The Virginian

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Ann Coulter on those Immigrant crime studies

Ann Coulter: Every Pro-Immigration Claim is a Lie

In the wake of Kate Steinle's murder at the hands of an illegal immigrant, mass immigration advocates have begun a campaign of lies in defense of their cheap labor. "Studies show," they say, that immigrants commit LESS crime than the native population.

Inasmuch as the vast majority of post-1970 immigrants -- legal immigrants -- are poor, non-white and come from countries with far worse crime rates than our own, that's at least counterintuitive.

The main evidence cited in support of the claim that immigrants commit less crime than Americans is a moronic point about cities with a lot of immigrants seeming to have low crime rates. Check and mate, Mr. Trump! ...

Reason magazine boasts, for example, that El Paso, Texas, has a large Hispanic population and yet El Paso "is among the safest big cities in America."

In fact, however, El Paso's "safe city" ranking is based on an outdated FBI crime index that includes only eight crime categories, excluding such crimes as drunk driving, narcotics offenses and weapons violations. When the FBI's more complete crime index is used, El Paso has a higher crime rate than the national average.

The reason crime has plummeted around the nation in the last few decades is aggressive policing, increased prison sentences and the expansion of concealed carry permits. (All policies currently being jettisoned by liberals.)

According to The New York Times, the drop in crime in New York City during Giuliani's first two years as mayor aloneaccounted for 35 percent of the reduction in the national crime rate.

The second main line of attack on the idea that immigrants are committing prodigious amounts of crime are the apocryphal "studies."

The two researchers whose work is cited over and over again for the proposition that immigrants are less criminal than Americans are Alex Piquero, criminology professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, and Bianca Bersani, sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Pew cites their studies -- and everyone in the media cites Pew, leading to headlines like these:

"UT Dallas prof finds immigrant kids less likely to commit serious crimes, re-offend" -- The Dallas Morning News

"UMass Boston Prof: Stereotype of 'Criminal Immigrant' Doesn't Hold Up" -- Targeted News Service

"Surprise! Donald Trump is wrong about immigrants and crime" -- The Washington Post

Curiously, we are never shown the actual studies, but simply told -- with some heat -- "studies show!"

I looked up some of these alleged studies this weekend. They're all hidden behind ridiculous Internet paywalls. I was often only the sixth person to read them.

It turns out that neither Piquero nor Bersani compared immigrant crime to "the overall population" -- as the British Guardian recently claimed in an article purporting to prove Donald Trump wrong. Rather, they compare immigrants' crime rate to the crime rate of America's most criminally inclined subgroups.

Thus, for example, once you get past the paywall, you will find that Piquero and Bersani's joint study, "Comparing Patterns and Predictors of Immigrant Offending Among a Sample of Adjudicated Youth," used as its base group "adolescents who were found guilty of a serious offense."

THAT'S NOT A REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLE OF AMERICANS! It's a representative sample of teenagers who are convicted criminals.

Read the whole thing.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Courage and it's lack

Robert Tracinski commenting on the reaction of the Liberal Beta males showing off their cowardice as if it were a badge of intellectual honor to admit that they are physical cowards.

Courage: The Mother of the Virtues

Consider The Daily Beast’s Mike Barnicle, who dismisses arguments that the passengers should have intervened, scolding us that, “The reality is that nobody knows how they would react in a similar situation. We’d like to think we’d behave honorably, with courage and care, but we simply cannot know until a moment like that occurs.” Really? Nobody could ever know how they would react? It’s as if it is a totally exotic notion that anyone would ever have been called upon to show physical courage at any point in their lives...

Courage is now viewed as exotic and unusual and unproven and unknowable—rather than a normal and expected part of being a man.

This is the part that got me:

Ironically, the same people now making excuses for cowardice are the kind who engage in exaggerated Kabuki theater displays about how evil slavery was and how terrible the Confederate flag is and how much they furiously oppose them—150 years after it took any courage to do so. But how do they think slavery was defeated? Who do they think took down that flag the first time around? By their own admission, they would have been the ones averting their eyes when they saw a master beating a slave. They would have been the ones to make compromises and concessions every time John Calhoun thundered...

And this:

Perhaps this explains the weird combination of intrusive moralizing about “microaggressions” on one side, and elaborate excuses for passivity on the other. The people cowering in the corners not wanting to make eye contact while a thug carves up some poor sucker are the same people who stay silent while a Twitter mob demands that some guy be fired from his job based on a dubious report of an allegedly offensive statement. They’re the people who tell you that they agree with the article you wrote but won’t post it to Facebook because they don’t want to deal with the anger they get from people who disagree. They are the ones who give the fashionable political or cultural stampede of the moment the dangerous confidence that it is backed by a total consensus, because they don’t want to be the ones to stick their necks out.

Courage is an essential virtue for a free society—and an insurmountable barrier to petty tyranny. Perhaps this explains why cowardice is being openly touted as a new virtue.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Monday, July 13, 2015

Free to Shut Up

If you can't say something good about gays ... it's a crime.

Life in Obama's America: D.C Metro Murder Undermines Liberal Talking Points

If Obama had a son he would look like Jasper Spires.

The brutal killing of Kevin Sutherland in the Washington, D.C., subway on July 4, does much to undermine popular leftist tropes, in this case, race, crime, guns and drugs, just as the murder of Kathryn Steinle in San Francisco challenges liberal immigration policies. Sutherland was beaten and stabbed to death on a Metro train by a drug addled African-American teenager in the middle of the day in front of about a dozen other stunned passengers.

Sutherland’s killer, 18 year old Jasper Spires, shares many characteristics with more famous and lionized Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, except that while the latter two were shot to death by armed men in the midst of physical assaults, Spires took full advantage of his unarmed victim (and other passengers) to complete his crime and survive, and is now in custody. The mainstream media and leftist politicians have mostly downplayed the incident, since Spires cannot be caricatured as a victim of white racism. Indeed, the problem for the media is that in almost every respect, this encounter shows the utter inanity and hypocrisy of many of their favored talking points and positions.

How did the press react?

In an unusual move, the Washington Post’s July 10 edition moved the Petula Dvorak Metro column (she’s the paper’s reliably leftist suburban mom) to page one. Dvorak never misses a chance to excoriate gun owners or 2d Amendment advocates, “reporting” recently from a Virginia “death bazaar” (gun show) as if she were a foreign correspondent, openly scornful of vendors and attendees. In the July 10 column she ridiculed people who said that they would have intervened during the attack, and especially those that pointed out how useful a gun might have been in the situation, calling them “cowboys.” Her incisive analysis: that an armed passenger might have hit others with stray bullets or caused a hostage situation. How either result could have occurred, with all the terrified passengers crowed in one end of the car, while Spires stabbed and beat Sutherland to death in the other, she didn’t make clear, but maybe she thinks bullets have minds of their own and can go backwards? Or that a gun-wielding passenger would have held Spires hostage? Of course, she never considers that a passenger just producing a gun might have ended the incident peacefully and without any casualties.

Another day in the life of Obama's America

The Blaze

“They were walking around both sides of the vehicle — in the front, in the back — and as they were walking across, they were hitting my car, using racial slurs and telling me that I didn’t belong in their neighborhood because I was white,” she told WLS.

She said people in the group kicked her car and shook it while her two children, a boy and girl, screamed. Then a bicycle was used to ram the car, shattering the rear window and sending broken glass into the third row where 3-year-old Benjamin was seated, she told the station.

At least she wasn't shot.

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Trump Speech in Las Vegas

With a big endorsement form a Black dad whose son was killed by an illegal immigrant.

"Once they found it was an illegal immigrant that committed the crime, it became political..."

Saturday, July 11, 2015

"Hello, Suckers!" The Left vs The Nice

It's Stockholm Syndrome. The "nice" people war-game what resistance to The Left would mean, conclude they wouldn't like what might happen, so they sit down and wait for magic or someone else to stop the decline. The Left hasn't just taken over the country, we've fled the battlefield AND given them our minds as well. Their media is unwatched, yet we multiply it's reach by studiously monitoring every second of it, and trumpeting it to our side.

"The Left demands X, and we invent some rule that happens to mean in this case X might be the outcome.

"There is no rule, there never was a rule. The Left makes demands and we just surrender and mask that surrender with some self-invented rule. No matter how many times we "discover" the rule must not be what we thought, because that would dictate Y, we still keep referring to some rule that ought to bind The Left.

"The Left isn't advancing any rule or bound by any rule, other than They Win.

"We argue about rules, extrapolate the rule into the future, see future bad consequences from the rule, and think we've done something.

"The Left is personally and deliberately gunning for you. You won't find a place to hide, you won't be left alone. You won't moderate your views until they don't think you are a threat. You are a threat simply by being here and no amount of fairness, preemptive explanations about peace, love, and understanding will spare you the treatment they give to their worst opponents.

"The people The Left have targeted in the past weren't targeted because of some excess measure of opposition to Leftism, but because of ANY opposition to Leftism.

"The Lukewarm Republicans, in D.C. and in Mayberry, are helping The Left destroy this country and as long as you believe you or someone else can stop The Left with clever tactics in moderate ways you are giving aid and comfort to those that surrender to every fight with The Left.

"You will get no credit for being the first or last to rush to condemn some Republican politician.

"You will get no credit for being the first or last person to have an opinion on the Confederate flag.

"You will get no credit for welcoming or blocking illegals inside the country.

"If you are 1% less Leftist than Party Secretary Obama, you will be treated as if you were Party Secretary Obama's sworn mortal enemy.

"You are/will be targeted by The Left no matter what so you might as well fight back and take some of them out before you're gone.

"Being "the last Jew to understand where the cattle cars are headed" isn't something to be proud about."

H/T Vanderleun

What I notice is that the worse Obama does at his job, the more racist America seems to become.

Scott Johnson at Powerline (headline courtesy of Glenn Reynolds)

After Dylann Roof murdered nine pastors and churchgoers in the course of Bible study in Charleston, President Obama couldn’t wait to use the occasion for his narrow political purposes. “Let’s be clear,” he said with urgency in his voice. “At some point we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence … doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it.” The implication, of course, was that additional gun control legislation was required but that his political opponents refused to see the light.

Now we learn in whose power it was to do something about it, and it wasn’t anyone Obama was talking about. The Washington Post reports: “Dylann Roof, who is accused of killing nine people at a church in South Carolina three weeks ago, was only able to purchase the gun used in the attack because of breakdowns in the FBI’s background-check system, FBI Director James B. Comey said Friday.” The White House, of course, declines to comment.

If there has ever been a smaller man or bigger jerk than Barack Obama holding the office of president, we need to know now.

Friday, July 10, 2015

Things that "outrage" and things that don't

Bud Norman

Such strangely differing standards of what should be met with indifference and what should be met with offense are by no means confined to the academy, or to those corners of the world only culture vultures still take an interest in, but also define the broader public’s approach to politics.

Thus The New York Times is outraged by the four traffic tickets that Republican presidential contender Sen. Marco Rubio has received over the past 20 years, but seemingly indifferent to the four brave Americans who were killed in an American consulate in Libya that failed to receive requested security from Democratic presidential contender and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton following her ill-fated war against Libya.

Thus the civil rights establishment is aroused to hash-tagging “black lives matter” and rioting in the streets when a black man is killed by police in even the most justifiable circumstances, yet indifferent to the vastly greater number of black men killed by other black men, and further indifferent when that horrible number inevitably increases after the hash-tagging and rioting inevitably hamper law enforcement efforts in poor black neighborhoods.

Thus it is that polite opinion holds the insane profligacy of the Greek government is not only to be tolerated but forever to be subsidized, while a corporation that prefers not to pay its minimum wage employees any more than they produce is considered outrageously greedy.

Thus it is that the mass executions of homosexuals in the Islamic world is met with sincere attempts to understand context and generally with indifference, while some Baptist confectioner’s reluctance to bake a gay wedding cake is met with widespread outrage.

Wednesday, July 08, 2015

New Docs Reveal DOJ, IRS, and FBI Colluding to Prosecute Obama Opponents

The newly obtained records include an official “DOJ Recap” report detailing an October 2010 meeting between Lois Lerner, DOJ officials and the FBI. The documents also reveal that the Obama DOJ wanted IRS employees who were going to testify to Congress to turn over documents to the DOJ before giving them to Congress.

I have said it before and I'll say it again, the custom of not prosecuting law breaking of officials of previous administrations has to go.

Clintons repeat corralling the media

And the media took it and asked for more.

Six-times deported illegal charged in felony hit-and-run... PREVIOUSLY DEPORTED ILLEGAL CHARGED WITH BURNING WOMAN, SON... REPORT: More Than 347,000 Convicted Criminal Immigrants At Large In USA... Trump gets support from mother of teen slain by illegal... Somali leaders in Minnesota seek release of men accussed of joining ISIS... FLASHBACK: Feds relocate 'tens of thousands' of Somalis to Minnesota...

Monday, July 06, 2015

DRUDGE summarizes press reaction to Greece.

Obama disappears, abandons press corps

No word on why Obama left without the press. The White House has deferred questions to the Secret Service.

He doesn't need them any more.

DRUDGE on Greek "NO" vote

EURO FALLS AFTER GREECE VOTES... Jubilation in Syntagma Square tinged with fear... BANKS PREPARE TO RAID DEPOSITS... Panicked residents stock up on essentials... Quartet of crises threatens Europe's core... Merkel, Hollande Call for Summit... Brussels weighs next steps... STOCKS ROCKED...

BIG FAT 'NO' EU ON THE BRINK

Is "true North" Nordo-centrism?"

The direction of "North" is racist on the pages of the NY Times.

Reason is also racist:

I think that what modern philosophers call “pure” reason — the Cartesian ego cogito and Kant’s transcendental consciousness — is a white male Euro-Christian construction.

Meanwhile, Greece voted for pulling the covers over its head and telling reality to go away. It remains to be seen if the rest of Europe is willing to allow this adolescent country to live in its basement forever.

Sunday, July 05, 2015

Why Trump is resonating.

If you don’t address the concerns of a large group, someone else will, and it won’t be someone you choose.

I suspect that Trump is resonating on more than the Right.

Baker Has a Message for the Gov’t Official Who Just Fined Him $135,000 for Declining a Gay Wedding Cake: ‘He’s Doing This With the Wrong Christian’

Just hours after Oregon officials announced that Aaron and Melissa Klein, owners of Sweetcakes by Melissa, would be fined $135,000 for their refusal to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding, Aaron Klein had a message for government officials: He has no plans of backing down.

“He wants to silence anyone who opposes his point of view,” Klein told TheBlaze, speaking specifically about Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian, who has spearheaded the case against the couple. “Unfortunately, he’s doing this with the wrong Christian, because I fight back.”

Klein also delivered a message to Americans and business leaders about why he believes that his case is monumentally important.

“For years, we’ve heard same-sex marriage will not affect anybody,” he said. “I’m here firsthand to tell everyone in America that it has already impacted people. Christians, get ready to take a stand. Get ready for civil disobedience.”

Multi-millionaire corporate bullies who use equality legislation to advance their own interests? Meet the new heroes of the San Francisco progressive left.

#THANKYOUELLENPAO? ONLY IF YOU LIKE BULLYING, VEXATIOUS OPPORTUNISTS

And now many of the moderators in Reddit are in revolt against the same bullying, vexatious opportunist who also uses law-fare to extort millions of dollars.