Archive for June 21, 2016

On Crime, Trump’s Right and Polifact is Wrong

June 21, 2016

On Crime, Trump’s Right and Polifact is Wrong, Power LinePaul Mirengoff, June 21, 2016

These days, the mainstream media barely pretends to be other than anti-conservative and anti-Trump. But even by the MSM’s revoltingly low standards, Polifact’s analysis of Trump’s statement on crime is a disgrace.

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Polifact, a biased liberal operation that purports to fact-check political claims, recently examined Donald Trump’s statement that “crime is rising.” It found the claim to be false, rating it “pants on fire,” the worst rating these liberals dole out.

But Trump, in this instance, is correct. Crime is rising.

How did Polifact err on such a basic question? It erred by looking at no data past 2014. Sean Kennedy at AEI Ideas blows the whistle.

Trump made his statement on June 7, 2016. Thus, his claim that crime is rising can only be fact-checked by analyzing current data. By failing to do so, Polifact confirmed that it is either incompetent, hopelessly biased, or both.

Kennedy did what Polifact was obligated to do before proclaiming Trump a liar. He looked at data that would illuminate whether crime is increasing.

Specifically, Kennedy examined local agency data for 2016 and compared it to 2014 and 2015 data. He found that violent crime in most major US cities, especially homicide, is up substantially since 2014.

Kennedy also cites a March 2016 Gallup poll finding that 53 percent of Americans “personally worry about crime and violence…a great deal.” That’s up 14 percent since the question was last asked in 2014. This dramatic increase in concern surely reflects a change in the facts on the ground — i.e., increased crime and violence.

But Polifact’s bias and/or incompetence wasn’t limited to its failure to dig up 2016 data. Kennedy notes that the source Polifact did use — the FBI, per its Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) database — provided preliminary figures for 2015.

The preliminary 2015 numbers show crime rising in most categories across the country between 2014 and 2015. Violent crime (i.e. murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault) is up. The murder rate rose 6.2 percent; rape rose 9.6 percent.

This information was readily available as of January 2016, well before Polifact wrote its June hit piece on Trump.

Why didn’t Polifact use the preliminary 2015 data? The information was, of course, “preliminary.” But it still represented the FBI’s best estimate as to whether crime was increasing as of the beginning of 2016.

This data was sufficient to show that, at a minimum, Trump’s claim that “crime is rising” is plausible. I would say it shows he is probably right (and the 2016 numbers show he is right). Yet Polifact gave Trump’s statement the lowest possible rating for veracity.

These days, the mainstream media barely pretends to be other than anti-conservative and anti-Trump. But even by the MSM’s revoltingly low standards, Polifact’s analysis of Trump’s statement on crime is a disgrace.

Cartoons of the Day

June 21, 2016

Via The Jewish Press

No-Profiling-Allowed

 

H/t Kingjester’s Blog

bigot-alert-li-600

 

H/t Vermont Loon Watch

Isl State

 

H/t Freedom is Just Another Word

Islamic Scholar

 

Motive

 

NRA

Robert Spencer on why the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization

June 21, 2016

Robert Spencer on why the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization, Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer via YouTube

Iraqi Cleric Al-Kubeisi: ISIS Controlled by Netanyahu; Al-Baghdadi Stupid, Can’t Be Held Accountable

June 21, 2016

Iraqi Cleric Al-Kubeisi: ISIS Controlled by Netanyahu; Al-Baghdadi Stupid, Can’t Be Held Accountable, MEMRI-TV via YouTube, June 21, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx3a7iYVwIc

The blurb beneath the video states,

In a recent TV interview, Sunni Iraqi cleric Sheikh Ahmad Al-Kubeisi said that ISIS was an asset in the hands of Netanyahu, who “holds the remote control” and “gives orders to all the rulers of America, Europe, and elsewhere” and that the Jews are the masters of the land today. Al-Kubeisi further said that his fatwa ruling that people killed fighting ISIS were martyrs did not apply to the mostly-Shiite militia Popular Mobilization Units, because they “are killing Muslims just because they are Sunnis.” Asked about Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, he said that he was “so stupid that when he was detained in Camp Bucca… they used him as a scarecrow and then chucked him into the garbage.” The interview aired on the Iraqi Sumaria TV channel on June 11, 2016.

Meet the ‘Islamophobes’

June 21, 2016

Meet the ‘Islamophobes’, Conservative Review, Nate Madden, June 20, 2016

(CAIR is Obama’s “go to” organization on how to deal with the Muslim community and for how best to combat “violent extremism.” — DM)

islamophobia banner

What do talk show host Bill Maher, author and Eagle Forum Founder Phyllis Schlafley and Conservative Review Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin all have in common? They’re all Islamophobes, according to a new report released by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) on Tuesday.

“Confronting Fear: Islamophobia and its Impact on the U.S. 2013-2015” is a joint project of CAIR and the U.C. Berkeley Center for Race and Gender meant to outline the funding streams for, and cast aspersions on, what it calls “The U.S. Islamophobe Network.” This list boasts 33 “inner core” and 41 “outer core” groups, while offering “a four-point strategy designed to achieve a shared American understanding of Islam in which being Muslim carries a positive connotation.”

CAIR’s “inner core” consists of “[g]roups whose primary purpose is to promote prejudice against or hatred of Islam and Muslims and whose work regularly demonstrates Islamophobic themes,” while the “outer core” is made up of “[g]roups whose primary purpose does not appear to include promoting prejudice against or hatred of Islam and Muslims, but whose work regularly demonstrates or supports Islamophobic themes.”

Essentially, it’s a hit job on anyone who has ever dared say anything negative about radical Islam and has ever been willing to speak up against it. Such groups included on CAIR’s Islamophobe list include:

ACT! For America, American Islamic Forum for Democracy, Center for the Study of Political Islam, Clarion Project, David Horowitz Freedom Center, Florida Family Association (Fla.), Investigative Project on Terrorism, Jihad Watch, Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Tennessee Freedom Coalition (Tenn.), Adelson Family Foundation, American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), American Family Association, American Islamic Leadership Coalition, Christian Broadcasting Network, Concerned Women for America, Eagle, the Glenn Beck Program, HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the Mark Levin Show, National Review, Really Big Coloring Books, Inc, The Washington Times, and WND.

Again, these are some. Not all.

But let’s not forget who’s throwing these labels around here.

We’re talking about CAIR. This is a group affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and was an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation case, in which the DOJ investigated and prosecuted a conspiracy to direct funding to Hamas. Ironically, or maybe not, this is also the same group that President Obama confers with on his “countering violent extremism” agenda.

So not only are critics of Jihadism to be labeled Islamophobes en masse, but they should also be delegitimized with the same scrutiny of the Ku Klux Klan.

Minor details, right?

So how does CAIR suggest that America combat these wretched hatemongers? Treat them like the Ku Klux Klan, of course. The report reads:

The Ku Klux Klan is the oldest of America’s hate groups, and in 1925 the white supremacist group could boast four million members and enormous political influence and popular support. Today, however, their numbers and resources are vastly diminished, their bigoted views are socially and politically marginalized, and they are virtually irrelevant within the national landscape. This progressive erosion of the Klan’s social acceptability serves as a model for CAIR’s strategy toward contemporary Islamophobic groups.

So not only are critics of Jihadism to be labeled Islamophobes en masse, but they should also be delegitimized with the same scrutiny of the Ku Klux Klan.

From a tactical perspective, the move is brilliant. This is the same thing that the social left used to silence and browbeat social conservatives for years on every single issue even remotely related to marriage and the family, and it all began with the Southern Poverty Law Center similarly designating every pro-traditional marriage organization in existence as a “hate group.”

Once that happened, it wasn’t too long before it no longer mattered to many how compelling the argument for conjugal, stable, permanent families was and still is. Now, if you hold the position, you’re labeled a hate-mongering bigot and are not to be trusted.

CAIR’s “network” looks similar in scope. It doesn’t matter that many of the groups listed in this report have clearly made the distinction between peaceful interpretations of Islam that don’t seek to subvert our way of life and Jihadism. They’ve been branded; Saul Alinsky would be proud.

“Let’s nudge ourselves from our Religion of Peace’ slumbers for a moment and consider Muslim Brotherhood ideology,” writes Andrew McCarthy, author of “The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America,” in National Review. According to McCarthy, a key memo obtained by the FBI outlines how the Muslim Brotherhood’s “American tentacles,” like CAIR, envision themselves as waging:

[A] kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.

However, the Muslim Brotherhood and its international affiliates aren’t like Al Qaeda (the Jihadist equivalent of Che Guevara) or ISIS (who operate more like Mao Zedong, both analogies courtesy of Dr. Sebastian Gorka). Rather, McCarthy explains, its vision of a “ground-up revolution” is one “in which the use of force plays a part but is just one aspect of a multi-faceted aggression arsenal.”

What’s one way to make this happen? Completely rid yourself of legitimate criticism. And if we’ve learned anything from the marriage debate that culminated in last year’s Obergefell decision, or even recent battles over Religious Freedom laws, the best way to do that is smear, smear, and smear.