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[BearFlexington]

Unsubstantiated.

Also, my mind keeps going back to illegal wars and who has been waging them. Is there a more violent crime?

 

[haxamin]

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/dec/01/ted-cruz/are-overwhelming-majority-violent-criminals-democr/

Not that this needed debunking to begin with.

 

[capitalCORN]

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/dec/01/ted-cruz/are-overwhelming-majority-violent-criminals-democr/

Not that this needed debunking to begin with.

That's not gonna change perception. Coloured people are ravenous beasts while whites are knight of god. It's as simple as that.

 

[~Devil Trigger~]

he cant stop

he wont stop

 

[hydragonwarrior]

LOL this proves this guy isn't serious about becoming President anymore. How can you go on the record and say something like that? Doesn't he realize he has to win BOTH sides in order to become president?

My hope is Rubio, Carson and Trump keep saying similar things.

Cruz: just shut up.

Actually, I prefer he keep Repubs in the gutter.

 

[davepoobond]

Cruz seems to be the new flavor once Carson drops off severely. They get the crazy with less of the "idiocy"

 

[zon]

You know this isn't too different from what a conservative told me five years ago. According to him every crime/evil that had been committed in human history was done by liberals. This just seems like a less insane version of that.

 

[Cybit]

the only worthwhile thing Cruz has ever done is this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_mcie4Nasw

 

[Metaphoreus]

Ted Cruz salivated when he claimed the PP shooter to be a extreme leftist transgendered woman.

Salivated? Cruz's point was that if the shooter were a "transgendered leftist activist," it wouldn't be appropriate to tar the left based on the shooter's actions.

Politifact says this is mostly false.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...erwhelming-majority-violent-criminals-democr/

PolitiFact needs to learn the difference between "False" and "Fuck if I know."

 

[Nastrodamous]

if you want to say black people commit crimes, atleast have the balls to actually say it and not beat around the bush,what a coward.

 

[Wilsongt]

Republicans have a super majority on gay sex scandals, but we won't go into that, Teddy.

 

[Coffee Dog]

What do you mean by this?

Ironic post.

lmao

Watch out everyone, it's reverse racism! Hide your children!

 

[AxelFoley]

I would imagine that most crime is by people who are economically challenged. Poorer communities tend to vote democrat. So while I could envision a scenario where what he's saying is factually true, what he's implying is as has been said, correlation vs causation.

This drives that point home:

Poorer black communities probably tend to vote Democrat, but poorer white communities more than likely vote Republican.

 

[Aske]

Poorer black communities probably tend to vote Democrat, but poorer white communities more than likely vote Republican.

Exactly. Poor white people tend to be incredibly conservative.

 

[Veritigo_X]

Salivated? Cruz's point was that if the shooter were a "transgendered leftist activist," it wouldn't be appropriate to tar the left based on the shooter's actions.

He didn't make up some hypothetical, he claimed there were reports of this being the case. He did say that he wouldn't tar the left over this, but I don't think that was his point in bringing up that claim.

 

[Sianos]

Salivated? Cruz's point was that if the shooter were a "radical Islamic terrorist," it wouldn't be appropriate to tar the Muslims based on the shooter's actions.

No, tarring the entire spectrum of conservatives/Muslims for the actions of the extremists is incorrect. However, it must also be considered that dangerous rhetoric and antiquated beliefs with unintended consequences may lead to the rise of extremist groups.

Ironically, I find the prevalent "why haven't the moderates spoken out against the extremists" sentiment more applicable to conservatives than Muslims, although this could just be due to mosques being inherently better organized due to having an organized structure that can coordinate.

Granted, this could also depend on what you define "moderate" to be in both cases.

 

[Ri'Orius]

Their policies on sex education, contraception, and abortion and their inherent contradictions are particularly ridiculous and indicative of a tremendous lack of introspection.

Yes, restrict access to contraception and condemn all sex education except for abstinence only peppered with horror stories that degrade women (ex: your body is like a stick of gum) - that will SURELY help reduce abortion rates.

The only justification I've seen for this contradiction is "well, they believe~~ sex education is wrong because of reasons they can't articulate" - I'd really like to see that line of reasoning fly as a defense of any liberal platform.

Getting pretty off-topic here, but the goal isn't to reduce abortions. It's to reduce premarital sex, which they see as immoral:

 

[Sianos]

Getting pretty off-topic here, but the goal isn't to reduce abortions. It's to reduce premarital sex, which they see as immoral:

Hanlon's Razor fails me again - that terminal goal is what truly follows from their actions, but it is a despicable and malicious position. I can't recall any of the GOP explicitly stating that, but I'm interested in any quotes you do have and of course a goal does not have to be explicitly stated to be sought after, as we see so commonly, especially when dog whistles are involved.

The question is whether they are incompetent or malicious with regards to this topic.

 

[Raptor2155]

Please proceed, senator.

 

[Technosteve]

Oh he's talking about black people

 

[McLovin]

Most people arent rich so its kind of true, besides republican criminals get away with it most of the time.

 

[Cybit]

Poorer black communities probably tend to vote Democrat, but poorer white communities more than likely vote Republican.

Exactly. Poor white people tend to be incredibly conservative.

That's...not actually true. Poor (poverty level and below) white people just don't tend to vote at all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/opinion/sunday/who-turned-my-blue-state-red.html?_r=0

 

[Metaphoreus]

He didn't make up some hypothetical, he claimed there were reports of this being the case. He did say that he wouldn't tar the left over this, but I don't think that was his point in bringing up that claim.

That was precisely why he brought it up. Watch the clip.

 

[Oblivion]

That was precisely why he brought it up. Watch the clip.

It's a little difficult to see/hear from that clip but I didn't get any impression that Cruz was just trying to make a point as opposed to shifting blame elsewhere.

 

[Not]

What

Oh he's talking about black people

Ah

 

[Veritigo_X]

That was precisely why he brought it up. Watch the clip.

He said "we don't fully know the motivations of this deranged individual, we know that he was a man who was registered to vote as a woman and the media promptly wants to blame him on the pro-life movement when at this point there is very little evidence to indicate that."

The only thing he said we know about the shooter's motivations is the fact that he was registered to vote as a woman. When pressed about the shooter saying "no more baby parts" when arrested he goes off about reports that the shooter was "registered as an independent and as a woman and a transgendered leftist activist" without even acknowledging the question.

Like Oblivion said, he's shifting blame.

 

[biggersmaller]

I recently saw a jail survey, and most people in jail identify as democrats. I'm not sure he is factually wrong here, as crazy as he is.

Yup. Cruz is 100% right about most criminals being Democrat. Without polling anyone all you have to accept is most convicts are minorities and as such vote overwhelmingly Democrat.

 

[Aske]

That's...not actually true. Poor (poverty level and below) white people just don't tend to vote at all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/opinion/sunday/who-turned-my-blue-state-red.html?_r=0

Conservative with a small 'c'; as in philosophically right wing even if they don't vote. And I hasten to add I'm basing that on nothing; just personal anecdotal experience.

 

[Metaphoreus]

It's a little difficult to see/hear from that clip but I didn't get any impression that Cruz was just trying to make a point as opposed to shifting blame elsewhere.

It wasn't that difficult to hear, as my transcription below reveals. And his point was clear, which is why HuffPo and the like choose to punctuate his sentence as they do and leave the "I don't think it's fair to blame on the rhetoric of the left" completely unmentioned.

He said "we don't fully know the motivations of this deranged individual, we know that he was a man who was registered to vote as a woman and the media promptly wants to blame him on the pro-life movement when at this point there is very little evidence to indicate that."

The only thing he said we know about the shooter's motivations is the fact that he was registered to vote as a woman. When pressed about the shooter saying "no more baby parts" when arrested he goes off about reports that the shooter was "registered as an independent and as a woman and a transgendered leftist activist" without even acknowledging the question.

Like Oblivion said, he's shifting blame.

Here are his comments (in relevant part) as presented by the HuffPo video I linked to:

We know that he was a man who registered to vote as a woman and the media promptly wants to blame him on the pro-life movement, when at this point there's very little evidence to indicate that.

[Reporter mentions that the shooter said "no more baby parts" to the police when arrested.]

Well, it's also reported that he was registered as an independent and as a woman and a transgendered leftist activist; if that's what he is, I don't think it's fair to blame on the rhetoric of the left. This was a murderer.

Cruz was making two points here: (1) it's too early in the investigation to conclude much of anything about the shooter's motivation, and (2) it's inappropriate for the media to use this shooting to smear the pro-life movement as a whole.

HuffPo parses Cruz's statement improperly so that they can write a hostile story about his comments. As rendered by HuffPo, Cruz's response was, "It’s also been reported that he was registered as an independent and a woman and transgendered leftist activist, if that’s what he is." That's a nonsense sentence.

 

[Malyse]

I see the defense force has arrived.

 

[Veritigo_X]

Cruz was making two points here: (1) it's too early in the investigation to conclude much of anything about the shooter's motivation, and (2) it's inappropriate for the media to use this shooting to smear the pro-life movement as a whole.

HuffPo parses Cruz's statement improperly so that they can write a hostile story about his comments. As rendered by HuffPo, Cruz's response was, "It’s also been reported that he was registered as an independent and a woman and transgendered leftist activist, if that’s what he is." That's a nonsense sentence.

First of all, you were the one that posted that Huffington Post article. You could've picked any source but you decided to go with that one for some reason only to turn around and try to make a point by it. You've established you posted a shitty article, great. I agree with you there.

I still disagree with your interpretation of Cruz's comments. He wasn't prompted to say that he was registered as a woman or that he's a transgendered leftist activist by any question, that was something he said in a prepared statement to the press. He knew what he was doing by bringing up those points and he knew how his supporters would hear those comments. He could've made those exact same two points by saying exactly what you said. Instead he decides to float out unfounded reports to shift blame away from a cause he wholeheartedly supports and cause confusion about who the shooter is.

 

[jmdajr]

Cruz stepping up his game.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Bush JR was a democrat? Oh he doesn't mean illegal wars and being responsible for many deaths of innocents he means serious crimes like robbing stores.

 

[Prototype]

Oh, I can play this game too.

Majority of people in the US believe in god, therefore most criminals are religious.

 

[Cybit]

Oh, I can play this game too.

Majority of people in the US believe in god, therefore most criminals are religious.

Yep. You might also be able to stick homophobic as well on the same population.

 

[Metaphoreus]

First of all, you were the one that posted that Huffington Post article. You could've picked any source but you decided to go with that one for some reason only to turn around and try to make a point by it. You've established you posted a shitty article, great. I agree with you there.

I still disagree with your interpretation of Cruz's comments. He wasn't prompted to say that he was registered as a woman or that he's a transgendered leftist activist by any question, that was something he said in a prepared statement to the press. He knew what he was doing by bringing up those points and he knew how his supporters would hear those comments. He could've made those exact same two points by saying exactly what you said. Instead he decides to float out unfounded reports to shift blame away from a cause he wholeheartedly supports and cause confusion about who the shooter is.

The HuffPo article is representative of other articles taking the same angle. Salon follows HuffPo's punctuation, but, to its credit, includes what comes after. ThinkProgress gives even less context for Cruz's comment. Mediaite provides full context but characterizes Cruz as "bash[ing] the left," though Cruz clearly disclaims any such goal in his comment ("I don’t think it’s fair to blame on the rhetoric on the left"). Even mainstream sources buy into the spin: CNN punctuates and omits like HuffPo. WaPo provides full context, but obliviously argues that Cruz is jumping the gun because we don't know enough yet (which was Cruz's point). The New York Times omits the conditional that even HuffPo included ("if that's what he is").

I don't think it matters that Cruz raised the registration without prompting. That doesn't affect the import of his comment. He raised that issue immediately after (according to your earlier post--the HuffPo video starts where my quotation started) his acknowledgment that "we don't fully know the motivations of this deranged individual," and immediately before his comment about there being "very little evidence to indicate" that blame belongs on the pro-life movement.

I see the defense force has arrived.

This isn't a persuasive post. I'm not going to suddenly realize that HuffPo's punctuation is correct just because you stumbled into the thread half-asleep and muttered something about "defense force lol."

 

[mclem]

So what you're saying, Mr. Cruz, is that when Republicans do something wrong, they're disproportionately less likely to be found to have committed a crime than a democrat is? Fancy that!

 

[mclem]

How is this guy a junior US senator? He's like a comic book villain

At some point some trendy news aggregator is going to use a bunch of quotes to run "Comic book villain or Republican Presidential Candidate?". Maybe one already has?

 

[Malyse]

This isn't a persuasive post. I'm not going to suddenly realize that HuffPo's punctuation is correct just because you stumbled into the thread half-asleep and muttered something about "defense force lol."

You do realize I made this thread right? I didn't stumble in; I've been here the whole time. Your attention to detail is inspiring.

But go back to not hearing the dog whistle. More entertaining that way.

 

[BigDug13]

Democrats also more likely to be killed by police too, eh Cruz?

 

[Metaphoreus]

You do realize I made this thread right? I didn't stumble in; I've been here the whole time. Your attention to detail is inspiring.

But go back to not hearing the dog whistle. More entertaining that way.

Have you anything of substance to say on this topic, or not?

 

[effzee]

I could say the same thing about how RepublicanS wish all attacks to be by Muslims so they can push their agenda.

 

[Coolio McAwesome]

LMAO at those who are automatically assuming Cruz is lying. His statement is correct. It's only logical that Cruz is telling the truth. Consider the following:

- The criminal justice system is unfairly rigged against minorities. The majority of minorities are Democrats.
- The criminal justice system is unfairly rigged against poor people. Poor people tend to lean Left.

Anyone who has been paying attention knows the system is broken. We have threads all the time about how the system is broken. Why would anyone be surprised to learn that a rigged system has resulted in exactly what it had been designed to result in!?

Cruz is right. He's legitimately frightening and he has horrible ideas that would destroy the country, but he is right in this instance.

 

[plagiarize]

Oh, I can play this game too.

Majority of people in the US believe in god, therefore most criminals are religious.

We can go further than that and say Christian. A disproportionate number of criminals are Christian. Many religious positions are for various reasons under represented in prisons. Christians are over represented.

It doesn't mean anything more than most poor people tend to be Christian. Look at your criminal demographics and compare them to the ones below the poverty line and they match basically.

At least they do at the jail I work at, where I regularly have to run demographic reports.

Legal immigrants with their crazy foreign religions tend to have work. Atheists tend to be higher educated, and tend to have work. Poor immigrants tend to be from Christian countries because of geography and nothing else, and poor people tend to be black for a whole host of socio economic reasons, and poor black people are factually more Christian than most groups or America at large.

Only an idiot couldn't understand this.

Hi Ted!

 

[entremet]

These guys are smart. They know what they're doing. This riles up their base.

Demagoguery clearly works.

 

[plagiarize]

LMAO at those who are automatically assuming Cruz is lying. His statement is correct. It's only logical that Cruz is telling the truth. Consider the following:

- The criminal justice system is unfairly rigged against minorities. The majority of minorities are Democrats.
- The criminal justice system is unfairly rigged against poor people. Poor people tend to lean Left.

Anyone who has been paying attention knows the system is broken. We have threads all the time about how the system is broken. Why would anyone be surprised to learn that a rigged system has resulted in exactly what it had been designed to result in!?

Cruz is right. He's legitimately frightening and he has horrible ideas that would destroy the country, but he is right in this instance.

His facts are right, his point is totally wrong. He is trying to wash any responsibility he has as someone who has called PP evil and likened what they do to murder etc, for inspiring people to commit violence. Rhetoric matters. Politicians understand this even if they pretend not to. Word choice is hugely important.

More violent criminals are democrats, is him trying to say 'can't blame me for contributing to a climate that inspired someone to commit violence, because more of the violent people are democrats' without establishing any specific rhetoric that Democrats preach that would be inspiring this violence.

Because we have way more causation between the proliferation of utter unsubstantiated nonsense inspiring some one who believes it into doing terrible things, than we do in his Democrat / violent criminal link.

It's a cheap shot he's hoping will work as a slight of hand.

Accuse a politician of something and they will say there is no proof. Show them the proof, and they will accuse their opponent of something worse.

 

[Veritigo_X]

The HuffPo article is representative of other articles taking the same angle. Salon follows HuffPo's punctuation, but, to its credit, includes what comes after. ThinkProgress gives even less context for Cruz's comment. Mediaite provides full context but characterizes Cruz as "bash[ing] the left," though Cruz clearly disclaims any such goal in his comment ("I don’t think it’s fair to blame on the rhetoric on the left"). Even mainstream sources buy into the spin: CNN punctuates and omits like HuffPo. WaPo provides full context, but obliviously argues that Cruz is jumping the gun because we don't know enough yet (which was Cruz's point). The New York Times omits the conditional that even HuffPo included ("if that's what he is").

I don't think it matters that Cruz raised the registration without prompting. That doesn't affect the import of his comment. He raised that issue immediately after (according to your earlier post--the HuffPo video starts where my quotation started) his acknowledgment that "we don't fully know the motivations of this deranged individual," and immediately before his comment about there being "very little evidence to indicate" that blame belongs on the pro-life movement.

I just went straight to the source all those articles used, the Texas Tribune. They've got the complete audio in their article.

Cruz said "we don't fully know the motivations" and immediately follows up with the one thing we do know about his motivations (according to him), the fact that he was registered as a woman, completely ignoring the reports of the shooter saying "no more baby parts." If you don't think that's an attempt to shift blame away from his movement while at the same time using words that excites his base, I don't know what else to say. It's why he was the first GOP candidate to invite the press to make a comment on this.

I think there's room for both of us to be right considering he did raise the points you mentioned, but I don't think that was what his intentions were with the wording. We will probably continue to disagree there.

It's also rich that Cruz doesn't want one person negatively painting his movement when he's doing the exact same thing towards Muslims, but that's another topic I suppose.

 

[Malyse]

His facts are right, his point is totally wrong. He is trying to wash any responsibility he has as someone who has called PP evil and likened what they do to murder etc, for inspiring people to commit violence. Rhetoric matters. Politicians understand this even if they pretend not to. Word choice is hugely important.

More violent criminals are democrats, is him trying to say 'can't blame me for contributing to a climate that inspired someone to commit violence, because more of the violent people are democrats' without establishing any specific rhetoric that Democrats preach that would be inspiring this violence.

Because we have way more causation between the proliferation of utter unsubstantiated nonsense inspiring some one who believes it into doing terrible things, than we do in his Democrat / violent criminal link.

It's a cheap shot he's hoping will work as a slight of hand.

Accuse a politician of something and they will say there is no proof. Show them the proof, and they will accuse their opponent of something worse.

Or more succinctly, correlation does not imply causation

 

[plagiarize]

Or more succinctly, correlation does not imply causation

Well yes, but I responding to someone saying that his fact was correct. Which it is... but that doesn't make his *point* correct, because it's patently not.

TLDR on my last post: There is way more evidence that anti abortion lies have inspired people that believe it to commit violent crime than there is for the broad inference that general Democratic beliefs tend to inspire people to commit violent crime.

 

[Malyse]

Well yes, but I responding to someone saying that his fact was correct. Which it is... but that doesn't make his *point* correct, because it's patently not.

TLDR on my last post: There is way more evidence that anti abortion lies have inspired people that believe it to commit violent crime than there is for the broad inference that general Democratic beliefs tend to inspire people to commit violent crime.

In this case, I was referring to the implication that being a democrat increases your likelihood of being a criminal and vice versa.

Spoiler

Though he was really talking about the fact that most people convicted of crime are minorities. Hence, dog whistle.