Millennials are the only democrats voting for Bernie in high numbers and other inconvenient Primary facts.

There is so much emotion in this election on both sides of the political spectrum that Truthiness has way too often made it's way to where the truth and facts should reside.

There have also been some things that have left me perplexed, such as many Bernie and Trump voters thinking they have more in common than with members of their own party, or the massive amount of free publicity that Mr. Trump is getting, I can't watch the news any more, even the supposedly liberal MSMBC can't get enough of him.  "What are we going to do today?"  Joked one CNN reporter, half seriously "Mr. Trump has not been on the airwaves the past two days...."

So how much free media has Mr. Trump been getting?

I have to admit I am a bit surprised by the fact that Hillary, while not getting as much media as Trump, is getting more than any of the others, my own perception was that she was getting less than most of the others.  Again, looking at facts rather than relying on perception can dramatically change our own view of how the world actually works, vs how we think it does.

But this post is not an anti Trump post, it is an attempt to add some clarity and bring some numbers to what has been a presidential primary season that is seriously lacking in both.

So let me go back to the Trumpites vs Bernie bro bromance, is it really true that Trump and Bernie have more in common than Bernie has with Bernie, or Trump does to the other republicans in the field?  I guess it depends (as with everything) on what metric you choose.

Personally I think that one of the great unifiers between the two camps is the visceral dislike they both have for Hillary Clinton.  But is there more?  Is Hillary really a secret radical conservative and is Trump really a liberal in hiding that is secretly a bleeding heart liberal?  It is true that Hillary is more to the right than many of the young liberals today, and that Trump on many social issues is more to the right than some of his republican palls, but just how centrist are they compared to the pack?

So it would seem that just looking at their views on a range of subjects, Hillary and Bernie are closer to each other ideologically than Bernie and Trump.  Trump and Kasich are not moderates, they are conservatives, again I was surprised that the only real moderate was Chris Christie, I thought that Kasich and Bush might have been closer to that middle square.  Oddly enough both Bernie and Cruze are at the opposite sides of their respective political views, not odd that they are, but odd how different the conversation around them is.  Why is it that in Bernie's case, being a radical Liberal is OK but in Cruz's case it is not?  I am not saying that it should not be that way, I am just throwing out the question because it made me stop and think and wonder a little.

Here is another way of looking at this information.

Presidential Candidates | InsideGov

And here is how the voters voting for the candidates feel about various issues.

Also is Bernie really doing as well as we are led to believe with Democrats?  The narrative is that only older women (a prime voting block, not previously dismissed as it is this election year) and blacks are voting, but in reality, most Dems are voting for Hilary.

So this brings us to my next question.  Is politics really more polarized than it used to be?  It sure feels that way.

The graphs above really gave me pause.  I mean I knew that it was happening, but the shift in political leanings of both Republicans and Democrats over the past few years is just astonishing.  No wonder it is so hard for people to listen to each other, there is much less overlap in ideology.   But the shift is even bigger if you look at registered voters rather than the general population

What is fascinating about this is aside from the major chasm in ideology between voters in the two parties, is that while the general population leans slightly left, registered voters lean slightly right, less so than before, but still they do lean right.

But I have a feeling that will change when the 97 million millennia's start coming of age and the silent generation is no more.

The other thing that is so fascinating about this year is just how differently people in the two parties see how their lives and the country is going.  Much has been made of how angry people are, but not everyone is angry, and those that are not angry are voting Democratic and most of those are voting for Hillary.  Apparently there are a lot of happy donkeys lots of very sad Elephants around this year.  Which brings us to another difference between Sander's and Trump voters, most of Sander's voters don't seem as angry as the miserable Trump voters...not a slur..they really just don't seem very happy from the data below.

One has to ask the question though, is life really much worse for the republicans than it is for the democrats?  If not, why do the two groups see the same reality so differently?

So let's tackle some other Truthinesses.  Lets look at honesty.  Much has been made of Lying Ted and Hillary's dishonesty, while Trump and Bernie have been touted as "saying it like it is!"   Truthiness or truth?

Truthiness it would seem.

  

Both Trump and Cruz seem to have some issues with the truth, while Bernie seems to be better at telling mostly true things.  However most of what comes out of Hilary's moth is true, only Kasich seems to be doing better than she is.  So while Kasich might not be as liberal as one may think, at least he is honest. still his pant's on fire number is higher than that of either Democrat.

Lets talk a little about money :)  It is of course one of the biggest reasons many people are voting the way they do this year, in the hopes that with the right President selected, more of it will come their way.

To hear the media, and Bernie talk, I though Hillary was making much more of her money from the financial sector, sure it is much more than Bernie and more than some republicans are making, but it is only about 7% compared to a whopping 25% or more for Lindsey Graham, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie.

So we come to the last great myth, qualifications.  It seemed fair to me to look at what previous presidents did before they became president and compare it to what the candidates running today have done in their own past.  So who has the most or the least qualifications?

So yes, based on the qualifications of previous presidents, Hillary is the most qualified, with Trump being the least.  Now this is just my way of looking at it and if you look in terms of years in public service, Bernie wins hands down, if you look at corporate experience, then Trump and Carly of course win out, with Carson not far behind.  As with many things this season I guess it is simply a matter of how you look at it.

Finally, I was curious about the gender differences in hiring of campaign staff and I have to admit that while I was not surprised by some things, there were other things in the data below that did surprise me (Carly, blew everyone away with percent women hired, with a whopping 75%, I had already made the graph before I got curious and went back to look at her numbers). I did not include staff in regional office.

Finally, when you think about the election and wonder why it has turned out the way it has in the past few years, the answer is pretty simple:  Demographics, Demographics, Demographics

I hope this has given you something to think about, to turn down the heat and cut through some of the emotional

Graphical Portrait of a Mass Killer

Nothing in the profile of Christopher Jordan Dorner the most recent mass shooter in the news surprises me.  It might have a few months ago, but after going through the details of 53 mass killings and looking at some of the details about the killers and their lives, the story seems sadly familiar.

Alleged cop-killer details threats to LAPD and why he was driven to violence

 1) Mr. Dorner is ex military and law enforcement.

• 27 percent of the 53 killers I looked up were ex Military (2% were law enforcement), this is almost three times as high as in the general population (9 - 10%). 

 2) Mr. Dorner complains of racism, bias and corruption in his former workplace

• 34 % of the 53 Killers made complaints of bias, racism, bullying or other forms of discriminatory actions against themselves or others.  Some of these claims were substantiated, some were not and in some cases it will never be know if there was any truth in the allegations.

3) He was recently terminated from the LAPD, and had recently undergone disciplinary action

• When it comes to workplace violence, this is the most common thread among the killers. 30% of the 53 killers I looked at had undergone recent disciplinary action, including termination.  Also 57% of the killers were described as unemployed, many of them having recently lost their jobs (compared to ~7% in the general population).

•  Recent major life stressors including being terminated is also another common feature among many of the killers (60% had either just been terminated, disciplined, divorced, been unable to find a job, been in court for custody hearings or lost a loved one etc.)

4)  There were complaints about his temper from colleagues and his ex wife

• 49% of the 53 killers had a documented history of anger

 Here are some other statistics about the 53 Mass killers that I looked up:

Location of Killings (note many of the University killings can also be placed under the 'workplace' heading, making the workplace the most frequently targeted area).  Most of the residential killings were a result of domestic violence shootings.

Here I looked to see if the perpetrators had a criminal history, in light of the recent push to restrict gun ownership to 'law abiding' citizens, it is worthwhile to note that 60% of the killers had no criminal records.

47% had documented histories of mental health disorders/illness (the rate of mental health issues in the general population is around 50% while that of mental illness is around 20% and that of serious mental illness around 6%) , others showed signs of possible mental illness, however one thing of note is that several were either on, or had recently stopped a powerful antidepressant (it would be interesting to see if there was any correlation between the medications and the crimes).

This last one addresses the 'loner' stereotype.  This one is a hard one to measure, as some had at one time been outgoing and then became less outgoing after a life stressor, others were depressed and as such became withdrawn and some were true introverts.  However the idea that all of them were people with no social interactions (or very few) is not correct, many were married, some had children, others had been in relationships but were no longer in them.

Immigrants: ~20% of the killers were immigrants, it interesting to note that all of the killers of Asian descent were recent immigrants.

List of websites of the Killings I looked at

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tucson_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_School_massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_University,_Fullerton_massacre

http://murderpedia.org/male.H/h/hilbun-mark-richard.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Seal_Beach_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oikos_University_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupertino_quarry_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101_California_Street_shootings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covina_massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Aurora_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford_Distributors_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_O._Barton

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Iowa_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Illinois_University_massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Gravure_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Essex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wakefield_massacre#Fatalities

http://reasonabledoubt.org/index.php/criminallawblog/entry/november-14-1991-fired-united-states-postal-service-employee-goes-on-shooting-rampage-today-in-crime-history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Grand_Rapids,_Michigan_mass_murder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_bombing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Minneapolis_workplace_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthage_nursing_home_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westroads_Mall_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_IHOP_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binghamton_shootings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Ferguson_%28mass_murderer%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Tulsa_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Tulsa_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Sherrill

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kip_Kinkel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Nickel_Mines_School

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_massacre

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2018167/Texas-gunman-Tan-Do-shot-wife-Trini-family-dead-sons-birthday-party.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luby%27s_massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Hood_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Gene_Ashbrook

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Felton_Parish

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Seattle_cafe_shooting_spree

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Jewish_Federation_shooting

http://murderpedia.org/male.D/d/deculit-anthony.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Sikh_temple_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Ratzmann

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Azana_Spa_shootings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_Square_Shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crandon,_Wisconsin_shooting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Ann_Spencer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_San_Marco

 

Do You Identify with the Hero's and Heroines in today's movies?

I am guessing that the answer to that question depends on who you are.  Recently I have been noticing more than usual that most of the characters, especially the main characters in movies are predominantly white and male.  When there is a female lead, she is white and most of the time blond.  The male leads vary in age, size and attractiveness, while the female leads tend to be young, thin, pretty and predominantly white blonds.

The poor, elderly, minorities, the over weight, physically disabled, mentally disabled, if present on screen at all are either positive supporting characters (typically die if it is a horror movie or Science fiction flick), or they are cast as villains.

This is clearly not an accurate representation of reality, so what is it a representation of?  Perhaps it is a representation of the movie industry trying to satisfy it's customers?  If you look at women, they tend to be overrepresented in both as movie goers and as those who buy the most tickets.

Yet if you look at the representation of characters, especially leading characters, women are highly underrepresented as a group.  This indicates that women are willing to go see movies where they are underrepresented in lead roles, but this is nothing new, minorities and all the other groups I have mentioned also keep going to the movies.  It also indicates that those making movies are not really making movies for their audiences.

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Data source: •Executive Summary

In some cases movie makers do cater to some of their audience, the percent of people under 24 years, who go to the movies, is higher than their percent of the general population, and Hollywood has responded to them by making more movies that would appeal to them, however they seem to have forgotten that 52 percent of their audience is over 25.



When looking at ethnicity, again we find that minorities as a group (Hispanics especially) are over represented with them being 33% of the general population and 40% of the movie going population.  This number is going to increase as the demographics of the country changes over time. 

The numbers of minorities in movies do not reflect this changing reality.  In the charts below you can see a comparison of the percent of either men or women of each race in the actual US population compared with the movie character population (e.g. black men in movies represent 8% of the male population compared to 12.33 percent in the actual US population).  Considering that Hispanics are overrepresented as movie goers, it is interesting that they are the most underrepresented group when it comes to characters in movies.

 Data source: •Executive Summary

 Data source: •Executive Summary

It seems clear that movies are not trying to cater to their movie going demographics, when the only concession that has been made has been to those aged 23 or under, while ignoring women, those aged 24 and over, and minorities.

Perhaps what we are seeing is the reality of those who are making movies.  All the statistics show that those making films are not very representative of the rest of the US.  Women as a group are very underrepresented and the situation has really not changed it seems since 1998, and in some cases the situation has deteriorated for women and minorities in the film industry.

The first chart looks at the proportion of men and women making movies (directors, creators, writers, producers etc)

From: It’s a Man’s (Celluloid)World: On-Screen Representations of Female Characters in the Top 100 Films of 2011by Martha M. Lauzen, Ph.D.

The following charts look at the percent of women in each film making category, again the field is clearly dominated by men regardless of if you are looking at Movies (as in the first chart),

From: It’s a Man’s (Celluloid)World: On-Screen Representations of Female Characters in the Top 100 Films of 2011by Martha M. Lauzen, Ph.D.

 Or on TV as in the chart below women are clearly underrepresented in the creation of movies and the stories that are told to us through them.

It was relatively simple to find information regarding gender and movie making, it was a little harder to find information about race and movie making.  I did find the following data

Which shows how who are directing the movies we see, and through whose eye we are all being seen.  This is perhaps why, it is rare that I identify with characters on the screen.  If the movie is well written, the story engaging, the actors compelling and the move is well directed it usually does not matter, I walk out of the movie feeling good about having seen it.  However, it is nice every now and then to feel a connection with the characters on screen, to see yourself represented in a positive manner, or in a varied manner (i.e. not as a limited number of stereotypes), or in some cases, to see yourself represented at all.

Do you see yourself reflected back from the silver screen?  What about from the little screen?  I think in some areas (children's programming) we have made great strides, but in other areas I think we still have more work to do:

Perhaps one day in our post racial society these covers will be blended, and we will have some older, Hispanic, Asian, overweight, disabled and less classically beautiful women :)

The Majority of Violence in the US does not involve Firearms, but the Majority of Murders do

In the previous posts I was just looking at how firearms were involved in murder, I found it hard to see a link between gun laws and firearms, although it was clear that firearms were a big component of violence that ended in murder.  I decided to go see how firearms were involved in violent crime in general, so I looked at the statistics for aggravated assault.

The main things the data suggest are:

1. Violent crime is involves a very small part of the population
2. Murder is a very small part of violent crime
3. Firearms are a small part of violent crime
4. Firearms are a big part of murder
5. If you look really, really hard there might be a link between lower gun violence and tougher gun laws.
6. You are more likely to be killed in/by a car than with a gun of any type

If you look at the chart for weapon type as a percent of total violent crime (totals of aggravated assault and murder, I did not include other stats such as rape, etc), the reason it looks so much like the chart that just looks at aggravated assault, is that most violent crime involves aggravated assault.

So when people attack each other they do so with many weapons and firearms are not the main weapon types used, however, when those attacks end in murder, then most of the time firearms are used.

As for the effect of gun laws on the use of firearms?  I suspect a much more involved study than the ones I do is required to look at that.  I did try something just out of curiosity and I did get a correlation although I am not sure it is a very strong one.

What I did was take all the data I had (FBI - Violent Crime), and sort it by firearm related assaults, total assaults and so on.  Then I looked at the average Brady ratings for the 25 states with the higher crime rates and lower crime rates for that particular sorting.   What I found was that if you sorted by total murder, or by total aggravated assault, there really was no difference in the average Brady rating, however when I sorted by firearm related crime for both murder and aggravated assault, the 25 states with the highest levels of firearm related crime had a lower (laxer gun laws) average Brady rating.  The reverse was true if you looked at knife related aggravated assault, but was similar if you looked at the use of personal weapons used in aggravated assaults (fists, legs etc).

Make what you will of this data :)

One thing to keep in mind, you are much more likely to be killed or injured in/by a car, than by any kind of violence, even that involving firearms.

Thoughts and prayers as always with those who have lost loved ones to violence of any kind.

The NRA and the Video Game Violence Red Herring

According to the NRA, the problem of firearm violence has nothing to do with firearms, and everything to do with everything else.  I can't blame them, it would be problematic for them to say that to curb firearm related violence, guns should be targeted rather than assault weapons, as I am guessing the gun industry sells many more guns than it does assault weapons.

In previous years they often successfully shifted the discussion away from firearms and to Hollywood, or video games.  In the past this was partially successful because at the time the people playing video games were mostly young males (usually introverted). 

Just as the race, age and gender demographics of the country has shifted under the GOPs feet, so has the demographics of video game players shifted under the NRAs feet.  The problem they face is that most adults have now played many of these games, they have played them with their kids and by themselves.  It is now much harder to portray people who play these games as 'the other'.

 I won't post most of the statistics as many before me (10 country comparison suggests little or no link between video games and gun murders, Gaming Audience getting older and slightly more female, Myths about video games and violence (PBS.org)), have done a pretty good job of this.  But it is pretty clear, that most research shows little correlation between video games and violence, with a few exceptions here and there.

For example even as violent crimes have dropped over the years the number of games played, bought and the types of people playing these games have increased dramatically.

(This is not my graph if found it here)

At the same time, there is the inescapable fact that nobody yet (that I know of) had been killed by video games, while many people (regardless of the reason) have been killed by firearms.  

 And yes I will post this graph again, because it is important as most people (and most children) are killed with handguns, not with assault rifles, normal rifles, or anything else.

Actually I agree with the NRA on one point, the answer to the problem is much more complex than just getting rid of guns, guns might be lethal weapons, but someone has to shoot them and if we could figure out how to prevent people from trying to kill others, then everyone NRA included would be happy.

Would it not be amazing if there was a march on DC of all the parents and families in the US who have lost their kids to violence?  All of them holding pictures of their kids (our kids) to remind us of the real magnitude of gun violence and violence in general?  Perhaps we should also add the parents and families of all the kids who have lost their kids to suicide (yes firearms play quite a role here as well).

So we are probably going to get stricter gun laws, but they won't matter because they will target the 'wrong' guns, and they won't remove from circulation all the assault style weapons obtained legally.  This means that kids in the inner cities will continue to die, because the real problems that cause violence in general, and gun violence specifically will not be addressed.

Assault Weapons the Red Herring in the Discussion about Gun Control

 Data often has the annoying habit of being non partisan.  Sometimes it supports your point of view, sometimes it does not.  This is why it is useful to turn to it when you want to make legislation that will affect the lives of many.

I have been going over some data looking at murders, rates of murder, rates of murders that involved firearms, rates of murders that involved firearms per state, and so on.  In my previous post on this issue, I looked at absolute numbers of murders and the only correlations I could find between the numbers of murders related to firearms and total numbers:

1. When the absolute number of murders passes 200, most of these murders are committed with firearms.
2. Most murders in the US involve a firearm 
3. Most firearms used in firearm related murders are guns, not rifles, not assault weapons, just guns.

I really was not able to see other correlations.  I looked at Brady points (how gun friendly a state was) and could not really find any clear cut correlations there.  Reading another blog on a similar topic made me realize that I had ignored population size in looking at the data.  So I looked at the data (www.fbi.gov) again taking into account population size.

 In the graph above I ordered the states by what I am calling 'Brady points', this is the ranking the Brady Campaign (www.bradycampaign.org) gives states according to how strict their gun laws are.  The states with the highest points are at the left of the graph and those with lower points are at the right in order.  I am not sure I can say I see any kind of pattern.

There was a suggestion on another blog that perhaps southern regions with laxer gun laws  had higher rates of gun violence than northern states with stricter gun laws. So then I looked at the rates of both total murders and those related to firearms again ordering the states by region.  Again I am not sure that I can say I see much of a correlation, except that perhaps western states have slightly lower rates than the other regions, while southern states might have slightly higher rates on average (I will look at this more closely later).  

But then I also compared total murder rates with those related to firearms by region and on average it looks like western states have lower overall murder rates, and southern states slightly higher ones, but again will look at this a little more closely in the next few graphs.

The main point I want to make here is that just on this data, I don't see anything really jumping out for me, no nice simple trend.  So I averaged the data per region (I split the West into mountain and pacific as if you look at the Brady points, there is a very big difference between the two regions (west is the combined data for both mountain and pacific)).  So the main thing here is that the NE and the Pacific W, have much stricter gun laws than the other regions by quite a bit.  

One thing the data does show is the importance of controls, sometimes even the best of scientists forget to include them.  If you just look at the NE and the South then it looks like the area with the best gun laws has lower violence and lower gun violence.

 But that logic breaks down if you add 'controls', other states in this case, and )when you do, it is really hard to make that same correlation.  The only correlation I can see is that states with higher Brady Points (stricter gun laws) tend to have lower violence in general, but not necessarily lower gun violence.

So lessons learned?

1.  There is a correlation between guns and violence
2. The target of gun control should be guns, not assault weapons if we really want to cut down on the number of children being killed by weapons.
3. It is hard to find an easy correlation between gun laws and gun violence  (probably because most of them don't target guns)
4. There does not seem to be a correlation between region and gun violence (could probably find one if one looked hard enough)
5. Most people will not be killed by guns (look at the rates) and most people will not be murdered. 
6.  Data tends to be non partisan

I think the last point is perhaps the most important.  Emotions are very useful in the debate about violence and gun control as it is the emotions of people that typically spur them into action.  However, when that action leads to laws then the emotions should give way to unbiased data analysis.  By unbiased, I mean looking at what the data tells us and not what we want the data to say.  Parts of the data presented here is great for those who support gun rights, parts support stricter gun laws.  But the overall data is less partisan, but tells us that we need more information (more research) and fewer guns (not fewer assault rifles).  

I am in favor of stricter gun laws I always note this because I know that it is a bias that I have, and I think it is important for those who look at this data understand where I am coming from.   The way I look at it is that I live my life based on my biases (I don't posses a gun), however if I want to place my biases on others then I better look at the data objectively to see if it backs me up. 

My thoughts go to the families of all gun victims including those at Sandy Hook.