Yom HaZikaron, Yom HaShoah, Holocaust remembrance day was April 20th, one day after the 77th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising on April 19th. I’ve got a few random thoughts this year.
The Warsaw Ghetto uprising actually had 3 different resistance groups that were fighting. Most know of ZOB with Mordechai Anielewicz, The Jewish Fighting Organization. Less well known was the communists and Bund also fought against the nazis, and the other group was right wing, the Zionist youth movement “Beitar” the “Jewish Military Union” (ZZW). Beitar sound familiar? It was established by Zev Jabostinsky. My puppy’s middle name is Zev, that’s appropriate as it means “wolf”. Most of the fighters were younger, and I’m guessing had seen their families hauled off and knew what was coming.
The Wuhan flu Zoo
Locked in a ghetto and told they aren’t allowed to leave without a permission slip. Possibly like the one I’m carrying in my purse along with my name badge which will get me through road blocks should the be instituted. I shamelessly swiped this from a friend of mine, who also apparently likes Mark Levin
How far are you willing to go with this?
If they told you to load your families onto train cars so that you could be taken to Virus Protection Facilities for your own safety, would you do it?
YES. Yes, you would. That much has become painfully obvious to me. And the whole time, you’d be shaking your finger and yelling at those of us who refused, accusing us of being “a danger to society” and “not caring if people die.”
But they don’t have to load you onto train cars and take you to Virus Protection Facilities or force you to comply, because you do that voluntarily. They control your mind. They control you through fear. They control you by convincing you that the world is a scary dangerous place, but they’re here to protect you, care for you, and keep you safe, just as long as you OBEY.
They know that as long as you’re locked inside your comfortable home with Netflix, Hulu, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and a cell phone while dangling a $1200 check in front of you like a carrot on a stick, you’ll comply. No force is necessary for the majority of the herd.
YOU ARE IMPRISONED, willingly, and you’re too blind to see it.
By Mark Levin
Our country has been locked down, and I think there are some lessons worth mulling over. Parents are being hauled off in handcuffs in front of their children because they took them to a park. A public park. I’ve covered some of these abuses in other columns. I’m guessing you know by now that while I do believe the virus is absolutely real, I also believe the reaction has been way overblown.
Corona worries?
Better safe than sorry? For whom? The 22 million people now out of work? The business owners that have lost or are losing a business because of what Doctors Fauci and Birx have urged? Honestly I have no idea why anyone would ever start a business now knowing it can be yanked away and your life’s work and savings down the drain at the whim of a government. Their employees that now may well face losing their homes and struggle with trying to support their families all the while the government is forcing farmers to dump milk, eggs and vegetables. I’m pretty sure the food banks could use them about now. Food like knowledge, is power. What will people do to feed their hungry children? Government is seizing power, no doubt. Some governors like the governor of South Dakota and Wyoming pretty much left their states open while others like the governor of Michigan took the power given by the federal government and then became a tin pot despot. What happened after that disturbs me even more. When people protested, she threatened them for speaking out by saying she might extend the lock down. Free speech not permitted. Along with freedom to assemble or to worship.
The following videos make several points, but the reason I’m putting them in are those listed above. This is going on all over the world. I have to tell you when I heard those German voices yelling “Ack-TUNG” and hauling people away I got nauseated. Beating people, using tear gas on them, explain to me how this keeps them safe? I mean, that’s what this is suppose to be about right? Saving lives from the Wuhan flu? Another friend of mine wrote this is response to something I had posted on facebook.
“When the State tells you it’s safe to go to Home Depot to buy a sponge but dangerous to go and buy a flower, it’s not about your health.
When the State shuts down millions of private businesses but doesn’t lay off a single government employee, it’s not about your health.
When the State bans dentists because it’s unsafe, but deems abortion visits are safe, it’s not about your health.
When the State prevents you from buying cucumber seeds because it’s dangerous, but allows in-person lottery ticket sales, it’s not about your health.
When the State tells you it’s dangerous to go golf alone, fish alone or be in a motorboat alone, but the Governor can get his stage make up done, and hair done for 5 TV appearances a week, it’s not about your health.
When the state puts you IN a jail cell for walking in a park with your child because it’s too dangerous but lets criminals OUT of jail cells for their health- It’s not about YOUR health!
When the state tells you it’s too dangerous to get treated by a doctor of chiropractic or physical therapy treatments yet deems a liquor store essential- It’s not about your health!
When the State lets you go to the grocery store or hardware store but is demanding mail-in voting, IT’S NOT ABOUT YOUR HEALTH.
WAKE UP PEOPLE — If you think this is all about your health you’re mistaken! Please open your eyes! Stop being lead like blind sheep.
I should probably mention this was originally one video, YouTube censored it and someone else put it up in three parts, so hopefully you can still see it.
And these protests to open the states back up are going on all over the country. Who decides the value of a life? I take death very seriously. When people get towards the end of life, one of the things one often does is to give an “Advance Directive” meaning they state what they consider to be an acceptable quality of life, and if something medically happens they can not do those things they do not want heroic measures done to save them. Quality of life counts. At what point do we begin to care about the 22 million that have been forced out of work due to flawed models designed by a man who has yet to get one right.
Wuhan Flu we will survive, but this government seizure of power? When has government ever handed back power once it’s been seized? Your rights are suspended. I keep hearing that line from the video. How much further will it go? Who knows. Just like the left are hypocrites about guns denying citizens the right to defend themselves and their families all the while having armed guards they are out of touch with the pain the lock down is causing. Yes, I know it’s a Trump ad, but it still sums it up really well.
And the new paradigm is set. Had a Democrat been president, I shudder because Democrats are communist now. Power and control, never enough. What will happen the next time there is a “crisis” be it in the fall or next year? I heard another great video from a politician named Paul Curtman who has written a couple of books Don’t Tread On Me and Don’t Tread On Me! The Constitution and State Soverneignty. Paul’s video was talking about the role of government. He said people have the misconception the role of government is to keep your safe. It is not, the proper role of government is to keep you free. And while you chew that over, I will give you the Partisans Song, because I honor those that resisted and fought against the tyranny.
וגם בעברית
In his most recent radio program Phantom Nation, host Sha’i ben-Tekoa talked about how some criticize and look down on the Jews in Germany who didn’t fight back. But he asked the question if you have a young man of 20, who has a wife and maybe a couple of kids what realistically could he have done when they heard that forceful knock on the door at midnight and opened it to find 5 nazis with guns at the ready?
The best answer I can give is to not let things get to that point. To recognize the signs, see people clearly, especially politicians and vote accordingly. We can still vote in this country perhaps. Some of the actions are familiar from the past, but is history going to repeat?
The Wuhan Flu madness continues. But I’m seeing additional deterioration of our society I think. You might want to grab a cup of coffee for this one.
We are in the middle days of Pesach, the festival we celebrate and re-live being taken out of slavery and bondage by the strong arm of G-d. We didn’t know the land we were going to live in, we didn’t know how we were going to get there and we had been living as slaves for a few hundred years so living as a free and just society was all new. Self-governance? What’s that? But we had G-d and his appointed leaders, so we had the courage and faith to leave Egypt מצרים . The word narrow is צרים see how similar they look? And if you put a Mem מ in front of it that means “from”. So I guess you could say we left “from narrows”, slavery.
Plagues, and seclusion, sounding familiar?
But what I am seeing that is totally new, to me at least, is the astonishing amount of fear and blatant attempts of people to seize power. The power-crazed Governor of Michigan Gretchen Whitmer has banned the sale of baby car seats, vegetable seeds, certain things in Home Depot are ok, others aren’t. Travel between residences is no longer allowed, so forget taking food to elderly neighbors or family that can’t get out. She has a whole host of other demands while the sale of pot and alcohol are still essential and fine. All at Queen Gretchen’s whim. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear ordered license plate numbers to be collected on christians who attended church in their cars, parked a distance apart and the service was over a loud speaker. Each would be getting a $500 fine, as would the pastor. Unbelievable. Oh wait, they are both Demoncrats, so I guess not.
I’m also increasingly disturbed by some of the messages I see on facebook. One friend posted a article that the Gov of Texas is considering reopening the state, and she asked for thoughts. Two people responded how foolish, and another it was a big mistake. Everyone just needed to stay home. Anyone that didn’t was selfish and wanted people to die. Another friend re-posted and excellent opinion piece about what this Wuhan Flu is doing to our liberty. Someone commented under it as a doctor he should know better about viruses. Huh, I think he does, but I wonder about her medical training /snark. Yet another friend shared a photo that a friend of hers had put on a page. It was a handwritten note someone had left on her Mother’s door. Apparently family had dropped off some food for the woman for Easter. The nasty-gram read something about no family, no visitors, no people were allowed due to the coronavirus quarantine orders, and that next time they would call the police. Wow. Well, some places make it very easy. I used to hear people say “Oh we would never had called the police and informed on the Jews during the holocaust”. Got news, there are those that would that are alive and well and still dialing. Yep, you too can easily be a socialist.
We can get into the why in a bit. Because “why” and “motives” matter.
Let’s look at the number of Wuhan Flu deaths, and how they are calculated and how they are presented. You like charts? I like charts especially when they are easy to understand and make a good points.
But according to comments I read, if we don’t stay shut down as a country and everyone stay sequestered in their homes we are selfish fools exposing the rest of the world to our death wish. I did see a interesting graphic on facebook, it read “Quarantine is when you lock sick people away. When you lock healthy people away it’s tyranny”.
Data indicates there no material differences in fatalities between the three countries leading the casual observer to question why is the US killing its economy?
The US continues to prevent nearly all commerce from occurring to combat the China coronavirus. Many other countries are following suit. But some countries like Sweden and Brazil are keeping their countries open for business.
Data shows that the fatalities related to the coronavirus in these countries are very similar to those in the US.
In fact there is a twitter thread #FilmYourHospital going. It’s people driving by their local hospitals showing empty parking lots, some with those tent cities outside for the overflow of sick people, they too are empty. Some of the people filming the empty tents were told they had to leave and weren’t allowed to film. There are stories of healthcare workers being sent home, laid off and told not to report to work, they are just “on-call”. Yep, in the midst of this healthcare crisis healthcare workers are going without hours, which means without pay.
I heard a guest on the Ben Shapiro show saying how if/when we ever had another pandemic again we needed to have one policy across the US, none of this patchwork stuff of each state doing what they want. That there needs to be one policy and the CDC needs to be in charge. I’m thinking “OH HELL NO”. But then I’d already been gathering sources for this column.
Then there is Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who was involved in the creation of Obamacare, who says this needs to go on another 18 months.
UNLESS there is a vaccine. Did you catch that? The MUST be a vaccine. Remember when I talked about the “why” of things matter? The motive matters. And here we go.
In concert with the ramp-up in death statistics, the government-steered vaccination industry has run an elaborate bureaucracy designed to hype vaccine use, as seen in a slide show presentation last April by Glen Nowak, the CDC’s spokesman for the National Immunization Program, to the American Medical Association. Here is the “Recipe that fosters influenza vaccine interest and demand,” in the truncated language that appears on his slides: “Medical experts and public health authorities [should] publicly (e.g. via media) state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes) – and urge influenza vaccination.” This “recipe,” the slide show indicated, would result in “A. Significant media interest and attention [and] B. Framing of the flu season in terms that motivate behaviour (e.g. as ‘very severe,’ ‘more severe than last or past years,’ ‘deadly’).” Other aspects of the CDC’s “Seven-Step Recipe for Generating Interest in, and Demand for, Flu (or any other) Vaccination” includes “Continued reports (e.g., from health officials and media) that influenza is causing severe illness and/or affecting lots of people – helping foster the perception that many people are susceptible to a bad case of influenza.” and “Visible/tangible examples of the seriousness of the illness (e.g., pictures of children, families of those affected coming forward) and people getting vaccinated (the first to motivate, the latter to reinforce).”
That is from 2004, the CDC has been at this for awhile. The whole thing is worth reading.
Flu results in “about 250,000 to 500,000 yearly deaths” worldwide, Wikipedia tells us. “The typical estimate is 36,000 [deaths] a year in the United States,” reports NBC, citing the Centers for Disease Control. “Somewhere between 4,000 and 8,000 Canadians a year die of influenza and its related complications, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada,” the Globe and Mail says, adding that “Those numbers are controversial because they are estimates.”
snippety snip snip
According to the National Vital Statistics System in the U.S., for example, annual flu deaths in 2010 amounted to just 500 per year — fewer than deaths from ulcers (2,977), hernias (1,832) and pregnancy and childbirth (825), and a far cry from the big killers such as heart disease (597,689) and cancers (574,743). The story is similar in Canada, where unlikely killers likewise dwarf Statistics Canada’s count of flu deaths.
Even that 500 figure for the U.S. could be too high, according to analyses in authoritative journals such as the American Journal of Public Health and the British Medical Journal. Only about 15-20 per cent of people who come down with flu-like symptoms have the influenza virus — the other 80-85 per cent actually caught rhinovirus or other germs that are indistinguishable from the true flu without laboratory tests, which are rarely done. In 2001, a year in which death certificates listed 257 Americans as having died of flu, only 18 were positively identified as true flus. The other 239 were simply assumed to be flus and most likely had few true flus among them.
So why?
The CDC’s decision to play up flu deaths dates back a decade, when it realized the public wasn’t following its advice on the flu vaccine. During the 2003 flu season “the manufacturers were telling us that they weren’t receiving a lot of orders for vaccine,”Dr. Glen Nowak, associate director for communications at CDC’s National Immunization Program, told National Public Radio. “It really did look like we needed to do something to encourage people to get a flu shot.”
The implication is this: when a new vaccine is invented then mass produced, it will not necessarily be mandatory, but everything else in your life, such as work, school, community, and sociality, will all become privileges granted by the state under the condition that you take the new vaccine.
Promising to eradicate Polio with $1.2 billion, Gates took control of India’s National Advisory Board (NAB) and mandated 50 polio vaccines (up from 5) to every child before age 5. Indian doctors blame the Gates campaign for a devastating vaccine-strain polio epidemic that paralyzed 496,000 children between 2000 and 2017. In 2017, the Indian Government dialed back Gates’ vaccine regimen and evicted Gates and his cronies from the NAB. Polio paralysis rates dropped precipitously. In 2017, the World Health Organization reluctantly admitted that the global polio explosion is predominantly vaccine strain, meaning it is coming from Gates’ Vaccine Program. The most frightening epidemics in Congo, the Philippines, and Afghanistan are all linked to Gates’ vaccines. By 2018, ¾ of global polio cases were from Gates’ vaccines.
In 2014, the #GatesFoundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by GSK and Merck, on 23,000 young girls in remote Indian provinces. Approximately 1,200 suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders. Seven died. Indian government investigations charged that Gates funded researchers committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying parents, forging consent forms, and refusing medical care to the injured girls. The case is now in the country’s Supreme Court.
In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded a trial of a GSK’s experimental malaria vaccine, killing 151 African infants and causing serious adverse effects including paralysis, seizure, and febrile convulsions to 1,048 of the 5,049 children.
During Gates 2002 MenAfriVac Campaign in Sub-Saharan Africa, Gates operatives forcibly vaccinated thousands of African children against meningitis. Between 50-500 children developed paralysis. South African newspapers complained, “We are guinea pigs for drug makers”
Nelson Mandela’s former Senior Economist, Professor Patrick Bond, describes Gates’ philantropic practices as “ruthless” and “immoral”.
In 2010, Gates committed $10 billion to the WHO promising to reduce population, in part, through new vaccines. A month later Gates told a Ted Talk that new vaccines “could reduce population”. In 2014, Kenya’s Catholic Doctors Association accused the WHO of chemically sterilizing millions of unwilling Kenyan women with a phony “tetanus” vaccine campaign.
Independent labs found the sterility formula in every vaccine tested.
After denying the charges, WHO finally admitted it had been developing the sterility vaccines for over a decade.
Similar accusations came from Tanzania, Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines.
A 2017 study (Morgensen et.Al.2017) showed that WHO’s popular DTP is killing more African than the disease it pretends to prevent. Vaccinated girls suffered 10x the death rate of unvaccinated children.
Gates and the WHO refused to recall the lethal vaccine which WHO forces upon millions of African children annually.
Some might even say his track record is criminal. Go back to the first link on Gates thinking vaccines are extremely important and look at the financial conflicts of interest. The stock he owns in pharmaceutical companies. Also interesting is
Perhaps a gold star? We can’t travel, work, see a doctor or shop without it?
But hey, Bill Gates has that covered too, no need for a gold star. That’s so 1940s. Nope, digital implants.
“Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it,” the Microsoft founder had speculated.
Snippty snip snip
However, as outlined in a December 2019 Scientific American article, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded Massachusetts Institute of Technology research that suggested embedding vaccine records “directly into the skin” of children: “Along with the vaccine, a child would be injected with a bit of dye that is invisible to the naked eye but easily seen with a special cell-phone filter, combined with an app that shines near-infrared light onto the skin. The dye would be expected to last up to five years, according to tests on pig and rat skin and human skin in a dish.”
Through his foundation, Gates has invested billions of dollars in vaccines.
Attorney General Bill Barr is skeptical of Gates’ idea to tag people with these mark-of-the-beast implants. He said he is concerned about “the tracking of people and so forth, generally, especially going forward over a long period of time.” Barr also said that he is “very concerned about the slippery slope in terms of continuing encroachments on personal liberty.”
However, Barr said he did feel like “appropriate, reasonable steps are fine.” This leaves the door open for some sort of government action in order to enforce vaccine compliance.
If you want to know even more about this, there is a doctor, Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai who is running for the Senate in Massachusetts and he has been weighing in on the Wuhan flu debacle. He’s a very bright man, 4 degrees from MIT. Here’s a youtube, he talks about Wuhan Flu, your immune system and the massive fraud being foisted upon us.
So, who or W.H.O. gets to decide what is reasonable and appropriate? The government? The panicked people on facebook, the crazed neighbors, the media, vaccine despot Gates? There are those that would clamor for a vaccine to be stuck in everything that moves right now. They have no idea of Gates record of “successful” vaccines. Remember, he wants to reduce the population. They would say the same things about being vaccinated as they do the lock down. If you don’t you’re selfish and want people to die. They will “demand” the government take action.
Look, I am not saying I’m against vaccines. That’s not what this is about. If you want to get a vaccination I’m all for it, you can take every vaccination out there. I won’t say a word. This is about forced vaccinations. And since some employers already do this I’m pretty sure this could go that route as well. With the added bit about governmental control and the vaccine despot’s lousy record added in. This is about being able to make free choices of what goes in your body, not what is forced in your body by the government or fear crazed people deceived by a willing media. I guess with all those people out of work due to the lock down, or those that will be looking for work because their business went under it will be easy. Potential employers will just say something along the lines of “I’m sorry, but governmental regulations state a certain percentage of our staff have to be vaccinated, so you must have the new Gates/Fauci vaccine for us to hire you”.
But we got scared
10 Pharaoh drew near, and the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold! the Egyptians were advancing after them. They were very frightened, and the children of Israel cried out to the Lord.
11 They said to Moses, Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us to die in the desert? What is this that you have done to us to take us out of Egypt?
12 Isn’t this the thing [about] which we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, Leave us alone, and we will serve the Egyptians, because we would rather serve the Egyptians than die in the desert
13 Moses said to the people, Don’t be afraid! Stand firm and see the Lord’s salvation that He will wreak for you today, for the way you have seen the Egyptians is [only] today, [but] you shall no longer continue to see them for eternity.
~~Exodus/Shemot 14:10-13
The opening of The Ten Commandments,
Leaving Egypt and slavery
I do not want to be one of those clamoring to go back into the slavery of governmental control over my life. Choose freedom, there is Moshe on the right, see him? He’s holding the reins of a camel for you, choose freedom.
I heard an interesting interview on the Mark Levin show a couple weeks ago on my way home from class. The interview involved Dr. Bandy X Lee.
Bandy Xenobia Lee (born 1970) is an American psychiatrist with Yale University and a specialist in violence prevention programs in prisons and in the community who initiated reforms at New York’s Rikers Island prison. Her scholarly work includes the writing of a comprehensive textbook on violence. In 2017 she organized a conference on the mental health of Donald Trump at Yale and was the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a book of essays that has contributed to the debate about Trump’s mental stability and within the psychiatric profession in the United States about the interpretation of the Goldwater rule.
Judith Lewis Herman (born 1942) is an American psychiatrist, researcher, teacher, and author who has focused on the understanding and treatment of incest and traumatic stress.
Herman is Professor of clinical psychiatry at Harvard University Medical School and Director of Training at the Victims of Violence Program in the Department of Psychiatry at the Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a founding member of the Women’s Mental Health Collective.
She was the recipient of the 1996 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and the 2000 Woman in Science Award from the American Medical Women’s Association. In 2003 she was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
How distinguished! But it seems these two distinguished doctors are afraid. There is a huge problem. They along with 2535 or 36 of their fellow psychiatrists realized the imminent danger our country is facing because we elected a seriously unstable Republican as President.
So Mark’s interview begins with asking Bandy about her political leanings. Is she a Demoncrat? She denies she is, though she did vote for Hillary. Is she a liberal? Yes, and a conservative. Has she ever voted for a Republican? Yes. Who? She’d rather not say. Then it really starts to get interesting. In what ways is she a conservative? She is a devout Christian, she believes in the founding principles of this nation, she’s a great patriot if you will, says she. By later in the interview I’m thinking she had to be a member of Jeremiah Wright’s church. Mark inquires if she believes in private property rights. Well, to an extent, she feels private property rights have gone too far. WTHeck? Does she believe in limited federal government? This made her nervous. Why was he asking her such things? She declares first and foremost she is a medical professional! She is not a very political person! She declares she has no conflicts of interest. Do you believe all the Bill of Rights? Ummmmm. Do you believe in the Second Amendment?
“Ummmmm…..I actually don’t really know the exact ummmm, meanings of the Bill of Rights. What I studied was enlightenment literature.”
So she and 36 other “mental health experts” have written this book. As many as thirty-six out of the, as she admits, hundreds of thousands of other mental health experts in this country, have written a book on the dangerous mind of President Trump.
Where did she get her information? Had she ever met the President? No. Had she ever spoken to the President? No. Did she watch TV, read newspapers, listen to the radio? No, she did a “fairly intimate analysis of him due to the information that was on him in the Mueller Report.” She said, well, its observations from outside the President’s head. As Mark points out, her book was written before the Mueller report came out. She says the alarm for herself started in early 2016. She was triggered by the interaction between the Presidential candidate DJT and his rally attendees. She said this is real time interaction, and response in real time, as recorded of course. She was disturbed by the things the Candidate said and that people were applauding and cheering. Mark points out she did no scientific diagnosis, as that’s not possible from a distance. She counters that is not true, she brought her scientific knowledge and psychiatric training as well as her experience in public health. So she was quite aware of what these signs represented, and they have born out to be true with time. A danger she says. That’s why it’s ok she wrote this book without a diagnosis. Mark points out you can’t have a diagnosis from afar. She says “that’s not true either”. With certain conditions, a diagnosis is more accurate from a distance, without a personal interview. And this is mainstream thought. Today diagnosis is based on no interaction, just on observing the person. But she insists she never diagnosed, she is only interested in the public health effects of DJT. Then she insists she can’t diagnose from afar. And she doesn’t want to, where upon Mark tells her the book is filled with speculation on such things. Mark asks if she analyzed Hillary Clinton? She insists dangerousness is about the situation, not the person. Huh? Ok, is she dangerous?
“Hillary Clinton never raised alarms for me”.
I guess she could do a internet search on the Clinton body count. She insists it’s not about political party, it’s about standards. Mark reiterates he’s read her book. On what page are the standards listed? They aren’t. He further points out, she only watched TV. She never actually went to any of his rallies, never talked to any of his people, never talked to any of his supporters.
Why does this outrage me so? Red Flag laws. Not only can a person accuse you without evidence it appears the medical profession, or at least the mental health profession (some of whom wanted nothing to do with Bandy or this book) are willing to make judgments affecting your property, your rights and your life based on some undocumented, unspecified standards. Will these be the same “professionals” helping to write legislation in an advisory capacity? Now I understand why Professor Quack thinks personal property rights have gone too far. Not that she can tell you about the Bill of Rights.
If you want to hear the whole interview, it’s available here
If you want the whole show, and the part about “medicare for all” is pretty darn interesting, as is the “wealth tax”, you can get that here.
The news today is full of the latest poll alleging massive support for an “assault weapon” ban, universal preemptively-prove-your-innocence checks, and more human/civil rights violations. The numbers claimed were so outrageous I was sure it would prove to be another Quinnipiac poll.
But not this this time; it was conducted by Langer Research Associates, an outfit of whom I’ve never heard before.
I had some time to kill, so I took a look at the poll data. This was a “nationwide” telephone survey of 1,003 people, supposedly randomly dialed. There is no further information on methodology. But given the questions they asked, no methodology was going to save them.
16. Would you support or oppose a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons?
They failed to define “assault weapon,” a term with different meanings in a few jurisdictions and none in most. Therefore the question has zero meaning, or a wildly variable meaning in the mind of each individual respondent.
Did they mean an “assault weapon” as defined by the 1994 federal law? A Massachusetts assault weapon whose definition was based on the ’94 federal law until it was bureaucratically expanded? The NY definition which encompasses both more and less? The CA definition which covers even more, while missing things covered by the others? Respondents were left to their own imagination.
17. Would you support or oppose [ITEM]?
a. requiring background checks on all potential gun buyers, including private sales and gun shows
All retail sales require background checks already. It’s already unlawful to knowingly transfer a firearm to a prohibited person. The question should mention costs, too. It should note that nearly all firearms used in crimes are obtained unlawfully, bypassing any required checks.
b. a nationwide ban on high capacity ammunition clips, meaning those containing more than 10 bullets
“Clips” are devices used to load magazines, and hold cartridges, not just bullets. The most common clips already hold 10 or fewer cartridges.
c. a law allowing the police to take guns away from people who have been found by a judge to be a danger to themselves or others
Such laws already exist. Their summary refers to “red flag” laws, so for the question to have meaning, they must specify that the order would be ex parte and the subject would not have the chance to speak in his defense and that the accuser need provide no evidence (if there were evidence, a regular arrest warrant could be issued).
d. a mandatory buy back program in which the federal government would require assault weapon owners to turn in those weapons in exchange for payment
Again, “assault weapon” must be defined, and the payment specified. For instance, New Zealand’s new ban specifies a maximum payment below market value, which may be part of why compliance is running below 10% (and dropping with each “buyback” event).
18. Who do you trust more to handle gun laws in this country – (Trump) or (the Democrats in Congress)?
That question is so biased that, if I had been polled, I would have hung up on the idiots. It presupposes that more gun laws are desirable. It frames the debate as an individual vs. a Dem majority. (Incidentally, Trump has implemented more new firearm restrictions in this year, than the Democrats have managed in the past twelve years.)
19. How confident are you that [ITEM] would reduce mass shootings in this country – very confident, somewhat confident, not so confident or not confident at all?
You failed to define “mass shooting.” The GVA definition, which includes people not shot? The CRS/FBI definition which excludes gangbangers shooting it out over turf and revenge? Meaningless question.
21. Do you or does anyone in your house own a gun, or not?
I’ve always found that question amusing. Imagine answering your own phone one day and hearing, “Hi! I’m a stranger randomly dialing numbers, so I don’t really know where you live. Will you tell me if you have valuable merchandise that’s easily stolen?”
It gets even better when you toss that question in with the suggestion of confiscation.
All in all, the clowns didn’t find “support” for anything specific. They conducted a verbal Rorschach test of “support” for whatever was in the mind of each individual. They might as well have asked, “Do you support or oppose color?” And left it to each person to guess if they meant color vs. B&W imagery, people of color, or red vs. blue.
I’d like to see more detail on the methodology. Did they ask the questions of whomever answered the phone, or ask for youngest likely voter? Someone else? What regions did they poll, and how did they weight responses? It doesn’t much matter, given the questions, but I’d like to further ridicule them.
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The short form is that Kivisto et al claimed to have found a definite relationship of more firearms ownership = more domestic firearms homicides. But, somehow, not nondomestic homicides.
First, I had an issue with their “validated proxy” for firearms ownership, and wondered just what that is.
Thus, a recently developed proxy measure of firearm ownership that integrates the FS/S ratio with per capita state hunting license data (firearm ownership % = (0.62 × FS/S) + (0.88 × per capita hunting licenses) − 4.48)8 was used.
They created a model (ding!) of gun ownership rates by mathematically manipulating suicide and hunting numbers.
“FS” is suicide by firearm, and “S” is total suicides. Then they used that to create a model by multiply it by a fudge factor of 0.62. (ding!)
Moving on to the “hunting license” part of the equation; once upon a time, I sold “hunting licenses,” so I see a potential problem there. Depending on the state, there are a lot of “hunting licenses.”
Firearm hunting
Non-firearm muzzleloader hunting
Non-firearm archery hunting
Combination hunting and fishing
I know I sold combo licenses to people who said they didn’t have a gun, but wanted to keep their future options open. I sold muzzleloader licenses to people who said they couldn’t own a firearm. Just saying “hunting license” means squat. And I can’t find anything in the paper or supplemental data to indicate they used only some form of firearm-specific hunting license.
For that matter, I sold hunting licenses to adults and minors who didn’t own a firearm, but would be borrowing one.
Then there are resident and non-resident licenses. Did they break that out? They don’t say.
So they created another model (ding!) by using an undefined number of licenses, which may or may not involve firearms and multiply that by yet another fudge factor.
So firearms ownership rate equals a proxy based on fudge-factored value plus fudge-factored value.
I think there may be just a little uncertainty in that.
Moving on, I had wondered how they got domestic firearms homicide numbers from the UCR. They didn’t.
From Table 10 theycan get victim/perp relationship numbers, but not weapon type. Table 9 breaks murders down by weapon.
So they made a model (ding!) of “domestic firearms homicides” by guesstimating that those followed the same weapon percentage as all murders.
But… the model is incomplete because most states don’t report victim/perp relationship. So they created another fudge-factor and applied that to all states. A model based on a model. (ding! ding! We got a two-fer!)
No uncertainty there at all; no, sirree.
Let put all this plainly in case you lost track. They compared…
Firearms ownership (fudged suicide rates plus fudged license numbesr that may not have anything to do with guns)
Domestic firearms homicide (a fudged estimate of two-thirds of the “data” based on an estimate of total in a few states)
And got numbers precise to three decimal places, with overlapping confidence intervals (domestic and non-domestic homicides) and determined a definite relation of domestic to ownership, but not non-domestic to ownership.
Again, definitely different even though CI overlaps. The “difference” is lost in the statistical noise.
Modified models of modified models compared to modified models of modified models.
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Added: And I finally found it. Looks like I’ll be going over it today.
The paper purports to find a definite link between domestic firearms homicide and firearms ownership. However, without seeing the whole paper and supplemental material, I’m inclined to doubt this link.
Let’s start with the results.
State-level firearm ownership was uniquely associated with domestic (incidence rate ratio=1.013, 95% CI=1.008, 1.018) but not nondomestic (incidence rate ratio=1.002, 95% CI=0.996, 1.008) firearm homicide rates, and this pattern held for both male and female victims.
When you have to run your ratio out to three decimal places, I begin to wonder, unless you’re modeling statistical quantum interactions between elementary particles. Shouldn’t need to be done with a few thousand documented events. When your 95% confidence intervals overlap, I really wonder if the “difference” is merely statistical noise.
But, again without seeing the data, I see more problems in the methods sections
Firearm ownership was examined using a validated proxy measure and homicide rates came from the Supplemental Homicide Reports of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports.
What “validated proxy measure” of firearms ownership? I’ve recently seen both the General Social Survey and YouGov.com used. Other estimates range from 45,000,000 gun owners to — seen this past Monday morning — 124,000,000. CBS actually estimated ownership by registered NFA items, not quite comprehending that’s not a proxy for states that don’t allow NFA items to be possessed.
You think a range like that might throw off incidence ratios a bit?
The next problem is that “homicide rates came from the Supplemental Homicide Reports” part. You might get the impression they got domestic firearms homicide numbers from the UCR. I don’t think so.
I’ve never been able to find a UCR table that broke that out. So what I think they did was “estimate” what percentage of firearms homicides (which are reported) were “domestic.” That’s another element of uncertainty.
Frankly, if one could reliably estimate firearms ownership, I would expect more domestic and nondomestic firearms deaths with more ownership, for much the same reason that a place with more cars per capita is likely to see more car crashes. But I can’t figure out what “data” they used to prove it.
This has the feel of just another anti-rights hit piece. But if Kivisto can show they used hard data and models somewhat more accurate than a kindergartener’s Play-Do sculpture, I’ll apologize.
If someone really wants to compare gun ownership to domestic firearms incidents, I’ll explain how to go about it.
Don’t make up estimates based on anonymous phone surveys.* Select just states with handgun registration (long guns are a small enough percentage of murder weapons to disregard for this). That ignores unlawful possession, but it’s something.
In those states, go to the state courts for domestic violence conviction records, and sort for those involving firearms. You want both fatal and nonfatal. Using fatal alone doesn’t tell you how often they happen, and incidents could be masked by good medical care or poor aim. You want convictions to weed out good self-defense cases, because some otherwise helpless woman eliminating a thuggish “boyfriend” who thinks trying to kill her is justifiable pest control and a good thing.
Graph each state, incidents on the X axis, ownership on the Y.
If you really want to drill down into the data, look at the convictions and see how often the weapons were lawfully possessed (i.e.- were unlawful possession charges present). (I’ll give you a hint: over 90% of crime guns used — per inmate surveys for decades — were unlawfully possessed.)
Now you can compare lawful firearms possession to domestic firearms homicides.
But wait, as Ron Popeil would say, there’s more.
Look up nonfirearm domestic homicides for those states, and compare that to ownership. Now you’ll see whether, as some suggest, people without guns simply kill with something else. Or maybe they just declare, “Aw, heck; I don’t have a gun. Guess I won’t do anything about you sassing me. Ain’t like I could beatcha to death with a skillet.”
* Anonymous phone surveys on ownership of politically incorrect tools are unreliable. Those disinclined to tell faceless pollsters what easily stolen goods they have often don’t answer the phone. Or they lie. After all, was that really the University of Chicago doing the GSS by wardialing pseudorandom phone numbers? The ATF with a list of potential investigatees? Or merely a burglar pre-casing the neighborhood? Caller ID is so easily spoofed.
Even if you got a gun ownership question into the oh-so-reliable American Community Survey… Let me tell you about the guy who answered those snoopy questions…
By filling it out as his D&D player character. Castel with suites, ballroom, feasting hall, jakes, stables; you get the idea. People in the home? Domestic retainers and soldiers. Commute time? Those quests can range for hundreds of miles.
Or all the crazy cat people listing their pets as children.
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A Childrens National doctor claims to have found that universal background checks reduce child firearms deaths by a whopping 35%. That’s rather astonishing.
State Gun Laws and Pediatric Firearm-Related Mortality
The presence of these laws was associated with a >35% lower rate of firearm-related mortality, even after adjustment for socioeconomic factors and gun ownership.
I was going to do an all-out analysis of this paper, since just from the press release I knew it had problems (cross-sectional analysis, without longitudinal; 18-21yo “children”), but this persuaded me to not waste that much time.
These data were used to select firearm-related deaths per year for those aged ≤21 years by state, except in states with <10 annual firearm-related deaths where the counts were suppressed.
Allow me to summarize: We compared death rates in states with gun control laws to state without, and found those states with the laws had fewer deaths once we tossed out the low death/no-law states.
You see, we can look up the states with the laws in question and see that their numbers of deaths exceeded the threshold for inclusion. Therefore, it had to be states without those laws that they tossed.
When I thought I was going to write all this up, I took a look at their supplemental information. Look at Table 5.
They confused a firearm owner identification card requirement for actual background checks on transactions.
Table 6, and even the inclusion of a microstamping/ballistic fingerprinting law, was simply pointless. Maryland and New York gave up fingerprinting because it never worked (pro-tip: the average “time to crime” for a firearm is over ten years, by which time the rifling and firing pin have been changed by a decade of wear or replacement, so it’s useless). California’s microstamping law is even more pointless because no commercial gun has it (and would be subject to the same wear).
So, starting with bad data, and excluding data that would invalidate their thesis, they did a cross-sectional comparison only, with no longitudinal analysis to find an effect of implementation of background check laws on in-state trends. A UC Davis study found no effect on homicide or suicide rates in the ten years after California’s passage of a universal background check law. More recently, California has seen an increase in firearms homicides.
The firearm homicide rate, which adjusts for population changes, increased by 15 percent from 2014 to 2016.
I can only speculate why they excluded 2016 and 2017, for which WISQARS data are available. Particularly since those years saw a 17.25% increase in 0-21yo firearms deaths over the 2011-2015.
And even so, a 35% decrease in fatalities seems odd, since approximately 96% of guns used in crimes were obtained through theft or trafficking, bypassing background checks; and at least 75% of murderers were prohibited persons due to felony convictions (60% alone), misdemeanor domestic violence convictions, rulings of mental illness, or court orders. Add in drug users (like this guy) and the percentage is even higher.
Just another BS paper with a pre-set agenda, lacking in anything resembling science.
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They seem to be referencing a recent Quinnipiac poll. We’re going to take a closer look.
48. Do you support or oppose stricter gun laws in the United States?
Support 61%
Oppose 34%
DK/NA 5%
As usual, I’ll say that means little, because the general population (from personal observations and conversations) knows little about existing laws. That’s why we see legislators entering bills to make domestic violence offenders prohibited persons, and to make it illegal to manufacture and undetectable guns… even though both have been the law for decades.
But accepting those numbers for the moment, drill down to the specifics.
49. Do you support or oppose requiring background checks for all gun buyers?
Support 94%
Oppose 4%
DK/NA 2%
More than a third of the population opposes stricter “gun laws” but want universal background checks?
50. Do you support or oppose requiring individuals to obtain a license before being able to purchase a gun?
Support 77%
Oppose 19%
DK/NA 4%
More than a third of the population opposes stricter “gun laws” but want licensing?
51. Do you support or oppose a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons?
Support 63%
Oppose 33%
DK/NA 4%
Ah ha! numbers that roughly match at last. But even less meaningful than question 48. What’s an “assault weapon”? No two jurisdictions that have such a thing define it the same way. How many people who “support” a ban think they’re talking about AK-47s and M-16s? How many realize common AWB proposals would ban their hunting rifle?
Setting aside the silly contradictions of alleged responses to those questions, let’s see how they went about asking folks. And where.
The overall adult sample is weighted to recent Census data using a sample balancing procedure to match the demographic makeup of the population by region, gender, age, education and race.
Weighted by region. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, done correctly. But… region? Not state? What are the “regions”?
https://poll.qu.edu/regional-definitions/
Regional Definitions
California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York City, New York State, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin.
15 “regions,” representing just 14 states. New York City gets equal billing. All the selection is biased towards Democrat holdings, don’t you think?
Considering the population densities, they’ve selected regions guaranteed to provide a Democrat bias’ A huge swathe of the country doesn’t get polled at all.
Ever.
The methodology told what states they used for this poll, but I got curious as to how extensive the problem might be. Searching their site for other states, I found their search tool.
16 states total. That’s it. Biased toward Dem and swing states. Searching for Georgia polls (all) for “gun control” yields…
Zilch. They don’t survey Georgia on the topic. Georgia, where roughly 1 in eight adults has a concealed carry license, and there’s at least a shotgun in damned near every home.
If any other state is there, I can’t find it.
I now understand why Quinnipiac polls have always been so far twisted to the Left.
While a more blatant way of biasing a poll, it’s far from the only technique. Several pollsters tried to get the youngest — and more likely to be liberal and ill-informed — potential voters.
“For the landline sample, interviewers requested to speak with the youngest male member of the household who is at least 18 years of age; if there was no male in the household, interviewers requested the youngest female.”
If you want to survey people to see what new laws they want, do it this way.
Quinnipiac’s — and those other offenders’ — technique are best suited to obscuring the truth, not finding it.
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Locking Up Guns Could Reduce Teen And Childhood Firearm Deaths By A Third
Most US households with children do not safely store firearms in the way the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends: locked up and unloaded. If parents simply locked up all their guns, then up to a third of gun suicides and accidental deaths among children and teens could be avoided, researchers estimate in a new study.
This modeling study using Monte Carlo simulation estimated that 6% to 32% of youth firearm deaths (by suicide and unintentional firearm injury) could be prevented, depending on the probability that an intervention motivates adults who currently do not lock all household firearms to instead lock all guns in their home.
So the researchers actually came up with an oddly wide range of 6% to 32% (which is less than a third). So far, so good. That would be nice to know. How did they do that?
DESIGN, SETTING, and PARTICIPANTS: A modeling study using Monte Carlo simulation of youth firearm suicide and unintentional firearm mortality in 2015. A simulated US national sample of firearm-owning households where youth reside was derived using nationally representative rates of firearm ownership and storage and population data from the US Census to test a hypothetical intervention, safe storage of firearms in the home, on youth accidental death and suicide.
This wasn’t even a dubious “synthetic control” (make up imaginary states by selectively combining real states) study. Simulation. They didn’t use real data. They made it up. Then they applied “hypothetical intervention” to their imaginary data.
For the record, you can stop right there. The “study” is meaningless. But the fact that their “youth” includes 18 and 19 year old adults would have told you that anyway.
I also found it amusing that they created their imaginary country using firearms numbers and storage methods gathered in the National Firearms survey, in which 45% of selectees declined to participate, leaving only those stupid enough to tell strangers how many guns they have and how they’re stored, if even if they are locked up.
Then there is this:
we assumed that all deaths resulted from firearms kept in homes where youth resided.
Invalid assumption, which even the most cursory web search could have told them. Even The Trace admits that 1 in 5 youth suicides are committed with guns not kept in the person’s home.
I could go about things like them doing a study about 0-19 year olds but using data from studies on 0-17, or that gun-owning adults (18, 19) need only unlock their safely stored gun and do the deed. Instead, let me explain how they could have come to meaningful conclusions.
At least a dozen states have so-called “safe storage” laws. For each state, graph the unintentional firearms death rate per 100,000 for people 0-17, for the period of 1999 to 2017 (years chosen because their readily available in WISQARS).
Then graph the firearms suicide rates for the same group and period.
Now identify the point in time when the safe storage law went into effect in each state.
Note the trend. Did the rate increase or decrease abruptly? Did the pre-law trend simply continue? Are there other discontinuities in the trend at other points in time which you can correlate to some known event (such as a sudden increase during a period of high unemployment)?
Compare the trends of the states. Did each state experience the same trend (more likely to be a correlation with the storage law), or do the differ significantly?
We have 30-something states without “safe storage” laws. Pick a dozen of those, preferably states with otherwise similar demographics as one of the “safe” states; the idea being to minimize the effect of non-safe storage factors.
Graph the same data for the same period, and analyze for the same trends.
How do the “unsafe” trends compare to the “safe” trends?
Now you have data to support a real conclusion.
But wait! There’s more.
Run another set of state by state graphs; this time for number and rate of firearms-related murders. We want to see if locking up one’s security had any negative effects. Saving one kid at the expense of 2-3 murder victims is expensive.
If you really want to be comprehensive, graph home burglaries and violent crime rates for the same period. Did locking up security embolden burglars and rapists?
But real data might not give you the results you want.
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Experiences living in California’s Bay Area, as a public high school teacher later for more than two decades in the Midwest, and now witnessing what is transpiring in the body politc convinces me the Left will stoop to any fabrication, dirty trick, smear, and hypocritical double standard to advance their agenda regardless of who is destroyed. Their strategy requires identifying certain groups to be targeted and demonized. Nothing unifies people like a bogeyman. Trashed and bashed by pop-culture for years, Christians have long served as a Leftist fave. They afford ready-made props useful in riling up the ignorant, the superstitious and conspiracy addled, bitter middle-aged feminists, malcontents perpetually angry and bitter about their lives, radical nihilists, anyone with an axe to grind, and those who despise G-d’s natural order galvanizing them in support of various faux crusades. All too often these intellectual lumpen have no idea they are pawns advancing a greater political cause and destined not to sup at victory’s banquet table. Now Police officers have become the current sacrificial lamb offered up to the eye of the hoi polloi storm.
Unlike war, wherein soldiers typically face death only on the battlefield, men and women donning the uniform of a police officer step onto the battlefield every day they go to work. The enemy doesn’t wear uniforms and they have access to weapons, vehicles, supplies, and technology. They live in plain sight, undetected, on the battlefield be it urban, suburban or rural and always outnumber the good guys. Police officers don’t fight enemies in a foreign land but here, at home. Enemy soldiers can locate their residences attacking them and their families where they live, a la Mexico. Unlike portrayals on the silver screen, most work in single officer squad cars. Backup may be minutes or hours away or nonexistent. Instead of facing the enemy as part of a unit, they typically face the enemy alone. Instead of decompressing back at base camp with fellow soldiers before rotating back to the U.S., police officers go home to families who can’t possibly understand the distant gaze in the eyes of men and women who see and face too much death and suffering. Police officers can only engage the enemy after he has fired on them first. When executing search and arrest warrants on known violent murderers, officers can only use deadly force if they are first attacked by the enemy. The level of stress they face is manifested through unusually high rates of depression, alcohol abuse, divorce, and suicide. Citizenry seemed unconcerned with the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of hardened violent criminals lose on the streets and millions more in prison. If united, they would form an unstoppable army of rage, murder, rape, and destruction. This is why police officers are called the “Thin Blue Line,” a tiny army standing between humanity and the most blood-thirsty murderous army ever assembled. Who has their back? Lieutenants and captains whose only interest is climbing the promotional ladder? Police Chiefs who view their job as a public relations experience ready and willing to throw anyone under the bus who threatens their reputation or political aspirations? Or citizens who don’t want to see cops in their rear view mirrors when speeding but are furious they aren’t guarding their homes 24/7 from burglars? Although putting their lives on the line to protect them, the liberal Jihad has singled out police officers as props to promote their political agenda. This they do by promoting a false narrative that cops are the point of the white man’s spear in a war of genocide against the black race.
An agenda takes shape when one recognizes for Black Lives Matter (BLM) and their Leftist allies, the only blacks who “qualify” as victims of shootings are those killed by cops or whites. The enormously larger number of black homicide victims in “Chiraq” (gang slang for Chicago), 677 from January to March (2016) alone, consisted of black on black murder but BLM, the New Black Panthers, and the white liberal media refuse to recognize or address who is doing the killing.1 Over its Fourth of July, Chicago experienced 11 people gunned down and another 50 wounded in one weekend. Many of the black children were what Millennials refer to as “collateral damage.” BLM’s website declares it’s working to create a world where blacks are no longer targeted for “demise” by whites and the police but, they make no mention of the epidemic of black on black violent crime and the blacks who have targeted each other for demise. Memphis, Tennessee, for example, is so bad that “98 percent of Tennessee’s other communities have a lower crime rate. In 2015, 74.5 percent of Memphis’ homicide victims were black and 68.3 percent were under the age of thirty-five” along with 435 children who were “shot at.” What have liberals, including the New York Times and BLM, said about the crisis in Memphis? Nothing. Not even a word that, in 2015, all 145 black murder victims were killed by other blacks.2
The New York Times, president Obama, and other liberals blamed the shooting of Michael Brown, (Ferguson, Missouri), on the racism of the city’s mostly white police force signaling to protestors they should express themselves which they did through looting, rioting, and assaults.3 As the size and threat of the roiling violent mob mushroomed out of control in Ferguson, the mayor pleaded with Missouri Governor, liberal Democrat Jay Nixon, to send the State Police and National (sic) Guard. But Nixon fiddled while this proverbial Rome burned.4 BLM, Obama, and the Liberal Media used Michael Brown to “prove” racism was endemic to white police officers but where were they and the New York Times when 9-year old Jamyla Brown was shot doing homework in her Ferguson, Missouri home? There were protests but they were in nearby St. Louis following the police shooting of eighteen year-old Mansur Ball-Bey during a drug raid (19 August 2015). The gun Bey pulled on police was stolen and officers retrieved 3 more guns and a quantity of crack cocaine in his possession. Demonstrators, the blind, the gullible, shrieking moms, and those seething with rage and racial hatred pushed the notion of police as the tip of the white race’s war of extinction against the black race. Soon rocks, bricks, and bottles filled the air, cars were set fire, buildings trashed, looted, and burned, and police, trying to save lives and restore order, were assaulted as well.5 In each riot, Ferguson and St. Louis, (and later, Baltimore) the police were prevented by government officials (liberal Democrats) from doing their job. White residents caught at the epicenter of these riots and found themselves targeted for assault by virtue of their skin color, and dialed 911, were told they were on their own. And yet the liberal media refused to call this violent savagery a riot instead employing the gonadophobic politically correct term “unrest.”6 I was a public high school teacher at the time and a liberal teacher (but, I repeat myself) chastised me for using the terms “riot” and “looters,” because they are “racist.” I asked, if he and other liberals automatically assumed “riot” and “looter” applied to blacks, who was being racist? And, if many if not most rioters and looters turn out to be one race or another, what benefit is there in lying about this? He said it didn’t matter. Those terms were forbidden. Does not this craven supine approach to addressing violent crime by the Left signal to criminals that, whatever they do, theft, burglary, rape, and violent rampages, it will be rationalized away and excused as long as committed by minorities? What justice then is promised to victims? Why does it seem as if the political leaders and media personalities most hair-pulling furious about racism in America are also the most lily white? Caucasians so white they’d disappear if they fell into a snowbank? These are the liberal whites whose income precludes contact with people of a darker hue unless staying in a hotel or ordering a meal. Isn’t that called “projection?”
Under no circumstances can Liberals admit the truth about race and crime. To do so would undermine what they are teaching America’s young in public schools, reinforced through their party propaganda organs, the liberal media, that blacks are numinous victims and whites, perennial oppressors. If white children grow up guilt ridden enough to accept this view, they will vote to purge their shame by supporting the Left’s political and social remedies…socialism and the end of individual liberty in America. Whipping up racial conflict advances the Left’s agenda. For example, the liberal New York Times trumpeted the ‘police war on blacks’ narrative declaring “the killing of young black men by police is a common feature of African-American life and a source of dread for black parents from coast to coast.” The Times also published a statistic from a 2014 study claiming “Black males are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by police than are young white males.” This is a lie. Killing of blacks by police is “rare” but black on black murder is commonplace. Even the Washington Post, marching orders for liberals, conceded of the 258 blacks shot and killed by police in 2015, most were committing serious assaults against the officer! In 2014, 6,095 blacks were victims of homicide, almost all killed by other blacks. Even if police shootings were eliminated, the impact on this statistic would be negligible. In reality, blacks “are responsible for a death rate ten times that of whites in urban areas.” Young black men commit homicides at a rate nearly ten times that of whites and Hispanics, combined. This “astronomically high homicide commission rate means that police officers are going to be sent to fight crime disproportionately in black neighborhoods, where they will more likely encounter armed shooting suspects.” And they will be shooting at the cops.7
Does it not make sense? Most crime, especially violent crime, occurs in black not Asian neighborhoods so, where should meager police resources be directed? To keep an eye on Japanese people? Armed “exchanges” between bad guys and cops will most often occur in high-crime neighborhoods, which means black neighborhoods because that’s where the armed bad guys live and “work.” In the study cited for its hit-piece, The New York Times’ “study” ignored this reality and that the study actually revealed 62 percent of those shot by police “were resisting arrest or assaulting a police officer” as was Michael Brown. Yet the New York Times insisted in claiming “many police officers see black males as expendable figures on the urban landscape, not quite human beings.”8 Perhaps blinded by a political bias that oozes from its pages, the Times has it backward. The cops are trying to halt the epidemic of violence in black neighborhoods. It’s the thugs and hoodlums, gunning down each other, moms, dads, and their kids who view each other as expendable.
Chicago’s nightmare of young black males gunning down each other has been visited upon other cities. Cleveland, Ohio, is a majority black city in which “more than ninety-one percent of the other communities have a lower crime rate than Cleveland.” Oakland, California, ranked by Forbes as the 3rd most dangerous city in America, is majority-black and 99 percent of other cities in the state have lower violent crime rates. Baltimore, my old stomping ground, is also majority-black and has set records for homicides the past several years. Like other black majority cities, its Mayor, Chief of Police, City Council, and Board of Education are black yet the “Black Press,” and the National Association of Black Journalists racializes each shooting between black males and white cops. Even violent black criminals, who prey on their communities, are portrayed as victims. These hyper-racial stories generate “high web traffic which translates into job security” for black journalists. But black on black violence generates little interest in the black community including social media. Perhaps because it was struggling financially, Ebony, a black magazine, commenced a “Save Our Boys’ campaign as if blacks are being slaughtered.” Apparently blacks comprise Twitter’s largest demographic and they employ hash-tags “to make black topics go viral” creating in the process “martyrs of the movement and construct racial grievances.” Through Black Twitter, activists can quickly mobilize protests, backlashes, boycotts, and flash mobs. Movie producer Spike Lee used it to publish what he thought was George Zimmerman’s (Trayvon Martin case) address. It wasn’t and the people living there were under grave threat. Yet none of the outrage in the black community, legitimate or manufactured, address the problem that less than six-percent of America’s population, who are black, commit most of its murders and its victims are black.9
In order to indoctrinate, mold, and shape future voters to accept their vision of a world in which the will of the individual must be bent to the volition of the state, the Left must instill guilt for all racial crimes, past and present, into white children. These children, as young adults, must make restitution for the sins of the white race against all peoples of color by supporting the Left’s massive socialist agenda. They must look the other way with respect to black crime, blame victims not the bad guys, and not criticize the hate fest leading to the ambush and murder of the very police officers protecting their young liberal upper middleclass white lives.
11 Taleeb Starkes, Black Lies Matter: Why Lies Matter to the Race Grievance Industry (North Charleston, South Carolina, Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016), 52-57.
