Jefferson Review

Terry’s Tidbits

By Terry Gray

August 9, 2004

“I was on a casting call for a show about clouds. They needed 5 actors. When 12 actors showed up it was suddenly overcast.” Jay London.

Most anti-tobacco studies start by trying to duplicate the conclusion of other studies. They fail miserably. The problem with most of these studies is that they begin on the assumption that the previous researcher has done his homework. What the previous researcher has done is assume the researcher before him has done his homework. If a logical person follows this research to its origins, he’ll find that the first Little Johnny Researcher was true to form and cheated on his homework. From the first studies to the current studies, there are underlying fallacies with data.

Look at any tobacco study that attempts to justify banning smoking and in the conclusion you’ll almost always find the words “estimated”, “probably”, “could happen”, “likely”, etc. That wording will be addressing the number of deaths associated with tobacco. But they don’t have any concrete numbers for any of their stuff.

There are no new smoke studies. When the current researcher attempts to duplicate the conclusion of a past study, he finds it impossible. This should send up warning signals to everyone, including the current researcher. However, in order to keep his research money and make a name for himself, he continues the study but calls it “new”. There are no new smoke studies.

Now, there was a substantial research project a few years ago that spanned 38 years. It looked at the correlation between smoking spouses and the health of their non-smoking partners. This was a true “second hand smoke” study. It was originally funded by the EPA but when researchers, Kabal and Enstrom, couldn’t prove that second hand smoke was dangerous, the EPA dropped the funding. After a time of no funding, one of the tobacco companies helped them out. Any time this study surfaces, the first thing that the Antis scream is, “That study was funded by Big Tobacco.”

These Nazi groups need to take a look at their own funding. Most of it comes from “Big Tobacco” by way of tobacco settlement money. So there!

I got into an email exchange with a writer in Minnesota after reading a statement he made in one of his attack articles. The whole piece was just his way of getting a paycheck while voicing his negative opinion of personal freedom. Here’s an excerpt of his piece.

make decisions about his or her own life and body, I'm so down with public smoking bans it isn't even funny. In fact, not only should states ban smoking in all public places, I wouldn't even get too excited if employers banned smoking and tested for it in the same way they "promote" the drug-free workplace.”

Here is part of an email he sent me after I wrote him about the fallacies of his piece.:

“That's just the nicotine talking. You clearly aren't well educated so I'll draw you a picture. I said I don't care if you smoke, just if you smoke in public. That's no contradiction. Smoke at home, pal. Enjoy. But not in my airspace. The fact that you think your patriotic right to do a drug in public is more important than my basic human right to breath without you blowing smoke around me and the vast majority (an important aspect of democracy) of nonsmokers shows how little you know about democracy.

You are a truly vulgar person wracked with addiction doing the bidding of the monkey on your back. You confuse your addiction with personal choice. You have no more personal choice than a heroine junkie, its just easier to get your fix.”

And this is how a typical Anti reacts to logic. This is the kind of person that America is producing at a steady pace. All they know is what someone has told them, whether it be his liberal 5^th grade teacher or his anti-smoking guru. And if you challenge his little world, he cannot react with any facts outside the special logic of his box. He resorts to sputtering, his head turns around, and he spits out not pea soup but Nazi nonsense.

I’m seriously thinking about including a section called WAVE Watch every week. WAVE 3 television has gotten out of control. I’m appalled by their presentations to include what they would call news teases.

These controversies that they scream about mostly don’t exist, whether it is Mike Tyson, Tasers, obscenity or Beasts in our backyards. I’ve been watching them for some time now, previously to get some local news but now just to see what idiots they make of themselves.

Mrs. Mayberry (chuckle) doesn’t like the innuendo in a song on the radio. There was no vulgarity mind you, just the depiction of sex. I haven’t heard the song. But she was quoted as saying that they didn’t say any cuss words but they said everything to describe what would be said if there were cuss words. I see, so it was cleaned up. With that in mind, she obviously isn’t upset over vulgar words, she is upset over ideas. What a mix, Aunt Bea and Hitler. Think she’ll bake him a pie?

But my beef is with Wave 3. It seems that Mrs. Mayberry (I have to laugh) was the only one complaining. Other mothers, when questioned by the trouble team at Wave said they just changed stations. But Wave wants a controversy. The problem is that these liberal icons don’t understand that they are getting what they have demanded – censorship. See where it leads? It leads right into more censorship.

There was story about a contractor that ripped off a couple of people. The trouble team went to one home and showed us all the unfinished stuff and told us how much money the abused folks were out. I don’t like people like this on the street, the abused folks as well as the contractor. As far as I’m concerned, the abused folks bent over.

But wily anchorman Scott Reynolds teased us with this tag, “We tracked down the contractor for some tough answers.” They didn’t need to track him down, he was in court. And the clip they showed was the same one they had been showing for days. The contractor never spoke to the reporters. I can give tough answers like that all day long.

Is anyone scared about the Beasts in Your Backyard? From what I saw on the news there have been panther tracks spotted but those were said to be those of a big dog; a black bear was rummaging around in some suburban neighborhood, and somebody’s pet snow leopard got loose. Not a soul has been harmed, and no damage has been done. So let’s do that mysterious, low-voiced news tease that scares all the soccer moms and old folks and adds new zest to “World Class City”. I expect killer reindeer and gun toting opossums next.

Holy chicken stomping Eggman, what will we do? If you closely scrutinize this organization, you’ll likely find that they are nothing more than a group of zealots that haven’t gotten the control, money and respect that they so feel they deserve. The attitudes they have are the same ones that fuel smoking bans, radio censorship, book burning, and general oppression of people. They are Nazis.

As I told you last week, I’ll be the first with a fist full of someone’s face for abusing an animal. My dogs are my kids and if you want to hurt one you’ll first have to get through 160 pounds of snarling teeth, then you’ll have to answer to the dogs.

But PETA has done nothing I can recall that even resembles constructive change. They are sniveling little Antis (see smoking bans) and they will do anything to promote their cause, whatever that is. I believe that they are jealous over the attention and money that all the other liberal social engineering causes have gotten. Perhaps they long for Sally Struthers to tell us that just $1.00 a day can feed a whole henhouse for a year. Eat more chicken.

Update: Penn and Teller did a piece on these folks Thursday night on Showtime. It was a rerun and its airing was very timely. The original piece was ahead of its time. I like Penn and Teller’s show on Showtime. It’s on Thursday nights at 10.

Have you ever noticed how a few pot plants that might be just a neighborhood project are suddenly worth millions when the cops find them? What makes their value go up like that? What do the cops have against neighborhood projects? A small crop could take a lot of people off the streets who would otherwise be out looking to buy illegal weed. I’m all for community gardening.

I have to point out to the cops that that $1.5 million dollar crop that they dig up isn’t worth $1.5 net. Oh it might gross that much if it is in fact for retail sale. But they haven’t figured in expenses. It isn’t cheap to grow pot. There are starter pots, fertilizer, soil, grow lights, and the starter stock. Then one has to transfer the starter plants to a safe area where pigs won’t root around in them. And there is all the hassle of marketing without the aid of advertising. What about security for the crop? It is a tough profession even if the market demand is very high and most of the big profits go up in smoke. Puns intended.

	Jefferson Review
	"Your Liberty is Our Interest"	August 9, 2004
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