Cops tell de Blasio: Stay away from our funerals

The article below is from a couple of  days ago but it has now become more relevant than ever in the light of the latest killing of police in NYC. De Blasio just drips hate and his refusal to back up his cops in their often difficult encounters with blacks just legitimates black resentment.  That resentment has just killed two cops who were clearly doing nothing wrong so De Blasio  must share the blame for that.  We see once again that racism can kill and Leftist anti-white agitation is no exception

Not over their dead bodies.  Cops are warning Mayor de Blasio and Council Speaker Melissa ​Mark-​Viverito to stay away from their funerals should they be ​killed in the line of duty.

The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association distributed a flier to members, blaring: “DON’T LET THEM INSULT YOUR SACRIFICE!” Cops were encouraged to sign and submit the “Don’t Insult My Sacrifice” waiver to ban the cop-bashing pols from their funerals.

“I, as a New York City police officer, request that Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito refrain from attending my funeral services in the event that I am killed in the line of duty,” the waiver states.

“Due to Mayor de Blasio and Speaker Mark-Viverito’s consistent refusal to show police officers the support and respect they deserve, I believe that their attendance at the funeral of a fallen New York City police officer is an insult to that officer’s memory and sacrifice.”

Officers can download the form on the PBA’s Web site and drop off a signed copy to their PBA delegates.

The mayor traditionally attends funerals for fallen officers.

“This is deeply disappointing,” the mayor and the council speaker said in a joint statement.  “Incendiary rhetoric like this serves only to divide the city, and New Yorkers reject these tactics.

“The mayor and the speaker both know better than to think this inappropriate stunt represents the views of the majority of police officers and their families.”

Sources say the revolt was sparked by the mayor’s lack of support for the NYPD following the grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer involved in the death of Staten Islander Eric Garner.

De Blasio added fuel to that fire in a press conference about the grand-jury vote where he said he had warned his 17-year-old, mixed-race son, Dante, to be careful around police officers.

“We’ve had to literally train him, as families have all over this city for decades, in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him,” the mayor said.

PBA President Patrick Lynch reacted to that by accusing the mayor of throwing cops “under the bus.”

SOURCE

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A professor who admits that she hates Republicans

Hate is what Leftists do so there is no great surprise in that.  Whether such a person should be leading an academic department is however open to question.  And it is unsurprising that Leftists should hate conservatives.  Conservatives are always bringing up the realities which make  Leftist dreams impossible of fulfilment.  They are the messengers of bad news.  And being infantile, Leftists are inclined to shoot the messenger.

Amusing that she has to go all the way back to Spiro Agnew to find examples of conservatives mocking Leftists.  I remember Spiro but I am an old guy.  Conservatives, by contrast, would have no such difficulties.  The obsessional attacks on the Koch Brothers by Harry Reid are very recent, for instance.  And the Tyrrell has other very recent examples here. Leftist media surge to the attack at the slightest opportunity


Susan J. Douglas is a professor of communications at the University of Michigan.  Since she endeavors to "psychologize" conservatives below, let me give her some of that back.  Leftists are people who hate the world they live in.  There are a variety of reasons why they might feel that way.  Being a rough-looking broad would be one reason for it

I hate Republicans. I can’t stand the thought of having to spend the next two years watching Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Ted Cruz, Darrell Issa or any of the legions of other blowhards denying climate change, thwarting immigration reform or championing fetal “personhood.”

This loathing is a relatively recent phenomenon. Back in the 1970s, I worked for a Republican, Fred Lippitt, the senate minority leader in Rhode Island, and I loved him. He was a brand of Republican now extinct—a “moderate” who was fiscally conservative but progressive about women’s rights, racial justice and environmental preservation. Had he been closer to my age, I could have contemplated marrying someone like Fred. Today, marrying a Republican is unimaginable to me. And I’m not alone. Back in 1960, only 5 percent of Republicans and 4 percent of Democrats said they’d be “displeased” if their child married someone from the opposite party. Today? Forty-nine percent of Republicans and 33 percent of Democrats would be pissed.

According to a recent study by Stanford professor Shanto Iyengar and Princeton researcher Sean Westwood, such polarization has increased dramatically in recent years. What’s noteworthy is how entrenched this mutual animus is. It’s fine for me to use the word “hate” when referring to Republicans and for them to use the same word about me, but you would never use the word “hate” when referring to people of color, or women, or gays and lesbians.

And now party identification and hatred shape a whole host of non-political decisions. Iyengar and Westwood asked participants in their study to review the resumés of graduating high school seniors to decide which ones should receive scholarships. Some resumés had cues about party affiliation (say, member of the Young Republicans Club) and some about racial identity (also through extracurricular activities, or via a stereotypical name). Race mattered, but not nearly as much as partisanship. An overwhelming 80 percent of partisans chose the student of their own party. And this held true even if the candidate from the opposite party had better credentials.

How did we come to this pass? Obviously, my tendency is to blame the Republicans more than the Democrats, which may seem biased. But history and psychological research bear me out.

Let’s start with the history. This isn’t like a fight between siblings, where the parent says, “It doesn’t matter who started it.” Yes, it does.

A brief review of Republican rhetoric and strategies since the 1980s shows an escalation of determined vilification (which has been amplified relentlessly on Fox News since 1996). From Spiro Agnew’s attack on intellectuals as an “effete corps of impudent snobs”; to Rush Limbaugh’s hate speech; to the GOP’s endless campaign to smear the Clintons over Whitewater, then bludgeon Bill over Monica Lewinsky; to the ceaseless denigration of President Obama (“socialist,” “Muslim”), the Republicans have crafted a political identity that rests on a complete repudiation of the idea that the opposing party and its followers have any legitimacy at all.

From here on, she regurgitates conventional Leftist psychology about conservatives. Leftist psychologists have been trying to find psychological defects in conservatives since at least 1950. They have never been able to convince anyone but fellow Leftists, however. And the reason for that is the very poor quality of the studies concerned. They fail to prove what they purport to prove. See here and here for a couple of demolitions of the nonsense concerned

Why does this work? A series of studies has found that political conservatives tend toward certain psychological characteristics. What are they? Dogmatism, rigidity and intolerance  of ambiguity; a need to avoid uncertainty; support for authoritarianism; a heightened sense of threat from others; and a personal need for structure. How do these qualities influence political thinking?

According to researchers, the two core dimensions of conservative thought are resistance to change and support for inequality. These, in turn, are core elements of social intolerance. The need for certainty, the need to manage fear of social change, lead to black-and-white thinking and an embrace of stereotypes. Which could certainly lead to a desire to deride those not like you—whether people of color, LGBT people or Democrats. And, especially since the early 1990s, Republican politicians and pundits have been feeding these needs with a single-minded, uncomplicated, good-vs.-evil worldview that vilifies Democrats.

So now we hate them back. And for good reason. Which is too bad. I miss the Fred Lippitts of yore and the civilized discourse and political accomplishments they made possible. And so do millions of totally fed-up Americans.

SOURCE

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Is this the most beautiful Santa ever?



A girl who is sometimes seen in my environment

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Does feeling old kill you?

The recent medical research excerpted below does report a slight effect of that nature but I am skeptical (as ever). The researchers did ask why people felt older but did not adequately address the possibility that many of those who felt older than their actual age might have had good medical reasons for that.  They may have felt older because they were in fact less well.  And it was their actual poorer health that killed them rather than feeling old.

The authors below did make a valiant attempt to examine that.  They measures eight indexes of physical health and allowed for their influence statistically. What they examined were major causes of death but  I was surprised that they failed to include blood pressure.  BP is a major factor for circulatory ailments and a lot of people do walk around with elevated BP.  And it seems to me that high BP might have a subtle influence on feelings of wellness and hence subjective age.

And that point can be extended to the observation that only KNOWN illness was controlled for. Many infections and viral illnesses can have adverse effects on wellness ranging from the very subtle to the gross -- with chronic fatigue syndrome being at the gross end.  So it seems to me likely that those who felt old did in fact have poorer health, but from many possible causes not picked up in the research.  Just being unfit, for instance, might make one feel old, and there are many claims that unfitness leads to premature death.

My suspicions about BP seem to be borne out by the fact that cardiovascular death was associated with feeling old but cancer was not.  There is of course a considerable association between BP and adverse cardiovascular events.

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Feeling Old vs Being Old: Associations Between Self-perceived Age and Mortality

Isla Rippon & Andrew Steptoe

The crude mortality rate during the mean follow-up period of 99 months was 14.3% in participants who felt younger, 18.5% in those who felt about their actual age, and 24.6% in those who felt older (Table 1). Adjustment for covariates had pronounced effects on the associations between self-perceived age and mortality.

Nevertheless, when we combined the factors that were independently associated with mortality in models 1 through 8, feeling older than actual age remained a significant independent predictor of mortality (model 9: hazard ratio, 1.41; 95% CI, 1.10-1.82).

Results were similar after excluding deaths occurring within 12 months of baseline (Table 2).

Analyses of separate causes of death showed a strong relationship between self-perceived age and cardiovascular death, but no association between self-perceived age and cancer mortality (Table 2).

SOURCE

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An inspiring  video for the Holy season



 Andrea Bocelli joins the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in Salt Lake City, Utah for an unforgettable rendition of "The Lord's Prayer."

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Senator Coburn’s (R-OK) Farewell Address (excerpts)

“I believe our founders were absolutely brilliant. Far smarter than us,” Coburn explained. He said we would not begin to solve our country’s problems until we once again accept the instruction of the constitution and restore individual liberty to everyone. “But I don’t believe we can if we continue to ignore the wisdom of our founding documents,” said Coburn.

Today, the state of the country is in bad shape, according to Coburn. He said the struggling economy and loss of freedom has created a country that his father would not recognize. Corburn attributes these problems to a centralized government that is too involved in decision-making instead of leaving it to the power of the free market.

He stops short of blaming his colleagues of opposition though when he said their intentions were not bad. “The intentions are great. The motivations of the people in this body are wonderful. But the perspective of how we do it, and what the long-term consequences of how we do it really do matter,” said Coburn. These intentions don’t prevent unintended consequences, however.

To prevent the occurrence of these unintended consequences, Coburn stands by specific principles. When reading legislation, Coburn determines if it may negatively impact life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He then makes sure the bill is consistent with the oath congressmen take when sworn into office.

While giving words of advice to his colleagues, the Senator took the time to read the oath in full. “Your state is not mentioned one time in that oath,” Coburn said to his fellow Senators. He told them their goal was to defend liberty and the constitution, not to pursue benefits for your individual state.

SOURCE

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