Day of the Antler, 7th of Fall, 525 M.E. (Deneb): To justify deploying armed federal troops in the streets of DC, the Stable Genius claimed, "Murders in 2023 reached the highest rate probably ever. They say 25 years, but they don’t know what that means because it just goes back 25 years.”

Cool story, bro, but it's not true. FBI crime stats indicate 274 homicides in DC in 2023. That's bad, that's a problem, and was the largest number in over 25 years, but not “ever.” In 1997, the total number of homicides was 301, which, scientists say, is a larger number than 274. And since then, the number of homicides has declined to 187 in 2024, about two thirds the 2023 level. The declining trend is apparently holding - as of August 12, there have been 100 homicides in DC, compared with 112 at the same point last year. 

But the Stable Genius was talking about murder "rates," not total numbers. The 274 total homicides in 2023 occurred at a rate of 40.4 per 100,000 people, which was the highest rate since 2003, when there were 44 per 100,000. But even as the city's population grew in the year since then, the number of homicides declined, so that the homicides rate in 2024 was 26.6 per 100,000. Again, scientists insist that 26.6 is a smaller number than 44.  

The Stable Genius is also wrong about the record going back only 25 years. Records dating back to the 1960s show that Washington’s homicide rate peaked during the height of the crack epidemic at more than 80 per 100,000 in 1991, or about double the rate of 2023.

My point in bringing up all this smart-assey fact-checking isn't to claim that there isn't a crime problem in Washington, DC (there is), but just to remind the gullible that the Stable Genius just makes things up as he goes along and says whatever's the most convenient to him at the moment. Also, I'm not convinced that stationing National Guard troops in photo-friendly locations around DC landmarks is necessarily going to lower the homicide rate, as many of the murders are committed in residential neighborhoods, in bars and nightclubs, and in private homes.  

The media, especially the more liberal outlets, are so primed to refute the Stable Genius, normally a useful reflex, that they could fall into the trap of arguing that crime in DC isn't an issue. It is, but not in the numbers the SG claimed during the conference, and sending in the Guard isn't the solution. 

They also want to keep their eye on the ball and are quick to claim, like Al Sharpton, that the SG is sending in the troops and spouting false statistics to distract us from the Epstein files. Personally, I'm more concerned about armed Federal troops patrolling the street of our cities than I am about whatever embarrassing revelations are contained in the Epstein files. It can even be argued that the media frenzy over Epstein is merely a distraction from having to discuss the creeping authoritarianism the SG is unleashing on America. "Don't think about the tariffs, martial law, or extrajudicial deportations," the media seems to insist, "the real story is the Epstein sex scandal."  

And almost no one is talking about climate change. While the Stable Genius is sending in the troops and the media is obsessed over what headlines the Epstein file could produce, in the name of deregulation, the EPA is rejecting the scientific consensus that greenhouse gases threaten public health. The Stable Genius' budget eliminates funding for a Hawaiian lab that has collected climate data for 70 years. It shutters the Agency's scientific research arm. It also retires an extreme-weather project that tracked the costs of natural disasters and said it would stop updating a database that companies use to calculate their emissions. That's what I'm worried about.

Oh, and by the way, don't think I don't see you, Erin. A Tropical Storm that formed of the west coast of Africa has crossed the Atlantic and is continuing to the west. It's current track has it moving north of Puerto Rico and possibly missing the Bahamas, and its unclear right now whether or not it will make landfall on the eastern US or follow the Gulf Stream north into the Atlantic.

Be careful out there, friends.