From Reuters via Yahoo! News:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Violence depicted on television, in films and video games raises the risk of aggressive behavior in adults and young viewers and poses a serious threat to public health, according to a new study.
After reviewing more than 50 years of research on the impact of violence in the media, L. Rowell Huesmann, of the University of Michigan, and his colleague Brad Bushman concluded that only smoking posed a greater danger.
“Exposure to violent electronic media has a larger effect than all but one other well known threat to public health. The only effect slightly larger than the effect of media violence on aggression is that of cigarette smoking on lung cancer,” he said in a statement.
Video games pose a serious threat to public health? With that assertion along with the comparison to smoking, how long do you figure before some liberal legislator tries to introduce a “violent video game” or “violent media” tax? After all, congress has recently considered reviewing the ESRB game rating system.
Posted on:
November 28, 2007 , by
newyank • Trackback
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Just posted on FOX NEWS:
A U.S. Air Force staff sergeant stationed in Italy is fighting to regain custody of her two children from Italian authorities after an official removed them from her home while she was on a military training mission.
A judge held off transferring custody of Leighlora Wylie, 7, and Lillian Ann Wylie, 5, from Italian social services to an American foster family earlier this month as authorities in northern Italy investigate their mother, 30-year-old Kris Wylie, on charges of maltreatment and abandonment, and Wylie’s Italian fiance on charges of child abuse.
Under NATO agreement, Italian officials have the primary right of jurisdiction for offenses that take place in Italy. The Italians must follow the best interests of the child under the United National Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Wylie and her Italian lawyer, Francesco Furlan, say the charges are unfounded.
The children were removed from the fiance’s custody last month while Wylie was out of the country on a training mission with the 31st Fighter Wing, which is based in Aviano, Italy. Wylie’s fiance had power of attorney over the girls, and a second family on the base was also given custody rights. Police removed the girls from the couple’s off-base home while letting the fiance’s 7-year-old son from a previous relationship remain there.
“We shouldn’t forget that these two girls have an American passport,” Furlan told FOXNews.com. “They cannot take the girls and take them to a secret location without informing the Embassy in Roma or the base commander in Aviano.”
Officials took custody of the girls in October.
A neighbor called Italian police in mid-August to report that the fiance was beating Wylie’s children. The girls were examined at a local hospital, Italian and American authorities investigated, and Italian police told Wylie and her fiance that they didn’t think there was a problem, Wylie said.
“All the investigations led to nothing,” Furlan said. “We have the official paper from the Aviano Base command saying there is absolutely, absolutely no case of child abuse.”
But on Oct. 13, a police official in Pordenone, Italy, took the girls away while Wylie was on a mission abroad. On Oct. 17, Wylie was formally charged with maltreatment and abandonment, and her fiance was charged with three counts of child abuse.
“She’s on a military mission here in Italy; her status is regulated by the North Atlantic Treaty,” Furlan said. “I would say you know that because the local DA says that she’s not a suitable mother because she abandons the girls quite often. I mean, of course. She’s in the military. She’s sent on missions or training in the States or whatever, they cannot interfere about this.”
Hmmm… I hope the situation is resolved in the best interest of the children and their mother as quickly as possible.
Read more: Air Force Staff Sergeant Fights for Return of Her U.S. Daughters From Italian Custody.
Posted on:
November 28, 2007 , by
newyank • Trackback
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Liberal writers can really pack an article full of insight into their self-absorbed world-views.
From another “enlightened” elitist (liberal), Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist:
Give me sushi, give me death
This luscious tuna nigiri meets the ocean's plummeting fish stocks. Can you reconcile?
It's times like this I wish I was a heartless Republican.
Heartless republican? I know many republicans and few of them are heartless. Most do more for their communities than they are given credit for. “Evil” or “heartless” is how liberals like to label republicans. The truth is, it’s a myth and promulgating smears and negative characterizations is what liberals resort to when they don’t get their way.
It's times like this I almost wish I didn't really give a damn, that I lived in happy, savage denial of humankind's true impact on the health of the planet, that I didn't have much of a conscience and therefore felt the world and all its natural resources and all its cute little squiggly creatures were merely here for my enjoyment and my wanton exploitation, all here to feed my omnivorous appetites and to hell with environmental protections and respectful, restrained consumerism and, hey waitress bring me another order, oh what the hell, make it a double because hey, I'm an American, I'm entitled.
It’s liberals like Mr. Morford who’ve done more to foster the “I’m entitled” attitude than anyone else. The liberal self-absorbed, entitlement mindset has done more damage to society than any republican has supposedly done to the environment.
Alas, that isn't me. It probably isn't you. Hell, it's not really even most Republicans. Just those in Congress. And maybe Utah. And Montana. But never mind that now.
Heh? Was that a hint of stereotyping I just read? I thought liberalism stood for tolerance and understanding? I guess not.
This time, it was all about the sushi. It was all about a fine lunch I was enjoying with a friend over at a raw fish joint in the Mission when it struck me that it was the third time in a week I'd enjoyed a fabulous sushi meal — not at all an unusual rate, I realize, for sushi-drenched San Francisco, and also increasingly common in America overall as mall sushi explodes in popularity — but still, not exactly a cheap way to live, especially on a (non) humble columnist's salary. But hey, you only live once, yes? Sort of?
This is the problem: Sushi has become one of those things. Like Cate Blanchett, like a Led Zeppelin reunion, like enlightened anal sex, there is simply nothing else like it, no other comparable cultural experience. Prepared well (as most San Francisco sushi is), sushi remains a unparalleled delight, so much so that it's nearly impossible to adore it and not at some point say out loud to anyone who will listen, "Man, this stuff is so effing good, if I could afford it, I'd eat sushi every single day. Wouldn't that be wonderful?"
Except, of course, for the fish. Except for the nagging issue of the massive, unnerving collapse, for how report after report and new scientific revelation after dire international prognostication now says, with increasing alarm, that we are actually raping our oceans far more severely than we ever imagined, that researchers actually haven't been measuring all that accurately in the past and when we now seriously study the historic record, well, it appears that the overall volume of edible marine life is plunging faster than Dick Cheney's soul into the fiery pits of hell. Which, as you well know, is pretty goddamn fast.
In fact, a recent New Yorker piece (a profile of radical environmentalist and whaling ship-rammer Paul Watson), cited the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization as stating that nearly 70 percent of the world's major fisheries are already "fully exploited" or "overexploited." One ominous report, appearing in Nature a few years ago, estimated that we've now lost a staggering 90 percent of our once-overflowing bounty of large predatory fish such as tuna, marlin and swordfish, and we're still hacking away.
It might very well not be that calamitous. Hell, it might only be, you know, 50 percent. Or the fish could all be lying. But no matter how you slice it, at the rate we're eating our way through the oceans right now, many scientists say that the seas could be nearly barren of most edible stock, from tuna down to calamari and sea slugs, by the time your toddler turns 40 and the ice caps finally melt and the sun turns black and God goes, "See?"
Read the rest if you can stomach it: Give me sushi, give me death.
Mr. Morford did say there’s nothing like enlightened anal sex… So raping the ocean should feel perfectly natural to him?
The problem is, most of the scientific “revelations” he mentions are based on consensus, not fact. Worse, they’re alarmist. Every liberal I talk to about the environment always refer to the consensus of the science behind the dire warnings. Science is not based on consensus, it’s based on fact. And so far the true facts just aren’t adding up.
I, like every republican/conservative/average American wants to do our part to be responsible stewards of the planet. And look how far we’ve come in the past twenty years:
- Voluntary recycling
- Innovative and better use of land-fills
- Cleaner manufacturing and processing of industrial waste
- More fuel efficient vehicles including affordable Hybrid, electric and fuel-cell power
- Free market race to develop alternatives to fossil fuel
- The list goes on…
The point is we’re moving forward. And it’s not because of our liberal friend, it’s because of the human need to innovate and strive to do better. This so-called global warming movement threatens to stifle true innovation by ushering in bigger government, more legislation, more rules and regulation for entire industries and people’s personal lives. That’s not a solution, it’s a disaster waiting to happen.
Mr. Morford and his liberal friends need to stop and think about the damage they’re doing to society by taking up the latest liberal craze “global warming” which doesn’t threaten to destroy the planet as their scare tactics suggest, it threatens to destroy the freedom most Western societies now take for granted.
Posted on:
November 22, 2007 , by
newyank • Trackback
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This kind of relates to my previous posts, Hillary Clinton and Tough Questions part one and part two. Michelle Malkin has once again produced a terrific video roundup of how liberal activists were sold to the public as “undecided voters” during the last Democratic debate hosted by CNN.
Watch the video and try to maintain a straight-face.
Posted on:
November 21, 2007 , by
newyank • Trackback
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Just read this mind-boggling post from the Jawa Report:
“Even as Ethiopia has troops on the ground in Somalia fighting al Qaeda forces, the Democrats in Congress are preparing to end aid to that country. Ethiopia is fighting a proxy war on our behalf, and the Democrats want to cut off aid? Great timing.”
Democrats strong on national security? Yeah right. That’s like saying O.J. Simpson is an advocate of womens rights.
Update: There’s more posted over at HotAir.com…
There is a pattern to what the Democrats are doing, whether they acknowledge it or not. I griped a bit a week or so ago at Democrat calls to cut off the Pakistanis for similar reasons. Whatever problems we have with Musharraf’s imperfections, cutting military aid from him objectively helps al Qaeda. I also opposed the Armenia genocide resolution for similar reasons; spitting in the face of useful allies is no way to go about winning a war. The Democrats are now cutting off funding to the troops in Iraq, which will a) force lacerations in the way the DoD can operate in Iraq and Afghanistan and will b) help every enemy we have on the face of the earth by directly weakening our military’s readiness. Democrats routinely let the perfect become the enemy of the good, especially if the imperfect good happens to be a US ally.
And while this is going on, Democrats and their allies routinely prop up Hugo Chavez as a swell chap in spite of (or because of?) his over the top anti-American rants.
Good point indeed!
Posted on:
November 20, 2007 , by
newyank • Trackback
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