I need a word beyond "stupid."

If you have a few minutes, feel free to peruse something I write exactly a year ago today -- pay special attention to the part involving the bogus death rate comparison. Take your time, I'll wait ... dum de dum dum ...

And now, let's see what Proud to be a Dumbass's Joel Johannesen wrote just today.

It just leaves you speechless, doesn't it?

HIT HIM AGAIN, HE'S STILL MOVING. I know it's flogging a mentally retarded horse, but it's worth pointing out just what kind of imbecile Joel Johannesen really is. Note carefully how he's terrifically impressed with the following bit of idiocy:

This is an interesting statistic

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of the U.S. involvement in Iraq, here is a sobering statistic:

There has been a monthly average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theatre of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2,867 deaths. That gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers.

The firearm death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000 persons for the same period.

That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. Capital than you are in Iraq .

Conclusion: The U.S. should pull out of Washington.

Lord Almighty, where to even begin? First, it is complete bullshit that "there has been a monthly average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theatre of operations during the last 22 months." The average number of troops in Iraq is normally given as around 135,000, with the figure of 160,000 coming from here:

As of 01 March 2006 there were 133,000 US troops in Iraq, down from about 160,000 in December 2005 during parliamentary elections.

Yes, you read that right -- the figure of 160,000 represents a peak, which is dishonestly being passed off as an average just so the death rate can be artificially reduced. If one used the more honest value of 135,000, that monthly death rate would jump from 60 per 100,000 soldiers to 71. Not a massive increase, but a noticeable change, nonetheless. But the dumbfuckitude doesn't end there, oh no -- we're just getting started.

From where comes this figure of "80.6 per 100,000 persons" as the death rate in D.C.? According to Statemaster, the rate of death by firearms for D.C. is only 31.2 per 100,000 for the year 2002, a considerably smaller figure. As best I can tell from poking around the Internets, that value of 80.6 per 100,000 represents the D.C. death rate when it peaked in 1991, so to use it as an average value is simply dishonesty heaped on top of dishonesty. But that's not the best part.

The best part is that the D.C. death of 80.6 per 100,000 is an annual death rate -- that is, over the course of an entire year, while the rate of 71 troops per 100,000 killed is, as you can clearly see unless you are a completely dumbass motherfucker or Joel Johannesen, a monthly average. Extrapolating this to a full year gives us a kill rate of something like 852 dead troops per 100,000 per year, versus around 31 for D.C.

Well, how about that? Isn't math wonderful? Isn't Joel Johannesen an asshole?

BONUS SNARK: I'm wondering how many of you caught this bit of Joelitude from that article, as he writes of those utterly bogus death rates:

Of course it’s trashy internet humor, right? Sort of but not really. I checked some of the stats myself, and it turns out it's based on fact, ...

In other words, Joel wasn't just a simpleton who gullibly believed the stupidity emailed to him. Oh no, he did his own research and verified those completely fictional values. I can't even imagine how retarded you have to be to do that. And I can imagine quite a lot.