Just to show how bad the right's numbers are getting.

Today I listened again to Rush for a little while (not much else to listen to up here, out of range for most radio).

He tried to compare the murder rate in the city of Philadelphia to the country of Iraq, specifically claiming that the 406 murders last year in the city of 1.5 million indicates a much more dangerous environement when compared to the 821 U.S. service members who died last year in Iraq.

Of course that is a meaningless comparison as I'm sure he knows. The number of civilian deaths in Iraq (about a hundred per day) is more than the number of daily murders in America.

In fact the only meaningful way of comparing the two would be what if a person living in the city of Philadelphia were to join the military and spend a year in Iraq. Living in Philadelphia, the risk of being murdered would be 406/1,500,000 X 100 % = .027 %; In Iraq (since last year there were on average 140,000 U.S. troops there at any given time) the risk is 821/140,000 X 100 % = .586% . This means that using Rush's own figures that he gave today, the person in question would have a 20 times higher risk of death while serving in the U.S. military in Iraq than remaining at home in Philly.

Of course the average 'dittohead' probably buys this argument, but Rush is certainly aware that he is intentionally skewing the numbers by comparing only a small fraction of all the violence in Iraq (that which is conducted against U.S. forces) to the base population of the entire country. In other words, he knows darn well he is lying, but is getting desperate to make anyone believe anything.