Lies, Damned Lies And Liberal Statistics

by Ben Crystal 

The graphic above was created by an outfit which calls itself “Occupy Democrats,” it’s the Twitter-attachment-meme version of Democratic talking points which have been floating like the proverbial poop in the punchbowl for a couple of years now.

Through a careful arrangement of demographic data, the graphic attempts to “prove” that Republicans hate poor people, or create poor people, or are mean to poor people, or something to that effect.
I’ll admit, it’s fairly well constructed. The adorable little moppets in the frame are acceptably cute, without coming across too much like catalog models. The girl standing center-right is barefoot, which I presume is supposed to evoke the idea that she can’t afford shoes; or that mean old Republicans are anti-footwear. There are a couple of old beaters, including a decades-old Ford pickup, parked haphazardly. Mom and Dad are there, as well; with Dad sporting a blue collar-type work shirt. And the bold-face print, arranged in simple vertical fashion with varying colors practically screams “LOOK AT WHAT THE GOP DID!”
Furthermore, the statistics are technically correct. However, the statistical construct is a house of cards. If you classify a State as “red” based on that State’s voting in Presidential elections and further classify “poorest” by per capita income, then 97 of the 100 poorest counties are, in fact, in “red” states.

Of course, context is important; and that’s doubtless why the “Occupy Democrats” didn’t include any. Even a cursory examination of the demographics of the 100 poorest counties reveals a decidedly different story. Of the “top” 10, ALL are Democratic strongholds. Expand the pool to the 20 poorest counties, and all but two are regressive redoubts. The theme remains the same throughout the 100 poorest counties in the country. In fact, the few “red” counties on the list are primarily located in the coal fields of Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, where President Barack Obama’s war on the coal industry has laid waste to more acreage than the Islamofascist hordes murdering Iraqi Christians with American-supplied weapons.
It gets worse. In addition to their status as torrential blue whirlpools in otherwise placid red seas, the overwhelming majority of the “horrendous hundred” also share another trait in common. They’re majority-minority. In fact, the top 10 are ALL majority-minority. In fact, the only county in the top 10 which isn’t comprised of Native American reservation land is Starr County, Texas, which sports the highest percentage of Hispanic residents of any county in the entire Nation.

The demographic trends repeat throughout the Census Tables like a bad fungus. Excepting counties whose primary industries have been targeted for destruction by the Democrats, the 100 poorest counties share two statistics:

1. They’re politically Democratic.

2. They’re majority non-white.

In their effort to prove that Republican governance creates poverty, “Occupy Democrats” have accidentally proven that even in the most conservative states, Democrats can gum up the works. As an additional lesson, it’s worth noting the correlation between the racial makeup of the populations which suffer the most and the leadership provided to them by the Democrats. Rather than asking how “Republican policies grow the economy,” the graphic ought to be asking why Democratic policies douse the economy with gasoline and burn it to cinders; especially if the economy is made up of mostly brown and black workers.
The left’s manipulation of facts and figures – ham-fisted thought it may be – taints every aspect of their body politic. They whine endlessly about so-called “gun violence;” to the point that they’ve turned that ridiculously hackneyed phrase into the boogeyman from a slasher flick. I keep waiting for the first time this APB goes out after a shooting: “Suspect is approximately 32 inches tall, is wearing black with brown wood trim, and answers to the name ‘Kalashnikov.’ Known associates include ‘AR-15,’ ‘Glock’ and ‘Remington.’”

Of course, their bizarre fixation with guns has left them willfully blind to the people who wield them. Despite not one firearm in all of human history successfully formulating a plan to kill a human being, much less actually committing the crime, Democrats have used so-called “gun violence” statistics to fearmonger their way into creating so-called “gun-free zones;” known to criminals as “target rich environments.” Those places are also known by other names, such as Chicago and Detroit.
Again, the crimes classified as “gun violence” by our regressive friends do involve firearms, making their assertions seem accurate. However, they leave out factors including gang involvement, suicide, and the always pesky fact that nearly all so-called “gun crimes” which are committed involve the illegal deployment of the firearm, thereby rendering the “gun violence” screamers’ attempts to use statistics to restrain the Bill of Rights devoid of academic merit.
The other common threads uniting the free-fire alleys in which the law-abiding citizens have been led like lambs to slaughter by regressive statistical wire-pulling are the same as the aforementioned counties. They’re all enslaved by decades of Democratic machine politics, and they’re all majority-minority; as if we needed further reminders that the Left’s racially inclusive demagoguery is window dressing hiding craven political exploitation of the African-American, Hispanic and Native American populations.

Demographics are hardly the lone area in which liberal talking points are twisted beyond recognition. The regressives’ religious devotion to so-called “global warming” is its own study in statistical manipulation. A pop science theory which purports to explain catastrophes which haven’t happened based on research which has yet to come near meeting basic scientific standards, global warming, which currently goes by the name “climate change,” averages a new name about every decade. While some might think the changing monikers reflect the wishes of the voices in Al Gore’s head, the reality is that the chief proponents of “global warming” have been forced to rename their cult’s idol because the climate continually fails to bear out their theoretical predictions.
In the 1970s, they called it “global cooling.” When the globe failed to plunge into a new ice age, they renamed it “global warming.” But the geological climate has stubbornly refused to stop producing record cold winters and record high amounts of key evidence like Antarctic icepack, necessitating the creation of the “climate change” nom de nonsense. With the actual climate changing without regard to Gore’s slide shows and Obama’s pronouncements, the same regressives who blame conservatives for poverty and guns for violence took a two-pronged approach:

1. They began claiming all weather was attributable to climate change. That’s technically true. It’s also embarrassingly stupid; especially when Obama uses it as justification for dropping a regulatory hammer on the coal industry; or some Hollywood bobblehead uses it to demand everyone be required to drive a biodiesel Prius.

2. They lied. Leading global warmists at renowned institutes like the University of East Anglia to react to the academic failure of their warmist bell ringing by stepping beyond a simple name change to simply fabricating data.

The Democrats tout economic progress by crowing about new additions to the workforce; all the while gingerly sidestepping the fact that Obama’s economic plans have convinced a record mass of nearly 100 million Americans to abandon all hope and change. They try to filter their amnesty for illegal aliens through the prism of “doing it for the children,” ignoring the hordes of MS13, Zeta and other narcoterrorists brazenly strutting across the border; probably in search of better weapons prices than Attorney General Holder can offer. They cloak their support for Islamofascist terrorism in the guise of “humanitarian” support; but refuse to acknowledge that groups like Hamas take their (OUR tax-funded) largesse and use it to buy artillery which they then set up in schools, using their own children as human shields.
And of course, they forced Obamacare on an unwilling nation; despite it constituting what my colleague Wayne Root accurately described as “..the first-ever trillion dollar scam.” They’re liars. They’re damned liars. And the statistics to prove it.