“American Cities, which I assume in a generation will be like the favelas of Brazil, places the police won’t even go.”

Or like Paris and its banlieues.

He’s more convincing when he writes,

…most dangerous big US cities are strongly Democratic

Well, now he’s talking about a correlation.

I happen to think he’s right, and you’re right. I think the more we dig up the numbers, the more detail we get into, the more that will become apparent. I don’t like people saying stuff that isn’t reasonably robust.

But when he starts talking about the Democrats, I start thinking “Oh, is that supposed to mean the GOP’s going to fix it? Who, Huckabee? Romney?”

But I guess it may no longer matter what you say, or who you say it to. Our political class will deny there are any problems as long as they can draw breath. The people will demand ever more handouts as things get worse, because the creation of handouts is simple enough for them to understand, while the creation of goods and services and jobs is utterly mysterious to them.

(And, yeah, he makes spelling errors.)

“Five of the 10 cities with the highest poverty rates (Detroit, Buffalo, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Newark) have had a Democratic stranglehold since at least 1961″

So between two options, a given effect is observed about equally with both? He hasn’t told us anything, until he tells us a lot more about those other five cities.

He’s on much firmer ground when he talks about the causes in detail. Even so, the rot is much too deep for local politics to be the answer, and probably too deep for national politics either.

Also, s/straights/straits/.