Blue Lives Matter...

[Lord Jim]

I have a really hard time believing that she could be as accomplished as she is, and have her work carried in some of the publications that publish her if she was in the habit of just making numbers up...

[Guinevere]

I didn't say she just made the numbers up, I said I do not trust "statistics" that come from an obviously biased source. Stats can be shaded and presented in all sorts of ways to favor one position over another.

You want to believe her "numbers" because they comport with your world view, thats fine. Just don't put words in my mouth, please.

[Lord Jim]

No, I believe her numbers because she's highly respected in this field, even by her opponents....

Even someone who clearly isn't a fan of hers gives her very high marks for her devotion to statistical accuracy and her scholarly research abilities:

Know Your Enemy: Heather Mac Donald

If you believe that the criminal justice system is racially biased, you need to know Heather Mac Donald.

She'll mess with your mind and make you either up your politico-cultural game or admit you were wrong. What worries me is that so few on 'our' side can, or bother to, go toe to toe with her. Just about every one of her pieces is a statistical and analytical tour-de-force, while we liberals tend too often to mouth liberal pieties like inside jokes.

Just yesterday, I was listening to Angela Davis address the Commonwealth Club (sorry. speech not posted) on my car radio. I agreed with nearly everything she said, but they were dissatisfying lefty bromides, one and all. Racist criminal justice system. Slavery was bad. War in Iraq. The crowd whooped and hollered, but where was the beef, the analysis, the facts? Forgive me Angela, patron saint of the streets, but Mac Donald would have had you for lunch.

According to her byline, Mac Donald "is a contributing editor of City Journal and the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute". She's also among America's harshest critic of blacks. Harshest and most devastating; unlike most of the right-wing blovio-sphere, home girl does her homework.

And this comes from somebody who is obviously ideologically biased against her...

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2008/05 ... mac-donald

[Guinevere]

Did you read the entire piece:

Starting with black crime and not with racism, is always the major flaw in Mac Donald's work. Still, she remains an opponent to both learn from and take oh so seriously. Thankfully, Mother Jones is among the few progressive organizations which work as hard as Mac Donald does to disprove the notion that blacks have no one to blame but themselves.

I.e., she is good, but biased. Which was my entire point, and means you cannot take at face value how she analyzes the problem or her numbers.

[Lord Jim]

Yes, I read the entire piece, and I know the woman who wrote it is biased against MacDonald, and that she engaged in a number of slanted observations about her in the article.

My point is that despite her biased-to-the-left world view, Dickerson was still giving her props for the quality of her scholarship. She doesn't argue that there's anything fishy about the numbers she uses. In fact she says that MacDonald is effective because her data is valid.

[MajGenl.Meade]

I'd like to meet this mythical unbiased creature who pops up in so many discussions.

It should be clear to everyone that agreement with me = no bias and disagreement with me = bias.

So when there is disagreement with me, I demand that this obviously biased source can only be verified by people who agree with me and are therefore not biased.

Until the people biased toward me agree with the person who is biased against me, I can ignore anything that biased against person claims as factual. Real facts only come from people with the same bias as myself.

[Guinevere]

Another straw man.

Do you blindly accept every statistic rube posts here? If not, why not? If yes, why?

Do you blindly accept every statistic that LJ posts here? if not, why not? If yes, why?

Are we not allowed to think critically and question?

[MajGenl.Meade]

Oh I tend not to read statistics that rubato posts - not all of them anyway. As to LJ, I skip a lot there too. Of course, when I do read their statistics (LJ's are 38-30-38 while rubato's are 48-15-48 and that's just his head), I also tend to give them the benefit of the doubt if I agree with them and not if I don't. I am biased. Regrettable but true.

[Guinevere]

Now you're just begging for eye rolls.

[MajGenl.Meade]

[Econoline]

Isn't this right about the time that the NRA and the ammosexuals usually inform us that There's nothing that could have been done to prevent mass shootings like this...if we even try to prevent them we're violating the constitution...the only thing anyone can do is to just keep buying more guns...? Hmm?

Not this time, huh?

[Lord Jim]

Well one thing LaPierre and Co. can't bitch about...

There were certainly plenty of "good guys with guns" on hand...

It didn't help much when this militarily trained murderous bastard got the drop on them...

The authorities are now saying that Johnson was the sole shooter, and he may have been planning for something even worse:

It appears that the dead sniper, identified as Micah X. Johnson, 25, was the sole gunman, a senior law enforcement official said. Officials at first said that at least two snipers had carried out a coordinated ambush, firing rifles from triangulated positions, including from one or more elevated posts in downtown buildings.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/ ... d-n2190007

According to a police report, investigators found bomb-making materials, rifles, ammunition, ballistic vests and a personal journal of combat tactics inside the Mesquite, Texas, home of the gunman after searching his house on Friday, July 8.

The contents of his journal are currently being investigated.

As previously reported, Johnson specialized in carpentry and masonry in the Army Reserve and was a junior enlisted soldier. According to TMZ, Johnson’s Facebook page revealed that he “liked” several pro-black and Black Panther organizations. He also reportedly belonged to several groups such as “Police the Police.”

A neighbor previously told CNN that Johnson “kept to himself” and lived at the home with his mother. The 25-year-old had no known criminal history or ties to terror groups, the Los Angeles Times reported.

http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-new ... ls-w212510

[Joe Guy]

Isn't it interesting that when there is a mass shooting the paranoid gun owners always mention that if people had been armed the shooter wouldn't have been able to kill so many people.

How do they explain this one? Let's see... if the cops didn't have guns, more of them would have been shot... No, that won't work. How about...The cops stopped the shooter because they were armed with their firearms that are guaranteed by the 2nd amendment... No, that's not true. A robot killed the shooter.... Oh well, time to go buy some more guns everybody before the government takes them away from you.... It's Obama's fault.

[Burning Petard]

No, the lesson is clear--go buy robots.

[Jarlaxle]

AmbI the only one that finds this precedent-sending in a robot bomb to kill a suspect-absolutely horrifying?

[Joe Guy]

It's not horrifying if the suspect just killed 5 cops, intended to kill more and refused to give himself up. It should only be horrifying to anyone planning on doing something similar.

[Econoline]

From Wired.com: Why a Killer Robot Was Likely the Only Option For Dallas Police

[MajGenl.Meade]

AmbI the only one that finds this precedent-sending in a robot bomb to kill a suspect-absolutely horrifying?

Just a drone taken out by a drone

[RayThom]

...DO.NOT.MIND.ME...I.AM.LOOKING.FOR.THE.BURSAR'S.OFFICE...HAVE.A.GOOD.DAY...

[dales]

RayThom............you're such a card!