Set a psychiatrist ...

... to review a psychiatrist: Why Some Politicians Are More Dangerous Than Others | James Gilligan | Review by The Spectator. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... on page 28 he states that the difference in violent death rates between Republican and Democratic presidencies ‘amounts to a difference… representing roughly 114,600 fewer violent deaths per year under Democrats than under Republicans’.

A man who can look at that figure and not see immediately that it must be wrong is no more to be trusted with statistics than an alcoholic in a wine-merchant’s. There are approximately 16,000 murders a year in the United States, and 30,000 suicides. Even Gilligan does not maintain that all of those are caused by Republican presidencies, or the memory or possibility thereof; but even if he did maintain it, it would still not amount to 114,600 per year. He writes what cannot be true.