Froth Slosh B'Gosh

Horrific

Right-wing fascist nut job admirer of Trump kills 49 people in New Zealand because of religion.  Thanks Fox News!

Pennsylvania Has Early Voting???

So everyone is talking about Newt Gingrich accusing Megyn Kelly of "being obsessed with sex" but what caught my ear was something early in the exchange:

GINGRICH: Well, look. The next two weeks are a contest of two parallel universes. I just listened to that report. First of all, I used to hang out with Charlie Cook when he would explain that Donald Trump was hopeless and would not get the nomination. I like Charlie. That doesn't mean he's infallible. But let's take the report we just got. Republicans are actually outvoting Democrats in Florida, they're outvoting Democrats in Pennsylvania, that's unprecedented. They've cut the Democratic leads --  

KELLY: You predict a win in Pennsylvania.  

GINGRICH: I think they might.

KELLY: Really? You think Trump is going to win Pennsylvania?

GINGRICH: Look, all I can report you right now is they're outvoting the Democrats in early voting which is also true in Florida which is unprecedented.

OK, so Newt says Republicans are outvoting Democrats in early voting in Pennsylvania?  That's rather interesting, as Pennsylvania doesn't even HAVE early voting. While you can cast an absentee ballot, Pennsylvania's rules are rather draconian on who is allowed to cast one.  You essentially have to prove that you will not be in the state on election day, and they won't give you a ballot if you're out of your precinct voluntarily, such as on a vacation.   So if Newt thinks Republicans are out polling Democrats in early voting in Pennsylvania, well, then he really is living in a parallel universe, or perhaps a bizarro one.

 

Your Assholes Of The Day

Jesse Watters and Bill O'Reilly.

How do you think O'Reilly would react to a "humorous" man-on-the-street segment that exploits drunken, brawling, potato-eating Irishmen stereotypes?

Dreaming Of A White Santa

The stupid, it hurts.

Fox News host Megyn Kelly on Wednesday assured children viewing her program that both Jesus Christ and Santa Claus were white men even though some liberals were trying to make them black.

Fox, reporting what's really important!  I'll add that Santa, at least in his current configuration is a totally fictional character.  I'll also add that there is scant evidence for a historical Jesus as well, and even if such a person did exist, it is unlikely he looked like a European.

The White Elephant

Faux News showed up at 3am Monday morning, fired up all their lights, started the diesel, and woke everyone up.  We have seen the elephant!

Binders Full Of Women

Could be the title of a porno, but no, that was Willard stumbling all over himself last night.  I didn't watch, these debates are on too late at night for me, but I caught some of the clips today online, and it looked like the President cleaned Mitten's clock.  Hard to believe as well, but Candy Crowley committed an act of actual journalism, rather than the national media's usual lazy stenography.  Oh, and Fox "News" attempted to edit out one of Romney's more embarrassing moments in their transcript and got caught.

Your impressions?

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

So what's the right-wing noise machine pushing today?  Its a report that illegal immigrants have a recidivisim rate of "nearly 20%" according to Faux news.  Thats based on a rate of roughly one in six over a three year period, or under 17%, which is closer t0 15% than it is to 20%, but whats a little number fudging in the interest of whipping up a frenzy?

But in order to be relevent, we have to look at what the recidivism rate is for the population as a whole.  So what's that number? Well, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a 15 state survey conducted in 1994 found that over a three year period, the recidivism rate for all convicts was over 67%.  A 1983 study showed an estimated rate of over 62%.

Now, I do not particularly like using stats that are decades old (the BJS is working on a new study using 2005 as a base year), but that's what I have to work with, so take it with a healthy dose of sketpicism, but it sure looks like the three year recidivism rate of illegal immigrants is substantially lower than the rate for the population as a whole. ( I did find a Philadelphia Daily News story from last year that put Pennsylvania's recidivism rate at 55% over five years) The BJS site also cites a single year recidivism rate for 2007 of "about 16%" which would make the three year rate for illegal immigrants the same as a single year rate for the population as a whole.

So why would the three year recidivism rate for illegal immigrants be so much lower?  I do not know, but I'd speculate that vast numbers of illegal aliens who are convicted of crimes are deported upon release from custody.  We now come to another problem with Faux's "reporting."    Here's the first paragraph in the report:

Roughly one in six illegal immigrants is re-arrested on criminal charges within three years of release, according to new government data being released Tuesday.  

And a bit further down, we find this:

The information was analyzed by the CRS, which also broke down the information for criminal immigrants -- legal immigrants who committed crimes and were arrested again over the three-year period. Together, the two groups also had a roughly one-in-six recidivism rate. 

So the "roughly one in six" is similar to rate for legal immigrants, and using the 2007 single year number, the rate for all offenders!  The headline and reporting are slanted in such a way as to leave the impression that recidivism among undocumented aliens is a huge problem, even though there is no statistical difference in recidivism among illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, or citizens, and if the three year numbers hold up in future studies, the rates for immigrants, illegal or otherwise, appear to be much, much lower.  But why let the facts get in the way of a little fear mongering?

 

They Didn't Get Their Pound Of Flesh

They usually have Faux News on the TV at work, and all week I've had to listen to breathless Faux "reporters" eagerly awaiting the verdict in the John Edwards trial, which they all pretty much assumed would be "guilty."  Well, we all know what happened.  Edwards was acquitted on one count, the jury deadlocked on the rest, and a retrial on the remaining charges is very unlikely.  The disappointment over at Faux was palpable.  They couldn't even bother to put their own story on their website, instead relying on the AP feed.  No matter, on to the next manufactured outrage!

Faux News

They're not even pretending anymore.