“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws!” –Tacitus (A.D. 55-130)
Yes, like any other kid, I ate Oreos and now an attorney in California (aka Kalifornia) wants to ban Oreos. No, don’t laugh, this is a real live prospective lawsuit! Oreos, so the attorney alleges, contain trans-fatty acids or “trans fats” as they are now known. Well, so does Crisco or other vegetable shortening, margarine and hundreds of other products we eat daily. We usually see them on labels as “partially hydrogenated” soybean oil or other vegetable oil product.
It was bad enough when the World Health Organization, the UN’s “fat police,” was weighing in on what our body mass should be, and they’ve only taken shelter for a little bit until they can make a home run in some liberal court. Meantime, Mayor Bloomberg of New York, an ex-smoker himself who is now out to reform (and financially ruin) the city over which he presides has cost restaurant and bar owners as much as 40%-50% of their business, according to a report in the New York Post.
However, it is now being proposed that Californians should throw down their Oreos and the product should be banned from the state. They’ve only been around since 1912, but suddenly they have become a threat to the public health, especially that of children. (Always watch out when someone says it’s “for the children” because there’s an agenda in the Control Closet somewhere.) If you cannot eat Oreos, then what will you eat? Almost all cookies are made with a lot of shortening. If you don’t use butter (full of cholesterol) then you use partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (like Crisco or margarine).
In my pantry are some cookies purchased from my local Trader Joe’s, the California-based home of all things organic and as many kinds of rice as people in the USA never knew about. I checked the label and <gasp> Trader Joe’s has sold me some of their own brand of oatmeal raisin cookies and they contain partially hydrogenated shortening! Ban those suckers. I purchased them from the most wildly liberal, seaweed-promoting, fish-dispensing, organic salad purveyor in the whole flippin USA. And yet they contain the same ingredient as Oreos. Sue the blighters. Sue them, I say.
In case anyone doesn’t recall the year 1983 or the circumstances, the Ninth Circuit (aka Ninth Circus) Court of Appeals in California (where else?) ruled that a woman’s health had been damaged by being subjected to smokers working around her. I was working in the legal field when I heard that report via news radio, and I knew what was coming. There is no delight in saying “I told you so” when Americans lose their freedoms. All these old pharts who lived through the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, residing in retirement communities like Sun City have now decided that in order for them to live even longer and pay even higher medical costs for their arthritis and hip replacements, everyone else should stop smoking. If all the smoke they lived through was so deadly, how did this bunch of goofballs who cannot tell red from green stoplights live into their late 70’s and 80’s?
Meanwhile, not all is calm in the state of New Jersey, either, where it has been proposed that anything that distracts a driver should be illegal and punishable by fines and/or jail time, and that ranges from tuning the radio to having a cup of coffee in the coffee holder and drinking it while driving (or maybe just sitting at a stop light waiting for green). The police power granted in this proposed law, which the people of New Jersey may or may not defeat, is frightening. Even a woman looking in the rear view mirror and touching her hair could be accused of driving while distracted, whether she was fixing her hair or not. Maybe she just has a scalp itch … no scratching while driving!
Now mind you, while each of these is a separate and discrete state issue, collectively they are forming the basis for controls such as the United States has never known.
Don’t think for a minute that these issues aren’t known to our present administration. If ever President Bush or Attorney General John Ashcroft wanted to assure Americans of their liberty, it would be now … with subtle phone calls to the people who are promoting these assaults against our liberties. Don’t think it isn’t any of their business, it is. Whatever they decide is their business becomes their business. Don’t think for a minute that President Bush isn’t acquainted with billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York.
What is this reference to the present administration about? It’s about using heavy-handed billionaire mayors and little known lawyers from California and New Jersey to instigate rules, regulations and police powers that will effect controls to further stifle the freedoms of Americans until there is no question that they will have to throw down their guns or die, be jailed, or carted off to some unknown destination as enemies of the state.
Most people will see little connection between a few outlandish controls in California, New Jersey, New York and other whack states (including my home, Arizona) and the overall progress of a controlled America. Be assured, there is one. A big network of little controls that condition us, one by one, to accept the fact that one morning, we will have utterly NO freedoms left. At that point … the gun owners who are fighting so hard to keep their weapons (and sometimes their Oreos and cigarettes) will be enemies of the state. It’s on its way.
True Republicans would fight this sort of control. Neocons will not and liberal Democrats will not. The struggle is not for American freedom but for American control. After all, as long as Americans own guns and can assert constitutional rights, there’s going to be a fight. Now … if a gun owner eats an Oreo cookie ….hmmm. Think about it. Every freedom one American takes from another American will find its way back home until the state has all the power and the people have none.
My suggestion is for the still-free Americans to apprise themselves of this chicanery and put a stop to it. Now. Tomorrow is too late. We’re not losing our Constitution and Bill of Rights by the year, or month, we’re losing it by the hour, one lawsuit at a time. What an elected administration will not do, and an elected Congress dare not do, is shifted to the courts to do. And it all adds up to police power. If eating a cookie is illegal … then they can confiscate your guns! Be sure that anyone convicted of eating illegal cookies or illegal driving will be forbidden to own firearms.
That’s my take on it. Now you, free Americans, who are getting less free every day, better get busy and find out what’s going on in your state to take away another one of your freedoms. The end object isn’t your cigarettes or your Oreos, it’s your firearms and anything they can convict you of that has a firearms confiscation or ownership prohibition attached to it. And soon, every offense will have that penalty.
You betcha!
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”