(derekbaker)

We're Number 145! We're Number 145!

The annual rankings by Morgan Quitno Press of America's safest and most dangerous cities just came out, and New York City is ranked right near the middle (but in the upper half) at 145 ... out of 371 cities studied. Rankings came from a combination of murder rates, rape incidents, and auto thefts. Safest was Brick Township, in New Jersey. Least safe was St. Louis -- and formerly least-safe city Camden, NJ, finally moved down to 5th most dangerous.

When looking only at cities with populations over 500,000, however, New York City came in as fourth safest, behind San Jose, Honolulu, and El Paso. Detroit, Baltimore, Memphis, and Washington, D.C., were the least safe in this category.

My hometown, Tulsa, is listed as the 37th most dangerous city, putting it in the worst 10 percent, I guess. Even sleepy little Topeka, Kansas, ended up in the bottom half of the list, at 206th safest. Which is kind of surprising, if you've ever visited either of these towns. And it's kind of bizarre that, by leaving there and coming here 19 years ago, I ended up in the safest of the three cities.

No blue state arrogance here, though. Crystal meth seems to be the poison affecting crime rates in communities across the South and Midwest today, but when I moved to New York 19 years ago, crack cocaine was the big problem here. These things go in generational cycles across broad swaths of the country, and there are no quick fixes, regardless of what James Q. Wilson or the concealed-carry movement may think.

Here's the list.

Labels: issues

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A story on NPR's Marketplace yesterday evening, they ran a story about oil leases north of the Arctic Circle. Most of the story was about the conflict at the heart of these leases, which are paid to Eskimo tribes who hold the land as their traditional fishing and whaling grounds, and there's some debate apparently within the Inupiat community about whether they should be leasing that area or not. But the part that hit me as among the most damning (and most ironic) pieces of evidence for human destructiveness was what makes these leases more popular now that the oil's easier to get to:

Oil companies have always drilled on land where spills can mostly be contained. But a fast-retreating ice cap allows oil giants like Shell and Conoco-Phillips to tap enormous underwater reserves for the first time. Right in the middle of the Inupiat Eskimo's fishing and whaling grounds.

That's right: fossil fuels are causing global warming, which is shrinking the ice cap, which makes it easier to drill for...more fossil fuels!

This is a business plan built by the Devil, no doubt about it.

Labels: issues

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Let the Scapegoating Begin

On the new, nightly "freeSpeech" segment on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric -- and why does Bob Schieffer get to speak there once a week, anyway? -- Monday's op-ed was by Brian Rohrbaugh, whose son Dan was killed at Columbine at 1999. They asked him speak, to give perspective from a parent's viewpoint following the horrible massacre that occurred in Amish Pennsylvania. Mr. Rohrbaugh chose to blame his son's death (and the death of those girls in Pennsylvania) on the following:

• The public school system "expelling God" and replacing him with evolution


• Abortion


• An apparent rise in acceptability for suicide. (I suppose he's referring to euthanasia?)

Basically, he says the entire Columbine murders, and subsequent such school murders, are the fault of, I guess, liberals. You know, the whole "culture of death" argument.

I could be wrong. I'm not sure how the scientific theory of evolution follows from this argument, anyway, except perhaps as his evidence that God has been "expelled" from school. But he's obviously staking a side in the culture wars, and blaming the other side for his son's death.

I've known grief, and I'm sure it affected my reasoning. And I know he's had the time to think about this, so that his rationale -- necessarily edited down for a network news broadcast, which probably forced a more simplistic statement than he might have otherwise have been able to make -- isn't a casual response to an immediate event.

I have to say, however: he's wrong.

Those may or may not be problems. (I would agree that, if suicide is starting to be regarded as an "acceptable action," as he says, there's a problem.) But they aren't what killed his son. What killed his son was a guy with a gun.

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 fellow students and a teacher, as well as themselves, at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado. Why they did it is the source of much speculation. How they did it is pretty clear: two 9mm firearms and two 12-gauge shotguns, which they sawed the barrels and butts off of. All in all, they committed several felony violations of state and federal gun laws even before they'd fired a shot.

And those gun laws did nothing to protect the students of Columbine. Gun laws did nothing to protect those girls in Pennsylvania, either.

But let's not ask the question about how these people were killed. That would threaten some people's interpretation of the Second Amendment -- despite the fact that Harris and Klebold in Colorodo, or Roberts in Pennsylvania, were not members of any kind of well-regulated militia. Instead, let's just ask why it happened, and keep asking, and keep asking ... until the next time there's a school massacre, and we continue to not ask that question.

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Labels: issues

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So if liquids aren't allowed on planes and gels aren't allowed on planes, what about things like Advil liqui-gels?

Labels: issues

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Let's get one thing straight -- even if it leaves everyone dead

logmodel Mudge -- which has a very different meaning than, for example, "supermodel Mudge," as he'd be the first to admit -- has written a great post about how right-wing Christians are putting the country at risk by continuing to demand that the military kick out anyone who is gay. That many of these people are sorely needed specialists in such fields as, oh, say, Arabic language translation makes the practice more than "merely" unjust. It makes it dangerous.

The American Taliban, however, isn't really interested in protecting the country. They get as much mileage out of militant Islamists as the neo-cons do, partly because they share much the same approach to faith as the neo-cons do to international threats: the only "constructive" thing they know how to do is hate on people. "Defend the country against terrorism? We don't need brainiac homos translating Farsi, we just need to go into a Muslim country and kick some ass. Protect heterosexual marriage? That's easy: smack down the gays." Every solution to every problem for them involves beating up on somebody or beating them down -- blacks, women, gays, non-Christians, progressive Christians -- sometimes all at once, or by following a tacit hierarchy of hate: gays trump Muslims, who trump women, who trump Jews, who trump blacks...or variations thereof -- and that's about the extent of their "policy."

Like the man said, I too have a dream that one day we'll all be judged only by the content of our characters. But I'm beginning to realize something more clearly: Conservatives created "identity politics" themselves by hating on various groups -- and then they decry its use when those groups have had enough and won't stand for more.

To their credit, I don't think they actually hate the poor, however, unless they also fall into one of the other groups above. Otherwise, they just don't care about them.

Labels: issues, politics

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