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Speaking for Herself

The University of Rochester held its commencement ceremony last weekend. The guest speaker of honor was Congresswoman Louise Slaughter who represents our local congressional district here in Western New York. I think the following will spare me from having to write a lengthy post: said Slaughter during her talk … (I am paraphrasing):

“and violence is a serious problem, in Chicago alone there were 36,000 youths murdered …”

Now I don’t have the data on Chicago on hand, but I know that for the U.S. as a whole, about 45,000 people died on car accidents … and she made the claim that nearly that many youths were murdered in a single city as were killed in cars across the entire country. It gets better, scroll down that table and you will see that there were 18,000 murders in the entire country in the most recent year I have data, but Slaughter seems to believe that twice that many youths were killed in Chicago alone – I guess 54,000 people were unmurdered around the country that year as well.

And the masses put blind faith in these sorts of people. Of all of the people that our university could have selected to send the class of 2009 out into the real world …

6 Responses to “Speaking for Herself”

  1. Calder says:

    I just hope we can get Richard Posner for the Class of 2010 commencement.

  2. Harry says:

    Calder, I wish everyone could get Richard Posner! Are you one of Wintercow’s hard-working students? (I should have said, “one of Wintercow’s few hard-working students.”)

  3. Speedmaster says:

    Now that you’ve spent some time in the Rochester area, you also get enjoy the longtime ‘gem’ that is Slaughter. I am amazed that people continue to vote for her. But then again, how many times that Ted Kennedy been reelected? Scary.

  4. Harry says:

    What dramatic irony, Ms Slaughter. I wonder whether she is familiar with Mel Gibson’s movie Apocalypto, and whether she sympathizes with the high priest talking of these days of our lament. Now there was a gifted orator taking advantage of the situation. He provided the stimulus, and mighty Culcucan responded by restoring the sun.

  5. Sohee says:

    I wonder where she got that number from…(top of her head?) Posner would be great. Any news on the class council?

  6. […] point. Is what the Conn College student did any worse than a commencement speaker making stuff up? Of course, no one in our student newspaper bothered to cover such a thing. Instead, folks on […]

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