They Say...
Words - Thoughts - Aritcles - etc. |
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I don't want any of your statistics. I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc., etc., etc. You never see but one side of the question. You are blind to the fact that most old men in America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your theory, they ought to have died young; and that hearty old Englishmen drink wine and survive it, and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet grow older and fatter all the time. And you never try to find out how much solid comfort, relaxation and enjoyment a man derives from smoking in the course of a lifetime, (and which is worth ten times the money he would save by letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of people from not smoking.
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Mark Twain|
For all intents and purposes, "political correctness" is a far too polite a label to describe the brand of political oppression being imposed on certain kinds of thought. Let's call it what it is: thought control and "political cleansing." Some liberals believe that their pet theories and beloved philosophical constructs have no legitimate intellectual competition, so they just declare other view points off limits. That's "political cleansing." Hypocrisy! The left-wing thought police are forever paying lip service to the ideals of free expression, but they are the first to place restrictions on it for those with whom they disagree. By establishing a new type of crime called a "hate crime", we are giving the left, power over our private thoughts. We know that they know how to reach inside our heads and know precisely what we are thinking at that moment. |
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds." Henry Adams --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pre-1992? Stanton Glantz files a report with EPA claiming 53-56,000 deaths per year are attributable to ETS. 1992 - EPA report "Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking" based on a meta analysis of 11 separate studies (Glantz not included--they never endorsed him) uses 3,000 deaths per year attributable to ETS. 1995 - CRS (Congressional Research Service -- 741 person, $62 million per year think tank that works exclusively for Congress -- Library of Congress report 95-1115 SPR, Nov. 14, 1995) rejects EPA and 3 other studies as not statistically significant and tainted by poor research and analysis. EPA found 119 lung cancers among non-smoking spouses where 100 would have been expected. This equals a risk ratio of 1.19, generally considered statistically insignificant.This was produced in response to an OSHA ruling that would ban smoking in Federal workplaces. It found no basis for such a ban. Only the Wall Street Journal editorial, "Smoking out Bad Science" and one in Investor's Business Daily "Junk Science" took any notice of the CRS report which says EPA wrong on passive smoking. See Michael Mitchel at: http://www.consumer.alert.org/fumento/passive.htm 1996 - November 11, Glantz prepares a report accepting the 3,000 figure. This was posted 11/5/1996. (http://www.tobacco.org/misc/crs_glantz.html) 1998 - WHO study on ETS -- purportedly the largest such ever undertaken comprising 20 years in 38 centers in 21 countries and minimizing the detrimental effects of ETS is immediately denounced as "garbage science" by anti-smoking leaders and even some from within WHO. 1998 American Heart Association still attributes 50,000 fatal heart attacks per year to ETS. |