to gullible attendees in order to create a false controversy, or used by libtards posing as conservatives for the same purpose.  Liberals have been so mendacious in these instances that it pays to be skeptical.

Via:  Liberaland
Via:  Memeorandum