Tuesday, December 31, 2013
January 3, 2014 - Issue #742If 12 years of damage is not enough warning for the world, it will never be ready for King Bloomberg. |
The Mike Bloomberg Legacy: 12 Years of Little Tyrannies in 2 Minutes! His legacy goes far beyond his nanny state war on cigarette smoke, salts and fat, but into his use of the NYPD (which he described as "his personal army") to spy on citizens and stop-and-frisk young men of color en masse, as well as his abuse of eminent domain to seize private property and hand it over to his fellow billionaire developers for massive vanity projects. Reason TV takes a brief year-by-year look back at Mayor Bloomberg's most outrageous assaults on freedom of choice and civil liberties.
Public Enemy Number One: More about Michael Bloomberg. ... and so much more! Smoking activists light up in City Hall: "You've shown nothing but disrespect and contempt and not just the choice to smoke, but on decision-making itself. This is my legal private life, not public health. You don't own me like state property" fumed Audrey Silk of NYC Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment. "Good people disobey bad laws." Smoker Steve Helfer shouted as he was carted off: "Take care mayor... 12 years is enough!" Last-Minute Bloomberg Push for Mandatory Flu Vaccines: The Board of Health voted in favor of the mandatory vaccine for children under 6 years old. The new rule takes effect in 30 days and will be required for about 150,000 children... forcing children as young as six months old to be immunized. Bloomberg Gun Control Agenda for the world: With the creation and personal funding of a cabal of urban political machines, Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) and his self-funded multi-million dollar super Political Action Committee, Bloomberg is obsessed with becoming a dictator over the Second Amendment. In his self-absorbed orbit, Bloomberg is so rich and so arrogant that laws simply don't apply to him. His all-consuming agenda would control the individual liberty of choice for ordinary Americans whom he believes are too stupid to possess such freedom. Bloomberg can buy the media and buy government, but he can't buy freedom. It is not for sale. Bloomberg Focuses on Rest (as in Rest of the World): Michael R. Bloomberg, determined to parlay his government experience and vast fortune into a kind of global mayoralty, is creating a high-powered consulting group to help him reshape cities around the world long after he leaves office. To build the new organization, paid for out of his own pocket, the billionaire mayor is taking much of his City Hall team with him: He has already hired many of his best-known and longest-serving deputies, promising them a chance to export the policies they developed in New York to far-flung places like Louisville, Ky., and Mexico City. For Mr. Bloomberg, the project is the first concrete phase of a post-mayoral life that aides said would remain intensely focused on cities, long viewed by him as laboratories for large-scale experiments in public health, economic development and environmental sustainability. The group resembles a government in exile. 
WARNING to King Bloomberg, taking rights from his subjects, and now reaching across the pond. Nothing lasts forever.WATCH: Coldplay - Viva La Vida I used to rule the world - Seas would rise when I gave the word - Now in the morning I sleep alone - Sweep the streets I used to own. / I used to roll the dice - Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes - Listen as the crowd would sing - "Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!" / One minute I held the key - Next the walls were closed on me - And I discovered that my castles stand - Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand. / I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing - Roman Cavalry choirs are singing - Be my mirror, my sword and shield - My missionaries in a foreign field. / For some reason I can't explain - Once you go there was never - Never an honest word - And that was when I ruled the world. / It was the wicked and wild wind - Blew down the doors to let me in - Shattered windows and the sound of drums - People couldn't believe what I'd become. / Revolutionaries wait - For my head on a silver plate - Just a puppet on a lonely string - Oh who would ever want to be king? / For some reason I can't explain - I know Saint Peter won't call my name - Never an honest word - But that was when I ruled the world. |
Thursday, December 26, 2013
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December 27, 2013 - Issue #741 "Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth." - Buddha |
Secondhand smoke myth up in flames.New study finds no link between secondhand smoke and lung cancer. *** Second-Hand Smoke Proven Harmless - Again. By Rush Limbaugh... secondhand smoke, does not give you lung cancer. *** Passive smoking - another of the Nanny State's big lies. By James Delingpole. Passive smoking doesn't give you lung cancer. So says a new report publicised by the American Cancer Institute which will come as no surprise whatsoever to anyone with a shred of integrity who has looked into the origins of the great "environmental tobacco smoke" meme. *** The Passive Smoking Issue Is A Rorschach Test For The Ability To Think Scientifically. By Geoffrey Kabat. *** ... and more! 
NYT Report Wrong on Small Particles-Why Not? Second hand smoking even in the data tortured meta analyses of the EPA and the Surgeon General shows an RR of 1.2 and yet they claim one breath of SHS is deadly-sure thing when you're on a roll you can claim anything, its called lying for justice in politics or lying for a cause in the nanny state. Can't be too careful-a good scare will have the right effect on behavior even if exaggerated.
Junk Science - New England Journal of Medicine. NEJM editor: "No longer possible to believe much of clinical research published." Harvard Medical School's Dr. Marcia Angell is the author of The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It. But more to the point, she's also the former Editor-in-Chief at the New England Journal of Medicine, arguably one of the most respected medical journals on earth. But after reading her article in the New York Review of Books called Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption, one wonders if any medical journal on earth is worth anybody's respect anymore. San Francisco Freedom-Haters and the Sale of Cigarettes. San Francisco Supervisor Eric Mar says he plans to introduce legislation next month that would set caps on the total tobacco sales permits allowed in neighborhoods with existing high concentrations, such as the Tenderloin, Bayview, Chinatown and Mission. 
Oklahoma's use of tobacco settlement funds is a state success story. The settlement came in an era when society forgot that tobacco usage is a personal choice. We looked instead for a scapegoat. Big Tobacco filled the bill. Most of all, we salute voters, who made sure the tobacco settlement wouldn't become a slush fund for politicians.
DC Library of Congress Scores Win for Smokers. Under the terms of an arbitrator's Dec. 11 ruling, the LOC must continue to allow smoking in the northwest quadrant of the Madison plaza, adjacent to the Cannon House Office Building, and must install benches to accommodate smokers at the back corner of the building, near Second and C streets Southeast.
Salt Is Worse Than Tobacco. Sodium chloride is - well - the salt of life. We would die without it. But too much salt is really harmful. Senior Researcher Ulla Toft at the Research Centre for Prevention and Health in Copenhagen thinks we err on the side of salinity. Toft points to figures which show that a 15 percent cut in salt intake prevents three times as many deaths from cardiovascular disease as does a 20 percent cut in smoking.
Scotland Speech Ban: No more muffin tops or cankles: Minister calls for ban on "fat talk" used to shame women over their bodies. Has called for a ban on terms such as "thunder thighs" from conversation. The equalities minister said: 'It's depressingly commonplace to hear women - and even young girls and children - insulting their own bodies. Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence last week called for the word fat to be "illegal to use" on television.
NY Bloomberg's e-cig ban: Likely to do more harm than good. The key idea is that e-cigs somehow facilitate tobacco smoking - but the best evidence suggests the reverse, that they're mainly useful for (and used by) people trying to quit. So the ban is likely to do harm, not good. UK Desperation Of E-Cig Prohibitionists: Water vapor. I take it, then, that - rather than venture out in public on a cold winter day - this neurotic chimp hides away indoors for fear of all that visible breath drifting close to him. |
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Thursday, December 19, 2013
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December 20, 2013 - Issue #740 "The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath." |
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Read more about keeping Christmas in Christmas. Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicolas soon would be there. When suddenly up on the roof, there a'rose such a clatter, I jumped up from my bed, to see what was the matter. I ran down the stairs, and what did I find? a big fat elf smoke'n in my living room, ...must be out of his mind. I yelled HEY! get out of here with that pipe, You're stinkin' up my house, and that ain't just no hype. I'll get the Lung Association, and Heart Association and ANR in your face, I'll make a few calls, and even get Repace! and I'll bet you didn't even pay taxes on the weed in that thing, when the attorney general gets done with you, you'll end up in Sing Sing. and the FAA says you can't smoke on your sleigh, It's a regularly scheduled flight, even if it's for only one day. and the law says you can't smoke, in your workshop at all, the Dept. of Health will fine you, when I give em' a call. So get out of here with that thing, and don't ever come back, or ASH will rip it out of your mouth, and shove it up your crack. Next year Tobacco-free Kids will deliver our gift, you're banished from Christmas, do you get my drift? and I heard him exclaim, as he rode out of sight, Merry Christmas to all! 'cept the dork on my right. See more comedy at: Comedy Week |
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Thursday, December 12, 2013
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December 13, 2013 - Issue #739 "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." - P. J. O'Rourke |
In a Plain Brown Package: Australia's doomed effort to kill tobacco sales. By P.J. O'Rourke. Beer is certainly next, with pictures of drunken fistfights, snoring bums, and huge, gin-blossomed noses on every can. Airplane crashes kill a lot of people. No plane should be allowed to land in Australia unless it's painted drab dark brown and bears an image of fiery carnage along its fuselage. Cars kill even more. Perhaps a banner showing lethal wrecks could be pasted across the inside of every car's windshield. And there's food. Make all food drab dark brown (something of a historical tradition in Australian cooking anyway) and deck the labels with naked fat men. Fortunately there are those who are still willing to fight for property rights and freedom of choice. Raul Castro, for one. Cuba has gone to the World Trade Organization to challenge Australia's Tobacco Plain Packaging Act. Cuba argues that the act violates the internationally recognized rights of trademark owners and does not comply with the WTO's agreements banning technical barriers to trade and protecting intellectual property. When Raul Castro is your Milton Friedman, you're ready for the intellectual firing squad. The thought process of Australia's legislators should be stood up against the wall of common sense. Care for a last cigarette?
No Clear Link Between Passive Smoking and Lung Cancer: A large prospective cohort study of more than 76,000 women found no link between the disease and secondhand smoke. Environmental Tobacco Smoke: Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. By Pam Parker. Bar owners already suffering under bans simply want a truly open-minded, independent economic investigation of smoking bans before more of these destructive laws are passed. This new CDC/Pfizer/RTI smoking ban study just can't be trusted. The CDC is yet another rogue federal agency attempting to drive policy and justify increased funding through junk science. If This Be Treason: Chris Sorochin interviews Michael J. McFadden, author of "TobakkoNacht - The Antismoking Endgame" exploring various facets of the social engineering "Endgame" being pursued by today's Tobacco Control movement. NY: Meanwhile, in NYC... Electronic Cigarettes. Gennaro has now admitted in public something that we have known all along. Denormalization has absolutely nothing to do with public health. Denormalization is a weasel word used by the people who would unleash it upon us in an attempt to conceal the moral, ethical and intellectual bankruptcy of their thinking and methods. They are telling us that because they dislike something, they have a right to engineer a society in which it becomes unacceptable. OH: No fat smokers for health commissioner. The health department for Dayton and Montgomery County this week adopted new employment policies that will require the health commissioner to be tobacco-free and maintain a body weight that "exemplifies a healthy standard of life." Current health commissioner Jim Gross says the person in the position needs "to practice what he or she preaches." UK: Government plans to curb smoking are not only wasteful but unworkable. By Nigel Farage. On this occasion the government has announced an independent review of cigarette packaging in England to discourage younger smokers. Already they have reneged on their promise of a minimum price for alcohol and are taking a beating from the "health campaigners" and assorted health fascists. Cigar Dens: These Dens Are Smoking. Luxury homeowners are increasingly willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars to create elegant smoking retreats with high-end fixtures. Mr. Carter home's smoking room has a centerpiece humidor that holds up to 1,200 cigars. "I don't call it a man cave because a lot of women love it, too," he says. "Your friends all want to come over because they can't believe that you have a cigar room in your house." |
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Thursday, December 05, 2013
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December 6, 2013 - Issue #738 "Hate crimes are the scariest thing in the world because these people really believe what they're doing is right." - Cher |
 Canada - Another Smoker Dead. "We've had enough!" Workers at the Halifax Shipyard walked off the job on Thursday, protesting treatment after co-worker commits suicide. "They harassed him, they were after him," Herse said as a light rain fell down on the workers. "The man couldn't even have a cigarette without them getting in his business." UK - Another Smoker Dead. Man stabbed to death while having cigarette outside St Christopher's Inn in Southwark. Victim Christopher Foster, 34, had a young daughter and worked for a law firm. 
More Ban Damage. Deaths, Injuries, Rape, and more! How many people have to die or be hurt before the Antis realize that smoking bans are a bad idea, and dangerous to people? What is the exact "body count" the Antis are waiting for? Would they please apologize to these people, and the grieving families for putting their lives and their loved ones into harms way? Would you like to explain to a child whose Mommy or Daddy will not be coming home that you don't like the smell of smoke? Tell someone that their spouse or child is dead because you didn't want people to do something legal in a place you never go to anyway? If the Antis don't like to be around smoke, they should use their freedom of choice to not enter a building where the owner has decided to allow it. They should not be allowed to push their will on others at the expense of human life.
FL Lawmakers want a playground smoking ban. That's an irony created by the 2002 constitutional amendment that created the Florida Clean Indoor Air Act which expressly preempted regulation of smoking to the state -- forbidding city and county governments from enforcing local ordinances. Rep. Katie Edwards, D-Plantation, and Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Orange Park, want to change that. A bill similar to the Bradley-Edwards' proposal enabling enforcement of the ordinances died during this year's legislative session. The Senate bill has been referred to the Regulated Industries, Community Affairs and Criminal Justice committees. The House bill has yet to be referred to a committee. NY: New York City May Ban Vaping Because It Looks Like Smoking. By Jacob Sullum. The New York City Council is considering a ban on the use of electronic cigarettes in bars, restaurant, and other "public places" - not because there is any evidence that the devices pose a hazard but because they look too much like regular cigarettes. Councilman James Gennaro, a sponsor of the proposed ban, tells The New York Times, "We see these cigarettes are really starting to proliferate, and it's unacceptable." Why is it unacceptable? According to the Times, "Mr. Gennaro said children who could not differentiate between regular and electronic smoking were getting the message that smoking is socially acceptable." 
USA - Stanton Glantz Funding At Risk. California Tobacco Control Program threatened by Dept of Public Health's interpretation of anti-outsourcing law. The defunding of contracts with independent, statewide tobacco control technical assistance providers will quickly hinder the ability of the California Tobacco Control Program to deliver the legislatively mandated tobacco control services mandated by the voters of California in 1988 with the passage of Proposition 99. California's structure of combining effective leadership from the CDPH with contracts with partner organizations who have technical expertise and community connections that do not exist in the Department has been one of the keys to its success and made it a model for the world. The resulting program, which combines a hard-hitting media campaign and local efforts that have saved one million lives and $134 billion in health care costs. This is a government program that works and yet you are risking the very integrity of the program by dismantling its current infrastructure and gambling on a potential new one with no understanding or assurances that it will work.
UK - NICE? No, just plain horrible people. So we now have the people who purport to act on behalf of NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) deciding what hospital policy/ies should be with regard to smoking. Since when have they been a legislative body I ask? These are the people who decide whether cancer sufferers live or die - acording to cost. I thought medical staff were medical staff, trained to treat people that were ill - not bullyboy style doormen/women that harrassed others because of a lifestyle chosen by them! This is one step too far. UK: Why walking within 30ft of a lit cigarette puts you at risk of dangerous passive smoking. Regular readers-indeed, anyone who can read-will know better than to take science reporting from the Daily Mail too seriously. Levels of PM2.5 are much higher on the average London street than they are within a few metres of burning cigarettes in this study. |
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