22 April, 2008...8:04 pm
A triumph of justice
By MrLefty
Timmeh mocks an AFP story that inadvertently multiplies the US prison population by ten:
If true, this means the US prison population would be larger than the population of all but two states. The actual figure is closer to one per cent.
Yeah! That’s showing ‘em. One in a hundred Americans is behind bars - or, to be more precise, one in every thirty two adults.
Something to be proud of. ONE IN THIRTY-TWO. 2.3 million prisoners.
But why stop there? If they reduced the three strike rule down to two strikes, I reckon they could get it up to 3 million within a decade. What do you think, Americans? You’re not going to shy away from a challenge, are you?
Meanwhile, I love/am horrified by how the same number is seen in completely the opposite light depending on your side of the political spectrum. Righties look at the above figure and see a triumph; lefties look at it and see a national embarrassment. I do not know how you could ever get such people to understand each other.
9 Comments
22 April, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Look on the bright side - Timmeh linked to a story about prison guards opening fire on a race riot which erupted after neo-Nazis celebrated Hitler’s birthday, and he never even mentioned any of those pet topics. That must have taken a lot of self-restraint.
Maybe he is learning?
Or maybe I just don’t hear dog whistles when they are pitched that high.
22 April, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Actually, I am rather curious about how Timmeh came upon this little story…
He links to the AFP story, exposes their error, and then writes: “UPDATE. A lefty fell for it.”
The link goes to my blog. Now, let’s ignore for a moment how you can “fall for” an error which was neither a trick nor a joke. I read this AFP story earlier today and wrote a quick, outraged blog post about it. If I’d had more time I might have realized the journalistic error, but I didn’t - my bad, I readily admit.
But there’s Timmeh waiting to pounce on my mistake. I challenge his minions to look through my blog and find any other such glaring factual (factual!) errors. I’ll wager they are few and far between.
So here’s what I’m thinking: Timmeh noticed my criticisms of him and Big Rupe here at blairboltwatch (and elsewhere), and has been keeping an eye on my blog, waiting for an opportunity to pounce. But he does it in his own clever, snarky way, pretending that he found the story himself, and THEN noticed my link.
Vengeance accomplished?
Alternatively, it’s possible that Tim’s real target was YOUR ABC, which carried the story which I originally linked to (now updated to fix the error, I notice). Maybe Blair is monitoring ABC News to gather more “evidence” of perceived leftwing anti-US bias? That would explain why his post links to the original AFP story, which he would have had to track down to check that it was an AFP error, not an ABC one.
Hmmn?
23 April, 2008 at 3:04 am
Snap…… Gahndi, great catch.
There is no way that Blair post was about journalistic accuracy from a major news organisation.
Blair just couldn’t help but reveal his neo-Nazi leanings with this one.
But what is exactly the point of the post entry on this blog? does it disagree with the point Blair has made? Is it condemning the fact the Blair calls out such incompetence?
Or does it provide a sounding board for discussing the relevant topics that Blair raises?
23 April, 2008 at 6:57 am
Why call him Timmeh? Why is it that left wingers always have to revert to name calling? And as for him having ‘neo-Nazi leanings’, what a crock.
23 April, 2008 at 9:36 am
Now I understand the desire to go to Mars. A place to send all the criminals. Sounds pretty familiar.
23 April, 2008 at 9:46 am
Infidel - I’d have thought the point obvious. It’s the strangeness of Blair defending the 1 in 10 error by reporting the 1 in 32 figure as if it’s a triumph.
Blink - at least we stop at the petty name-calling. Your more prominent right-winger often goes several creepy steps further.
23 April, 2008 at 9:59 am
Where is the triumphalism in the reporting? It didn’t look like he expressed a view one way or another in the blogpost.
24 April, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Once again, a criticism of the author is based on a misunderstanding of his point.
Silly fools.
1 May, 2008 at 10:21 pm
The prison population of 2.3M is obscene enough but factor in those on parole, some sort of bond, or elctronic tagging and the reasons (something like 70% of prisoners are non-violent, mostly drug or petty larceny) and the entire country seems to be either in prison, just out or employed to run the ‘corrective” (wotta sick name) system.
Oh the joys of private prison but that’s the triumph of free enterprise presumably.
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