Democrat Proves He Is A Fraud

Democrat Chris Murphy Complains About Soleimani Attack 2 Days After Calling Trump ‘Impotent’ on Iran

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JOEL B. POLLAK

2 Jan 20203,668

1:45

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) is complaining about President Donald Trump’s attack Thursday on Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Iraq — just two days after complaining that Trump was “impotent” to respond to Iranian attacks.

Murphy, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, tweeted on Tuesday: “The attack on our embassy in Baghdad is horrifying but predictable. Trump has rendered America impotent in the Middle East. No one fears us, no one listens to us. America has been reduced to huddling in safe rooms, hoping the bad guys will go away. What a disgrace.”

On Thursday evening, after Trump’s successful attack, Murphy tweeted that the problem was actually that Trump was being too aggressive: “Soleimani was an enemy of the United States. That’s not a question. The question is this – as reports suggest, did America just assassinate, without any congressional authorization, the second most powerful person in Iran, knowingly setting off a potential massive regional war?”

Ben Williamson@_WilliamsonBen

Not even 3 days apart. Political hackery at lightspeed.

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11:06 PM - Jan 2, 2020

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Murphy also called the killing of Soleimani an assassination, warning against “neocons thumping their chest” [sic].

Guns Save Lives

That Time The CDC Asked About Defensive Gun Uses

Paul HsiehContributor 

Healthcare

I cover health care and economics from a free-market perspective.

Last month, I discussed the need for more robust and intellectually balanced research into gun use in the United States. In particular, I proposed that “Any Study Of ‘Gun Violence’ Should Include How Guns Save Lives.”

In particular, a 2013 study ordered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and conducted by The National Academies’ Institute of Medicine and National Research Council reported that, “Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence”:

Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.

Subsequently, I learned of a recent paper by Florida State University professor Gary Kleck, “What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?“

Kleck looked at some previously unpublished results from the CDC surveys conducted in the 1990s and concluded:

Today In: Opinion

In 1996, 1997, and 1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted large-scale surveys asking about defensive gun use (DGU) in four to six states. Analysis of the raw data allows the estimation of the prevalence of DGU for those areas. Estimates based on CDC’s surveys confirm estimates for the same sets of states based on data from the 1993 National Self-Defense Survey (Kleck and Gertz 1995). Extrapolated to the U.S. as a whole CDC’s survey data imply that defensive uses of guns by crime victims are far more common than offensive uses by criminals. CDC has never reported these results.

Subsequently, Kleck removed this version of the paper, although a copy of the original can be found here. As reported by Reason editor Brian Doherty:

PROMOTED

You will note the original link doesn’t work right now. It was pointed out to me by Robert VerBruggen of National Review that Kleck treats the CDC’s surveys discussed in this paper as if they were national in scope, as Kleck’s original survey was, but they apparently were not. From VerBruggen’s own looks at CDC’s raw data, it seems that over the course of the three years, the following 15 states were surveyed: Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. (Those states, from 2000 census data, contained around 27 percent of the U.S. population.) Informed of this, Kleck says he will recalculate the degree to which CDC’s survey work indeed matches or corroborates his, and we will publish a discussion of those fresh results when they come in. But for now Kleck has pulled the original paper from the web pending his rethinking the data and his conclusions.

Furthermore, economist Alex Tabarrok has noted an interesting issue of statistics in his blog post, “Defensive Gun Use and the Difficult Statistics of Rare Events“:

People answering surveys can be mistaken and some lie and the reasons go both ways. Some people might be unwilling to answer because a defensive gun use might have been illegal (Would these people refuse to answer?). On the other hand, mischievous responders might report a defensive gun use just because that makes them sound cool.

The deep problem, however, is not miscodings per se but that miscodings of rare events are likely to be asymmetric. Since defensive gun use is relatively uncommon under any reasonable scenario there are many more opportunities to miscode in a way that inflates defensive gun use than there are ways to miscode in a way that deflates defensive gun use...

The bottom line is that it’s good to know that the original Kleck and Gertz survey replicated — approximately 1% of adult Americans did report a defensive gun use in the 1990s — but the real issue is the interpretation of the survey and for that a replication doesn’t help.

So what can Americans interested in rational gun policy make of this?

My own preliminary conclusions:

1) We still don’t really know how many defensive gun uses (DGUs) there are each year.

Doherty offers his own analysis of reasons why reported numbers might be both too low or too high in his 2015 article, “How to Count the Defensive Use of Guns.”

2) The number of DGUs has likely increased since the 1990s.

The numbers of Americans with legal concealed weapons permits has increased dramatically from the 1990s to today, as more states have adopted laws allowing such permits. It would make sense that the numbers of DGUs has likely increased as well.

CDC′s “Tom Harkin Global Communications Center” located on the organization′s Roybal Campus in... [+]

 (PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGE, COURTESY WIKIPEDIA.)

3) We don’t know why the CDC chose not to publish that data from the 1990s.

Kleck offers some ideas in his original paper. One possible explanation:

Another factor, however, might also have played a role in the decision of CDC personnel to not report the DGU findings. For CDC’s own surveys to generate high estimates of DGU prevalence was clearly not helpful to efforts to enact stricter controls over firearms, since it implies that some such measures might disarm people who otherwise would have been able to use a gun for self-protection.

One CDC official in the 1990s openly told the Washington Post that his goal was to create a public perception of gun ownership as something “dirty, deadly — and banned.” Given that history, I can’t dismiss Kleck’s critique.

4) The right to self-defense does not depend on statistics (echoing a point I made last month).

I especially like Doherty’s discussion on this:

However interesting attempts to estimate the inherently uncountable social phenomenon of innocent DGUs (while remembering that defensive gun use generally does not mean defensive gun firing, indeed it likely only means that less than a quarter of the time), when it comes to public policy, no individual’s right to armed self-defense should be up for grabs merely because a social scientist isn’t convinced a satisfyingly large enough number of other Americans have defended themselves with a gun.

In summary, the topics of “gun violence” and defensive gun uses are still topics worthy of objective scientific research. And again, any study of ‘gun violence’ should include how guns save lives.

Sanders--Now What He Tries To Sell

The Hypocrisy of Senator Bernie Sanders

Political News and Analysis    

The Hypocrisy of Senator Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders Condemns Anti-Semitism in Iowa Menorah Ceremony

December 30, 2019

The presiding Rabbi Yossi Jacobson at the ceremony asked Sanders why he rarely discussed his Judaism while on the campaign trail and reluctantly participated in the Chanukah Menorah lighting ceremony. Sanders dodged the question and for good reason.

One can only smell a rat in the hypocrisy in Sander’s condemnation of rising Anti-semitism. His own actions belie any genuine concern. Sanders in his role in the Senate has most often taken anti-Israel positions and anti-American positions that contradict  his usual populous meaningless platitudes of supposed Israel support.

What are Bernie Sander’s stands on issues that matter to Jewish voters

At the recent Democratic debate on December 19, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “racist,” and called for a US policy toward Israel that makes space for both Israeli security and a “pro-Palestinian” perspective.

Sanders said, “Israel has — and I say this as somebody who lived in Israel as a kid, proudly Jewish – Israel has the right to exist, not only to exist but to exist in peace and security. But what US foreign policy must be about is not just being pro-Israel. We must be pro-Palestinian as well.” 

“We must understand that right now in Israel we have leadership under Netanyahu, who has recently, as you know, been indicted for bribery, who, in my view, is a racist. 

What we need is a level playing field in terms of the Middle East, which addresses the terrible crisis in Gaza, where 60 percent or 70% of the young people are unemployed,” he added.

Additional Commentary by Jerome S. Kaufman

One must fact check check Sander’s blanket statements along with their crowd pleasing meaningless platitudes. There is absolutely no evidence that Netanyahu is “racist”  He is simply defending a very small portion of the land that was given to the Jewish people by G-d in the first place and, in a far less significant temporal way, the League of Nations and the British Mandate.  

As to Gaza, the mess in Gaza is entirely the problem of Hamas who wrested all the territory away from the Palestinian Authority after Israel PM  Ariel Sharon unilaterally relinquished Israel’s jurisdiction over Gaza in a misguided gesture of “peace” in August 2005. 

Sharon had the Israel Defense  Forces forcibly remove 8600 well established Israeli residents of a thriving community of productive green houses, which the Arabs promptly destroyed when given the land and against their own financial self interests.

It is often said that one can be judged by the company one keeps. In Sander’s case, that concept is an absolute road map.

Sanders has allied with surrogates like Linda Sarsour, a vehement anti- Jewish anti-Israel activist, and Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan congresswoman, who are harshly critical of Israel — not just because of its policies, but of its status as a Jewish state.

He has also enthusiastically  teamed up with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,

the millennial “it girl” of modern progressivism who is he hopes propping up the septuagenarian socialist senator  “This is not just about running for president,” she said in a video announcing her support. “This is about creating a mass movement.” Whatever that means.

Ocasio-Cortez was joined in her endorsement by Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar. “Proud to endorse @SenSanders for President, glad that @AOC and @RashidaTlaib are on board too,” she tweeted. “It’s time.”

You may remember In February, Omar responded to a tweet from journalist Glenn Greenwald, who posted about House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy threatening to punish Omar and another congresswoman for being critical of Israel.

Omar wrote back, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” a line about $100 bills from a Puff Daddy song. Critics jumped on the tweet and said Omar was calling up a negative and harmful stereotype of Jewish Americans.

In another tweet soon after, Omar named the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, saying it was funding Republican support for Israel, which is another complete lie. This tweet received bipartisan backlash, and Omar was widely accused of anti-Semitic speech.

Rashida Tlaib (MI Rep) also dived into the hate speech There was this headline back in January from a New York Post editorial: “Rashida Tlaib casually dives into anti-Semitism”

The focus of the editorial was Tlaib’s remark in support of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and her criticism of colleagues who supported Israel. Tlaib said: “They forgot what country they represent.” 

This drew an immediate rebuke from the Jewish Democratic Council of America and the Anti-Defamation League. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) said this: “This ‘dual loyalty’ canard is a typical anti-Semitic line. BDS isn’t about freedom & equality, it’s about destroying Israel.”

You may also remember the charade Rashida Tlaib pulled pretending to want to visit her aged, sick grandmother in Israel. Her real mission was of course to thickly spread anti-Israel hatred in the country. PM Netanyahu opposed the visit for awhile but then under US administrative pressure okayed it with the proviso that Tlaib could not travel around the country spewing her poison. At that point Tlaib suddenly lost interest in visiting her sick grandmother.

Then there was Sanders confusing equivocal position on BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanction Israel)

Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and James Risch, R-Idaho introduced the first bill to be considered in the Republican-led Senate, consolidating four bills that languished in the last Congress: One codifies into law $38 billion in defense assistance for Israel over 10 years; another protects states that pass laws against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, including states that ban contracts with Israel boycotters.

Bernie Sanders quickly reacted and blasted the introduction of anti-BDS bill as ‘absurd’

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 – “While I do not support the BDS movement, we must defend every American’s constitutional right to engage in political activity. It is clear to me that this bill would violate Americans’ First Amendment rights.  

Although Sanders has grandstanded his opposition to BDS, especially before Jewish audience, when push came to shove, he voted against the Marco Rubio/James Risch legislation which put teeth into the States ability to act against BDS. Just another example of  Sander’s hypocrisy and sham support of Israel and Jewish causes.  

In summary, those who say you are known by the bedfellows you keep are dead right. A golf buddy savant of mine said it a little differently. He always reminded his daughters that “When you lie down with dogs, you get fleas.”  I guess Sander’s father forgot to remind him of that. Maybe it is time the voters of this beautiful country did?

Jerome S. Kaufman, Publisher/Editor Sande 

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