What the Heck was I Thinking!?

The Instapundit.com -“>instapundit links to a paper written by Radley Balko on the “militarization” of police forces

“July 18, 2006

RADLEY BALKO has a paper on the militarization of police forces across America. This has been going on for over a decade, and I agree that it’s troubling.”

This does sound troubling…until you look at the statistics behind the incidents Balko notes on a map.

On “Botched Paramilitary Police Raids” you can find a map that displays the locations and links to a summary of the incidents.

At first, this looks just as bad as the claims in the article. Then I looked at the numbers:

“These 293 results represent
The state of: All
For the year: All
And the following type of incident: All”

The All years must cover back to 1985, the earliest year that can be queried.

293 incidents since 1985! Your almost twice as likely to die from “falling from or through a building or structure in any one year (557)” than that! What the heck kind of “epidemic” is that?

On the other hand, most readers have probably seen the TV tape from a few years ago of the bank robber who had body armor and a fully automatic machine gun who kept several dozen police officers pinned down, injuring several.

If I were a patron or employee of that bank, I’d have kissed the first paramilitary police officer to save my life from that paramilitary criminal.

Enough of the demagogery and scare tactics!

Is Leftist “thought” an oxymoron?

Dr. Sanity sends me to a post by Gagdad Bob that discusses Leftist thought among other things doomed to failure. He has several comments that caught my eye:

“…it disrupts the developmental arc toward maturity and replaces it with selfishness, entitlement, and dependency–all under the sanctimonious guise of altruism. This is one of the great bait-and-switches in history, for what could be more selfish than to vote to raise someone else’s taxes so you can get a lot of free stuff? The left always talks about “free medical care,” as if someone won’t have to foot the bill. And to paraphrase P.J. O’Rourke, “if you think healthcare is expensive now, just wait until it’s free.” “

and

Likewise, promoting the goal of making college accessible to everyone can only have two effects: college will become a mediocrity enabler, full of people who don’t belong there; or it will become a stupid factory, an outcome it is well on its way to achieving already. And, shielded from market discipline, it will only become more and more expensive. Eventually, the ability to attend college and become stupid will be financially beyond the reach of most Americans.

and this crystal beauty:

Rather, leftist policies fuel envy because they detach effort from outcome and nurture a cosmic sense of entitlement–wanting becomes confused with deserving, as in a child.

Sometimes Gagdad Bob is too hard to read early in the morning, but these three quotes above are gems.