Day: 1/16/2013

Breitbart Takes An Early Lead In The ‘Stupidest Article Of The Year’ Contest: On Gun-Related Deaths

Posted by on January 16, 2013 at 11:04 am. 10 Comments :

The year is only about two weeks old but a strong entry has already been made to capture the “Stupidest Article Of The Year” award. And to no one’s surprise, a perennial favorite in the competition to achieve Olympian idiocy has leaped to front of the pack.

Breitbart

Breitbart News has few rivals when it comes to jaw-dropping dimwittedness. And they have once again proven their mettle with an article sporting the headline “Less Than One Percent Of Deaths In 2011 Were Gun-Related.” Here’s an excerpt:

“The media regularly twists gun numbers to make gun-related deaths appear predominant over every other type of death in this country. However, a rational examination of how small the percentage of gun-related deaths are when compared to the overall number of deaths in any given year helps one to see through the hype.”

The blockheads at Breitbart are actually trying to deceptively distort the argument by comparing the number of deaths by guns to the total number of all deaths, including old age, disease, accidents, and auto-erotic asphyxiation (that last one was thrown in as a frame of reference for the Breitbrats who probably have personal experience with it).

Over two and a half million people died in 2011 for all combined reasons. It is utterly irrelevant to compare that number to just the deaths caused by guns and conclude that such deaths are therefore not a problem. A proper analysis would be to compare gun-related deaths to other types of similar fatalities. But by the perverse logic employed by the Breitbrats tuberculosis, AIDS, asthma, influenza, Parkinson’s disease, leukemia, and prostate or ovarian cancers are also not a problem. According to the Centers for Disease Control they all have death rates that are less than or equivalent to gun-related deaths. So rest easy America.

If all of that weren’t bad enough, the Breitbrats can’t even get their statistics straight. Their article claims that “in 2011, the total number of gun-related deaths was 8,583.” However, the actual number is 32,163 – a discrepancy of a mere 375 percent. That’s the sort of buffoonery that will make Breitbart a challenge to defeat as the year in stupid progresses. So congratulations to them on their world-class ignorance, and to the other contenders (i.e. Fox News, Daily Caller, WorldNetDaily, Newsbusters, et al), Don’t give up, the year is still young.

James O’Keefe’s New Video Embarrassment Hits The Internet With A Resounding Thud

Posted by on January 16, 2013 at 3:32 am. 3 Comments :

As reported earlier this week, citizen video mangler James O’Keefe has produced another in his series of fraudulent smear pieces. His latest is an attempt to embarrass a few newspaper folks by ambushing them with an utterly ridiculous bit of theater that proves nothing and only serves to embarrass O’Keefe and his company of juvenile players.

James O'Keefe

O’Keefe’s new video excrement has received attention only on the most disreputable outlets such as WorldNetDaily and the Daily Caller. And from the looks of it, that’s even more attention than it deserves. His circle of propagandists is apparently shrinking. Neither Fox News nor his mentor Breitbart has posted the video or even a story announcing it.

The video itself is ten minutes of mind-numbing boredom as O’Keefe’s flunkies accost people with appeals to put a stupid sign on their lawns. As usual, it was heavily edited to disparage the ambushees and O’Keefe inserted a lame, studio-produced introduction wherein he falsely asserts that gun safety advocates want to “take all guns from everyone,” a policy that no one has proposed. His ludicrous and unsupported conclusion was that “We didn’t find any members of the media with the strength of their convictions.” But that would only be true if any of his victims had ever expressed a conviction to favor the message on his infantile signs – which they did not.

Finally, O’Keefe’s flunkies may have committed yet another crime on behalf of his crusade to debase journalism. When approached by an officer from the Washington, D.C. police department outside of the home of Attorney General Eric Holder, they told him that they were from a gun control organization. Of course, they were not and the organization they claimed to represent does not exist. That may constitute giving false testimony to a law enforcement representative who was investigating a complaint, or even worse, obstruction of justice.

O’Keefe is a serial offender. In addition to his conviction for unlawful actions taken in the office of a United States senator (for which he is still on probation), he has broken election laws and invaded the privacy of people from whom he had not acquired consent to record. He even tried to entrap a CNN reporter in a perverse sting on his “Love Boat.” This latest violation of the law ought to be prosecuted as well and, at the very least, his probation should be revoked. Now that would be justice.