I'm not a morning person, and generally unpleasant to be around until lunchtime. But any day's a good day that starts with
a post from s.z, and when you add in Dennis Prager telling the ladies to just lie back and let him, Bill Bennett, Mike Gallagher, Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt fill their pretty little heads with the industrial run-off from their big pulsing Man Brains, well...that's about as close as I come to greeting the dawn with a smile and a wink across the brim of my coffee cup like the vivified spokesmodel in an old Yuban commercial.
Sheri also mentioned that she took the time out of her day to teach the fundamentals of Objectivism to an 11-month old infant, which takes a rare, Daniel-in-the-Lion's-den kind of courage, because babies are, by and large, not a sympathetic audience for the Randian Facts of Life. Most of them, in fact, are needy, greedy socialists with a teat-draining attachment to the Nanny State (have you ever seen a pair of baby booties with actual bootstraps? I rest my case).
And speaking of Self-Made
Mustaches Men, let's check in with ex-consumer reporter and wrestler whipping boy, and current Galt's Gulch real estate agent, John Stossel:
"What's wrong with these chains? These are the chains I forged (via a reputable off-shore subcontractor) in life! Because I'm a producer! Sure they chafe a little, but you know what? Jacob Marley was a wuss..."
FDA Kills Smokers
My intuition makes me grateful that the FDA is there to protect me -- to make sure that every drug is proven both safe and effective -- but "protection" kills people.
Look, John, just be frank and tell her you don't like wearing a condom. Or even fake a latex allergy if you must, but as pre-coital patter goes, this is a bit of a buzzkill.
Last week, I discussed how the FDA kills by keeping useful medical devices off the market.
Like the
Battle Creek Vibratory Chair, scourge of constipation! Or Sanitized Tape Worms!
"Easy To Swallow!" (Just like the claims in this ad!) And best of all, "No Baths!", unlike our exclusive line of Schistosomiasis Worms, which require immersion.
Now, we learn the FDA threatens the health of cigarette smokers who want to quit.
You know what I love most about English? It's a such a vibrant, living language, always evolving and adapting. Why, when I was a lad, we no longer said things like "when I was a lad," because it sounded archaic, or at least overbearingly precious. And "learn" meant "to master a skill," or "acquire a fact," rather than "to distort a press release," or "to root around and pull shit out of my ass like an Okie noodlin' for catfish on
Hillbilly Handfishin'."
How can I say that?
Perfunctorily? Unconvincingly? In Percy Kilbride's Downeaster accent from
The Egg and I?
Hasn't the FDA proposed that new warnings and gruesome pictures be placed on cigarette packages because the old scares apparently weren't working? ... So the FDA certainly seems to be trying to save smokers' lives. How can I say the FDA threatens smokers?
Because you have the morals of a Ukrainian phishing scammer?
What other conclusion can we draw when we consider that the FDA now talks about banning electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes. It sent threatening letters to manufacturers of the product.
The FDA sent letters threatening to kill smokers? Talk about typical government fraud and abuse! Instead of wasting our tax dollars threatening to kill people who are already killing themselves, they ought to be
actually killing
healthy people -- vegans, teetotalers, pilates enthusiasts!
E-cigarettes look like cigarettes, but instead of burning tobacco, they vaporize liquid nicotine when users puff on, or "vape," them. The resulting aerosol mist satisfies "smokers" without their inhaling tars and the most dangerous of tobacco's chemicals into their lungs.
What could be healthier? I'm sure high-end spas will soon be replacing macrobiotic diets and yoga studios with "vape rooms."
What could be wrong with that? Well, the FDA says e-cigarettes contain trace chemicals that "may" be "toxic."
So do chips of lead paint, but that's no reason kids shouldn't be allowed to dissolve them in soapy water and smoke them in a bubble pipe.
But most everything "may" be toxic.
This column, for instance; and yet Townhall still doesn't carry a Surgeon General's Warning.
New York Times science columnist John Tierney writes: "The agency has never presented evidence that the trace amounts actually cause any harm, and it has neglected to mention that similar traces of these chemicals have been found in other FDA-approved products, including nicotine patches and gum."
True, although no one has ever suffered from Secondhand Gum, unless they got a blob of it stuck to the bottom of their shoe, or tried to French kiss Ann Coulter while she was working on a Red Man-sized chaw of Nicorette.
"The agency's methodology and warnings have been lambasted in scientific journals."
Like the
Ladies Home Journal, and the
Journal of the Whills.
Brad Rodu...
Who certainly
sounds like a Star Wars character...
...a professor of medicine at the University of Louisville, concluded in the Harm Reduction Journal that the FDA results "are highly unlikely to have any possible significance to users" because it detected chemicals at "about 1 million times lower concentrations than are conceivably related to human health."
Moreover, Michael Siegel, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, told Tierney: "It boggles my mind why there is a bias against e-cigarettes among antismoking groups" such as the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association.
Anti-smoking groups are opposed to nicotine addiction? Call me impertinent, Professor, but it seems like your mind is easily boggled, so I suggest you decline any future invitations to actually play Boggle, otherwise it might set up a feedback loop that would ultimately result in a
Scanners-like cranial explosion.
But in the interests of peer-reviewed science, let's see exactly what's behind this beef the anti-heart disease, contra-cancer extremists seem to have with
vapin'.
[A]uthorities are wary of e-cigarettes and already several states, including New Jersey, New York, and New Hampshire, have made moves to ban them.
As an ardent Libertarian, Stossel naturally supports States Rights, unless they involve stronger consumer regulations, because that's like castrating Superman.
Affordable and readily available online by adults and minors alike, some argue that this product, which comes in flavors like chocolate or apple, is just another way for teens to get hooked on nicotine.
But it's a potential boon to dieters. Just imagine: you're in a restaurant, you've just finished a rich meal and you're trying to resist the dessert cart, when someone at a neighboring lights up a Strudel-flavored e-cigarette. Suddenly, the flourless chocolate cake is forgotten, and all you can think is, "Mmm, your habit smells delicious! Just like
Großmutter used to make -- except, while we did gorge on her pastries after Sunday dinner, we didn't literally inhale them."
The American Cancer Society, Cancer Action Network, American Lung Association and others said in a statement on the product that "absent scientific evidence, these claims…that they are safer than normal cigarettes ... are in blatant in violation of FDA rules."
And suspicions about these unregulated devices are not unfounded. The FDA survey of e-cigarettes found that one brand, Smoking Everywhere, contained diethylene glycol, a toxic chemical found in anti-freeze.
Now your teen won't overheat in the summer, or freeze up in the winter. Anyway, back to Stossel:
It boggles my mind, too, because...e-cigarettes not only pose merely a hypothetical risk compared to real "cigarettes containing thousands of chemicals, including dozens of carcinogens and hundreds of toxins"... True, the cigarette substitutes are basically nicotine-delivery devices. But so what?
The American Association of Public Health Physicians wrote that e-cigarettes might "save the lives of 4 million of the 8 million current adult American smokers."
Four million lives!
It's unusual -- even surprising -- to see Stossel so exciting about saving lives. I would assume this means he also supports a Single Payer national health insurance program that would save many millions more, except I know him. Still, he probably feels entitled to credit for caring enough about his fellow, if inferior Man to save his miserable, moochery existence by unleashing the power of the Free Market, in the form of an untested, hand-held incinerator that delivers a highly addictive substance, seasoned with automobile coolant.
The FDA seems to believe that it can create a risk-free environment here on earth.
The FDA also seems to believe the American Businessman would put rat shit and brake fluid in baby formula if they could turn a half-cent per unit higher profit. Bunch of airy-fairy Utopians.
But that is pure balderdash. Life is always a choice between greater and lesser risks -- zero risk is not an option. Striving to abolish risk kills people.
Preventing the Mark Eden Breast Development System from claiming it was "clinically proven to give you the front end of a 1955 Cadillac!" killed more people than Hitler and Mao combined.
"It's time to be honest with the 50 million Americans, and hundreds of millions around the world, who use tobacco," Rodu writes. "It's time to abandon the myth that tobacco is devoid of benefits and to focus on how we can help smokers continue to derive those benefits with a safer delivery system."
I don't know what planet Rodu comes from -- although I assume it's lousy with Sith -- but I think his statement would sound more credible if he was talking through a Darth Vader-style breath mask.
