The American Politics Thread

Logan wrote: Thanks, that's interesting. When doing stats things should be broken down as much as possible. Where there is poverty there is usually more violent crime. I was getting confused too with the stats that Friede was arguing with Omphal, cause it seemed to be talking at cross-purposes rather than sourcing statistics to make comparisons and generate a bigger picture.

I thought the statistics were obvious. There was talk of an increase of rape crime rate that was correlated to the number of new immigrants (around 1.150.000; I can look up the exact number if wanted). I only did the maths which resulted in the per capita number of rape crimes committed by a new immigrant being about 1500 times as high as the per capita number of rape crimes from the rest of the population, which is ridiculous.

Logan wrote: I didn't notice him mentioning the stats being limited to new immigrants. Sweden opened its doors to Moslem refugees back in the 70s. Anyway, yeah, see how your stats correlate to the stats he mentioned here as you're much more of a maths person than I: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5195/sweden-rape

You are missing the point, Logan. There is a supposed rise of rape crimes by 1452% within a short time span. Now please explain to me why all of a sudden the foreigners who have been living in Sweden for quite some time should start committing rape crimes to such an extent.

As to Sweden being the country with the highest rape rate: Read Chapter 6 of the Swedish Penal Code.

omphaloskepsis wrote: The Stock Market is at an all time high.   That's great for American retirement accounts.  Stock Market prices are based on future optimism.  That's the way the Stock Market works.  How do I know?  I quit my Day Job 17 years ago to go full time trading the stock market.

The stock market was already at record highs under Obama. Neither president can claim credit for it. For that matter, investment is high in bull markets because people have money to invest at higher yields. Mandatory spending and military spending comprise more than 3/4 of our $3.8 trillion federal budget. What is left is half a trillion dollars, or less than 3% of GDP. You bet on market conditions, not on an administration.

omphaloskepsis wrote: How do you tell the difference between the good immigrants and the terrorists without extreme vetting?

How do you tell the difference between good Americans and domestic terrorists without extreme vetting? Nay, we must allow the CIA to freely surveil, imprison, and torture all American citizens to determine their TRUE colors! Your argument worthy of naught but mockery.

omphaloskepsis wrote: According to Wikipedia the Netherlands has a 4% Muslim population.    Compare that to Sweden's 14.3%.   Sweden has the 2nd highest rape rate on the planet Earth.  Please look it up yourself

You should probably read what people have already posted, like my response in the last thread when you brought it up. It was wrong then, and it's still wrong now. I'm also going to repost the German economic study of refugees that found no such thing.

Perhaps moreover... how do you manage to convince yourself of such a preposterous notion to begin with? I can see how people use fear to manipulate others and I understand why that can be convincing in the first place, but when readers point out the obvious flaws, you've just ignored it. What makes it so sticky that you not forgo skepticism at the outset, but actively crusade for an idea that doesn't pass a basic sniff test?

//EDIT: Oh, oh! I wasn't going to post it, but I thought it was worth noting. You can review some Swedish statistics on rape here, where you can see that between 2005 and 2014, victimization did not change significantly (0.9% in 2005, 1.0% in 2014), but reported offenses increased by about 50%. As has been said over and over, it's all about how the law itself and how sexual offenses are reported. On the flipside, you know what's gone up? Reported hate crimes, especially those with Islamophobic motivation.


Edited by Gamemako - February 20 2017 at 21:01

BaldFriede wrote: Logan wrote: I don't think I am missing the point as it's not that short a time. That increase is since 1975 when Sweden opened its doors to Moslem migrants up until 2014. I don't even know how much Sweden's population has even increased in about 40 years, so I don't have enough info to deeply interpret the data. You can question how impact moslem immigration had on the increase, but there is a very significant rise in reported rape cases over those 40 years. "In 1975, 421 rapes were reported to the police; in 2014, it was 6,620. That is an increase of 1,472%." Yes, Logan, and since 1975 1.150.000 new immigrants came to Sweden; the rest of the foreign population had been living there already without committing rape crimes. And then during the last 40 years for some reason they started doing so. There were, however, several changes to Chapter 6 of the Swedish Penal Code since 1975. I don't know what exactly these changes were, but there were several; they are noted in the Penal Code. I think it is highly probable that the increase in the sexual crime rate has something to do with these changes; acts that had not considered to be criminal before now are. An example of how this can happen: Before 1997 rape in a marriage was not considered to be a crime in Germany. So the rape rate increased some since 1997. There also is the fact that rape victims often don't report these crimes, so there always is a dark figure. But over the years more and more women find the courage to report sex crimes. This also leads to an increase of these figures. You can't simply compare crime statistics from different countries simply because the definition of what a crime is not the same in these different countries. So saying something like "Sweden has the highest rape rate" is quite meaningless. I won't even go into the role of cultural misunderstandings.

I think you're missing the dishonesty of these statistics. If you go by raw reported rapes from the FBI's UCR, then rape in the United States has nearly doubled since 1973, up to 90,000 from 51,000. If you use the more accurate, more valuable, more generalizeable BJS crime victimization survey rate, rapes have plummeted to less than one fifth the 1973 rate (see: 1973, 2014). Using the FBI data would be patently dishonest, of course, but that's exactly the kind of data used. Even without changes in law or mores, it's unhelpful data to have.

That the claims are so boldly duplicitous is intended, I should think. It's a bit like the Nigerian prince scam: it's just dumb enough that skeptical readers can reject it outright, so the scammers can focus on fleecing the most vulnerable. Add to that the tendency for rumors masquerading as fact to spread just as well if not better than actual fact and you may have the recipe they were following.


Edited by Gamemako - February 20 2017 at 22:37

I'm glad to see that Trump is as popular in the UK as he is in the US. And the British thought that Mitt Romney was a twit!

Before accepting that article from the Gatestone Institute as something reliable, it's worth your time to investigate exactly what the Gatestone Institute is and who is running it.

progaardvark wrote: Like this, for example: http://www.factcheck.org/2017/02/trump-exaggerates-swedish-crime/

This article underlines (among other things) what I said before: Just because the trends of two independent statistics appear to be similar does not mean there is a correlation between them. The fact that both the population of storks and the human birth rate significantly increased over a given time period does not mean that the stork brings the babies (an example my statistics professor at the university liked to give). It is an all too human trait to fall into this trap though.

Well, I wouldn't say he can do whatever he likes. He can't drive and can't even use an iphone among other things. He can't start a war. If he wants to start WWIII he has to have the approval of congress even though he has to sign the actual declaration. The President is not as powerful as most would think. He can beak off all he wants which is what Trump loves to do.

Re: Sweden rape statistics et. all.: nowadays, the generally accepted result (as presented to the general public) of compared statistics has become largely valueless. The brashness with this still is done confounds me most of the time. Please let me explain what I mean:

Two statistics can only be compared if the calculation basis remains unaltered for any two time periods being compared. It is invalid to compare two statistical results if their calculation basis differs.

Calculate the rape statistic for a country for the time period A, and you get a certain result a.
Calculate the rape statistic for this same country for another time period B USING A CHANGED RULESET, and you get a result b. And now, what is done and NEVER SHOULD BE DONE: the results a and b are presented next to each other for comparison. Anyone trained in mathematical statistics will tell you that this comparison is valueless, the transferred information is worth nothing at all. You can only compare two such resultant numbers if the same rule set applies.

What you should be presented with for valid comparison is the availability of 4 results: two for the time periods A and B under rule set one, and another two for the same time periods A and B for the new (altered) rule set. The corresponding results can now be reliably compared. But you can NEVER compare time period A under rule set one with time period B under rule set two, because these two have practically nothing in common. The value of such a comparison is ZERO! And yet, this is what is practically the norm now. Surprisingly no one ever protests and wants to see the real data comparison results.

The same principle is also liberally applied to many other areas, such as national unemployment figures, so that everything is doctored to look superficially good, although this is often not the case.

The brazen cheek of all this drives me crazy! The institues publishing such results are well aware of the invalidity, and still they continue this malpractice.

Edited by npjnpj - February 21 2017 at 16:33

and you know what before I put myself in thread timeout... this sh*t really does piss me off.... gone is embarrassment.. then comes anger..

my fellow f**king Americans...

get your heads out of your asses.. you have bigger problems than targeting those who are different.. those who are those trying to escape to a better life and upsetting your notion of a white christian America.

the f**king idiots white christians already here...




yet we did NOTHING, those fools you elect to Congress did nothing... and yet you all elect someone that plays to your racial fears..your ignorance.... your ..bah...

whatever it is .. it is not to reality