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Terry’s Tidbits

By Terry Gray

August 1, 2005

EVIL TOOLS

Guns v. sticks, stun guns, pepper spray.  How many citizens today actually have to use stun guns or pepper spray for protection?  Though not typically lethal, they can be lethal in some circumstances.  Guns are not always lethal either.  A sweet knee shot or slug in the shoulder is sufficient to put down the baddies. 

For some reason, liberals believe that if one owns a gun, one will use the gun. They believe that if there are no baddies to shoot at then gun owners will shoot something.  Wouldn’t the same mentality apply to stun guns and pepper spray?  Wouldn’t there be a rash of sore eyes and twitching muscles?

I get tired of hearing that guns are bad.  Guns are machines, tools manufactured by man.  How one uses the tool, any tool, defines not the tool but the man.  So, leave my 2^nd amendment alone.

FDA
“Every physician who treats a patient that has had a stroke, heart attack, or experienced sudden death, will now be obligated to report any dietary supplements after an adverse event. This is guilt by association.”

The above is from a new FDA guideline on dealing with and controlling over-the-counter “drugs”, specifically vitamin supplements.  This is exactly the attitude that government has when dealing with most things that fall beyond its total control.  “Find a reason to control it” no matter if the reason or reasons are ludicrous. 

This is the mindset in the wars on guns, drugs, tobacco, pornography, violence, and yada yada.  Yada yada is the big one as it encompasses most things known and unknown.  In the war on smoking, smoking causes death, destruction, and disease in unknown quantities so anything that connects smoking to the above doom-makers is recorded as a factual cause.

“If you don’t know, estimate.”  We get figures ranging from 3,000 deaths a year from tobacco to 440,000.  Any number in between is perfectly acceptable to use, depending on one’s agenda.  We can also figure in how many tobacco farmers are killed while tending their crops and the offspring that the deceased farmer may have had, for 10 generations.

“Mr. Brown was crossing the street at 9:40 this evening when he was struck and killed by a city bus.  Witnesses say that Mr. Brown was talking wildly and staggering as he walked against the traffic light and made his way into the path of the oncoming bus.  An open pack of Marlboros was found next to his body, once again proof that smoking kills.  I’m Libby Media reporting for WASS.  Back to you in the studio Gary.”

DEMOCRATIC TYRANNY
Yep.  Every time we push for something to be placed on a ballot for the American people to vote on we are indulging ourselves in democratic tyranny.  If 4 people don’t want it and 3 people do, then the 3 people can’t have it because the 4 people don’t want it.  What is the difference between 4 people dictating to 3 people or one person dictating to a bunch of people?  One is called Democracy and the other is called tyranny.  An armpit by any other name would still smell like an armpit.

TRANSPORTATION CABINET
I was doing a little research on what state employees must endure in order to be hired by the state.  It is an amazing process, and stupid too.  In my investigation I ran across some information on background investigations that I thought was interesting.  Most everyone hired by the state undergoes some kind of background investigation, some involving the FBI.  At the bottom of the list was the Transportation Cabinet.  In the “investigation conducted by” column of the Transportation Cabinet it says, “Self.”  Now we understand.

POWER OF FEAR
We need to thank our local broadcast media for keeping our fear level at its highest.  Or should we thank them for numbing us to all the dangers in our lives by presenting to us everything in association with fear?

Thursday night between Double Jeopardy and Final Jeopardy, a 4 minute stretch, there were 4 commercials for medicinal drugs, 1 obligatory car commercial, and 1 promo for WLKY telling us how they keep us informed of all the dangers in our lives.

WHAS tells us that it “Investigates the problems and gets answers.”  Most of the problems that WHAS “finds” are problems that weren’t problems until WHAS showed up.  Many times, the “problems” prove not to be problems after WHAS is done.

The Courier Journal is conducting a 3 part “investigative” series on the health of Kentuckians.  It brags that they have followed health in Kentucky for 8 years and they want to follow up to prove they were right in their notion that Kentuckians are unhealthy.

The segueways between news and commercials is what is killing us.  News stories tell us that we are all going to die of some horrid disease and then cut to happy customers eating delicious ice cream.  Then the news picks up again and we are told that ice cream is killing us.  How can our news media take advertising dollars for things that our news media say are killing us?  Furthermore, how can advertisers justify spending their money with news media that are going to stomp their products at any given moment?

A recent story on WLKY told us about a man who was run over and killed while he lay in the middle of the road.  John Boel then told us that no charges were expected to be filed.  I emailed Mr. Boel and asked him why reporters insisted on assuming that a criminal act was committed until proven otherwise.  I reminded him of Journalism 101 and an important tool of that class:  “Man bites dog is news.”  News stories need to tell us of the abnormal, not the normal.  Charges being filed should be news, not the other way around.

Mr. Boel was kind enough to reply to my email.

“Though I'll never be the journalist you are, you clearly don't have a clue as to what Journalism 101 calls for.  In the vast majority of cases when people are run down on the street.. some kind of charge is filed.  So when a charge is not filed in a case like that, it's unusual, or 'man bites dog' and thus it's reported that way.  That's why we put the coroner on the way explaining it.  And that's why we further explained it by detailing how the guy was drunk and passed out.

Thanks for the uninformed sarcasm,

          -John”

Hmmm.

 

The bottom line is that our news media are fundamentally right in one respect:  we are all going to die.  We all know this.  So please, let me enjoy my ice cream.

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