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 Terry’s Tidbits – by Terry Gray

January 10, 2005

RUBBER BANDFOOLERY

“There have been recent incidences of students at our school using rubber bands as a method of projecting objects at other people.  Occasionally, students are using their fingers to project the wasps.  These activities have resulted in injured students.”

This story comes from Cincinnati and involves a magnet school.  Students caught with evil rubber bands will be suspended.  This is a case of punishing kids for being in possession of an inanimate object which when used for its intended purpose harms no one.

It would seem that school officials have no control and in an effort to gain control they falsely blame rubber bands.  Wouldn’t it be much better to teach our kids that the responsibility for their actions belongs to them, not rubber bands?  Little Suzy may be suspended because her mother put a rubber band around the baggy holding her lunch sandwich.  Evil Billy with his arsenal of rubber bands intended to inflict pain may never get caught.  Hey, purveyors of education, it isn’t the rubber bands.

This same mentality is used to ban certain weapons from American citizens even though our 2^nd amendment strictly forbids the government from doing so.

Law abiding citizens who own guns don’t shoot people.  If rocket launchers were legal, and they should be, according to the 2^nd amendment, law abiding citizens wouldn’t arbitrarily fire them, either.

The whole silliness is about control or lack of it and authorities striking out at things that they feel they can’t really control instead of the causes.  When will pencils be issued at the beginning of class and collected at the end?  When will we deal with horrible paper cuts by simply removing the fingers of kids?  Actually, that isn’t a bad idea.  We can collect fingers at the beginning of class and give them back at the end of class.  Or better still we can just keep the fingers forever.  Without fingers, kids can’t smoke, shoot rubber bands, open chewing gum wrappers, drink beer, flip off the teacher, or open most doors.  The state would assume almost complete control of our youth.

SALTED

          One snow storm, and our mayor is crying about money.  You know Jer, the expense of this clean up wouldn’t have been quite so damaging if you bought the road salt at standard prices.  Word has it that the city used 13,000 tons at a cost of $145,000.  This amounts to paying $5.60 per pound for salt.  Kroger sells 5 pounds for $3.99, or 80 cents a pound.  Isn’t there anyone at city hall who can do a little comparative shopping?

The plows never did visit my street.  But that’s okay, especially after hearing people say that all the trucks simply plowed the road snow right back from where residents had just shoveled it.  The government promises to do something, and then only does it wrong.  Is anyone surprised?

PETRINO

          “It isn’t fair to the fans that he talked to another school.” 

          “He owes it to his fans to stay.”

          How many ways can you people complain that Petrino is staying?  And what if he had jumped on a bigger salary and gone to LSU?  You gonna blame a guy for jumping ship for more money?

          Let’s say you agree to take a job making 5 bucks an hour.  A few days later somebody comes along and offers you 10 bucks an hour.  How many people are going to blame you for taking the money on the run?  Are you going to care very much if they did think badly of you?  Did you notice that we aren’t even considering that you might not have taken the money?  You would take it - Petrino didn’t.

          Now let’s get down to the bottom line.  Petrino has a job of coaching a game.  It is a game you know, just like tiddly-winks and ping pong.  Petrino owes you nothing for being fans.  If he is so important to you, then I’d say you owe him.  You aren’t entitled to a football coach, and there is nothing unfair about listening to another option.

AIRPORT GENDER BIAS

          They say that women subjected to pat-downs at airports can request that females do the pat-down.  This is discrimination.  I want the option of requesting a woman to pat me down too.

WHY ISN’T TOBACCO ILLEGAL?

          Ask any nanny about the perils of tobacco, and they’ll tell you that it is addictive, it kills smokers, and it poisons the air that non-smokers breathe.  They’ll tell you that it is a drain on our healthcare system, it raises insurance rates for all of us, and smoke breaks cut into productive time.

          They’ll tell you that movies, music, and books that portray smoking lead our children to nicotine addiction.  Sports stars, singers, actors, and other public figures who smoke are bad influences on our kids.  They’ll tell you that people like me who fight for the freedom to smoke and the freedom to use our property in the way that we see fit, are bad people.

          These nannies will look past property ownership, personal responsibility, and our constitution to tell us that banning smoking is the most important thing in the world to do. 

          They’ll also tell you that they don’t want to eradicate tobacco.

          Why don’t they want to eradicate tobacco?  Why would they want a product on the shelves that threatens their safety and the safety of their children?  Without total eradication, their children will encounter tobacco.  Their kids will probably try tobacco.  Without eradicating it entirely, society will continue to suffer from its effects.  Why don’t they take that stand and get rid of the stuff?  Money! 

          When tobacco becomes illegal, all those hundreds of millions of dollars that nanny groups receive to fight tobacco will go away.  Funding for research will dry up.  Money for propaganda material will be no more.  Many of the people now employed to fight the evil weed will find themselves without jobs.  Tobacco will go underground, and funding to fight it will go to law enforcement, not nannies.

          These groups, made up of highly paid “caring people”, by not trying to outlaw tobacco, are protecting their pockets at the expense of our children and society.  They are allowing it to remain legal when they know full well that with tobacco on the market their kids will encounter it.  They are selling out their kids for bucks. 

          But what they also fail to realize is that, by banning cigarettes in almost every public place, they will eventually run tobacco out of the legal market, and their Nanny’s funds will dry up just the same.  But they will also have no control of the product.  Having done their jobs, the funding of their oppressive ideas will stop.  Now their kids will go to big Ernie’s basement to buy some smokes, and not a dime of profits will be available to fight tobacco.  It is a fine line they walk between bans and eradication.

          Looking at the entire scenario, one has to wonder, what are these nannies thinking?  What is their true motivation?  They are going to lose control and funding one way or the other.  Their kids are going to find tobacco, above ground or below.  Society is still going to have the costs involved with tobacco.  And not a dime of money from tobacco will make it to nanny groups, governments, or healthcare.

PROPAGANDA CHECK

A “new study” was released a few days ago and reported on Wave 3 News. 

          It seems that the study gives us alarming information about children’s test scores being adversely affected by secondhand smoke.  This isn’t so surprising, given that secondary smoke is responsible for global warming, paper cuts, and soggy cereal.

          The study was predominantly based on the amount of cotinine found in children’s bloodstreams.  Cotinine is used to measure the amount of nicotine that is present in blood.  Researchers and Wave 3 failed to tell us that nicotine is found in several vegetables, including potatoes, tomatoes, green peppers, and egg plant.  Should a kid eat these vegetables, their blood will contain cotinine.  Nicotine is also found in many insecticides, so children exposed to Raid will also test positive for nicotine.

          There were several flaws to the study Wave 3 didn’t care to question and report. 

The study failed to measure parents’ intelligences.  It may be that less intelligent people expose their children to smoke.

The study failed to include the economic backgrounds of the subjects.  Economics take a big part in diet, quality study time and the importance of education, study tools that affect grades, and the overall performance of kids when taking tests.  The researchers went after nicotine specifically, threw out or omitted important data, and concluded that nicotine was the evil culprit.

One last thing that Wave 3 failed to mention, the study is not new.  I can’t really blame Wave for this because they pulled it from USA Today and USA Today failed to mention that the study took place from 1988 to 1994, over ten years ago.  What I can blame on Wave 3 is the fact that they presented this “alarming new study” as fact when they didn’t lift a finger to check it out.

I just received a reply email from Adell Crowe, Standards Editor for USA Today.  Here is the gist of the reply:

“I don't see this as a case against freedom. Smokers still have the right to smoke in their homes, cars and even in some restaurants. We are not advocates, we simply report the study.”

It sure sounds to me like she is advocating.

TARGET PRACTICE

          Another one bites the dust.  A Louisville man was shot this week while waving a knife at cops.  Well, when you bring a knife to a gun fight…

          Another was shot by cops while waving an ax.  What is with all of this waving?  We should all be careful of what we hold in our hands when waving.

          A week or so ago, Chief White said that we “have to identify the criminal element and deal with it.”  Let me rephrase that for you, “We have to identify criminals and shoot them.”

          Apparently the cops felt threatened by these two criminals.  The cops had guns, and these guys had sticks with sharp blades on them.  The criminal element was outnumbered and outgunned.  Who deserved to feel more threatened? 

          Mayor Jerry said that the two men were wrong, not the cops.  Jerry, it’s wrong to run a red light, but we aren’t gunning down our citizens for doing it. 

One would think with all the arms training our police receive they would be able to hit a kneecap when within ax range.

Our mayor and Chief White said that the cops had followed proper procedure.  That’s nice, but what is proper procedure and for whom is it proper? 

The scariest part of this whole story is that while cops gun down two marginally armed men, our leaders tell us that all was done properly.  I beg to differ. 

          This is week one of the new year in Louisville.  Under Chief White’s unhappy leadership, these incidents set the tone for the rest of the year.  Happy New Year Louisville!  May we all enjoy the security of knowing that our cops are on the job.

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