Monday, May 26, 2014

 

We Put More Criminals In Prison, Despite a Drop in Number of Crimes Committed

The New York Times goes full looney on crime here. I am a former prosecutor (although it was a long time ago) so I know that it is a good thing to put a person guilty of malum in se crime apart from society until he (and it's usually a he) gets the idea that perhaps he shouldn't do such a thing. On malum prohibitum crimes, I don't think locking up people is such a good idea.



Here is the stupidity of the Times on display:

And even though the political climate has shifted in recent years, many politicians continue to fear appearing to be “soft on crime,” even when there is no evidence that imprisoning more people has reduced crime by more than a small amount. (Emphasis added).

Oh, so the lower number of criminals outside prison had hardly anything to do with the actual decline of violent crimes committed between 1985 and 2012, even as the population grew from 239 million to over 314 million. Gun homicides rates are down 49% since the peak in 1993. What then, oh keepers of the truth, caused such a decline in violent crimes committed?


Crickets chirping.





Here is the lefty wish list:

Reduce sentence lengths substantially. Provide more opportunities for rehabilitation inside prison. Remove the barriers that keep people from rejoining society after they are released from prison. Use alternatives to imprisonment for nonviolent offenders, drug addicts and the mentally ill. Release elderly or ill prisoners, who are the least likely to re-offend. And since more than 95 percent of inmates are eventually released, rate prisons on their success in keeping former inmates from returning — which as many as two-thirds currently do.

I'd add, wouldn't it just be super if people were nicer to each other.




Wait. So two-thirds of the felons released go on to commit other felonies which put them back in prison? Isn't that an argument for not releasing felons?




I'm for diversion for drug crimes, for all malum prohibitum crimes, like giving too much money to a candidate for office, but if the people willing to murder, rape or rob a fellow human are in prison and not on the streets, then obviously they cannot commit a crime against normal citizens (prison guard assaults is a separate problem) because they have no access to them. This is not exactly rocket science.





OK, we should release more criminals on parole, but only if the people who support releasing more criminals have the released live with them during the parole period. That way they can really help the criminals reintegrate into law abiding society.

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The Incredible Hypocrisy of the Southern Poverty Law Center

I've again seen the nonsense that most terrorism in the United States is by right wing organizations. No matter where you find that expressed, the source is almost always the same, the Southern Poverty Law Center. What is Poverty Law anyway? It has authored a list of these so called right wing terrorist attacks. Here is what is really on the list: Common crimes by bigots who are not Republicans. The same is true for the execrable study by the New America Foundation and Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, which Ben Shapiro debunks well here.

If we were to ascertain the political beliefs or political affiliation of common criminals, I believe the overwhelming majority of those perpetrators would be Democrats, liberals and progressives. The FBI doesn't collect those statistics, but does anyone really doubt my belief? We could engage in analysis if you do doubt it. We could limit it to murderers, if you want a crime to analyze for political affiliation of the perpetrator.

All the Presidential assassins and attempted assassins were Democrats or on the left. How about recent mass murderers (more than 4 killed one episode of slaughter)?

Let's see this incomplete list:

In 1984 James Hubert, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 22 people in a McDonalds restaurant.
In 1986 Patrick Sherrill, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 15 people in an Oklahoma post office.
In 1990 James Pough, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 10 people at a GMAC office.
In 1991 George Hennard, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 23 people in a Luby’s cafeteria.
In 1993 Colin Ferguson, bigoted Democrat, shot 25 and killed 6 on a Long Island Rail Road car in Garden City, NY.
In 1995 James Daniel Simpson, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 5 coworkers in a Texas laboratory.
In 1999 Larry Asbrook, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 8 people at a church service.
In 2003 Douglas Williams, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 7 people at a Lockheed Martin plant.
In 2010 a mentally ill registered Democrat named Jared Lee Loughner, shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed 6 others.
In 2011 a registered Democrat named James Holmes, went into a movie theater and shot and killed 12 people.
In 2012 Andrew Engeldinger, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 7 people in Minneapolis.
In December, 2013 a registered Democrat named Adam Lanza, shot and killed 26 people, mostly children, in a school.
In Sept 2013, an angry Democrat shot 12 at a Navy ship yard.
Last week, a lefty geek knifed 3 and shot another 3 to death in Santa Barbara.

Now there are actual bomb throwers and arsonists on the left--the list is very long (and includes the Unabomber, the ELF, Earth First, not to mention the Weather Underground). Are any of these actions or organizations listed on the SPLC wall of shame? No. Not even one.

What's up with that?

Even the lefty-led FBI appears to have severed its ties to the SPLC.

I think it's time we just ignored SPLC's one sided invitations to join its two minute hate all day everyday.

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Friday, May 23, 2014

 

Advice for the Man's Man

Never take an ex back. She tried to do better and is now settling for you.


One of 65 bits of advice supposedly from Goldman Sachs to young men. I also like:


Stop talking about where you went to college.
If riding the bus doesn’t incentivise you to improve your station in life, nothing will.
When the bartender asks, you should already know what you want to drink.
There’s always another level. Just be content knowing that you are still better off than most who have ever lived. (I forget this too often)
Don’t split a check.
Pretty women who are unaccompanied want you to talk to them.
When a bartender buys you a round, tip double.
Don’t use the word “closure” or ever expect it in real life.
Don’t ever say, “it is what it is.”


But I'd edit this: Own a handcrafted shotgun. It’s a beautiful thing.


to this: Own a high end firearm. The 20th Century was the apex of firearm design.


But I have to admit I don't know what a life hack is. Is it more than advice?

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Tuesday, May 13, 2014

 

Years of Living Dangerously Gives Up the Ghost

A really successful show has a 40 percent share, that is, of all the televisions on, 40% are tuned to that successful show. The episode before last night's YOLD had a .05 percent share. That's not very good. And it has become such a loser that Showtime moved it to Monday so that the stink of its dreadful failure won't affect the other shows, apparently.


And it continues to be both dull and one-sided propaganda.That combo spells doom every time they try it. They repeated the "accepted science" that one full foot of sea rise at New Jersey near the mouth of the Hudson last century was caused by anthropogenic global warming. I cannot find the source of that false assertion. OK, I've seen the tidal gauges (usually just since the early 20th C.) and they show the rise of a foot more or less over the past 100 years. So what was the rise in the 100 years before that? And the 100 years before that, etc. back to the start of our current interglacial. If they don't know that, how can they possibly say the rise in the 20th C. was not the ordinary slight rise of the past thousand centuries?


I say they can't. Help me out, Warmies. Who, besides the semi-celebrity on the unwatched show, say the last foot of sea level rise was caused solely by the human output of CO2?

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Dreadful at Any Cost

I watched Penny Dreadful on Showtime. Well named. I suspected the plot it was brewing when they mentioned the missing daughter's name, Mina, who is the heroine in jeopardy, like her more unfortunate friend Lucy, rescued from being lost to Dracula in the epistolary novel by Bram Stoker, but then Victor Frankenstein showed up, so Dorian Gray cannot be far behind and it's League of Extraordinarily Dreadful Gentlemen all over again. That ain't so good.

I'll probably keep on watching in the hope that Eva Green takes off her clothes. Probably.


Lord knows that the Mother of Dragons has stopped appearing naked, but I keep watching her show.

I'm also having trouble getting my mind around how incredibly-good-looking Timothy Dalton has aged. I can still recall his Heathcliff in 1970.


Meanwhile, irreplaceable time runs away, indeed.

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