Another dumb "War On Women" meme

Some of the "War On Women" screeds are so. Dumb.
When I saw this one:



All I could think of was... Seriously? Who in the world believes that this is a credible reflection of statistics?

Okay, so the meme is that women are killed like... all the time. Really.
But you might wonder, as I do, is it more then men? Because that also seems implied by the whole "War On Women" thing?

No. Women are not killed anywhere near the rate that men are.
Go to the FBI breakdown on homicides, by gender.

Victimization rates for both males and females have declined in recent years

• Males were almost 4 times more likely than females to be murdered in 2005.
  
• In 2005 rates for females reached their lowest point recorded; rates for males increased slightly from the low point recorded in 2000.

Uh, what? The meme at the top of the page was that there is a war against women.

If anything, there is a war against men, since we're being killed off at more than 3 times the rate of women. To top it all off, when men kill, its almost 3 times as likely that they will kill another man. -And even when women do kill, they kill men more often then women... almost 3 times as many men.

	Male offender/Male victim	65.3%
	Male offender/Female victim	22.7%
	Female offender/Male victim	9.6%
	Female offender/Female victim	2.4%

So no matter how you look at homicide rates... men are getting screwed.

I bought this up on Facebook, and someone told me that I'm missing the point; that women are more likely to be killed by family members and intimates, rather then strangers. Somehow, its supposed to be a good thing for men that we're most likely to be killed by a stranger at 3 times the rate of women?
But I digress. Let's do the math again.

But let's break it down further. Let's suppose that there were 100 people killed in any given year. Based on the percentages, that would mean:

Male offender/Male victim -- 65 Men

Male offender/Female victim -- 22 Women

Female offender/Male victim -- 10 Men

Female offender/Female victim -- 2 Women

Right? (I rounded off)

Or 24 women killed for every 75 men killed.

Now let's apply the percentages of how they knew their intimate or family member to those numbers:

		Victims			# per 100
		Male	Female		Male	Female
Victim/offender relationship

	Intimate	35.2%	64.8%		27	15
	Family	51.5%	48.5%		39	12

Using the percentages, above, I plugged in the numbers based on 75 men killed for every 24 women.

Let's word that a different way: of the 75 men that were killed, 27 (26.5) were killed by "intimates". (35.2% x 75 = 27)

Of the 24 women killed, 15 (15.3) were killed by "intimates". (64.8% x 24=15)

So in any group of 100 homicides, 27 men who were "intimates" were killed to the 15 women who were killed by their "intimate."

We get that, right? We agree on that math?

27 men are killed by someone that they are intimate with to every 15 women.

I did the same thing with family members.

We're starting with 75 men and 24 women getting killed, then applied the percentages.

Men 39 (38.6); Women 12 (11.64)

Of the men and women who are killed every year who are family members: 39 men are killed for every 12 women. More then 3 times as many men are killed by family members then women.

Again, how is that a war on women?
The only way you can come to the conclusion that its a "war on women" is if you failed math.

Photo Evidence! Bill Maher finds Drudge Racist!

I'm a photographer.
Which is why I found this particular piece of "detective" work offensive, idiotic, and beyond the pale:


Yes, that's right. Bill is making the argument that since a news aggregater has 6 images of black men in one month (April)- and the images are not flattering - that Drudge is racist.

I love to research things, and this seemed kinda custom built for an investigation. So I set my criteria ahead of time, and went to work grabbing DrudgeReport images from the month of April.

My criteria:

• I would start at the archive calendar, and go to each date in April.
• On each date, there are several dozen links. I would pick two or three at random, and grab the photos.
• I would only grab the "headline" photo, but I'd grab it no matter what it was.
• I would then shrink the images so that you could see them close together and get an idea of what they looked like as a group.
  

The goal was not to grab every single photo... but to get a really, really good representation of what a month load of Drudge photos look like. Keep in mind, this was completely at random.

Here's what I found:

Now you might notice a few things about this first composite: there are a few photos of Obama smiling. An image of Santorum looking defeated. (He just kinda was.) And of course, a depressed Fed Reserve Chairman.

Next composite...



Tim Tebow looks great, but he's kinda the only one. Chavez looks like an overweight evangelist, Obama looks depressed, Romney looks like a Point Break reject, the Pope looks like an extra from an Indiana Jones film, Holder looks guilty, and the last image of Obama looks, well... just about right.
The point being, everyone seems to be made fun of. Would you agree?
Let's keep going...



An obvious image of Obama losing his cool, Santorum looking thrilled (when the image was connected with him bowing out of the campaign), two depressing images of Zimmerman, an image from India's quake, a family photo of the Romney's to accompany the story about how Ann "doesn't work", and that idiot from North Korea.
Next...



A few stories on the media, and how the candidates feel they are perceived by them. A flattering image of Obama, an unflattering one, and one where Warren Buffet looks like a tool. A sour image of Cheney.

Next:



Two unflattering images of Zimmerman, plus one of his bloody head. A secret service hooker. Nicolas Sarkozy, and two images of Obama which are neither pretty nor ugly.

Next:


Obama's lawyer. Two images of Romney looking good, one of him looking constipated. Another hooker. Biden looking confused. Unhappy Zimmerman... and some guy that none of us know in a big leather chair.

Next:

We're already into late April, btw. Six images of Obama... one that makes him look flattering. An image that reflects unkindly on Anarchists. A triptych of images of Murdoch that make him look like he's losing an argument.

Are we getting the pattern yet?
With few exceptions... Drudge uses images that are either making fun of the person in the story, or reflect the tone of the story.
Last ones...


Okay, an image of Romney that makes him look like a failed superhero, and Obama greeting Kagan.

And that's what I found.

So you might wonder... since I scoured the images from April in a random fashion - and I didn't come up with the same images that Bill Maher did - was I leaving something out purposely?
No, I was not. In fact, I made a point of it to just put up the images that I found, whether or not they reflected either what I thought of Drudge, or what I think of Bill Maher.
You can do your own experiment, and see if you find similar images.

The point is that Drudge uses images to make fun of everyone. And I mean everyone.
The fact that Bill Maher went through and found images of black men that were not flattering, and that he missed all of the images of other people who were not flattering? Well, that's Bill Maher. We can't even begin to think of what's going on in his head, but clearly, he went in with an agenda, and not with any intent of being honest.

President Obama on enforcing immigration, March 2011

I'm sure he has a good reason for this.
Like... well, there were 3 branches of government.... but I didn't like 2 of them.

Background: watch this video


Okay... got all of that? Seems pretty straightforward, yes? The president said that we can't just ignore the laws that he doesn't like. That he has to enforce them.

Cut to this Wapo article:

President Obama said Friday his administration would stop deporting some illegal immigrants who were brought to the country as children and have gone on to be productive and otherwise law-abiding residents, forcing the emotional immigration policy debate into the forefront of the presidential campaign.

But wait... there's more...

The change was not imposed by executive order. Instead, it effectively extends an existing policy of “prosecutorial discretion,” in which immigration officials last year were instructed to prioritize the removal of felons, repeat border crossers and others considered to be security risks. Officials said the government would continue its aggressive enforcement policies but with greater care not to remove young people who came as children.

So... its the same thing. But different.
Come the fuck on.
Can we be adults for a moment here? Mr President, you completely reversed the position you held earlier... that you can't change enforcement of laws that you don't like.