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Terry’s Tidbits

By Terry Gray

October 3, 2005

“The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.”  Brooks Atkinson

Tobacco Persecution

          The first European to be persecuted for smoking tobacco was Rodriguo de Jerez, one of the dudes on the 1492 Columbus voyage to the new world.  It seems that Roddy was introduced to tobacco by native Cubans during an exploratory mission inland.  He took some leaves back to Spain with him and during the voyage began a habit of smoking a “cigar” every day.  Back in Spain he made the mistake of lighting up in public and was thrown in prison for 3 years.  He was the first victim of anti-smokers’ hate campaigns.

Nanny Mania

          And just when you thought you’d heard it all news from the Nazi Nanny World that yet another “secondhand” killer is on the loose.

          The study, still in its infancy, suggests that secondhand fat may kill.  Give them some time to fine tune the social engineering for maximum hysteria and funding will land in their laps.  City councils will be inundated with requests to ban fat from menus “to protect the public” and maybe, just maybe, our great leaders in this country will finally understand that they are being duped, as in smoking bans, by monsters of idiocy.

           "People should take a good look around them," warns Myers. "Instead of worrying about that cigarette someone at the next table may be holding in their fingers, they should be more concerned of invisible fat globules released in the air by the roly-poly woman gorging herself at a nearby table."  What a fine opening for legislation.

          The Weekly World News ran the story in its “Chamber of the Bizarre” section on September 30^th, but to Nannies it ain’t that bizarre.  The idea of regulating foods is catching on and government intervention is a fact.  Schools are being forced to offer healthier choices and remove “fat foods” from vending machines while removing parental control over kids.  It won’t take more than a couple of these type of articles to generate scoffs by those with some brain tissue while at the same time waking up researchers to the idea that money lies in wait for the picking.

Help the Children

Carbon Monoxide, Hydrogen Cyanide, Hydrazine, Formaldehyde, Benzene, and Nitrosodiamethylamine are poisons that are listed in tobacco smoke by the American Legacy Foundation.  The last ingredient is so hard to pronounce that it must be bad, according to ALF.

“Asthma, allergies, bronchitis, coughs, ear infections and pneumonia are just some of the health problems faced by kids exposed to second hand smoke,” according to ALF.

ALF is absolutely correct.  But kids suffer these afflictions with or without secondhand smoke, just as they suffer broken legs, measles, and total lack of most social graces.  As with most Nazi groups, ALF cherry picks its information and presents the distorted data in ways that make them seem like causes.  Sorry, SHS does not cause any of the health problems mentioned above but a lot of lame brained idiots will fall for this trap like flies in a spider’s web.  ALF is intent on banning smoking from homes, among other things.

ALF is also working on banning smoking from cars.  One of the pitches is that 32% of all teens are exposed to secondhand smoke in cars.  From where does this information come?  Skewed studies, folks.  But even if it were true, adding together those kids exposed to secondhand smoke in the home, secondhand smoke in public, and secondhand smoke in cars, and considering incidence of health problems associated with secondhand smoke, according to Nazi anti-smoking groups, our kids would be dropping all around us.

By the way, MEGASTIGMATRIENONE baby.  It must be bad because it is sooooo hard to say.  It is one of the 6,000 “toxins” in tobacco smoke.  It is also found in grapefruit.  And while I’m insulting the jerks at American Legacy Foundation how about ACETOXYDIHYDROTHEASPIRANE?  Gosh I’m tripping over my tongue while I eat my bread with spam and wash it down with instant tea.  That’s where you’ll find  ACETOXYDIHYDROTHEASPIRANE, another of the 6,000 “toxins” found in tobacco smoke.

What is Price Gouging? 

From a Libertarian standpoint I don’t think there is such a thing as price gouging.  You own a product and price it for whatever you think the market will bear; if someone else buys it, then great.  I don’t understand how any capitalist republic can label free market transactions as price gouging.

          Katrina and now Rita will affect how business is done in this country and if any business is to get done, there will have to be price gouging - by government definition.  The simple fact is that there are not going to be enough locals in these areas to rebuild what once was.  Workers are going to have to come from other areas to help in the rebuilding.  This means that there will be a shortage of workers which will create higher prices.  It is unrealistic to expect a carpenter to come from Ohio and work for the same wage he was making in Ohio.  Is it gouging when companies move their carpenters, at great expense, and charge more for their service?  Is it gouging when the people willingly pay the price for those services?

          What if you have a good widget business in Peoria and a storm wipes out the area leaving you as the only person to have widgets?  Widgets are desperately needed and you increase production, thereby increasing costs to meet the widget demand.  According to government, you cannot charge more for widgets than you charged before the storm.  What if people are lining up at your door to buy widgets at whatever price you charge?  Is this gouging?  What if widgets are a luxury and people still are willing to pay whatever you want to charge.  Is this gouging?   What if you decided to not sell ANY widgets during the crisis because your right to set your price is taken from you?  What would that be called?

          This attitude is a liberal entitlement attitude that we have to get over.  You are not entitled to widgets, regardless of the circumstances, unless you own the widgets.  Then you are entitled to do as you please with the widgets.  When the crisis is over and you are back on your feet, open your own widget factory.  In the meantime, stop whining and pay the asking price or don’t.

Pot and Guns  

          Why do the media insist on telling us about guns when a person gets into trouble and the trouble has nothing to do with guns?  A southern Indiana couple was busted for growing pot, a travesty in itself given that Katrina and now Rita will destroy a lot of the southern crops, and our media tells us that guns were found in the couple’s house.  So?  It is legal to own guns.  No guns were used in the “crime” of growing pot and no guns were used to defend the couple’s pot business from Para-military cops.

          This wouldn’t upset me so much if every now and then we hear that a politician was busted for taking a bribe and guns were found in his house.

          Folks, it’s a war out there and it’s our freedom that is at stake.  I keep the email addresses of known media personalities that persist in reporting with liberal, un-American slants and I let them know when they have screwed up.  And yes, some do take my advice and make changes.  Yes, this surprises me too but it shows that if they know we are aware they may take a second look at what they are saying and how they are saying it.

Trial of the Error?

          The Keep and Bear Arms website has a poll asking if the former police chief of New Orleans, Eddie Compass, who resigned after being told by the courts to return firearms confiscated from law abiding citizens, should be prosecuted for violating the civil rights of gun owners.  A whopping 98% of the respondents have vote “yes”.  I want to know what is wrong with the other 2%.

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