Because, America

[JWB]

 

[Skywalkre]

On 8/20/2023 at 3:44 PM, Ssnake said:

Border with Mexico?

CA, AZ, and TX have that same border... and longer... yet lower murders per capita.  All the southern states that are high on that list as well are nowhere near Mexico... so that likely isn't the reason.

Two things jumped to my mind when I was thinking about this.  One is weather.  Came across a random YT vid a few weeks back from a guy trying to make the most of his geography degree and he touched on why AZ has so many more people than NM.  A big focus of his was that while the summers in NM aren't as bad as they are here in the Valley they are still worse than most of the country and the winters in NM are abysmal... so the state basically has no nice periods of the year.  Contrast that with AZ where everything south of the Mogollon Rim has amazing winters (as an example this last year I went 6 straight months without needing to run AC or heat... that's pretty damn good).  A subset of weather could be location.  The Valley is a day's (half a day, actually) drive from the Grand Canyon.  There are also a ton of amazing places to visit in the state (NM has some destinations as well... but nowhere near as many).  That nicer weather we have means you can actually enjoy said outdoor adventures.

The second thing is I wonder how much of this goes back and the lasting effects of government investment over the years, in particular investment during WW2.  These terrible places in the country just don't flip on the dime when a D or R takes office.  Many of these places have been bad for years.  OOC I looked up base count during WW2 and AZ had twice as many airfields as NM.  After the war the Valley retained Luke AFB and that's one of the major USAF bases in the country now (what major bases remain in NM aren't around Albuquerque).  Maybe that WW2 investment had lingering effects that, part of a host of other reasons I'm missing, helped lead to AZ being a nicer place to live.

[Skywalkre]

On 8/20/2023 at 11:11 AM, Ivanhoe said:

If one were to run a multivariate analysis, I've no doubt a major factor is going to be the population/LEO ratio. Federal meddling probably also factors in, in some few cases. 

I've seen folks bring up this Fed involvement as a reason.  The big problem with that argument is Fed involvement is only a recent thing going back to the late 90s.  Most of these places were already shitholes before then and the Feds only get involved when local law enforcement has shown its terrible at its job.

[Skywalkre]

On 8/24/2023 at 9:07 PM, Ivanhoe said:

https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/lets-compare-homicide-rates-in-medium-size-red-and-blue-cities/

His argument is... really weak and brings up so many basic questions that he doesn't even bother to look into (probably for good reasons).

First is the notion that these trends just flip once a D or R takes office.  Look at NYC.  It had a massive spike in murders from 1960-1990.  When those murders started their drastic decline a D was in office.  Then you had Rs as the rates continued to drop... but since then the rates have stayed low and you've had Ds in office for a while.  So how would this author explain that?

I'd be more interested in knowing

- how long were various parties in control and how does this relate to homicide rates?
- what was the composition of the various city councils and was there friction between them and the mayor?
- what other factors could contribute (such as industry closing and no replacement employment being available)?
- what policies did said Ds and Rs push for and implement and what shift then occurred with the homicide rate?
- did the author just pick 400-500k cities because that supported his rather weak argument?  What about 300-400k cities?  200-300k?  Shouldn't we be looking at all of them?

I imagine there's a few PhD papers out there already looking into this problem and I imagine the answer is much more complicated and nuanced... but such an argument doesn't blindly label one party as the problem and make for such clickbait headlines.

[urbanoid]

 

[Ivanhoe]

7 hours ago, urbanoid said:

 

One of my all-time favorite quotes came from the TV series "Cops." Going from 20 year old memories here, so bear with me.

The po-po with TV crew was cruising around an urban area in the wee hours, and stumbled across a guy pushing a shopping cart with a water heater in it. They stopped to question the suspect, did a quick pat-down to "check for weapons" and came up with some Schedule II recreational pharmaceutical or other from a jeans pocket. 

When shown the baggies, the suspect exclaimed "Hey man, these aren't my pants!"

Since then, every time some bleeding heart liberal defends some criminal, I think "Hey man, these aren't my pants!"

Murph can comment with authority, but my understanding is that the first lie to LE makes all subsequent searches legit from 4th Amendment purposes. 

 

[urbanoid]

1 minute ago, Ivanhoe said:

One of my all-time favorite quotes came from the TV series "Cops." Going from 20 year old memories here, so bear with me.

The po-po with TV crew was cruising around an urban area in the wee hours, and stumbled across a guy pushing a shopping cart with a water heater in it. They stopped to question the suspect, did a quick pat-down to "check for weapons" and came up with some Schedule II recreational pharmaceutical or other from a jeans pocket. 

When shown the baggies, the suspect exclaimed "Hey man, these aren't my pants!"

Since then, every time some bleeding heart liberal defends some criminal, I think "Hey man, these aren't my pants!"

Murph can comment with authority, but my understanding is that the first lie to LE makes all subsequent searches legit from 4th Amendment purposes. 

 

And if they do find the weapons:

[sunday]

Emotional support weapon?

It makes me feel safer, after all.

[JWB]

16 hours ago, Skywalkre said:

trends just flip once a D or R takes office

Not what the author wrote. 

 

16 hours ago, Skywalkre said:

Look at NYC

Far too large in population to be used as a comparison.

[BansheeOne]

26 minutes ago, Ivanhoe said:

When shown the baggies, the suspect exclaimed "Hey man, these aren't my pants!"

Since then, every time some bleeding heart liberal defends some criminal, I think "Hey man, these aren't my pants!"

A very similar phrase circulates in my family, but based upon a memory of my brother #4 where for some reason he woke up a classmate on a school trip who emerged from deep sleep with the words "Huh, what? Not my pants." 😄

[Skywalkre]

9 hours ago, JWB said:

Not what the author wrote.

The problem is he didn't write anything.  Zero effort to go into an oz of detail.  Zero effort to address the multitude of questions I raised and that anyone would raise if they took just a few seconds to think about it.

What he clearly writes is that the differences he highlights are because of the differences between D and R leadership... with zero evidence to back it up.

9 hours ago, JWB said:

Far too large in population to be used as a comparison.

Why is that important?  He clearly states he looks at the cities he did because there's some parity in leadership between the parties.  His argument is pretty straightforward (Rs mean less homicides).  So why does that argument fall apart when you look at NYC?

[JWB]

22 minutes ago, Skywalkre said:

The problem is he didn't write anything.

He wrote this:

"Note that while Colorado Springs has an Independent who was sworn in two months ago, the city had a line of Republican mayors for decades before that, so I am counting that city as red for this exercise."

That is not a flip.

24 minutes ago, Skywalkre said:

with zero evidence to back it up.

The evidence is in the stats.

25 minutes ago, Skywalkre said:

Why is that important?

Because the comparison he uses is cities with pops between 400k to 500k. NYC is millions.

29 minutes ago, Skywalkre said:

He clearly states he looks at the cities he did because there's some parity in leadership between the parties. 

No where did he write the word "parity".

[Ivanhoe]

9 hours ago, BansheeOne said:

A very similar phrase circulates in my family, but based upon a memory of my brother #4 where for some reason he woke up a classmate on a school trip who emerged from deep sleep with the words "Huh, what? Not my pants." 😄

Apparently just back from a school trip to Chicago. 

[Skywalkre]

19 hours ago, JWB said:

He wrote this:

"Note that while Colorado Springs has an Independent who was sworn in two months ago, the city had a line of Republican mayors for decades before that, so I am counting that city as red for this exercise."

That is not a flip.

And doesn't explain how far back 'counts' for purposes of this comparison.  Several decades is vague... if you look at Raleigh, one of the cities he uses for comparison sake, if you go back to the late 90s (when the FBI starts collecting and posting this data) you have R mayors with a worse homicide rate per 100k than the D and I mayors since.

19 hours ago, JWB said:

The evidence is in the stats.

What he presents is hardly meaningful stats nor evidence.  He did a quick search to validate a view he already has and did zero fucking research to try and understand the issue further.

19 hours ago, JWB said:

Because the comparison he uses is cities with pops between 400k to 500k. NYC is millions.

Right... that's what the author focused on because there's basically the same number of cities controlled currently by Rs and Ds.  You stated NYC doesn't count because it is "too large in population to be used as a comparison".  The author never made any such statement.

19 hours ago, JWB said:

No where did he write the word "parity".

Did you actually read it or just look at the numbers he posted?  He stated:

Quote

The biggest cities in America are almost entirely Democrat-controlled. Of all cities with over 500,000 people — 36 in total — only four have Republican mayors. But once you get into cities with populations just under the half-million mark, you get a decent mix of party control. From there, you can make some useful comparisons.

So... let's go back to his 'stats' and point out some obvious issues at first glance.  For starters there's not very many cities in the comparison (11 total).  Two of the cities for the Ds have exorbitantly high homicide rates (Atlanta and Oakland).  Taking them out, even with Minneapolis' high rate the average drops to ~12.3... which is fairly close to the R cities.

Let's go back and look even closer at Raleigh.  The figure listed is the most recent and represents a spike in homicides in that city over the last few years.  Before '21 Raleigh had just one year where they had more than 30 homicides (2008... hmm, I wonder what happened that year?).  Otherwise Raleigh ranged from single digits to the twenties from '95-'20.  Mayoral party affiliation for Raleigh, going backwards in time, was D('19-current) -> I('11-'19) -> D('01-'11) -> R('95-'01... FBI doesn't have data from before '95).  Most of these stints were the same mayor for extended periods of time.

Now let's look at homicide rates over those various party runs.  The first listed numbers are the range in homicides per 100k and the last number is the average over that span.

D - 5.78-8.99 | 6.98
I - 1.16-6.11 | 3.9
D - 3.31-8.65 | 5.02
R - 3.31-10.8 | 7.92

Notice something?  The worst run Raleigh has ever had was under R mayoral leadership (even with the recent spike since '21 and the spike in '08).  Another fairly easy counter to this author's brain-dead assertion that took just a few minutes of looking up the numbers.

The tl;dr is it's not so simple as just looking at who's mayor and homicide rate.  There are a host of factors that go into this (the FBI website specifically warns against knee jerk reactions from the posted data).  Instead of Rs posting nonsense like this it'd be nice if they tried to understand what was really going on and try to offer sensible solutions to the problems (outside of the nonsense that bad shit is caused entirely by Ds).  Articles like this add nothing to the discourse and only highlight the shortsighted and ignorant view the writer is trying to push.

Edited August 28, 2023 by Skywalkre

[rmgill]

On 8/27/2023 at 10:54 AM, sunday said:

Emotional support weapon?

Emotional support tank? 

[sunday]

More supportive, yes!

Fuel costs, OTOH...

[JWB]

5 hours ago, Skywalkre said:

On 8/27/2023 at 7:43 PM, JWB said:

No where did he write the word "parity".

Did you actually read it or just look at the numbers he posted?  He stated:

Parity and party are not the same thing. 🤣

You don't know how to read. Enough of your twaddle. Off to jail.

[Skywalkre]

4 hours ago, JWB said:

Parity and party are not the same thing. 🤣

You don't know how to read. Enough of your twaddle. Off to jail.

Amusing how you keep referring to things that were never said... in the article (that was all of a few sentences... and you couldn't be bothered to read them) and in my own post.

The author didn't look at cities above 500k because out of the 36 in the US only 4 were run by Rs.  He looked at those in the 400-500k range because there were 6 R to 5 D cities.  That's... parity (not hard to look up words you don't understand... there's this thing called google or bing).

There were plenty of other things in my post you could have responded to... but just left them ignored.  Shock, surprise.  You chose to defend a shit article and had nothing to counter.  That's on you for looking like an idiot and running away when called out on it.

So brave...

[sunday]

Some parts of America begins to acquire Russian traits

 

[PCallahan]

12 hours ago, sunday said:

Some parts of America begins to acquire Russian traits

 

Tell me about it.  My mom, in suburban Connecticut, town next to Hartford, so no the boonies, left her garage open for an hour a few weeks ago.  Then had to leave it open for another hour to let the bear finish off the bread and tortilla chips stored there.  

Growing up in Connecticut (which for those not familiar, is both very small and relatively heavily populated), the first bear spotting in the state in more than a century took place in the late 1980s.  Now they are literally everywhere (including wandering around Hartford).  

And now they've got moose also.  One wandered onto the tarmac at Bradley Airport (Hartford's international airport, and a military air base) this summer; local authorities didn't know what to do, so shot it.

[sunday]

So, were another Mark Twain to write something in the line of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Should the aforementioned yankee go to Camelot with a bear?

Jokes apart, this is a problem. Racoons and their abilities to destroy electrical wiring were hard enough so, now, bears.

Edited August 31, 2023 by sunday

[Markus Becker]

NORFOLK, Neb. -- Around 10:00 a.m. Norfolk Police Division responded to a call of a man driving eastbound on 275 with a Watusi bull in his passenger’s seat.

“The officers received a call referencing a car driving into town that had a cow in it,” said Police Captain Chad Reiman. “They thought that it was going to be a calf, something small or something that would actually fit inside the vehicle.”

And the vehicle was big enough… Well, technically.
 

 

https://northeast.newschannelnebraska.com/story/49572004/norfolk-police-pull-over-man-and-bull-riding-shotgun

[urbanoid]

Uh...sorry, but I THOUGHT THIS WAS AMERICA!

[Ivanhoe]

Most US states require motor vehicles to have a working horn, so...

[rmgill]

Driver's view is obstructed. Probably not a tow away offense though...