It's been "Normalized", reduced to formulas. Creative thinking in music has quite simply become abnormal, a disease to be pruned from the collectivist "Greater Happiness".
Hundreds of Billions of dollars pissed down a chronic disease and violence riddled rat hole, in trade for not one single cure, . . . ever, . . . except of course for the team Selling those drugs.
April 21, 2018 Newly discovered statistics from the Centers for Disease Control
(CDC) that were never released to the public strengthen the argument for
guns and blow a hole in the gun control narrative. The statistics show
that guns are used in a defensive manner against crimes far more than
they are used by criminals to commit crimes. A new report from
Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck shows that recently
unearthed surveys from the CDC, which were never made public, show that
Americans use guns in millions of defense scenarios every year on
average.
...
Kleck conducted the most thorough previously known survey data on the
question in the 1990s. His study, which has been harshly disputed in
pro-gun-control quarters, indicated that there were more than 2.2
million such defensive uses of guns (DGUs) in America a year. Now
Kleck has unearthed some lost CDC survey data on the question. The CDC
essentially confirmed Kleck's results. But Kleck didn't know about that
until now, because the CDC never reported what it found.
Kleck
discovered that the CDC asked about defensive uses of guns in its
Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) in 1996, 1997, and
1998.
The CDC survey, which Kleck described as "high-quality,"
asked respondents: “During the last 12 months, have you confronted
another person with a firearm, even if you did not fire it, to protect
yourself, your property, or someone else?”
Reason notes that the
survey instructed respondents to leave out “incidents from occupations,
like policing, where using firearms is part of the job” and it excludes
instances where firearms were used in a defensive manner against
animals.
One key point that Kleck noticed was that the only
people who were asked that question were people who admitted to owning
guns. This is a problem because Kleck found in his surveys that “79
percent of those who reported a DGU ‘had also reported a gun in their
household at the time of the interview.’” Because of this, Kleck argues
that the CDC's numbers needed to be rounded up, as Reason notes:
At any rate, Kleck downloaded the datasets for those
three years and found that the "weighted percent who reported a DGU ...
was 1.3% in 1996, 0.9% in 1997, 1.0% in 1998, and 1.07% in all three
surveys combined."
Kleck figures if you do the adjustment upward
he thinks necessary for those who had DGU incidents without personally
owning a gun in the home at the time of the survey, and then the
adjustment downward he thinks necessary because CDC didn't do detailed
follow-ups to confirm the nature of the incident, you get 1.24 percent, a
close match to his own 1.326 percent figure.
Kleck
found the results to be astonishing as they strongly confirmed his
prior work, which had been attacked by those pushing the gun control
narrative:
The final adjusted prevalence of 1.24%
therefore implies that in an average year during 1996–1998, 2.46 million
U.S. adults used a gun for self-defense. This estimate, based
on an enormous sample of 12,870 cases (unweighted) in a nationally
representative sample, strongly confirms the 2.5 million past-12-months
estimate obtained Kleck and Gertz (1995). .... CDC's results, then,
imply that guns were used defensively by victims about 3.6 times as
often as they were used offensively by criminals.
The newly discovered CDC surveys severely damage gun control narratives
pushed by the media, including a poorly written piece last week by NPR's
Samantha Raphelson, who just happened to be unaware of Kleck's
discovery of the surveys. Raphelson's report backed the National Crime
Victimization Survey's ultra-conservative lowball number of only 100,000
defensive uses of firearms per year.
Thank You Daily Wire, and Mr Kleck.
Does stuff lke this make you feel 'Disordered'?
Well Here's another study you probably didn't hear about.
A new study, presenting an unconventional exploration of heavy metal music as it impacts psychosocial functioning, was recently published in the Journal of Community Psychology. The researchers report that heavy metal music can be a catalyst for improved socioemotional functioning for bullied or marginalized youth. They find that for some fans metal music may play a protective role against mental health issues in the context of adverse environmental factors.
Heavy metal artists have long been met with criticism by concerned parents and politicians. Metalheads (heavy metal fans) have likewise fallen victim to undeserved suspicion. “A common perception is that metal music and culture either leads to mental health issues or attracts people with mental health issues,” the authors write.
Through qualitative analysis of unstructured interviews with self-proclaimed metalheads in Australia, researchers Paula Rowe and Bernard Guerin of the University of South Australia recently examined the function of metal music in the identity development, social orientation, and emotional experiences of teen listeners. A number of studies have connected music exposure to positive outcomes in childhood, adolescence, and later adult life, although metal and emotional (“emo” music) have been subjected to less scientific scrutiny.
Rowe and Guerin suggest two culprits in this slanted representation in research: 1) highly publicized instances of violent outbursts by metal performers (e.g., Ozzy Osbourne’s dove-biting publicity stunt), and 2) the problematic pattern of research designed in accordance with public opinion.
“There is a dearth of good research on young metalheads,” Rowe and Guerin write, “instead there is a history of speculating on the mental health of metal youth through correlational and experimental research that record nothing of the detailed social contexts and immediate life-worlds by talking to the metalheads directly.”
According to the researchers, there has been limited theoretical and empirical justification for efforts to pathologize passion for metal and emotional music among youths. Correlative links have been found between internalizing issues (and violent outbursts) among adolescents and a preference for metal music; however, authors argue that past studies have neglected social circumstances and environmental features. They reject the oversimplification of these investigations, suggesting that prior inquiry has been reduced to the question of whether or not youth displaying characteristics of mental disorders prefer metal music or the extent to which metalheads present with mental disorders.
Acknowledging that past research has primarily explored metal from the outside looking in, Rowe and Guerin conducted interviews with a purposively assembled sample of 18-24-year-old metalheads. To avoid informing the direction and content of the discussions, the researchers incorporated minimal probing and allowed the conversation to flow naturally. Four primary themes emerged in analyzing participants’ reported relationships to metal music. “All participants experienced some form of marginalization in their main social environment (school) at the time they embarked on becoming metal. All participants described the importance to them and the power of the listening experience. All participants narratively constructed a sense of belonging and acceptance by the global metal community (with variations by metal subgenres and types of community). In varying ways, all participants described how the embodiment of metal identities brought about a sense of social protection.”
Rowe and Guerin found that metal not only provides a form of escape and release to youth grappling with ostracism but also provides a kind of informal therapy. When asked by filmmaker Michael Moore to respond to claims that his music inspired the Columbine High School massacre in the 2002 film Bowling for Columbine, Marilyn Manson responded:
“When I was a kid growing up, music was the escape. That’s the only thing that had no judgments. You know, you put on a record, and it’s not going to yell at you for dressing the way you do. It’s going to make you feel better about it.”
Rowe and Guerin’s findings make a compelling case, suggesting that the release provided by intense emotional music may be helpful to young people in the midst of significant psychological stress.
****
Rowe, P., & Guerin, B. (2018). Contextualizing the mental health of metal youth: A community for social protection, identity, and musical empowerment. Journal of Community Psychology. (Link)
ObamaCare: The Defining Issue of the last election. Promising to Kill it is what destroyed Dem majorities all over the country. But the Private Insurers are gone, ObamaCare killed them. Remember that nasty, horrible thing Liberals Love to castigate as a moral failing? That sin of all sins? Plain, old fashioned Greed? Erase any barriers to selling Insurance across State Lines (along with cleaning up State Insurance Commissions and no nonsense anti trust enforcement) and Be Amazed, Simply Amazed, at how fast Private Insurance Companies will appear out of nowhere. Give them Tax Breaks but Anti Trust them at the hint of a merger. Keep them independent. Keep them competing with each other. Make the market so attractive that the market conditions alone will create Hundreds of smaller, Private Insurers. The more Private Insurers you have the Lower the cost to consumers, as they all try to out perform and undersell each other. It's not rocket science.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) used his regular Thursday
press conference to offer a power point presentation -- complete with
charts and graphs -- to defend the GOP House bill to replace the health
law.
The Hill:
Ryan Brings Out Slideshow To Sell GOP Healthcare Bill
Jacket off and sleeves rolled up, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on
Thursday ditched the podium and delivered a 25-minute TED Talk-like
presentation on why the new GOP health bill represents the best, and
perhaps only, chance to repeal ObamaCare. “This is the closest we will
ever get to repealing and replacing ObamaCare,” Ryan told reporters at
the end of his slideshow presentation. “The time is here; the time is
now. This is the moment.”The Speaker typically stands behind a podium
and answers questions from reporters during his Thursday news briefings.
But on this day, reporters in the room weren’t the intended audience.
(Wong, 3/9)
NPR:
House Speaker Paul Ryan Sells Health Care Bill As 'Once-In-A-Lifetime' Chance
"This is the chance. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,"
said the speaker, roving the stage with a wireless mic, gesturing at
both the audience in front of him and the PowerPoint presentation behind
him. TED Talk? Late-night infomercial? Nope — it was House Speaker Paul
Ryan, making a hard pitch for his health care plan after a week of loud
conservative criticism. (Detrow, 3/9)
USA Today:
Republican Leaders Warn That Changing Health Care Bill Would Doom It In Senate
House Republican leaders warned their members Thursday that any
major changes to the proposed GOP health care bill will prevent its
passage in the Senate and kill their best shot at ending Obamacare.
Those warnings came as both the House Ways and Means Committee and the
Energy and Commerce Committee approved the GOP's American Health Care
Act on Thursday without significant amendments after marathon debates.
(Kelly, 3/9)
Morning Consult:
GOP Leaders Say Republicans Won’t Get 2nd Chance On Health Care
Congressional Republican leaders are pushing back against party
criticism of their plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. In media
appearances on Thursday, House and Senate leaders drove home the message
that their plan is Republicans’ best shot to make good on their No. 1
campaign promise. “The time is here, the time is now, this is the moment
and this is the closest that will ever happen,” Speaker Paul Ryan said
at his weekly press conference. “It really comes down to a binary
choice.” (Reid, 3/9)
Politico:
Three Misleading Claims From Paul Ryan's Obamacare Lecture
With his jacket off and sleeves rolled up, House Speaker Paul Ryan
made the case for the Republican health care law Thursday, walking
through a 35-minute PowerPoint presentation to a packed crowd of
reporters and millions of viewers watching on the three cable TV
networks. It was quintessential Ryan, calmly explaining the details of
the American Health Care Act looking more like a college professor than a
professional politician. But in making his case, Ryan made a series of
misleading statements, both about the current state of Obamacare and the
details of the replacement bill. (Vinik, 3/9)
The Wall Street Journal:
Ads Push Conservatives To Get On Board With GOP Health Plan
A GOP outside group closely aligned with Speaker Paul Ryan (R.,
Wis.) is set to begin airing ads targeted at 30 members of the Freedom
Caucus, urging their constituents to call them to vote in favor of
Republican leadership’s bill to replace the Affordable Care Act. The
ads, paid for by the American Action Network, a nonprofit not required
to disclose its donors, mark the first time this year that a major
outside group is spending money to keep members of the Republican Party
in line. The group is spending $500,000 to air the ads for two weeks,
bringing its total spending on the GOP health-care plan to over $8
million since January. (Hackman, 3/9)
The Hill:
Ryan Pushes Back Against Critics Panning Health Plan As 'Entitlement'
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Thursday sought to push back against
criticism from the right that the GOP leadership’s healthcare bill
amounts to another “entitlement” program like ObamaCare. During an
interview on Sean Hannity’s radio show, Ryan argued that replacing the
2010 law’s subsidies to help low-income people buy health insurance with
tax credits was not the same as directly giving people federal aid.
(Marcos, 3/9)
The Hill:
Right Targets Ryan — Not Trump — On ObamaCare Plan
President Trump has so far managed to avoid becoming a target for
the conservative backlash to Speaker Paul Ryan’s ObamaCare repeal and
replace plan, even as the White House vigorously whips support for the
bill. Ryan hasn’t been so lucky. Breitbart News, which has long been one
of Ryan’s most vocal foes, panned his American Health Care Act as
“Speaker Ryan’s ObamaCare 2.0.” (Easley and Wong, 3/10) Ryan also has other health-related items on his legislative to-do list -
Politico:
Ryan Planning More Health Care Votes Alongside Repeal Effort
House Republicans will vote on a second health care bill the week
they vote to repeal Obamacare, Speaker Paul Ryan told Sean Hannity on
Thursday afternoon. The Wisconsin Republican did not divulge many
details about the legislation, though he said it would likely allow
people to purchase insurance through association health plans. Such a
proposal has always been part of the GOP alternative, Ryan told Hannity,
but Senate rules bar leadership from including it in their fast-tracked
repeal bill. (Bade, 3/9)
Do you remember the way Susan Boyle was received on that talent show, where the judges and audience quietly sniggered at the rather plain looking, non fashion-model on stage who told them she wanted to be a singer? And after she sang, and floored the whole room, the Judges apologized to her?
In short, we're impressed. And it takes a lot to even catch our attention much less impress us these days.
