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New study finds that eating dinner as a family makes children happier

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From the left-wing UK Guardian. (H/T Mercator via RuthBlog)

Excerpt:

Researchers at the National Foundation for Educational Research asked the English pupils, aged between 10 and 15, whether they agreed, disagreed or were unsure about the statement: “I feel happy about life at the moment.”

[…]The research, Reasons to be Cheerful: Being a 12-year-old Boy who Eats Dinner with his Family, which was commissioned by the Department for Education, also found that boys were 1.4 times more likely to say they felt happy than girls.

[…]Children who often eat a meal with family or friends at home and regularly eat fruit and vegetables are also more likely to say they are happy. The study found young people who often sit down for a meal with their family are 1.6 times more likely to state that they are happy as those who sometimes or never sit down to a meal with their family. The most likely reason for children to say they are unhappy is being worried about their parents or family, the researchers found. A high proportion of those who worried about their looks also said they were unhappy.

The happiest group were 12-year-old boys who eat with their families.

[…]Benton said: “Our analysis confirms that If we are interested in the happiness and wellbeing of young people we need to look beyond how much money they have.

“In particular, growing up in a supportive and safe environment, both within the home and elsewhere appear to be far more important. Parents making the effort to spend time with their children are a major positive influence on their chances of being happy.”

This sort of contradicts the left’s way of addressing children’s issues – which is to weaken the parental bond through taxation and government-run social programs. Maybe we should lower taxes and let parents have more of their own earned income to pump into their own families directly on things like family dinners and family activities?

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Is the media accurate in reporting on left-wing and right-wing violence?

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Here’s an post from Newsbusters dated March 2010 that talks about whether the left or right is more violent.

Excerpt:

Before letting the media continue to perpetuate a stereotype that may not actually exist at all, let me give you the facts that U.S. journalists refuse to cite. Let me show you where real violence comes from, and I don’t even need to mention the millions of babies killed every year by progressives or even the tens of millions of people murdered by their communist heroes.

But of course, you would never have this view if all you watched was the mainstream news media. Isn’t it funny how the pattern of leftist violence has been obscured by the way that the media presents the stories? Is it intentional?

Is the media biased to the left?

Here’s a UCLA study on media bias.

Excerpt:

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS’ “Evening News,” The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Only Fox News’ “Special Report With Brit Hume” and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

The most centrist outlet proved to be the “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.” CNN’s “NewsNight With Aaron Brown” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” were a close second and third.

“Our estimates for these outlets, we feel, give particular credibility to our efforts, as three of the four moderators for the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential debates came from these three news outlets — Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and Gwen Ifill,” Groseclose said. “If these newscasters weren’t centrist, staffers for one of the campaign teams would have objected and insisted on other moderators.”

The fourth most centrist outlet was “Special Report With Brit Hume” on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC’s “World News Tonight” and NBC’s “Nightly News” to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.

“If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox’s ‘Special Report’ as ABC’s ‘World News’ and NBC’s ‘Nightly News,’ then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news,” said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.”

Here’s a Harvard University study on media bias.

Excerpt:

The programming studied on Fox News offered a somewhat more positive picture… of Republicans and more negative one of Democrats compared with other media outlets. Fox News stories about a Republican candidate were most likely to be neutral (47%), with the remainder more positive than negative (32% vs. 21% negative). The bulk of that positive coverage went to Giuliani (44% positive), while McCain still suffered from unflattering coverage (20% positive vs. 35% negative).

When it came to Democratic candidates, the picture was more negative. Again, neutral stories had a slight edge (39%), followed by 37% negative and 24% positive. And, in marked contrast from the rest of the media, coverage of Obama was twice as negative as positive: 32% negative vs. 16% positive and 52% neutral.

But any sense here that the news channel was uniformly positive about Republicans or negative about Democrats is not manifest in the data.”

And of course in the related links you will find surveys of journalists, records of political contributions made by journalists, and glaring examples of left-wing media bias. The Democrat party as a whole is more to the right than mainstream journalism as a whole.

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News

Democrat sheriff admits he has no evidence for politicizing Arizona shooting

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I was in the weight room when this came on – Megyn Kelly takes Democrat sheriff Clarence Dupnik to task for trying to link the Arizona shooter to the Tea Party/conservatives/Republicans.

And more:

Notice how no one is mentioning the fact that the shooter is an anti-theist who favorited a flag-burning video on his youtube account. Does that sound like a Tea Party conservative?

Actually, what I get from these two videos is that political correctness is going to be a major problem. First of all, when law enforcement is politicizing crime, how can they be expected to conduct their investigation fairly? Secondly, it looks like the shooter had several run-ins with the law over drug charges, etc., but that he was able to get a firearm anyway. Why didn’t he have a criminal record? To me, this looks like another failure in law enforcement where the accused was let off easy. And Democrats are notorious for going easy on criminals.

Why do people have the impression that conservatives are more violent than liberals?

If there isn’t any evidence to connect the shooter to the Republican party, will that stop the left-wing media from linking them anyway?

Check this post from Verum Serum.

Excerpt:

But, in a move reminiscent of what we saw during Rather-gate, the left has decided to argue that the details of the shooting don’t matter, the gist of their case holds true…

  • They couldn’t prove the Bush memos were real, but wanted to stick with the story anyway. This was the genesis of “fake but accurate.”
  • They couldn’t deny that Joe Stack (who flew his plane into an IRS bldg.) quoted the Communist manifesto favorably and disliked George Bush, but labeled him the “Tea Party terrorist” anyway.
  • They couldn’t deny that Richard Poplawski’s only connection to Glenn Beck was that he was disappointed in Beck’s debunking of a conspiracy theory he believed in. They continue to suggest Poplawski was a fan.
  • They couldn’t deny that Pentagon shooter J. Patrick Bedell was a registered Democrat and a 9/11 Truther who disliked Bush, but they wanted him to be a Tea Partier as well.
  • They couldn’t deny that Clay Duke was a leftist inspired by a left-wing movie produced during the Bush years, so they mostly said nothing at all.

I’m leaving out a bunch more. The census worker’s death who was blamed on the right, but which turned out to be suicide. The “right-wing” shooter at the Holocaust museum who turned out to hate Christianity and Fox News. And now the latest on the Giffords shooting is that Loughner may have been anti-Semitic and targeting her because she is Jewish. Generally speaking which party is more supportive of the Jews and Israel and which one is regularly accused of being beholden to Jewish interests? The group Loughner is believed to have been part of also supports SB1070, but Giffords was known to be tough on border control, so how would shooting her advance that agenda? Once again, we’re not supposed to look that closely or ask if any of it makes sense. We’re just supposed to feel outrage at the right targets.

Giffords also voted against Nancy Pelosi to be the House Leader. There was rage on the left over that. Why is that not being discussed?

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